HUGH MCGEHEE went out by the tall glass doors on to the gallery. “There are so many candles burning, and so many flowers,” was all he thought; but he did not walk up and down as he had meant to do. He stood leaning against one of the columns, slowly snapping his thumb and middle finger together, and was glad when he heard a gust of wind strike the trees and the scattering leaves. He saw the crowd of carriages and buggies drawn up along the drive; the horses stamped now and then, and their drivers moved about talking among themselves. Some of the Homewood negroes stood on the ground below the balcony and were watching the entertainment indoors. The late autumn night was cool and clear, and where some of the leaves had fallen from the trees the blue light of the sky shone through. It was almost full moon and all across the sky a glow had arisen from the east. The lush greens of the garden were black under it; the fragrance of the sweet-olive seemed as forgotten and natural as the coming moonlight and the air. He could still see in the dusk the white camellias sown thick amid their leaves; they reminded him of Montrose. How can one be homesick for a place a mile away? But it was so.
On the gallery near the other negroes a few of the more favored servants had been allowed to stand. Mammy Tildy had driven over from Portobello with the children, Duncan had seen to it. They had brought her a low hickory chair and she sat upright, a stiff white apron over her dress, on her head a new tignon.
Captain Ruffin came out to join Hugh. Since his wife’s death his hair was white and he was thinner.
“Two years have passed, sir, since I had the pleasure of being in Natchez,” he said, speaking in his slow and elegant manner but more quietly than once. As if by an effort to take his old place, he added, “And how fortunate I am to arrive when there is this festivity that makes ‘the foot of time to tread on flowers.’ ”
“Yes,” Hugh said, turning to look at the figures moving about the parlor, “and it’s a good thing for a change. We’ve seen too much black. At church every other woman in mourning. But ’tain’t worthwhile now to speak of that.”
Captain Ruffin, whom time had begun to reduce, said nothing; and Hugh stood with his arms folded, gazing into the room. “In these people—they are my people—how much goodness there is!” he thought. He was right. Among them there was still goodness that comes of harmony. It rested on a physical harmony and manner of life in which the nerves were not harassed; and it arose from the natural springs of feeling, where interest, pressure, and competition have not got in the way. “How sweet people’s faces are!” thought Hugh.
“Do your meditations resemble mine, my dear friend?” said Captain Ruffin suddenly, taking Hugh’s arm and beginning a stroll along the gallery. “Looking at these young people, these young ladies of our country, I was wondering if there would come a time when that radiance will not be in girls’ faces.”
Hugh made no answer, though such a thought had more than once come to him as he considered the changes that lay in the future.
“My friend, what a fragrance in the air!” the old man added, as if he and Hugh were listening to music. “I suppose I oughtn’t to complain if my world is gone. I’ve had my years.” He sighed.
Old Tildy’s voice interrupted them with a good evening.
“So your young master’s taken himself a bride, Aunt Tildy,” Hugh said, putting his arm affectionately through Captain Ruffin’s whose spine immediately straightened into parade lines. “What do you think of that, Aunt Tildy?”
“I done say my say jes’ now,” the old woman answered, with the bold assurance of her place in the family. “When Bishop Thompson ax ef she gwine cherish Marse Duncan, I say ‘An’ well she mought.’ And I said it loud, so I been hyerd.”
“Yes, well she might. And so with him too.”
“I done say already long ago how come he want to marry Miss Valette? Her folks talks long. I recollects her ma and I recollects her pa, befo’ ’at yellow fever. Marse Duncan when he ain’t found de word he wants, he gits on a horse. I ain’t never misunderstood him, neither.”
“God A’mighty, Mammy, he knows that,” said Hugh.
“Miss Valette when she can’ find ’e word she wants she Jes’ makes ’em up.”
“Don’t sit up too late, Mammy Tildy,” Hugh said, kindly, and passed on with Captain Ruffin. The old woman gave a chuckle and folding her arms again, began to bob her head to the tune of the music that floated out to them.
Captain Ruffin had come to Natchez for the purpose of conferring with some of the landowners whose taxes were being multiplied in a system intended to break them. His own property had already been turned in to the Government by default and he hoped for a professorship in law at some university.
“Look at your daughter,” Mrs. Wilson, at the supper table, said to Hugh, when he and Captain Ruffin approached. She turned to Agnes, through whose arm she had twined her own. “Pray, look! Dear, dear, dear!”
Lucinda passed near them waltzing with George McGehee, The white muslin of her dress, its puffed sleeves and wide sash ruffled with lace, and pink roses in the hair, seemed to float and sparkle in the candlelight. Her mother had decided to encourage an interest in clothes. It was a French dress and the long white gloves were French, with six buttons.
Mrs. Wilson went on: “It’s what I call wasting your sweetness on the desert air. First I see her dancing with some man as old as the hills, and now it’s with her cousin, who’s a married man besides—and, from what you tell me, only too soon to be a father.” She turned to Mrs. George McGehee, who had been a Miss Stewart from St. Francisville and smiled. “Yes, a married man.”
“And what are our young gals to do, may I venture to inquire, Mistress Wilson, short of some special Providence?” said Mary Cherry. She stood holding a plate with a slice of cake which she alternately glared at, bit, glared at again, and then took another bite of. So close to the many candles on the table, the old grenadine showed even more the fading at the cuffs and tops of the sleeves. “With so many killed in the war—unless our girls marry trash—Here, take this—” she handed her plate to a servant going by with his tray, “and don’t keep passing me things—marryin’ trash is not in Lucy McGehee’s line.”
Agnes drew Mrs. Wilson and her Irish temper away, changing the subject to a letter from Francis Eppes in Paris about General Lee’s fame over Europe, where military academies were already studying his campaigns as classic strategy. Miss Mary addressed herself to Hugh and Captain Ruffin:
“It’s the politicians got us into this war and nobody else,” she said, her voice loud enough to be heard at the other end of the room. “Yes, I warrant you, the politicians dragged us in. And by the time I got good and mad, it was the politicians kept General Lee from carryin’ out his plans.”
The captain reddened to the roots of his hair.
“But, Miss Mary——”
“Then the wind-bags up and stopped the war.”
“But, Miss Mary,” Captain Ruffin repeated, “I have been a senator myself, as you may know. Doubtless there is a modicum of truth in what you say, but surely, surely——”
“I am not talkin’ about you, Senator Ruffin,” Miss Mary said, “I’m not talkin’ about you. I’m talkin’ about people exactly like you.”
At this moment the music ended and Lucinda came up with her cousin George. Her manner now had become more open and carelessly affable, like a woman who knows at last that she will never have what she most wants in life or that it will never return to her. She got on now more easily with people; and this was because she asked less of any one person. More people would like her company now, and fewer could think of her with the notion of falling in love. If she seemed to have less of something rare and elusive about her, she was handsomer than ever.
“Well, daughter,” her father said, smiling and gazing at Lucy until she blushed and looked down to see if the violets in her bodice were right, “your Aunt Lucinda was the prettiest girl in Georgia. Governor Gilman thought the fact so important that he recorded it in that history of his.”
“Yes, and, Papa, you’re the one always says his history is mostly lies, now, don’t you?”
“Otherwise ’tis, otherwise ’tis,” he said, “lies,” and put her hand through his arm.
“If you want to see who Miss Callie Armat thinks is the prettiest lady,” said Lucy, giving her lips a droll twist, “and the finest dress, look. Yon she is now.” At the far end of the ballroom they could see Mrs. Armat stepping out and signalling the musicians with her fan, as if she meant to lead the cotillion.
George McGehee laughed. “Then it’s just as well she didn’t see the expression I caught on Duncan’s face once during the ceremony. In fact I saw it more than once. Don’t know if you saw it. I thought I’d die the way Duncan was scowling at her.”
“I saw him,” said Lucy. “If Duncan had got his say, Valette would have all three wedding dresses.”
“That’s more than probable,” said George, laughing, as he took his wife’s hand and began to swing it to and fro. “ ’Twould be like him.” He let go his wife’s hand and put his in his pockets, and stood there looking down at his boot-tips for a moment. “ ’Twould be like Duncan exactly.” The sweet smile which everybody in the family had spoken of at one time or another came over his face.
“I remember the time I was at Montrose,” he said, “and Ed was telling that story about Duncan. He was telling of a ride with Duncan. They had been into Natchez and were returning to Portobello when Duncan began to tell him of the sundry attractions of Miss Valette Somerville. Ed, by way of being agreeable, chimed in and enlarged upon the lady’s many virtues, too. When there was a pause in the conversation, Duncan turned in his saddle and said in the most generous tone, ‘Ed, do you want her? If you do, I’ll go away and give you an opportunity to win her.’ ”