Part 19 (1/2)
CHAPTER XI.
ON THE SALKAHATCHIE.
Scarce a leaf quivered on the branches of the magnolias, or a tress of gray-green moss on the cypress boughs. All the world of the Salkahatchie was wrapped in siesta. The white clouds drifting on palest turquoise were the only moving things except the water flowing beneath, and its soft swish against the gunnels of the floating wharf made the only sound.
The plantation home of Loringwood, facing the river, and reached through the avenue of enormous live oaks, looked an enchanted palace touched with the wand of silence.
From the wide stone steps to the wide galleries, with their fluted pillars, not a murmur but the winged insects droning in the tangled gra.s.ses, for the wild luxuriance of rose tree and j.a.ponica, of lawn and c.r.a.pe myrtle, betrayed a lack of pruning knives in the immediate season past; and to the south, where the rice fields had reached acre beyond acre towards the swamps, there were now scattered patches of feathering young pine, creeping everywhere not forbidden to it by the hand of man.
Spring time and summer time, for almost a century, had been lived through under its sloping, square, dormer-windowed roof. But all the blue sky and brilliant suns.h.i.+ne above could not save it from a suggestion of autumn, and the shadows lengthening along the river were in perfect keeping with the entire picture--a picture of perpetual afternoon.
”Row-lock,” ”Row-lock,” sounded the dip and click of paddles, as a boat swept close to the western bank, where the shadows fell. Two Afro-Americans bent in rhythmic motion--bronze human machines, whose bared arms showed nothing of effort as they sent the boat cutting through the still water.
A middle-aged woman in a voluminous lavender lawn and carrying a parasol of plaid silk-green, with faded pink bars, sat in the after part of the boat, while a slight brown-haired girl just in front amused herself by catching at branches of willows as they pa.s.sed.
”Evilena, honey, you certainly are like to do yourself a hurt reaching out like that, and if you _should_ go over!”
”But I shan't, Aunt Sajane. Do you reckon I'd risk appearing before Gertrude Loring in a draggled gown just when she has returned from the very heart of the civilized world? Goodness knows, we'll all look dowdy enough to her.”
Aunt Sajane (Mistress Sarah Jane Nesbitt) glanced down at her own immaculate lawn, a little faded but daintily laundered, and at her own trim congress-gaitered feet.
”Oh, I didn't mean you,” added the girl, laughing softly. ”Aunt Sajane, I truly do believe that if you had nothing but gunny sacks for dresses you'd contrive to look as if you'd just come out of a bandbox.”
”I'd wear gunny sacks fast enough if it was to help the cause,” agreed Aunt Sajane, with a kindly smile. ”So would you, honey.”
”Honey” trailed her fingers in the waters, amber-tinted from the roots of the cypress trees.
”If a letter from mama comes today we will just miss it.”
”Only by a day. Brother Gideon will send it.”
”But suppose he's away somewhere on business, or up there at Columbia on state councils or conventions, or whatever they are, as he is just now?”
”Then Pluto will fetch it right over,” and she glanced at one of the black men, who showed his teeth for an instant and bent his head in a.s.sent.
”Don't see why Judge Clarkson was _ever_ named Gideon,” protested the girl. ”It's a hard, harsh sort of name, and he's as--as--”
”Soft?” queried the judge's sister, with an accompaniment of easy laughter. The youngest of the two oarsmen grinned. Pluto maintained a well-bred indifference.
”No!” and the girl flung a handful of willow leaves over the lavender lawn. ”He is--well--just about right, the judge is; so gentle, so considerate, so altogether magnificent in his language. I've adored him as far back as when he fought the duel with the Northern man who reflected some way on our customs; that was starting a war for his state all alone, before anyone else thought of it, I reckon. I must have been very little then, for I just recollect how he used to let me look in his pockets for candy, and I was awfully afraid of the pistols I thought he must carry there to shoot people with,” and she smiled at the childish fancy. ”I tell you, Aunt Sajane, if my papa had lived there's just one man I'd like him to favor, and that's our judge. But he didn't, did he?”
”No, he didn't,” said Aunt Sajane. ”The McVeigh men were all dark, down to Kenneth, and he gets his fairness from your ma.” Then she added, kindly, ”the judge will be very proud of your admiration.”
”Hope he'll care enough about it to hurry right along after us. He does put in a powerful lot of his time in Charleston and Columbia lately,” and the tone was one of childish complaint.
”Why, honey, how you suppose our soldier boys would be provided for unless some of the representative men devote their time to the work?
It's a consolation to me that Gideon is needed for civil service just now, for if he wasn't he wouldn't be so near home as he is; he'd be somewhere North with a regiment, and I reckon that wouldn't suit you any better.”