CHAPTER XI.

ON THE SALKAHATCHIE.

Scarce a leaf quivered on the branches of the magnolias, or a tress of gray-green moss on the cypress boughs. All the world of the Salkahatchie was wrapped in siesta. The white clouds drifting on palest turquoise were the only moving things except the water flowing beneath, and its soft swish against the gunnels of the floating wharf made the only sound.

The plantation home of Loringwood, facing the river, and reached through the avenue of enormous live oaks, looked an enchanted palace touched with the wand of silence.

From the wide stone steps to the wide galleries, with their fluted pillars, not a murmur but the winged insects droning in the tangled gra.s.ses, for the wild luxuriance of rose tree and j.a.ponica, of lawn and c.r.a.pe myrtle, betrayed a lack of pruning knives in the immediate season past; and to the south, where the rice fields had reached acre beyond acre towards the swamps, there were now scattered patches of feathering young pine, creeping everywhere not forbidden to it by the hand of man.

Spring time and summer time, for almost a century, had been lived through under its sloping, square, dormer-windowed roof. But all the blue sky and brilliant sunshine above could not save it from a suggestion of autumn, and the shadows lengthening along the river were in perfect keeping with the entire picture--a picture of perpetual afternoon.

"Row-lock," "Row-lock," sounded the dip and click of paddles, as a boat swept close to the western bank, where the shadows fell. Two Afro-Americans bent in rhythmic motion--bronze human machines, whose bared arms showed nothing of effort as they sent the boat cutting through the still water.

A middle-aged woman in a voluminous lavender lawn and carrying a parasol of plaid silk-green, with faded pink bars, sat in the after part of the boat, while a slight brown-haired girl just in front amused herself by catching at branches of willows as they pa.s.sed.

"Evilena, honey, you certainly are like to do yourself a hurt reaching out like that, and if you _should_ go over!"

"But I shan't, Aunt Sajane. Do you reckon I'd risk appearing before Gertrude Loring in a draggled gown just when she has returned from the very heart of the civilized world? Goodness knows, we'll all look dowdy enough to her."

Aunt Sajane (Mistress Sarah Jane Nesbitt) glanced down at her own immaculate lawn, a little faded but daintily laundered, and at her own trim congress-gaitered feet.

"Oh, I didn't mean you," added the girl, laughing softly. "Aunt Sajane, I truly do believe that if you had nothing but gunny sacks for dresses you'd contrive to look as if you'd just come out of a bandbox."

"I'd wear gunny sacks fast enough if it was to help the cause," agreed Aunt Sajane, with a kindly smile. "So would you, honey."

"Honey" trailed her fingers in the waters, amber-tinted from the roots of the cypress trees.

"If a letter from mama comes today we will just miss it."

"Only by a day. Brother Gideon will send it."

"But suppose he's away somewhere on business, or up there at Columbia on state councils or conventions, or whatever they are, as he is just now?"

"Then Pluto will fetch it right over," and she glanced at one of the black men, who showed his teeth for an instant and bent his head in a.s.sent.

"Don't see why Judge Clarkson was _ever_ named Gideon," protested the girl. "It's a hard, harsh sort of name, and he's as--as--"

"Soft?" queried the judge's sister, with an accompaniment of easy laughter. The youngest of the two oarsmen grinned. Pluto maintained a well-bred indifference.

"No!" and the girl flung a handful of willow leaves over the lavender lawn. "He is--well--just about right, the judge is; so gentle, so considerate, so altogether magnificent in his language. I've adored him as far back as when he fought the duel with the Northern man who reflected some way on our customs; that was starting a war for his state all alone, before anyone else thought of it, I reckon. I must have been very little then, for I just recollect how he used to let me look in his pockets for candy, and I was awfully afraid of the pistols I thought he must carry there to shoot people with," and she smiled at the childish fancy. "I tell you, Aunt Sajane, if my papa had lived there's just one man I'd like him to favor, and that's our judge. But he didn't, did he?"

"No, he didn't," said Aunt Sajane. "The McVeigh men were all dark, down to Kenneth, and he gets his fairness from your ma." Then she added, kindly, "the judge will be very proud of your admiration."

"Hope he'll care enough about it to hurry right along after us. He does put in a powerful lot of his time in Charleston and Columbia lately," and the tone was one of childish complaint.

"Why, honey, how you suppose our soldier boys would be provided for unless some of the representative men devote their time to the work?

It's a consolation to me that Gideon is needed for civil service just now, for if he wasn't he wouldn't be so near home as he is; he'd be somewhere North with a regiment, and I reckon that wouldn't suit you any better."

"No, it wouldn't," agreed the girl, "though I do like a man who will fight, of course. _Any_ girl does."

"Oh, Honey!"

"Yes they do, too. But just now I don't want him either fighting or in legislature. I want him right along with us at Loringwood. If he isn't there to talk to Mr. Loring it won't be possible to have a word alone with Gertrude all the time we stay. How he _does_ depend on her, and what an awful time she must have had all alone with him in Paris while he was at that hospital, or whatever it was."

"Not many girls so faithful as Gertrude Loring," agreed Aunt Sajane.

"Not that he has ever shown much affection for her, either, considering she is his own brother's child. But she certainly has shown a Christian sense of duty towards him. Well, you see, they are the only ones left of the family. It's natural, I suppose."

"_I_ would think it natural to run away and leave him, like Aleck and Scip did."

Aunt Sajane cast a warning glance towards the two oarsmen.

"Well, I would," insisted the girl. "I wonder no more of them ran away when they thought he was coming home. How he must have raved! _I_ shouldn't wonder if it prostrated him again. You know old Doctor Allison said it was just a fit of temper caused--"

"Yes, yes, honey; but you know we are to sleep under his roof tonight."

"I'll sleep under Gertrude's half of it," laughed the girl. "It's no use reminding me of my bad manners, Aunt Sajane. But as long as I can remember anyone, I've had two men in my mind. One always grunted at me and told me to take my doll somewhere else or be quiet. That was Kenneth's guardian, Matthew Loring. The other man always had sugar kisses in his pocket for me and gave me my first dog and my only pony.

That was Judge Clarkson. You see if my judge had not been so lovely the other would not have seemed so forbidding. It was the contrast did it. I wonder--I wonder if he ever had a sweetheart?"

"Gideon Clarkson? Lots of them," said his sister, promptly.

"I meant Mr. Loring."

"Nonsense, honey, nonsense."

"And nonsense means no," decided the girl. "I thought it would be curious if he had," then an interval of silence, broken only by the dip of the oars. "Gertrude's note said a Paris doctor is with them, a friend of Kenneth and mama. Well, I only hope _he_ isn't a crusty old sweetheartless man. But of course he is if Mr. Loring chose him. I'm wild to know how they got through the blockade. Oh, dear, how I wish it was Ken!"

"I don't suppose you wish it any more than the boy himself," said Aunt Sajane, with a sigh. "There's a good many boys scattered from home, these days, who would be glad to be home again."

"But not unless they gain what they went for," declared the girl in patriotic protest.

The older woman sighed, and said nothing. Her enthusiasms of a year ago had been shrouded by the c.r.a.pe of a mourning land; the glory of conquest would be compensation, perhaps, and would be gained, no doubt. But the price to be paid chilled her and left her without words when Evilena revelled in the glories of the future.

"Loringwood line," said Pluto, motioning towards a great ditch leading straight back from the river.

Evilena shrugged her shoulders with a little pretense of chill, and laughed.

"That is only a reminder of what I used to feel when Gertrude's uncle came to our house. I wonder if this long dress will prevent him from grunting at me or ordering me out of the room if I talk too much."

"Remember, Evilena, he has been an invalid for four years, and is excusable for almost any eccentricity."

"How did you all excuse his eccentricities before he got sick, Aunt Sajane?"

Receiving no reply, the girl comforted herself with the appreciative smile of the oarsmen, who were evidently of her mind as to the planter under discussion, and a mile further they ran the boat through the reeds and lily pads to the little dock at Loringwood.