Sally Dows Read online

beside the Redlands platform. Asthe two travelers descended a hand was laid on Courtland's shoulder, anda stout figure in the blackest and shiniest of alpaca jackets, and thewhitest and broadest of Panama hats, welcomed him. "Glad to see yo',cun'nel. I reckoned I'd waltz over and bring along the boy," pointing toa grizzled negro servant of sixty who was bowing before them, "totote yo'r things over instead of using a hack. I haven't run much onhorseflesh since the wah--ha! ha! What I didn't use up for remounts Ireckon yo'r commissary gobbled up with the other live stock, eh?" Helaughed heartily, as if the recollections were purely humorous, andagain clapped Courtland on the back.

  "Let me introduce my friend, Mr. Drummond, Major Reed," said Courtland,smiling.

  "Yo' were in the wah, sir?"

  "No--I"--returned Drummond, hesitating, he knew not why, and angry athis own embarrassment.

  "Mr. Drummond, the vice-president of the company," interposed Courtlandcheerfully, "was engaged in furnishing to us the sinews of war."

  Major Reed bowed a little more formally. "Most of us heah, sir, werein the wah some time or other, and if you gentlemen will honah me byjoining in a social glass at the hotel across the way, I'll introduceyou to Captain Prendergast, who left a leg at Fair Oaks." Drummond wouldhave declined, but a significant pressure on his arm from Courtlandchanged his determination. He followed them to the hotel and into thepresence of the one-legged warrior (who turned out to be the landlordand barkeeper), to whom Courtland was hilariously introduced by MajorReed as "the man, sir, who had pounded my division for three hours atStony Creek!"

  Major Reed's house was but a few minutes' walk down the dusty lane,and was presently heralded by the baying of three or four foxhounds andforeshadowed by a dilapidated condition of picket-fence and stuccoedgate front. Beyond it stretched the wooden Doric columns of theusual Southern mansion, dimly seen through the broad leaves of thehorse-chestnut-trees that shaded it. There were the usual listless blackshadows haunting the veranda and outer offices--former slaves and stillattached house-servants, arrested like lizards in breathless attitudesat the approach of strange footsteps, and still holding the brush,broom, duster, or home implement they had been lazily using, in theirfixed hands. From the doorway of the detached kitchen, connected by agallery to the wing of the mansion, "Aunt Martha," the cook, gazed also,with a saucepan clasped to her bosom, and her revolving hand with thescrubbing cloth in it apparently stopped on a dead centre.

  Drummond, whose gorge had risen at these evidences of hopelessincapacity and utter shiftlessness, was not relieved by the presence ofMrs. Reed--a soured, disappointed woman of forty, who still carried inher small dark eyes and thin handsome lips something of the bitternessand antagonism of the typical "Southern rights" woman; nor of her twodaughters, Octavia and Augusta, whose languid atrabiliousness seemed apart of the mourning they still wore. The optimistic gallantry and goodfellowship of the major appeared the more remarkable by contrast withhis cypress-shadowed family and their venomous possibilities. Perhapsthere might have been a light vein of Southern insincerity in his goodhumor. "Paw," said Miss Octavia, with gloomy confidence to Courtland,but with a pretty curl of the hereditary lip, "is about the only'reconstructed' one of the entire family. We don't make 'em much aboutyer. But I'd advise yo' friend, Mr. Drummond, if he's coming herecarpet-bagging, not to trust too much to paw's 'reconstruction.' Itwon't wash." But when Courtland hastened to assure her that Drummondwas not a "carpet-bagger," was not only free from any of the politicalintrigue implied under that baleful title, but was a wealthy Northerncapitalist simply seeking investment, the young lady was scarcely morehopeful. "I suppose he reckons to pay paw for those niggers yo' stole?"she suggested with gloomy sarcasm.

  "No," said Courtland, smiling; "but what if he reckoned to pay thoseniggers for working for your father and him?"

  "If paw is going into trading business with him; if Major Reed--aSo'th'n gentleman--is going to keep shop, he ain't such a fool as tobelieve niggers will work when they ain't obliged to. THAT'S been triedover at Mirandy Dows's, not five miles from here, and the niggers arehalf the time hangin' round here takin' holiday. She put up new quartersfor 'em, and tried to make 'em eat together at a long table like thoselow-down folks up North, and did away with their cabins and their melonpatches, and allowed it would get 'em out of lying round too much, andwanted 'em to work over-time and get mo' pay. And the result was thatshe and her niece, and a lot of poor whites, Irish and Scotch, that shehad to pick up ''long the river,' do all the work. And her niece Sallywas mo' than half Union woman during the wah, and up to all No'th'ntricks and dodges, and swearin' by them; and yet, for all that--thething won't work."

  "But isn't that partly the reason? Isn't her failure a great deal due tothis lack of sympathy from her neighbors? Discontent is easily sown,and the negro is still weighted down by superstition; the FifteenthAmendment did not quite knock off ALL his chains."

  "Yes, but that is nothing to HER. For if there ever was a person in thisworld who reckoned she was just born to manage everything and everybody,it is Sally Dows!"

  "Sally Dows!" repeated Courtland, with a slight start.

  "Yes, Sally Dows, of Pineville."

  "You say she was half Union, but did she have any relationsor--or--friends--in the war--on your side? Any--who--were killed inbattle?"

  "They were all killed, I reckon," returned Miss Reed darkly. "There washer cousin, Jule Jeffcourt, shot in the cemetery with her beau, who,they say, was Sally's too; there were Chet Brooks and Joyce Masterton,who were both gone on her and both killed too; and there was old CaptainDows himself, who never lifted his head again after Richmond was taken,and drank himself to death. It wasn't considered healthy to be MissSally's relations in those times, or to be even wantin' to be one."

  Colonel Courtland did not reply. The face of the dead young officercoming towards him out of the blue smoke rose as vividly as on thatmemorable day. The picture and letter he had taken from the dead man'sbreast, which he had retained ever since; the romantic and fruitlessquest he had made for the fair original in after days; and the strangeand fateful interest in her which had grown up in his heart since then,he now knew had only been lulled to sleep in the busy preoccupation ofthe last six months, for it all came back to him with redoubled force.His present mission and its practical object, his honest zeal in itspursuit, and the cautious skill and experience he had brought to it,all seemed to be suddenly displaced by this romantic and unreal fantasy.Oddly enough it appeared now to be the only reality in his life, therest was an incoherent, purposeless dream.

  "Is--is--Miss Sally married?" he asked, collecting himself with aneffort.

  "Married? Yes, to that farm of her aunt's! I reckon that's the onlything she cares for."

  Courtland looked up, recovering his usual cheerful calm. "Well, I thinkthat after luncheon I'll pay my respects to her family. From what youhave just told me the farm is certainly an experiment worth seeing. Isuppose your father will have no objection to give me a letter to MissDows?"

  CHAPTER II.

  Nevertheless, as Colonel Courtland rode deliberately towards Dows'Folly, as the new experiment was locally called, although he had notabated his romantic enthusiasm in the least, he was not sorry that hewas able to visit it under a practical pretext. It was rather late nowto seek out Miss Sally Dows with the avowed intent of bringing her aletter from an admirer who had been dead three years, and whose memoryshe had probably buried. Neither was it tactful to recall a sentimentwhich might have been a weakness of which she was ashamed. Yet,clear-headed and logical as Courtland was in his ordinary affairs, hewas nevertheless not entirely free from that peculiar superstition whichsurrounds every man's romance. He believed there was something more thana mere coincidence in his unexpectedly finding himself in such favorableconditions for making her acquaintance. For the rest--if there was anyrest--he would simply trust to fate. And so, believing himself acool, sagacious reasoner, but being actually, as far as Miss Dows wasconcerned, as blind, fatuous, and unreasoning as any o
f her previousadmirers, he rode complacently forward until he reached the lane thatled to the Dows plantation.

  Here a better kept roadway and fence, whose careful repair wouldhave delighted Drummond, seemed to augur well for the new enterprise.Presently, even the old-fashioned local form of the fence, a slantingzigzag, gave way to the more direct line of post and rail in theNorthern fashion. Beyond it presently appeared a long low frontage ofmodern buildings which, to Courtland's surprise, were entirely new instructure and design. There