Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches Part 15

"Well," said Miss Tewksbury placidly, "we are about to ignore the most impressive fact, after all."

"What is that, Aunt Harriet?"

"Why, child, these people are from Azalia, and for us Azalia is the centre of the universe."

"Ah, don't pretend that you are not charmed, dear aunt. We shall have the pleasure of meeting the handsome Miss Hornsby, and probably Mr.

Goolsby himself--and certainly the distinguished general."

"I only hope Ephraim Buxton has a clear conscience to-day," remarked Miss Tewksbury with unction.

"Did you observe the att.i.tude of the general toward Mr. Goolsby, and that of Mr. Goolsby toward the general?" asked Helen, ignoring the allusion to Dr. Buxton. "The line that the general drew was visible to the naked eye. But Mr. Goolsby drew no line. He is friendly and familiar on principle. I was reminded of the 'Brookline Reporter,' which alluded the other day to the London 'Times' as its esteemed contemporary. The affable general is Mr. Goolsby's esteemed contemporary."

"My dear child," said Miss Tewksbury, somewhat anxiously, "I hope your queer conceits are not the result of your illness."

"No, they are the result of my surroundings. I have been trying to pretend to myself, ever since we left Washington, that we are traveling through a strange country; but it is a mere pretense. I have been trying to verify some previous impressions of barbarism and shiftlessness."

"Well, upon my word, my dear," exclaimed Miss Tewksbury, "I should think you had had ample opportunity."

"I have been trying to take the newspaper view," Helen went on with some degree of earnestness, "but it is impossible. We must correct the newspapers, Aunt Harriet, and make ourselves famous. Everything I have seen that is not to be traced to the result of the war belongs to a state of arrested development."

Miss Tewksbury was uncertain whether her niece was giving a new turn to her drollery, so she merely stared at her; but the young lady seemed to be serious enough.

"Don't interrupt me, Aunt Harriet. Give me the opportunity you would give to Dr. Barlow Blade, the trance medium. Everything I see in this country belongs to a state of arrested development, and it has been arrested at a most interesting point. It is picturesque. It is colonial.

I am amazed that this fact has not been dwelt on by people who write about the South."

"The conservatism that prevents progress, or stands in the way of it, is a crime," said Miss Tewksbury, pressing her thin lips together firmly.

She had once been on the platform in some of the little country towns of New England, and had made quite a reputation for pith and fluency.

"Ah, dear aunt, that sounds like an extract from a lecture. We can have progress in some things, but not in others. We have progressed in the matter of conveniences, comforts, and luxuries, but in what other directions? Are we any better than the people who lived in the days of Washington, Jefferson, and Madison? Is the standard of morality any higher now than it was in the days of the apostles?"

"Don't talk nonsense, Helen," said Miss Tewksbury. "We have a higher civilization than the apostles witnessed. Morality is progressive."

"Well," said Helen, with a sigh, "it is a pity these people have discarded shoe-buckles and knee-breeches."

"Your queer notions make me thirsty, child," said Miss Tewksbury, producing a silver cup from her satchel. "I must get a drink of water."

"Permit me, madam," said a sonorous voice behind them; and a tall gentleman seized the cup, and bore it away.

"It is the distinguished general!" exclaimed Helen in a tragic whisper, "and he must have heard our speeches."

"I hope he took them down," said Miss Tewksbury snappishly. "He will esteem you as a sympathizer."

"Did I say anything ridiculous, Aunt Harriet?"

"Dear me! you must ask your distinguished general," replied Miss Tewksbury triumphantly.

General Garwood returned with the water, and insisted on fetching more.

Helen observed that he held his hat in his hand, and that his att.i.tude was one of unstudied deference.

"The conductor tells me, madam," he said, addressing himself to Miss Tewksbury, "that you have tickets for Azalia. I am going in that direction myself, and I should be glad to be of any service to you.

Azalia is a poor little place, but I like it well enough to live there.

I suppose that is the reason the conductor told me of your tickets. He knew the information would be interesting."

"Thank you," said Miss Tewksbury with dignity.

"You are very kind," said Miss Eustis with a smile.

General Garwood made himself exceedingly agreeable. He pointed out the interesting places along the road, gave the ladies little bits of local history that were at least entertaining. In Atlanta, where there was a delay of a few hours, he drove them over the battle-fields, and by his graphic descriptions gave them a new idea of the heat and fury of war.

In short, he made himself so agreeable in every way that Miss Tewksbury felt at liberty to challenge his opinions on various subjects. They had numberless little controversies about the rights and wrongs of the war, and the perplexing problems that grew out of its results. So far as Miss Tewksbury was concerned, she found General Garwood's large tolerance somewhat irritating, for it left her no excuse for the employment of her most effective arguments.

"Did you surrender your prejudices at Appomattox?" Miss Tewksbury asked him on one occasion.

"Oh, by no means; you remember we were allowed to retain our side-arms and our saddle-horses," he replied, laughing. "I still have my prejudices, but I trust they are more important than those I entertained in my youth. Certainly they are less uncomfortable."

"Well," said Miss Tewksbury, "you are still unrepentant, and that is more serious than any number of prejudices."

"There is nothing to repent of," said the general, smiling, a little sadly as Helen thought. "It has all pa.s.sed away utterly. The best we can do is that which seems right and just and necessary. My duty was as plain to me in 1861, when I was a boy of twenty, as it is to-day. It seemed to be my duty then to serve my State and section; my duty now seems to be to help good people everywhere to restore the Union, and to heal the wounds of the war."

"I'm _very_ glad to hear you say so," exclaimed Miss Tewksbury in a tone that made Helen shiver. "I was afraid it was quite otherwise. It seems to me, that, if I lived here, I should either hate the people who conquered me, or else the sin of slavery would weigh heavily on my conscience."

"I can appreciate that feeling, I think," said General Garwood, "but the American conscience is a very healthy one--not likely to succ.u.mb to influences that are mainly malarial in their nature; and even from your point of view some good can be found in American slavery."

"I have never found it," said Miss Tewksbury.

"You must admit that but for slavery the negroes who are here would be savages in Africa. As it is, they have had the benefit of more than two hundred years' contact with the white race. If they are at all fitted for citizenship, the result is due to the civilizing influence of slavery. It seems to me that they are vastly better off as American citizens, even though they have endured the discipline of slavery, than they would be as savages in Africa."

Miss Tewksbury's eyes snapped. "Did this make slavery right?" she asked.

"Not at all," said the general, smiling at the lady's earnestness. "But, at least, it is something of an excuse for American slavery. It seems to be an evidence that Providence had a hand in the whole unfortunate business."

But in spite of these discussions and controversies, the general made himself so thoroughly agreeable in every way, and was so thoughtful in his attentions, that by the time Helen and her aunt arrived at Azalia they were disposed to believe that he had placed them under many obligations, and they said so; but the general insisted that it was he who had been placed under obligations, and he declared it to be his intention to discharge a few of them as soon as the ladies found themselves comfortably settled in the little town to which Dr. Buxton had banished them.

III

AZALIA was a small town, but it was a comparatively comfortable one. For years and years before the war it had been noted as the meeting-place of the wagon-trains by means of which the planters transported their produce to market. It was on the highway that led from the cotton-plantations of Middle Georgia to the city of Augusta. It was also a stopping-place for the stage-coaches that carried the mails. Azalia was not a large town, even before the war, when, according to the testimony of the entire community, it was at its best; and it certainly had not improved any since the war. There was room for improvement, but no room for progress, because there was no necessity for progress. The people were contented. They were satisfied with things as they existed, though they had an honest, provincial faith in the good old times that were gone. They had but one regret--that the railroad station, four miles away, had been named Azalia. It is true, the station consisted of a water-tank and a little pigeon-house where tickets were sold; but the people of Azalia proper felt that it was in the nature of an outrage to give so fine a name to so poor a place. They derived some satisfaction, however, from the fact that the world at large found it necessary to make a distinction between the two places. Azalia was called "Big Azalia," and the railroad station was known as "Little Azalia."

Away back in the forties, or perhaps even earlier, when there was some excitement in all parts of the country in regard to railroad building, one of Georgia's most famous orators had alluded in the legislature to Azalia as "the natural gateway of the commerce of the Empire State of the South." This fine phrase stuck in the memories of the people of Azalia and their posterity; and the pa.s.sing traveler, since that day and time, has heard a good deal of it. There is no doubt that the figure was fairly applicable before the railways were built; for, as has been explained, Azalia was the meeting-place of the wagon-trains from all parts of the State in going to market. When the cotton-laden wagons met at Azalia, they parted company no more until they had reached August.

The natural result of this was that Azalia, in one way and another, saw a good deal of life--much that was entertaining, and a good deal that was exciting. Another result was that the people had considerable practise in the art of hospitality; for it frequently happened that the comfortable tavern, which Azalia's commercial importance had made necessary at a very early period of the town's history, was full to overflowing with planters accompanying their wagons, and lawyers traveling from court to court. At such times the worthy townspeople would come to the rescue, and offer the shelter of their homes to the belated wayfarer.

There was another feature of Azalia worthy of attention. It was in a measure the site and centre of a mission--the headquarters, so to speak, of a very earnest and patient effort to infuse energy and ambition into that indescribable cla.s.s of people known in that region as the piny-woods "Tackies." Within a stone's throw of Azalia there was a scattering settlement of these Tackies. They had settled there before the Revolution, and had remained there ever since, unchanged and unchangeable, steeped in poverty of the most desolate description, and living the narrowest lives possible in this great Republic. They had attracted the attention of the Rev. Arthur Hill, an Episcopalian minister, who conceived an idea that the squalid settlement near Azalia afforded a fine field for missionary labor. Mr. Hill established himself in Azalia, built and furnished a little church in the settlement, and entered on a career of the most earnest and persevering charity. To all appearances his labor was thrown away; but he was possessed by both faith and hope, and never allowed himself to be disheartened. All his time, as well as the modest fortune left him by his wife who was dead, was devoted to the work of improving and elevating the Tackies; and he never permitted himself to doubt for an instant that reasonable success was crowning his efforts. He was gentle, patient, and somewhat finical.

This was the neighborhood toward which Miss Eustis and her aunt had journeyed. Fortunately for these ladies, Major Haley, the genial tavern-keeper, had a habit of sending a hack to meet every train that stopped at Little Azalia. It was not a profitable habit in the long run; but Major Haley thought little of the profits, so long as he was conscious that the casual traveler had abundant reason to be grateful to him. Major Haley himself was a native of Kentucky; but his wife was a Georgian, inheriting her thrift and her economy from a generation that knew more about the hand-loom, the spinning-wheel, and the cotton-cards, than it did about the piano. She admired her husband, who was a large, fine-looking man, with jocular tendencies; but she disposed of his opinions without ceremony when they came in conflict with her own. Under these circ.u.mstances it was natural that she should have charge of the tavern and all that appertained thereto.

General Garwood, riding by from Little Azalia, whither his saddle-horse had been sent to meet him, had informed the major that two ladies from the North were coming in the hack, and begged him to make them as comfortable as possible. This information Major Haley dutifully carried to his wife.

"Good Lord!" exclaimed Mrs. Haley, "what do you reckon they want here?"

"I've been a-studyin'," said her husband thoughtfully. "The gener'l says they're comin' fer their health."