BY autumn most of the house negroes returned to Portobello. One way or another they had been able to leave the stockades, where the crowding, and the feeding question, the epidemics, like smallpox, measles, and fever, and the number of deaths made the Federals there glad to loose them. Some of the negroes escaped, some were allowed to go. At various times the Portobello servants came straggling in, old Tildy among the first. Her husband, Uncle Thornton, had died and been buried in the sandbar.
Sallie Bedford did her duty by the Portobello negroes and wanted them not to suffer; but she had little sentiment about them, and so looked over the old woman at the foot of the back steps coldly.
“Go on to your cabin, Aunt Tildy. You’ve been an old fool and I hope you know it. I had a board nailed on the door to keep the other niggers out.”
Plantation negroes had moved into a few of the other cabins. The lane along the quarters had grown up with dog-fennel and crab-grass. What she most resented in Tildy’s case was the fact that it was Duncan’s mammy who had been one of the negroes to desert.
“Go on now out of my sight,” she said, as the fat old hands were raised to thank her, and Tildy began mumbling and rubbing her eyes. “Your clothes are all down there. If you haven’t got any castor oil, send Feeny up to get it. You need it, I’m positive. If ’t hadn’t been for you, madam, Uncle Thornton would be here. You can’t tell me it was in Uncle Thornton to leave us. So, you can just keep your mouth shut now.”
Tildy broke into loud lamentations. “Oh, Miss Sallie——”
“Didn’t I tell you to hush your black mouth!”
The old woman turned and started for her cabin.
Valette, however, did not take these matters as Mrs. Bedford did. That day after sunset she went down to the cabin and read the riot act to Aunt Tildy, who felt better after it. Valette had done the same with the other negroes when they came back, first scolding and then giving them orders what to do.
“Have Miss Valette been give you one o’ dem tongue lashin’s?” Feeny asked.
“Oh, my Jesus!”
“Lak she give we all?”
“I ain’ say she didn’.”
“Aun’ Tildy, Miss Valette can sho’ raise de blisters,” Feeny went on, in the tone of some one who has just been listening to a fine orator.
“I ain’ say she can’t.”
The next morning Tildy, in a dress she had washed the night before and ironed at daylight, went up to the children’s room and sat down as if she had never been away at all. Middleton climbed into her lap and Frances stood leaning her little head on the fat shoulder. Only Mary Hartwell understood that Mammy had gone away and deserted them; the others, seeing her back again, accepted the situation.
“Did you know Duncan had been in a battle?” Middleton said. “Did you, Mammy?”
“I hyerd Marse Duncan go be a colonel soon,” Mammy said, opening the little boy’s mouth to look at his teeth, “and you got yo’ new eye teeth, ain’t you, son?”
“We haven’t hyerd Brother go be a colonel,” Frances said.
“Dar you is still, who ast you to be talkin’ like a nigger?”
“Say heard,” Mary Hartwell told her little sister, firmly.
“Fannie’s got to say heard,” Middleton chuckled, standing on his knees, with his arms around Mammy’s neck.
“De truth too, y’all can’ be talkin’ lak a passel o’ white trash.”
One night in November when only herself was awake in the house, Mrs. Bedford heard the dogs at the quarters barking. At all the front windows of the house blankets had been nailed up, which a Federal officer, riding in one day to find some of his men looting the smoke-house, had told her to do. Many of his company were hired and scum out of the big cities, Germans, he said, and he could not control them; any night passing along the roads, if they saw a lighted window, they might take a shot at it. On the south side of her chamber, however, toward the rose garden and away from the road, Sallie had left the windows free, merely closing the shutters when her candle was lit; and that night, instead of undressing and going to bed, she had blown out the candle and sat down in a low chair by the sill. It was a clear night and she could see the starlight over the garden and the trees, and could smell the red roses blooming near the porch. The soldiers had finally looted the smoke-house; one of the negroes had told them that the white powder sprinkled on them was only flour. Keeping house grew even harder. When night came she was tired.
Sallie Bedford was too proud and bitter to pity herself, and could scarcely have told you what she was thinking of as she sat there that night by the window. She leaned out listening to the dogs, one of them a shrill little fice that had belonged to Uncle Thornton, you would have known that bark anywhere. Then she seemed to hear swishing noises and a sound of heavy breathing somewhere beyond the box hedges, then only the dogs. The dogs barked less and grew quiet again. Then she heard voices and horses’ feet and presently, off beyond the garden and in a direction opposite that of the quarters, she saw lights, now twinkling, now lost in the trees. She felt her way across the unlighted room to the bed-table where her pistol lay every night, loaded, on top of the books. Valette also heard the noises beyond the lot and came into the hall. She had put a long dark wrapper over her nightgown.
“My Dumplin’, you certainly can’t go downstairs by yourself,” she said.
The two women, Valette following and holding on to the other’s hand, who kept it behind her back and clasped tight the young fingers, stole out into the garden, bending down and keeping to the box-walks till they came to one of the pavilions. Here the one leading stopped and turned to the startled girl.
“No. You stay at the pavilion till I get back.”
“But, My Dumplin’—” Valette begged.
“No use arguing, or we’ll just pack right to the house again, and no knowing what will happen.” Valette said no more but stood close against the pavilion, and saw the other’s form moving away.
From the pavilion the walks led through the camellia bushes; then came open ground, now full of weeds, along the bordering shrubbery. Mrs. Bedford could follow this shadow till she reached the heavy clumps of bay bushes, and from there could see what was going on in the wood beyond. The horsemen, whoever they were and whatever they were after, had halted there and she could hear their voices, the stamping of the horses, and a stir of activity. Her own small body in its black dress was tense; she was not afraid of the devil. But she went as noiselessly as she could, and found a place where the leaves were thick as a wall and she could watch. They were not fifty feet away.
There were twelve or fifteen men with their horses, and at that moment three others rode up and dismounted. In the light on a pine-knot that a negro held up she could see that they were Confederate cavalry. Some of them had gray uniforms, some no coats. On two horses and on an old mule she saw men, and at the same moment saw that their uniforms were blue. The clothes of all three were dirty and torn, two of them wore caps. They were not astride but, with the men cursing at them, were trying to stand up in the saddles. A soldier who was trying to throw ropes over the boughs of a post-oak swore at the negro for not holding the torch higher. The flare of the pine-knot struck all around, and even from that distance she could hear where birds flew upward from the trees around. Meanwhile the officer who directed the hanging was stepping back and forth, giving orders and cursing at the prisoners. He was a middle-aged man in a better uniform than the rest, and wore a black felt hat with the wide brim turned straight up in front. He looked in a fury, and then, as the preparations neared completion, grew quieter, until finally he stood motionless, watching relentlessly what went on. The officer’s silence affected his men, who were now silent, looking at him, at the men on the horses, and at the tree limbs above where the ropes were being thrown. In the moment of stillness Sallie Bedford heard the little noises in the grass near her, the small innocent life going on, and faintly a bird calling, far down toward the end of the avenue.
When the three soldiers who held on to the bridle-bits of the mule and two horses were standing them on the spots where the nooses could be put around the prisoners’ necks, Sallie Bedford saw that the one standing up on the first horse, balancing himself with his hands now and then—none of their hands had been tied—was a young man, a foolish-looking Swede, some farmhand who had doubtless enlisted for the pay. His face was greedy and coarse, with a shock of blond hair under his dirty cap. Next to him was a short, lean man of fifty. She could see him screwing up his eyes and trying to grin at his captors. He was already hysterical and kept glancing at the mule and up at the face of the soldier standing on it, a thin, consumptive youth scarcely of age, who held his lips tight together and shut his eyes. The soldier in charge of this prisoner she could see. He stood in front of the horse’s head, holding both reins in one hand and the bridle end in the other like a whip. He was even younger than the youth on the horse. This young soldier had clothes almost as new as the officer’s and a black felt hat. His face, fresh as a child’s and delicately molded, wore a look of severe control, as he stood ready to do as he was commanded.
The faces of the onlookers had now, after some talking among themselves, again grown quiet. Some of them pretended to be busy with their belts or rifles; and one who had sat down on a log to take off his shoe held up a sock full of holes.
“Just look at that,” he said, “by God, nine tomcats couldn’t keep a mouse in it.”
He threw the sock away, put back on the shoe and came to stand among the others. Unconsciously, perhaps, the company took a position; they fell into a kind of semicircle, watching the soldiers who held the horses by the bit. The presence of death, even under circumstances so hasty and so rough, imposed a certain formality.
“Go on, go on, we’ve got to get to Port Gibson,” the officer said coldly. “Stand up, God damn you!” One of the men on the horses had half stumbled.
Sallie Bedford turned her head away. “Leaves on their boughs,” she thought vaguely; they had always meant coolness and shade in the garden at Portobello—Duncan in Virginia—they well ought to hang, the thieves—if she’d caught them like this, she’d——
The thin-faced youth uttered a short scream, and at the same time she heard the officer’s voice give the order, the sound of a lash and of a horse rearing. When she looked, the young boy in gray with the black hat was holding down the horse, and the thin youth’s body, the legs jerking up and down in a spasm, the arms bent, swung back in the air.
The officer swore at his two other men, who struck out wildly. The mule did not budge, but the short man, pulling at the noose and his cravat, had slipped and lost his footing and then jumped. The cravat ends flipped into the air, the hand shot convulsively forward as if scattering something.
“By God, he’ll hang himself, mule, if you won’t hang him,” the officer shouted, giving the mule a kick in the flank.
“He wants to shake hands with you, Captain,” a high voice said.
The officer ordered the negro to trample out the pine torch.
“Come on, Alexander.”
The young soldier who had held himself so rigidly and had struck the first lash got up from where he had sat down against a tree, forced his hands down to his sides, and without looking at the others, mounted his horse. A few minutes later they had ridden off.
Sallie Bedford put up one hand and moved a branch of leaves out of her way. It was dark now under the post-oak, but she could see dimly the shapes swinging above the ground. She clenched her fists to stop her hands shaking. The soldiers had done what the officer commanded. The negro had held the torchlight, the three Yankees were dead. Except for the officer, whose tense excitement she could not understand, none of the men had seemed to be in a hurry to kill the prisoners, and they had gone through with it like the parts of a machine. So she had seen this. It confirmed her feeling that we are all animals and fight for our existence, that all love is fierce and watchful, and that pride and scorn must be in the nature of passions. “What did I always tell Darlin’?” she said to herself. “I always told Darlin’.”
And at the same moment she was thinking of Agnes McGehee. Agnes was not a McGehee born, but she had married a McGehee and was like one. As she stood there, all the McGehees seemed to her at this moment soft and tedious. With Darlin’ gone she was farther from them and less patient. These war times——
With the pistol still in her right hand, she hurried back toward the house. It was all dark, and she saw that the quarters were dark; the negroes would have heard the noise and some of them would have peeped through chinks or cracks in the door, but had not made a sound.
“The child’s gone out of her head,” was her first thought when she heard Valette’s voice talking. “I oughtn’t have left her by herself. Lord knows what anybody ought to do in these times!”
“But try to stand up,” she heard Valette whisper. “We can get you in, Sir. Try to stand up.”
“What on earth?” she called. “Valette?”
On the ground and propped against the lattice wall she saw dimly a man’s form and Valette kneeling beside him.
“Eh, My Dumplin’, it’s a Yankee soldier. He got away from them. They shot him.” She was almost sobbing.
“How’d he get here?”
“He came crawling through the hedge, nearly scared me to death.”
“They ought to’ve killed him.”
Valette caught hold of Mrs. Bedford’s skirt.
“I could understand him better just now, My Dumplin’, but not now, the way he’s muttering.”
“We’ll see. Get up, Valette,” Mrs. Bedford said. She stood Valette to one side and put the pistol against the soldier’s forehead. “Are you dying or just playin’ possum?”
The soldier jerked his head back from the pistol. The fright and the cold steel perhaps revived him. “I’ll tell you,” he said, quite distinctly.
“What were they after you for?”
“They caught us on the road with some jewelry,” the soldier said.
“That you dirty dogs had stolen like this child’s mother’s watch. The soldier that got that she followed all the way to the gate crying and wringing her hands, but he just dangled it in his hand and rode off laughing at her.”
“Three of us,” the soldier went on, under his breath and trying to turn his head to peer into the shadows around him. “Not the short old man. He wasn’t in the army. An agent. They caught him at a nigger cabin, trying to get the niggers to tell where the cotton was hid, that’s what that was.”
“Yes, gathering up our cotton,” she said.
“He said they pay for it.”
“So General Sherman says. The officer out there tonight glowered like a crazy man.”
“He said he’d hang all four for the way somewhere they’d treated his mother. But it wasn’t us did that.” He began to whimper, leaning over first on his all-fours; and then slowly, with his fingers hooked through the lattice, getting on his feet, while they stood thinking what to do.
“All for a damned gold chain, Mrs. Oh, Jesus, hanging men!” he muttered.
“You dry up, you stinkin’ little thief.” At the same moment she was putting her arm through his at the shoulder to support him. “Here, does that hurt you, does it?”
He gave a groan.
“Once you’re in bed, boy,” she said quietly.
Valette, holding the other shoulder, was telling him it didn’t hurt so much, afraid meanwhile that she would retch at the smell of the blood.
“Poor thing,” Mrs. Bedford said, “I’m a good doctor. You’re thin as a rail.”
They drew the curtains close in the room and lit a candle. The soldier had already collapsed on the bed.
“Bolt the door,” Mrs. Bedford said.
Valette ran to bolt the door and came back to the bed where the other stood with the candle looking down at the soldier.
“ ’Twon’t do to let the niggers find out he’s here. There’s no knowing them now, what they’d tell. Mammy Tildy especially. You know what she’s feeling. She’s likely to get us in trouble yet. I don’t know what we’re going to do about Tildy. I’ve told her ten times, if she didn’t stop talking about getting even with the Yankees I’d tell them to go out there and get her.”
Thornton had been buried without a coffin. Before Tildy had left the stockade, down on the sand bar, where the river had washed over last year’s graves, the bleached bones were sticking out.
Valette could do nothing with the clenched teeth. “I can’t make him do it,” she said, putting the glass of water on the floor. “Is he asleep, My Dumplin’?”
“I can’t tell.” She rubbed her bruised forearm and screwed up her eyes, as she held the candle closer to the soldier’s face. “I don’t know whether he’s fainted or just dropped asleep from weakness, losing blood.”
The blood from the wound at the back of the head had come round the neck and soaked up in the collar. The room had filled with the stench of sweat and dirt.
“I declare,” she said, setting down the candle near the bed’s head, “you’d think with General Sherman capturing the whole Mississippi River they might at least wash their men. Oh, no, honey, don’t mind me; I’ve just seen too much this night.”
Valette threw her arms around her neck and kissed her. “You’re a saint, My Dumplin’, you’re just a saint!”
“That’s as it may be, no need to weep over that. But look at the clothes on the poor little wretch.” She had an arm around the girl’s waist, and they stood looking again at the soldier; he was as young as the consumptive youth they had hanged. “Look how it wasn’t worth a shuck. That’s that shoddy, honey, that’s the famous shoddy some smart Yankees made and sold their government. It looked mighty fine till the rain struck it. And now see what it’s like. You want to ask me some more about what I saw out yonder by the lot, but you’ve heard enough tonight. You go put your dress on and come back here to me.”
It would soon be daylight, and at daylight she must go down to the quarters and tell Enoch to take Ross, one of the plantation negroes whom she trusted, and go bury the three Yankees off in the woods. If some of the Yankees should come and find out what had happened, they would burn the house down as sure’s you’re born.
“But, My Dumplin’—” Valette exclaimed, when she returned and was let through the door—“You’ll wear yourself out, you’re not iron any more’n anybody else is.”
“Bolt that door again,” Mrs. Bedford said, sitting down again on the chair by the soldier’s bed. “He’s been delirious, and kept calling for his mother. Then he must have thought she was here. ‘Kiss me, Mother,’ he said, ‘Kiss me, Mother.’ I passed my fingers over his lips. ‘Kiss me, Mother,’ he’d say, and when I did that it seemed to comfort him.”
The tears came to Valette’s eyes. “It’s a good thing he’s dying, I reckon. Isn’t it, My Dumplin’?”
“Precious, how should I know? Though we ought to know something; we’ve seen death enough lately.”
“I know you think I’m young and don’t know anything—” Valette began.
Mrs. Bedford rose from her chair as she said, “I’ve never thought there was any connection between age and knowledge. You know what Hamlet said about old men. Said they had most weak hams and plumtree gum in their eyes. My papa used to make us read that Cicero piece on old age, De Senectute. I always said, ‘Papa, he’s an old fraud, I don’t believe he means a word of it,’ ‘Then he stole it from some Greek writer who did mean it,’ Pa said. Deliver me from sages. But it’s better for you to think about Shakespeare and Cicero than crying over this poor wretch, so that’s why I’m going on about them. In the morning if he’s dead, I’ll send in town for the officer who warned me about the blankets over the windows. From Springfield, Ohio, Captain Laffer—by way of a name! There was a sergeant, too, from the same town in Ohio, who said his name was Sam Silt. Miss Mary Cherry, when she heard his name, just said, ‘Well, young man, I presume it was just your father’s name.’ Do you hear me, honey? No, you don’t. Then I’m only wasting breath.”
When she was gone Valette took sole charge. She had heard Mrs. Bedford talk of Florence Nightingale, who nursed English soldiers in the wars. Though she had no such flowery name, and though she was nursing a Yankee soldier, not some handsome Confederate, she felt that the moment was romantic. The soldier lay quiet now, there was nothing harrowing; for his face was tranquil and as pale as marble. The thin hands even were crossed on his breast as he lay there.
But youth prevailed, and after a while, in that perfect stillness and exhausted by this night, of which the older woman had seemed to make nothing, Valette fell asleep. She dreamed that Duncan came and asked her to put on her blue silk, and said to her that all strong natures loved only one.
Toward six o’clock in the morning she was awakened by the soldier asking for water. Coming out of that dream with Duncan, she bent so tenderly over him that the young soldier blushed, looking away from those beautiful eyes.