Colonel Carter of Cartersville Part 19

Descending the great spiral staircase with its slender mahogany bal.u.s.ters,--here and there a break,--I caught sight of the entrance hall below with its hanging gla.s.s lantern, quaint haircloth sofas lining the white walls, and half-oval tables heaped with flowers, and so on through the wide-open door leading out upon a vine-covered porch.

This had high pillars and low railings against which stood some broad settles--all white.

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The colonel, Fitz, and the English agent were still in their rooms,--three pairs of polished shoes outside their several doors bearing silent witness to the fact,--and the only person stirring was a pleasant-faced negro woman with white ap.r.o.n and gay-colored bandana, who was polishing the parlor floor with a long brush, her little pickaninny astraddle on the broom end for weight.

I pushed aside the hanging vines, sat down on one of the wooden benches, and looked about me. This, then, was Carter Hall!

The house itself bore evidence of having once been a stately home. It was of plaster stucco, yellow washed, peeled and broken in places, with large dormer windows and sloping roof, one end of which was smothered in a tangle of Virginia creeper and trumpet vine climbing to the very chimney-top.

In front there stretched away what had once been a well-kept lawn, now a wild of coa.r.s.e gra.s.s broken only by the curving line of the driveway and bordered by a row of Lombardy poplars with here and there a gap,--bitten out by hungry camp-fires.

To the right rose a line of hills increasing in height as they melted into the morning haze, and to the left lay an old-fashioned garden,--one great sweep of bloom. With the wind over it, and blowing your way, you were steeped in roses.

I began unconsciously to recall to myself all the traditions of this once famous house.

Yes, there must be the window where Nancy waved good-by to her lover, and there were the flower-beds into which he had fallen headlong from his horse,--only a desolate corner now with the gra.s.s and tall weeds grown quite up to the scaling wall, and the wooden shutters tightly closed. I wondered whether they had ever been opened since.

And there under my eyes stood the very step where Chad had helped his old master from his horse the day his sweetheart Henny had been purchased from Judge Barbour, and close to the garden gate were the negro quarters where they had begun their housekeeping. I thought I knew the very cabin.

And that line of silver glistening in the morning light must be the river Tench, and the bend near the willows the spot where the colonel would build the iron bridge with the double span, and across and beyond on the plateau, backed by the hills, the site of the future city of Fairfax.

I left my seat, strolled out into the garden, crossed the gra.s.s jeweled with dew, and filled my lungs with the odor of the sweet box bordering the beds,--a rare delight in these days of modern gardens. Suddenly I came upon a wide straw hat and a broad back bending among the bushes.

It was Chad.

"Mawnin', Major; fust fox out de hole, is yer? Lawd a ma.s.sey, ain't I glad ter git back to my ole mist'ess! Lan' sakes alive! I ain't slep'

none all night a-thinkin' ober it. You ain't seen my Henny? Dat was her sister's chile rubbin' down de flo'. She come ober dis mawnin' ter help, so many folks here. Wait till I git a basket ob dese yer ole pink rose-water roses. See how I snip 'em short? Know what I'm gwineter do wid 'em? Sprinkle 'em all ober de tablecloth. I lay dey ain't n.o.body done dat for my mist'ess since I been gone. But, Major,"--here Chad laid down the basket on the garden walk and looked at me with a serious air,--"I done got dat coal lan' business down to a fine p'int. I was up dis mawnin' 'fo' daylight, an' I foun' dat rock, an' de crotch is dar yit; I sc.r.a.pe de moss offen it myself; an' I foun' de tree too.

I ain't sayin' nuffin', but jes you wait till after breakfas' an' dey all go out lookin' for de coal! Jes you wait, dat's all! Chad's on his own cabin flo' now. Can't fool dis chile no mo'."

This was good news so far as it went. Our sudden exodus from Bedford Place had been determined upon immediately after Chad's dismal failure to locate the coal-field: Fitz having carried the day against Yancey, Kerfoot, and even the agent himself, who was beginning to waver under the acc.u.mulation of uncertainties.

"Dat's enough roses to bury up de dishes. Rub yo' nose down in 'em.

Ain't dey sweet! Now, come along wid me, Major. I done tole Henny 'bout you an' de tar'pins an' de times de gemmen had. Dis way, Major; won't take a minute, an' ef ye all go back to-night,--an' I yerd Mister Englishman say _he_ got to go,--you mightn't hab anudder chance.

Henny's cookin', ye know. Dis way. Step underdat honeysuckle!"

I looked through an open door and into a dingy, smoke-dried interior, ceiled with heavy rafters, and hung with herbs, red peppers, onions, and the like. This was lighted by three small windows, and furnished with a row of dressers filled with crockery and kitchen ware, and permeated by that savory smell which presages a generous breakfast On one side of the fireplace rested the great hominy mortar, cut from a tree trunk, found in all Virginia kitchens, and on the other the universal brick oven with its iron doors,--the very doors, I thought, that had closed over Chad's goose when Henny was a girl. Between the mortar and the oven opened, or rather caverned, a fireplace as wide as the colonel's hospitality, and high and deep enough to turn a coach in. It really covered one end of the room.

Bending over the swinging crane hung with pots and fringed with hooks,--baited so often with good dinners,--stood an old woman with bent back, her gray head bound up with a yellow handkerchief.

"Henny, de major made a special p'int o' c.u.min' to see ye 'fo' he gits his break-fas'."

She looked up and dropped me a curtsey.

"Mawnin', marsa. I ain't much ter see, I'm so ole an' mizzble wid dese yer cricks in my back an' sich a pa.s.sel o' white folks. How did my Chad git along up dar 'mong de Yankees?"

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I gave Chad so good a character that every tooth in his head came out on dress parade, and was about to draw from Henny some of her own experiences,--this loyal old servant whose life from her girlhood to her old age had been one of the romantic traditions of the roof that sheltered her,--when Chad, who had gone out with the roses, returned with the news that the colonel and his guests were breathing the morning air on the front porch, and were much disturbed over my prolonged absence.

The colonel caught sight of me as I rounded the corner, Fitz and the agent joining in his outburst of hilarious welcome, intoxicated as they all were with the elixir of that most exhilarating of all hours--the hour before breakfast of a summer morning in the country.

"Welcome, my dear Major," called the colonel; "a hearty welcome to Caarter Hall! Come up here where you can get a view of Fairfax, suh!"

and by the time I had mounted the steps he was leaning over the railing, with Fitz on the one side and the agent on the other, sweeping the horizon with his index finger and drawing imaginary curves and building bridges and locating railroad stations in the air with as much confidence and hope as if he really saw the gangs of laborers at work across the fields, their shovels glinting in the dazzling sunlight.

"Jes cast yo' eyes, suh,"--this to the agent,--"and tell me, suh, if you have ever in yo' world-wide experience seen such a location for a great city. Level as a flo', watered by the Tench, and sheltered by a line of hills that are beauty itself--it is made for it, suh!"

The agent did full justice to the natural advantages and then asked:--

"Is the coal in that range?"

"No, suh; the coal is behind us on an outlyin' spur. I will take you there after breakfast."

And then followed a brief description of the changes the war had made in the homestead, the burning of the barns, the abandonment of the quarters, the destruction of the lawns--"A yard for their d.a.m.nable wagons, suh;" the colonel pointing out with great delight the very dent in the ridge where General Early had ridden through and captured the whole detachment without the loss of a man.

While we were talking that same rustling of silk that I had learned to know so well in Bedford Place was heard in the hall, then a sweet, cheery voice giving some directions to Chad, and the next instant dear aunt Nancy--Fitz and I had long since dared to call her so--floated (she never seemed to walk) out upon the porch with a word and a curtsey to the agent, a hand each to Fitz and me, and a kiss for the colonel.

Then came the breakfast, and such a breakfast! The outpourings of a Virginia kitchen, with the table showered with roses, and the great urn shining and smoking, and the relays of waffles and corn-bread and broiled chicken; all in the old-fashioned dining-room, with its high wainscoting, spindle--legged sideboards, and deep window seats; the long moon-faced clock in the corner-and the rest of it! After that the quiet smoke under the vine-covered end of the portico with the view towards Cartersville.

"There comes the jedge," said the colonel, pointing to a cloud of dust following a two-wheel gig, "and Major Yancey behind on horseback."

(They had both been dropped outside their respective garden gates the night before.) "Now, gentlemen, as soon as my attorney arrives with the surveys and deeds we will adjourn to my library and locate this coal-field."

Yancey's horse proved, on closer inspection, to be the remnant of an army mule with a moth-eaten mane and a polished tail bare of hair--worn off, no doubt, in a lifelong struggle with the Fairfax County fly. The major was without the luxury of a saddle, some one having borrowed the only one the owner of the mule possessed, and his breeches, in consequence, were half way up his knees. The judge arrived in better shape, the gig being his own and fairly comfortable,--the same he rode to circuit, a yellow-painted vehicle washed only when it rained,--and the horse the property of the village livery man, who had a yearly contract with his Honor for its use.

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Chad was waiting on the flagstones surrounded by some stray pickaninnies when the procession stopped, and a.s.sisted the major to alight, with as much form and ceremony as if he had been the best mounted gentleman in the land. The saddleless fragment was then led to a supporting fence. The judicial equipage was accorded the luxury of a shed, where the annual contract was served with a full measure of oats--Chad's recognition of his more exalted station.

The judge bowed gracefully and with great dignity, and with the air of a chief justice entering the court room; then preceding the colonel and his guests,--without a word having fallen from his lips,--he entered a small room opening into the parlor. There he placed upon a chair certain mysterious-looking packages, long and otherwise, one a tin case, which he uncapped, spreading its contents upon a table.

It proved to be another and larger map than the one Chad had pored over, and showed distinctly the boundary lines between two dots marked "Oak" and "Rock" dividing the Carter and Barbour estates.

Up to this time Fitz and the agent had preserved the outward appearance of two idle gentlemen visiting a friend in the country, with no interest beyond the fresh air and the environments of a charming hospitality.

With the unrolling of this map, however, and the discovery of the very boundary points insisted on by Chad in Bedford Place, their excitement could hardly be suppressed. The agent broke loose first.

"Before we find out, Colonel Carter, to whom this coal belongs, which may take some valuable time, I want to examine the quality of the vein itself. I would like to go now."

"By all means, suh; and my people shall go with us," said the colonel, turning to Kerfoot with instructions to bring Chad and all the maps later.--Yancey excused himself on the ground of the heat. Then donning a wide straw hat and picking up a cane,--something he never used in New York,--the colonel led the way through the rear door, across a stone wall, and up a hill covered with a second growth of timber.

The experienced eye of the Englishman took in the lay of the land at a glance, and beckoning Fitz to one side he stooped and picked something from the ground which he examined carefully with a magnifying gla.s.s.

Then they both disappeared hurriedly over the hill.

When they returned, half an hour later, the perspiration was rolling from the agent, and Fitz's eyes were blazing. Both were loaded down with bundles of broken bits of rock, tied up in their several handkerchiefs, large enough to start a geological collection in a country museum.

"What is it, Fitz--diamonds?" I said, laughing.

"Yes; black ones at that." He was almost breathless. "Solid bed of bituminous! Clear down to China! Don't breathe a word yet, for your life!"

The agent was calmer. The coal-bed, he said, seemed to be of more than ordinary richness, and as far as he could judge lay in a vein of generous width. He was ready for the survey, and would like the boundary points located at once.