“Little Cupid one day in a myrtle-bough strayed,
And among the sweet blossoms he playfully played,
Plucking many a sweet from the boughs of the tree,
Till he felt that his finger was stung by a bee,”
sang Gardis, and went on blithely through the whole, giving Mother Venus’s advice archly, and adding a shower of improvised trills at the end.
“Bravo!” said a voice from the garden below.
Rushing to the casement, Miss Duke beheld, first with astonishment, then dismay, two officers in the uniform of the United States army standing at the front door. They bowed courteously, and one of them said, “Can I see the lady of the house?”
“I—I am the lady,” replied Gardis, confusedly; then drawing back, with the sudden remembrance that she should not have shown herself at all, she ran swiftly up to the study for Cousin Copeland. But Cousin Copeland was not there, and the little mistress remembered with dismay that old Dinah was out in the corn-field, and that Pompey had gone fishing. There was nothing for it, then, but to go down and face the strangers. Summoning all her self-possession, Miss Duke descended. She would have preferred to hold parley from the window over the doorway, like the ladies of olden time, but she feared it would not be dignified, seeing that the times were no longer olden, and therefore she went down to the entrance where the two were awaiting her. “Shall I ask them in?” she thought. “What would Aunt Margaretta have done?” The Gardiston spirit was hospitable to the core; but these—these were the Vandals, the despots, under whose presence the whole fair land was groaning. No; she would not ask them in.
The elder officer, a grave young man of thirty, was spokesman. “Do I address Miss Gardiston?” he said.
“I am Miss Duke. My aunt, Miss Gardiston, is not living,” replied Gardis.
“Word having been received that the yellow fever has appeared on the coast, we have been ordered to take the troops a few miles inland and go into camp immediately, Miss Duke. The grove west of this house, on the bank of the river, having been selected as camping-ground for a portion of the command, we have called to say that you need feel no alarm at the proximity of the soldiers; they will be under strict orders not to trespass upon your grounds.”
“Thanks,” said Gardis mechanically; but she was alarmed; they both saw that.
“I assure you, Miss Duke, that there is not the slightest cause for nervousness,” said the younger officer, bowing as he spoke.
“And your servants will not be enticed away, either,” added the other.
“We have only two, and they—would not go,” replied Gardis, not aggressively, but merely stating her facts.
The glimmer of a smile crossed the face of the younger officer, but the other remained unmoved.
“My name, madam, is Newell—David Newell, captain commanding the company that will be encamped here. I beg you to send me word immediately if anything occurs to disturb your quiet,” he said.
Then the two saluted the little mistress with formal courtesy, and departed, walking down the path together with a quick step and soldierly bearing, as though they were on parade.
“Ought I to have asked them in?” thought Gardis; and she went slowly up to the drawing-room again and closed the piano. “I wonder who said ‘bravo’? The younger one, I presume.” And she presumed correctly.
At lunch (corn-bread and milk) Cousin Copeland’s old-young face appeared promptly at the dining-room door. Cousin Copeland, Miss Margaretta’s cousin, was a little old bachelor, whose thin dark hair had not turned gray, and whose small bright eyes needed no spectacles; he dressed always in black, with low shoes on his small feet, and his clothes seemed never to wear out, perhaps because his little frame hardly touched them anywhere; the cloth certainly was not strained. Everything he wore was so old-fashioned, however, that he looked like the pictures of the high-collared, solemn little men who, accompanied by ladies all bonnet, are depicted in English Sunday-school books following funeral processions, generally of the good children who die young.
“O Cousin Copeland, where were you this morning when I went up to your study?” began Gardis, full of the event of the morning.
“You may well ask where I was, my child,” replied the bachelor, cutting his toasted corn-bread into squares with mathematical precision. “A most interesting discovery—most interesting. Not being thoroughly satisfied as to the exact identity of the first wife of one of the second cousins of our grandfather, a lady who died young and left no descendants, yet none the less a Gardiston, at least by marriage, the happy idea occurred to me to investigate more fully the contents of the papers in barrel number two on the east side of the central garret—documents that I myself classified in 1849, as collateral merely, not relating to the main line. I assure you, my child, that I have spent there, over that barrel, a most delightful morning—most delightful. I had not realized that there was so much interesting matter in store for me when I shall have finished the main line, which will be, I think, in about a year and a half—a year and a half. And I have good hopes of finding there, too, valuable information respecting this first wife of one of the second cousins of our respected grandfather, a lady whose memory, by some strange neglect, has been suffered to fall into oblivion. I shall be proud to constitute myself the one to rescue it for the benefit of posterity,” continued the little man, with chivalrous enthusiasm, as he took up his spoon. (There was one spoon to spare now; Gardis often thought of this with a saddened heart.) Miss Duke had not interrupted her cousin by so much as an impatient glance; trained to regard him with implicit respect, and to listen always to his gentle, busy little stream of talk, she waited until he had finished all he had to say about this “first wife of one of the second cousins of our grandfather” (who, according to the French phrase-books, she could not help thinking, should have inquired immediately for the green shoe of her aunt’s brother-in-law’s wife) before she told her story. Cousin Copeland shook his head many times during the recital. He had not the bitter feelings of Miss Margaretta concerning the late war; in fact, he had never come down much farther than the Revolution, having merely skirmished a little, as it were, with the war of 1812; but he knew his cousin’s opinions, and respected their memory. So he “earnestly hoped” that some other site would be selected for the camp. Upon being told that the blue army-wagons had already arrived, he then “earnestly hoped” that the encampment would not be of long continuance. Cousin Copeland had hoped a great many things during his life; his capacity for hoping was cheering and unlimited; a hope carefully worded and delivered seemed to him almost the same thing as reality; he made you a present of it, and rubbed his little hands cheerfully afterward, as though now all had been said.
“Do you think I should have asked them in?” said Gardis, hesitatingly.
“Most certainly, most certainly. Hospitality has ever been one of our characteristics as a family,” said Cousin Copeland, finishing the last spoonful of milk, which had come out exactly even with the last little square of corn-bread.
“But I did not ask them.”
“Do I hear you aright? You did not ask them, Cousin Gardiston?” said the little bachelor, pausing gravely by the table, one hand resting on its shining mahogany, the other extended in the attitude of surprise.
“Yes, Cousin Copeland, you do. But these are officers of the United States army, and you know Aunt Margaretta’s feelings regarding them.”
“True,” said Cousin Copeland, dropping his arm; “you are right; I had forgotten. But it is a very sad state of things, my dear—very sad. It was not so in the old days at Gardiston House: then we should have invited them to dinner.”
“We could not do that,” said Gardis thoughtfully, “on account of forks and spoons; there would not be enough to go— But I would not invite them anyway,” she added, the color rising in her cheeks, and her eyes flashing. “Are they not
our enemies, and the enemies of our country? Vandals? Despots?”
“Certainly,” said Cousin Copeland, escaping from these signs of feminine disturbance with gentle haste. Long before, he was accustomed to remark to a bachelor friend that an atmosphere of repose was best adapted to his constitution and to his work. He therefore now retired to the first wife of the second cousin of his grandfather, and speedily forgot all about the camp and the officers. Not so Gardis. Putting on her straw hat, she went out into the garden to attend to her flowers and work off her annoyance. Was it annoyance, or excitement merely? She did not know. But she did know that the grove was full of men and tents, and she could see several of the blue-coats fishing in the river. “Very well,” she said to herself hotly; “we shall have no dinner, then!” But the river was not hers, and so she went on clipping the roses, and tying back the vines all the long bright afternoon, until old Dinah came to call her to dinner. As she went, the bugle sounded from the grove, and she seemed to be obeying its summons; instantly she sat down on a bench to wait until its last echo had died away. “I foresee that I shall hate that bugle,” she said to herself.
The blue-coats were encamped in the grove three long months. Captain Newell and the lieutenant, Roger Saxton, made no more visits at Gardiston House; but, when they passed by and saw the little mistress in the garden or at the window, they saluted her with formal courtesy. And the lieutenant looked back; yes, there was no doubt of that—the lieutenant certainly looked back, Saxton was a handsome youth; tall and finely formed, he looked well in his uniform, and knew it. Captain Newell was not so tall—a gray-eyed, quiet young man. “Commonplace,” said Miss Gardis. The bugle still gave forth its silvery summons. “It is insupportable,” said the little mistress daily; and daily Cousin Copeland replied, “Certainly.” But the bugle sounded on all the same.
One day a deeper wrath came. Miss Duke discovered Dinah in the act of taking cakes to the camp to sell to the soldiers!
“Well, Miss Gardis, dey pays me well for it, and we’s next to not’ing laid up for de winter,” replied the old woman anxiously, as the irate little mistress forbade the sale of so much as “one kernel of corn.”
“Dey don’t want de corn, but dey pays well for de cakes, dearie Miss Gardis. Yer see, yer don’t know not’ing about it; it’s only ole Dinah makin’ a little money for herself and Pomp,” pleaded the faithful creature, who would have given her last crumb for the family, and died content. But Gardis sternly forbade all dealings with the camp from that time forth, and then she went up to her room and cried like a child. “They knew it, of course,” she thought; “no doubt they have had many a laugh over the bakery so quietly carried on at Gardiston House. They are capable of supposing even that I sanctioned it.” And with angry tears she fell to planning how she could best inform them of their mistake, and overwhelm them with her scorn. She prepared several crushing little speeches, and held them in reserve for use; but the officers never came to Gardiston House, and of course she never went to the camp—no, nor so much as looked that way; so there was no good opportunity for delivering them. One night, however, the officers did come to Gardiston House—not only the officers, but all the men; and Miss Duke was very glad to see them.
It happened in this way. The unhappy State had fallen into the hands of double-faced, conscienceless whites, who used the newly enfranchised blacks as tools for their evil purposes. These leaders were sometimes emigrant Northerners, sometimes renegade Southerners, but always rascals. In the present case they had inflamed their ignorant followers to riotous proceedings in the city, and the poor blacks, fancying that the year of jubilee had come, when each man was to have a plantation, naturally began by ejecting the resident owners before the grand division of spoils. At least this was their idea. During the previous year, when the armies were still marching through the land, they had gone out now and then in a motiveless sort of way and burned the fine plantation residences near the city; and now, chance having brought Gardiston to their minds, out they came, inconsequent and reasonless as ever, to burn Gardiston. But they did not know the United States troops were there.
There was a siege of ten minutes, two or three volleys from the soldiers, and then a disorderly retreat; one or two wounded were left on the battle-field (Miss Duke’s flower-garden), and the dining-room windows were broken. Beyond this there was no slaughter, and the victors drew off their forces in good order to the camp, leaving the officers to receive the thanks of the household—Cousin Copeland, enveloped in a mammoth dressing-gown that had belonged to his grandfather, and Gardis, looking distractingly pretty in a hastily donned short skirt and a little white sack (she had no dressing-gown), with her brown hair waving over her shoulders, and her cheeks scarlet from excitement. Roger Saxton fell into love on the spot: hitherto he had only hovered, as it were, on the border.
“Had you any idea she was so exquisitely beautiful?” he exclaimed, as they left the old house in the gray light of dawn.
“Miss Duke is not exquisitely beautiful; she is not even beautiful,” replied the slow-voiced Newell. “She has the true Southern colorless, or rather cream-colored, complexion, and her features are quite irregular.”
“Colorless! I never saw more beautiful coloring in my life than she had to-night,” exclaimed Saxton.
“To-night, yes; I grant that. But it took a good-sized riot to bring it to the surface,” replied the impassive captain.
A guard was placed around the house at night and pickets sent down the road for some time after this occurrence. Gardis, a prey to conflicting feelings, deserted her usual haunts and shut herself up in her own room, thinking, thinking what she ought to do. In the mean time, beyond a formal note of inquiry delivered daily by a wooden-faced son of Mars, the two officers made no effort toward a further acquaintance; the lieutenant was on fire to attempt it, but the captain held him back. “It is her place to make the advances now,” he said. It was; and Gardis knew it.
One morning she emerged from her retreat, and with a decided step sought Cousin Copeland in his study. The little man had been disquieted by the night attack; it had come to him vaguely once or twice since then that perhaps there might be other things to do in the world besides copying family documents; but the nebula—it was not even a definite thought—had faded, and now he was at work again with more ardor than ever.
“Cousin Copeland,” said Gardis, appearing at the door of the study, “I have decided at last to yield to your wishes, and—and invite the officers to dinner.”
“By all means,” said Cousin Copeland, putting down his pen and waving his hands with a hearty little air of acquiescence—“by all means.” It was not until long afterward that he remembered he had never expressed any wish upon the subject whatever. But it suited Gardis to imagine that he had done so; so she imagined it.
“We have little to work with,” continued the little mistress of the house; “but Dinah is an excellent cook, and—and—O cousin, I do not wish to do it; I can not bear the mere thought of it; but oh! we must, we must.” Tears stood in her eyes as she concluded.
“They are going soon,” suggested Cousin Copeland, hesitatingly, biting the end of his quill.
“That is the very reason. They are going soon, and we have done nothing to acknowledge their aid, their courtesy—we Gardistons, both of us. They have saved our home, perhaps our lives; and we—we let them go without a word! O cousin, it must not be. Something we must do; noblesse oblige! I have thought and thought, and really there is nothing but this: we must invite them to dinner,” said Miss Duke, tragically.
“I—I always liked little dinners,” said Cousin Copeland, in a gentle, assenting murmur.
Thus it happened that the officers received two formal little notes with the compliments of Miss Gardiston Duke inclosed, and an invitation to dinner. “Hurrah!” cried Saxton. “At last!”
The day appointed was at the end of the next week; Gardis had decided that that
would be more ceremonious. “And they are to understand,” she said proudly, “that it is a mere dinner of ceremony, and not of friendship.”
“Certainly,” said Cousin Copeland.
Old Dinah was delighted. Gardis brought out some of the half-year rent money, and a dinner was planned, of few dishes truly, but each would be a marvel of good cooking, as the old family servants of the South used to cook when time was nothing to them. It is not much to them now; but they have heard that it ought to be, and that troubles the perfection of their pie-crust. There was a little wine left in the wine-room—a queer little recess like a secret chamber; and there was always the crocodile china and the few pieces of cut glass. The four forks would be enough, and Gardis would take no jelly, so that the spoons would serve also; in fact, the dinner was planned to accommodate the silver. So far, so good. But now as to dress; here the poor little mistress was sadly pinched. She knew this; but she hoped to make use of a certain well-worn changeable silk that had belonged to Miss Margaretta, in hue a dull green and purple. But, alas! upon inspection she discovered that the faithful garment had given way at last, after years of patient service, and now there was nothing left but mildew and shreds. The invitation had been formally accepted; the dinner was in course of preparation: what should she do? She had absolutely nothing, poor child, save the two faded old lawns which she wore ordinarily, and the one shabby woolen dress for cooler weather. “If they were anything but what they are,” she said to herself, after she had again and again turned over the contents of her three bureau drawers, “I would wear my every-day dress without a moment’s thought or trouble. But I will not allow these men, belonging to the despot army of the North, these aliens forced upon us by a strong hand and a hard fate, to smile at the shabby attire of a Southern lady.”
Constance Fenimore Woolson Page 28
