Old Times in Dixie Land Part 4

"I 'clar to gracious, de boss is a-workin' Miss Patsy's garden!" said she to the housemaid.

"He's workin' nuthin'. He's jes' a-cuttin' an' choppin' up everything,"

said the more observant girl.

"Ef dat ole vilyun is spilen' dat chile's gyardin'," said the cook, "when she fines it out, little Patsy'll tar up de whole plantation. You listen out when she gits up en comes down-stairs. He ain't done no payin' job dis time, I let you know he ain't dat. Great Gawd," said she, "Patsy'll be mad!--eh--eh!"

Jeff Davis, Patsy's little brother, who was out at the front gate, spied Walter Jones riding past, and called out at the top of his voice, "Come in, old fellow, and take breakfast. Sissy's asleep yet, but we have killed a chicken, and churned, and opened a keg of nails, and there are three fine cantaloupes in the ice-box."

Walter could not resist this invitation. He dismounted and joined Mr.

Benton on the porch, where that gentleman was sipping a cup of black morning coffee after his labor in the garden.

The dense fog was clearing away, and the sun began to show in the eastern horizon. Patsy came down, and was working up the golden b.u.t.ter, printing it with her prettiest molds. She knew Walter was there. She set on the breakfast table a vase filled with water, and ran out into the garden to get the lilies for a center-piece of beauty and color--for they had actually opened at last.

In a moment everybody was electrified by a terrific scream. The whole family rushed out to see what was the matter. Patsy was wringing her hands and crying. She pointed to the ruined flower-beds, sobbing: "Some wretch has cut up and destroyed all my beautiful flowers!"

"Well," said Jeff Davis, "it won't do any good to bellow over it like that, Sis. Breakfast is ready, I tell you. Come to breakfast."

But Patsy continued weeping and bewailing her loss, regardless of entreaties. She called down some anathemas on the perpetrator of the outrage, which were not pleasant to Mr. Benton's ears.

"Dry up this minute!" said he. "_I_ cut out those confounded things, and don't let me hear any more about it. Dry up," said he, sternly, "and eat your breakfast."

Neither Patsy nor her mother ate anything, however. They looked through their tears at each other, and were silent, while rebellious indignation filled their hearts. Mr. Benton was angry.

"It is beyond all reason," said he, "for you to act so because I did as I pleased with my own. Anyhow, I would not give one boy," looking at Jeff, "for a whole cow-pen full of girls like you," glancing at Patsy.

Walter was an indignant spectator of this scene, and he wished he could take his sweetheart and fly away with her forever. He took a hasty leave, and Mr. Benton went earlier than usual on his daily round of plantation business.

Her mother soothed Patsy's feelings as well as she could and counseled patience.

"I hate him, if he _is_ my father," said the girl.

The mother reminded her of the filial respect due the author of her being.

"I wish I had no father," she answered perversely.

Mr. Benton rode back of the fields to the woods where the "hands" were cutting timber to complete a fence around the peach orchard. Tom had started in the spring wagon to go three miles down the river for some young trees. Jeff sat on the seat beside Tom. When Mr. Benton returned to go with them to select the trees at the nursery, the horses were apparently restive and rather unmanageable.

"Get down, Jeff," said Mr. Benton, "and ride my horse, while I show Tom how to drive these horses."

A moment after, Jeff and his father had exchanged places, and before Mr.

Benton had fully grasped the reins, the ponies took fright and ran out of the road. Coming suddenly to a tree which had fallen, they bounded over it, and the vehicle was upset, and Tom and Mr. Benton were violently thrown out. Tom escaped with a few bruises, but Mr. Benton was seriously injured, his arm being dislocated and his leg broken. Jeff went off for the doctor, and Mr. Benton was carried home insensible.

When Patsy saw the men bringing him into the house in this condition, she thought he had been killed, and was filled with heart-breaking grief and remorse. "Poor father!" she cried, "this is my punishment for wishing I had no father this morning. O Lord, forgive me!"

Mr. Benton, however, was not dead. After his injured limbs were set to rights by the surgeon, he was soon in a fair way to recovery. In the meanwhile, Patsy and her mother devoted themselves wholly to ministering to his wants and ameliorating the tedium of his confinement to the house.

"Pat," said he one day, "you have been a great trouble and expense to me, but when a man is suffering with a lame arm and a broken leg, women are certainly useful to have in the house. You and your mother have waited on me and taken good care of me for many weeks." He glanced at his spliced leg and his swollen arm, and continued: "I could not do much cutting up things in the garden at this time, Pat, could I? I wish I had let your flower-beds alone. Great Caesar! didn't you make a fuss over those lilies, and your mother, too! You both actually cried over that morning's work."

"Never mind, father," said Patsy, rea.s.suringly, "we don't care now," and she smiled sweetly and lovingly upon the hard-featured invalid.

He was almost well when he said to her: "You are a good child, and let me tell you, my doctor has fallen in love with you. He told me so. Yes, Pat, he is mashed on you, and intends to ask you to marry him, and you had better give up any foolish notion you may have taken to Walter Jones, and take the doctor. He is the best chance you will ever have. He is doing well in his profession, and besides having a good home to take you to, he belongs to an influential family. All I ask of you is to promise me you won't refuse the doctor. You would be a fool to reject such a man."

"O father!" said the girl, "don't ask me to promise anything."

"I am going to be obeyed in my own house," said Mr. Benton, flying into a rage, "and if you don't mind me, I will put you out of doors."

Patsy was struck with consternation.

The invalid was now able to move around without a.s.sistance. Patsy's heart was full of fear and trembling.

The next morning she did not come down to print the b.u.t.ter or bring her father his early morning coffee. The girl had eloped with Walter Jones.

"This is worse than breaking my leg," said Mr. Benton, after his first indignation had subsided.

When he could speak calmly about his trouble to his wife, he wondered what made Patsy so thoughtless and undutiful, when she was an only daughter and had everything she wanted.

"She is very much like her father," said Mrs. Benton, "and she thought marriage would set her free--emanc.i.p.ate her."

"That's pure folly," said Mr. Benton, "for all females are and ought to be always controlled by their male relations. Nothing on G.o.d's earth can emanc.i.p.ate a woman. She only changes masters when she marries and leaves her father's house."

"Patsy, then, has changed masters," said his wife, "and she seems to be very happy--in her own little home."

"Old woman, don't get saucy, and I will tell you something," said he. "I have sent to the city for some flower-garden truck, and Maitre has sent me up fifty dollars' worth of what he calls first-cla.s.s stuff on the last boat, and I am going over to give it to Pat to plant. Tom shall do the work for her, too. To tell you the real downright truth, you all made me feel cheap about chopping up her things, and I am going to replace them."

"Oh, I am so glad!" said Mrs. Benton.

"Yes," said Mr. Benton, "I am perfectly willing to restore forty times as much as I destroyed. Pat's a trump, anyhow, and I shall never go back on her for anything she has ever done. You can rely on that for a fact."

Mr. Benton was a good neighbor of ours and a.s.sumed some authority over my household. He never failed to come over immediately whenever we had a visit from one of the gunboats, and to reprove me sharply for having any friendly interviews or even civilities with our "kidney-footed enemies,"

as he called them, yet at the same time he would seize upon all the newspapers which these gentlemanly officers had given us, and carry them off for his own delectation, regardless of all objections and expostulations.

CHAPTER VIII.

HOW WOMAN CAME TO THE RESCUE.

Mary Wall's letter from Clinton, Louisiana, December 27th, 1863, contains some strong expressions showing the feeling and suffering among women at that period: "You must keep in good heart, my dearest friend, about your son David. I heard he was killed, but I have just seen Mr. Holmes, who has read in a Yankee paper: 'Capt. Merrick, of Gen. Stafford's staff, slightly wounded.' When I heard your boy was killed I felt the blow, and groaned under it, for I know just how the iron hoof of Death tears when it settles down among the heart-strings. When my mother died last year I did not weep so bitterly, for my only disinterested friend was taken from the evil to come; but when my gifted, first-born soldier-boy, Willie--my pride and joy--was laid in a lonely grave, after a mortal gunshot wound, on the Atchafalaya, at Bute la Rose, _that_ was my hardest trial. I could not get to him; yet he was decently buried; but of my brother, shot in the fight in Tennessee, we only know that he was killed on the battlefield at Franklin. My son Wesley was reported missing after the fight at Chickamauga; he may be a prisoner. I have heard nothing more, and my heart stands still when I think he too may have been killed, and his body thrown in some ravine or creek, as the Texans are said sometimes to do when they 'lose' their Yankee prisoners on the march. G.o.d knows, this is a wicked war! And there is Bowman, my third son; he may be dead, too, for I do not hear a word from him. I try to steady my aching heart, and go my way, and do my work with a quiet face; but often when I am alone I sink down, and the waves go over me. I can pour out my heart to you. I do hope your boy is but 'slightly wounded,' so that he may be sent home to stay with you for a long time. May G.o.d in mercy spare his life; but do not set your heart on him."

General Leroy Stafford, on his last visit to his family, stopped at Myrtle Grove and gave me the particulars of the engagement at Payne's Farm, Virginia, where David was shot, the ball entering his head above the ear and going out on the other side below the ear. He fell from his horse, it was supposed, mortally wounded. By careful medical attention he survived with the loss of the sight of one eye and power of hearing, the drum of one ear being perforated. He suffered temporarily much disfigurement from paralysis of the facial nerve.

When I saw my handsome boy in this condition my distress will not tax the imagination. "O mother," he said, "you ought not to feel in this way! So many mothers' boys can never come back to them, and I am alive and getting better every day. If you have felt cramped in expression, or anybody has ever done anything to you which rubbed you up the wrong way, throw down your gauntlet and I'll fight your battles for you. Don't shed tears over me!"

Judge Avery said, referring to David's own letter from the hospital: "It is the letter of a hero--not one word of complaint in the whole of it."

The surgeon attributed my son's extraordinary recovery to the purity of blood uncorrupted by the use of tea, coffee, tobacco or alcoholic drinks.