CHAPTER IX
THE OLD RÉGIME
Socola left Briarfield with the assurance of the President-elect of the Confederacy that he might spend a week with the Bartons and yet be in ample time for the inauguration at Montgomery.
He boarded the steamer at the Davis landing and floated lazily down to Baton Rouge.
From Briarfield he carried an overwhelming impression of the folly of Slavery from its economic point of view. The thing which amazed his orderly New England mind was the confusion, the waste, the sentimental extravagance, the sheer idiocy of the slave system of labor as contrasted with the free labor of the North.
The one symbol before his vivid imagination was the sight of old Uncle Bob and Aunt Rhinah seated in their rocking chairs gravely listening to the patriarchal farewell of their master. The ancient seers dreamed of Nirvana. These two wonderful old Africans had surely found it in the new world. No wave of trouble could ever roll across their peaceful breasts so long as their lord and master lived. He was their king, their protector, their physician, their almoner, their friend. The burden of life was on his shoulders, not on theirs. Their working days were over. He must feed and clothe, house and care for their worthless bodies unto the end. And the number of these helpless ones were constantly increased.
He marveled at the folly that imagined such a system of labor possible in a real world where the iron laws of economic survival were allowed free play. He ceased to wonder why it still flourished in the South. The South was yet an unsettled jungle of bewildering tropical beauty. One might travel for miles and hundreds of miles without the sight of a single important town. Vast reaches of untouched forests stretched away in all directions. Apparently the foot of man had never pressed them. Rich plantations of thousands of acres were only scratched in spots to yield their marvelous harvests of cotton and cane, of rice and corn. The idea of defending such a territory, extending over thousands of miles, from the invading hosts of the rich and densely populated North was preposterous. His heart leaped with the certainty of swift and sure triumph for the Union should the question be submitted to the test of the sword.
As the boat touched her landing at Baton Rouge, Jennie waved her welcome from the shore. The graceful figure of her younger brother stood straight and trim by her side in his new volunteer uniform. Whatever the political leaders might think or do, these Southern people meant to fight. There was no mistaking that fact. With every letter to his Chief in Washington he had made this plain. The deeper he had penetrated the lower South the more overwhelming this conviction had become.
For the moment he put the thought of his tragic mission out of his heart. There was something wonderful in the breath of this early Southern spring. The first week in February and flowers were blooming on every lawn of every embowered cottage and every stately house! The song of birds, the hum of bees, the sweet languor of the perfumed air found his inmost soul. The snows lay cold and still and deathlike over the Northern world.
This was fairyland.
And the Bartons' home on the banks of the river was the last touch that completed the capture of his imagination. Through a vista of overhanging boughs he caught the flash of its white fluted pillars in the distance. The broad verandas were arched with climbing roses. In the center of the sunlit space in front a fountain played, the splash of its cooling waters keeping time to the song of mocking birds in shrubs and trees. In the spacious grounds which swept to the water's edge more than a thousand magnificent trees spread their cooling shade. The white rays of the Southern sun shot through them like silver threads and glowed here and there in the changing, shimmering splotches on the ground.
And everywhere the grinning faces of slowly moving negroes. The very rhythm of their lazy walk seemed a part of the landscape.
This fairy world belonged to his country. His heart went out in renewed devotion. Not one shining Southern star should ever be torn from her diadem! He swore it.
For three days he bathed in the beauty and joy of a Southern home. He saw but little of Jennie. The boys absorbed him. They were eager for news. They plied him with a thousand questions. Tom was going to join the navy, Jimmie and Billy the army.
"Would the United States Army stand by the old flag?" Tom asked with painful eagerness.
Socola was non-committal.
"As a rule the sailor is loyal to the flag of his ship. It's the symbol of home, of country, of all he holds dear."
"That's so, too," Tom answered thoughtfully. "Well, we'll build a navy. We built the old one. We can build a new one!"
The last night he spent at Fairview was one never to be forgotten. It gave him another picture of the old régime. They sat on the great pillared front porch looking out on the silvery surface of the moonlit river. Jennie's grandfather. Colonel James Barton, a stately man of eighty-five, who had led a regiment with Jefferson Davis in the Mexican War, though at that time long past the age of military service, honored them with his presence to a late hour.
His eyes were failing but his voice was stentorian. Its tones had been developed to even deeper power during the past ten years owing to the deafness of his wife. This beautiful old woman sat softly rocking beside the Colonel, answering in gentle monosyllables the questions he roared into her ears.
To escape the volume of the Colonel's conversation Socola asked Jennie to walk to the river's edge.
They sat down on a bench perched high on the bluff which rose abruptly from the water at the lower end of the grounds. The scene was one of memorable beauty.
He laughed at the folly of his schemes to learn the inner secrets of the South. These people had no secrets. They wore their hearts on their sleeves. He had only to ask a question to receive the answer direct without reserve.
"Your three younger brothers will fight for the South, of course, Miss Jennie?"
"Of course--I only wish I were a man!"
"You have an older brother in New Orleans, I believe?"
"Judge Barton, yes."
"He, too, will enter the army?"
The girl drew a deep breath and hesitated.
"He says he will not. He is bitterly opposed to my father's views."
Socola's eyes sparkled. "He is for the Union then?"
"Yes."
"He is a man of decided views and character I take it."
"Yes--as firm and unyielding in his position as my father on the other side."
"You will be very bitter towards him if war should come?"
"Bitter?" A little sob caught her voice. "He is my Big Brother. I love him. It would break my heart--that's all--but I'll love him always."
Her tones were music, her loyalty to her own so sweet in its simplicity, so utterly charming, he opened his lips to speak the first words to test her personal attitude toward him. A flirtation would be delightful with such a girl. And Mr. Dick Welford was a fearful temptation. He put the thought out of his heart. She was too good and fine to be made a pawn in such a game. Beside it was utterly unnecessary.
He had gotten exactly the information about this older brother in New Orleans he desired and sat in brooding silence.
Jennie rose suddenly.
"Oh, I forgot--I must go in. My maids are waiting for me, I've an affair to settle between them before they go to bed."
Socola accompanied her to the door and turned again on the lawn to enjoy the white glory of the Southern moon. The lights were still twinkling in the long rows of negro cabins that lined the way to the overseer's house. Through the shadows of the trees he could see the dark figures in the doorways of their cabins silhouetted against the lighted candles in the background.
He strolled leisurely into the lower hall. The door of the library was open. He paused at the scene within. A group of four little negro girls surrounded Jennie. She was reading the Bible to them.
"Can't you say your prayers together to-night?" the young mistress asked.
The kinky heads shook emphatically.
Lucy couldn't say hers with Amy:
"'Cause she ain't got no brother and sister to pray for." Maggie couldn't say hers with Mandy:
"'Cause she ain't got no mother and father."
So each repeated her prayer alone and stood before their little mistress who sat in judgment on their day's deeds.
Lucy had jabbed a carving knife into Amy's arm in a fit of temper. Her prayer had made no mention of this important fact. The judge gave a tender lecture on the need of repentance. The little sullen black figure hung back stubbornly for a moment and walled her eyes at her enemy. A sudden burst of tears and they were in each other's arms, crying and begging forgiveness. And then they filed out, one by one.
"Good night, Miss Jennie!"
"Good night!"
"God bless you, Miss Jennie--"
"I'll never be bad no mo'!"
He had come to break the chains that cut through human flesh and he had found this--great God!
For hours he lay awake, dreaming with wide staring eyes of the long blood-stained history of human Slavery and its sharp contrast with the strange travesty of such an institution which the South was giving to the world.
He had barely lost consciousness when he leaped to the floor, roused by loud voices, tramping feet and the flash of weird lights on the lawn. Growls and long calls echoed from point to point on the spacious grounds, hulloes and echoing answers and the tramp of many feet.
Some horrible thing had happened--sudden death, murder or war had broken out. A voice was screaming from the balcony aloft that sounded like the trumpet of the arch-angel calling the end of time.
He listened.
It was old Colonel Barton yelling at the sleepy negroes. In heaven's high name what could they be doing?
Socola dressed hastily and rushed down-stairs. Jennie and the boys appeared almost at the same moment.
"What is it?" Socola asked excitedly. "War has been declared? The slaves have risen?"
Jennie laughed.
"No--no! Grandmamma smells a smell. She thinks something is burning somewhere."
"Oh--"
The whole place, house, yard, grounds, outhouses, swarmed with bellowing negroes. Those that were not bellowing were muttering in sleepy, quarrelsome protest.
And they all carried candles to look for a fire in the dark!
There were at least seventy--two-thirds of them too old or too young to be of any service, but they belonged to the house.
The old Colonel's voice could be heard a mile. In his nightgown he was roaring from the balcony, giving his orders for the busy crowd hunting for fire with their candles flickering in the shadows.
Old Mrs. Barton, serenely deaf, was of course oblivious of the sensation she had created. The loss of her hearing had rendered doubly acute her sense of smell. Candles had to be taken out of her room to be snuffed. Lamps were extinguished only on the portico or on the lawn. Violets she couldn't endure. A tea rose was never allowed in her room. Only one kind of sweet rose would she tolerate at close range.
In the mildest voice she was suggesting places to be searched.
Far out at the negro quarters the candle brigade at length gathered--the flickering lights closing in to a single point one by one.
The smell was found.
A family had been boiling soap--a slave-ridden plantation was a miniature world which must be practically self-supporting. There could be no economy of labor by its scientific division. Around the soap pot the negro woman had swept some woolen rags. They were smoldering there and the faint odor had been wafted to the great house.
Socola couldn't sleep. All night long he could hear that wild commotion--the old Colonel's voice roaring from the balcony and seventy sleepy, good-for-nothing negroes with lighted candles looking for a fire in the dark. When at last he was tired of laughing at the ridiculous picture, his foolish fancy took another turn and fixed itself again on old Bob and Aunt Rhinah in their rocking chairs, swathed in cochineal flannel.