She had taken exact and careful measurements of rooms and doors and windows before she and Brett went to England; and as the boxes and bales and crates were unpacked, each article had a place waiting to receive it. Hand-painted canvas medallions, four to each room, one to each corner, were pasted on the ceilings of drawing room and parlor. The walls were painted to give the effect of an ornate plaster moulding framing large panels. An elaborate plaster frieze joined walls to ceiling, while in a moulded design around the drawing room chandelier, chubby little cupids seemed about to take wing out of a sea of plaster flowers and garlands.
The drawing room was Cinda’s particular delight. The plain wooden mantel was replaced with one of white marble adorned with carved grapevines and carved white fruit in huge clusters. On the mantel a gilt clock under a glass bell was flanked by two gilt girandoles hung with glass prisms to match the chandelier. Above each window the workmen under Cinda’s jealous eye set a heavy gilded cornice, bright and gleaming, cast in an elaborate and intricate pattern of fruit and leaves and vines. This cornice was continued to connect the two windows overlooking Franklin Street, and below it a mirror as high as the ten-foot windows filled the space between them. The mirror was framed in gilt, and its base was a low, marble-topped table with its legs concealed by a brass skirt moulded in a pattern that matched the cornices. At the windows full lace curtains hung to sweep the floor.
Tilda, watching all these changes, praised everything. “It’s lovely, Cinda,” she declared. “So bright and cheerful! No one could ever be dismal and unhappy in a room like this!”
“Just wait till it’s finished!” Cinda told her proudly. When the fine Brussels carpet gay with yellow flowers and charming browns and greens and blues had been laid, Tilda watched new wonders take their places. There was a carved whatnot. “And I’ve ever so many lovely things to put on it,” Cinda promised. “I’ll fill it and the corner cupboard and have treasures left over.” A pianoforte on one side of the room faced a melodeon on the other. They were painted black and decorated with a bright pattern of yellow flowers and green leaves which was repeated on the tiptop table, not only on the top but down the legs. The same design adorned the card table, and the oval, marble-topped table in the center of the room. On this and on the card table, under glass bells, a cluster of wax flowers and a bowl of wax fruit enchanted the eye. The settee and the occasional chairs, of carved ebony, were upholstered in black silk brocade; the foot stools in needlepoint of beads like tapestry.
Tilda swallowed the bitter taste of gnawing envy. “I declare, Cinda, I never imagined anything could be so beautiful.” Her own home seemed when she came back to it as dismal as a tomb; the dark gleam of mahogany, the severe lines of chairs and tables, the decorous mouldings, oppressed and crushed her. She returned again and again to Cinda’s as a drunkard to his cups, and she was always able to exclaim at each new treasure, from the huge tapestry which exactly covered one wall of the dining room to the Derby china—dark blue bordered with gilt, pink eglantine centers—and the delicate French porcelain and all the treasures that filled the whatnot and the corner cupboard and overflowed into any corner where there was room for them. But she went home afterward to grieve and suffer wretchedly, and it was no comfort to her that Vesta refused to be enthusiastic about all this new splendor, admitting that she preferred plain old familiar things. Tilda thought Vesta was a silly young idiot with not wit enough to appreciate beauty when she saw it; and certainly the other ladies, Cinda’s friends whom she met at Cinda’s house, were as delightedly approving as she.
Before they all went to Great Oak for Christmas, the new house was settled; but after Christmas, Streean still drove Tilda to haunt Cinda’s door. Dolly, as shrewd as her father, knew well enough that Vesta’s plain, freckled countenance was a flattering foil for her own beauty; and Vesta’s friendliness made it easy for them to draw together. Burr had gone back to South Carolina College at Columbia, and Julian presently was banished to the Plains. “He’s entirely too young to be footloose in Richmond,” Cinda told her sister. “Brett and I think of sending him to Virginia Military Institute. He’s at the age to need some restraint.” She smiled. “But meanwhile he likes the Plains.”
In February, Vesta followed Julian southward, to meet the northbound march of spring; but Brett and Cinda stayed on, and one day in early April, Streean spoke to Tilda.
“I’m going to Charleston to the Convention,” he told her. She knew vaguely that Democratic delegates would meet there to nominate a candidate for President in the coming election, and that Streean had sought unsuccessfully to be chosen one of them; and she thought it was like him to go to Charleston even without official purpose. To force himself into the company of greater men was always his delight. “Suggest to Cinda that Dolly go as far as Camden with me, and stop for a visit at the Plains.” He chuckled. “Tell her Dolly’s peaked after this long winter, needs southern air. Cinda won’t have any excuse to say no.”
Tilda, proud of Dolly’s beauty, resented his suggestion that weather could affect it; nevertheless she did as he directed. Cinda, after a momentary hesitation, said generously: “Why, of course! And you come too, Tilda!”
“Oh, Cinda, that’s sweet of you!” Tilda’s heart leaped with delight at the prospect. “But——”
“No ‘buts’ about it,” Cinda laughingly insisted. “It’s lovely there this time of year. I’m going down myself next week. Julian’s entering North Carolina Military Institute, and I want to get him ready.”
“North Carolina? I thought you said Virginia.”
“I did,” Cinda assented. “That’s what we planned, but Julian wants to go to Charlotte, and we’re letting him have his own way.” She added: “Brett and I are going down next week. He’s going to Charleston too. These men and their politics! But I’ll stay at the Plains while he’s gone, so do come, you and Dolly both.”
“Won’t I crowd things terribly?”
“Nonsense! There’s plenty of room.”
“Why—I’ll see what Redford says,” Tilda agreed. She was not surprised that he at first thought she should stay at home.
“Dolly’ll have a better time without you,” he predicted; but when Tilda repeated this to Cinda, the older sister said sharply:
“Nonsense! Besides, I won’t have Dolly without you!” She laughed in a way that took any sting out of her words. “I won’t take the responsibility of fighting off her beaux! Don’t be absurd! Of course you’re coming.”
Streean in the end relented. He even sanctioned the enlargement of Tilda’s wardrobe for the occasion. She and Dolly had his escort as far as Kingsville where they waited to take the Camden train; and in Camden, Vesta and Clayton met them with the carriage and they set out at once for the Plains. They crossed the Wateree at the ferry, and beyond they turned up river. The road dipped and rose as it skirted the clay and gravel slopes that rose out of the alluvial bottom lands. In the fields along their way Negroes were planting cotton, and the soft murmur of their voices, laughing together or sometimes singing, came through the still hush of evening. The horses splashed through the ford at Twenty-Five-Mile Creek and turned toward higher ground, the road winding through long-leaf pines whose green crowns glistened in the sun.
“Most of the plantations around Camden are east of the river,” Vesta told them. “We’re really off by ourselves here, at the edge of the sand hills, with the tackeys for nearest neighbors; but we always seem to have lots of company somehow.”
The road emerged from pines into an avenue of oaks that led toward the big house, and Vesta said the quarter and most of the work buildings were down nearer the creek, hidden by the rise of ground; but she pointed out the conical peak of the screw where cotton was pressed. “We used to love to ride the mules ’round and ’round when we were little,” she said. Smoke house and kitchen and the cabins of the house servants and the small building which Clayton had put up for a nursery were near the house. The house itself was of wood, painted white, squared pillars a
scending from the ground to the roof, and supporting a wide veranda at the first floor level. Tilda saw azaleas still showing some bloom and exclaimed approvingly, but Vesta said the azaleas and the yellow jessamine and the japonicas were gone. “And the wistaria, of course. That great vine along the balcony railing just smothers this side of the house when it’s in bloom. But the real gardens are on the other side, on terraces falling away down toward the creek.”
As the carriage halted where twin flights of stairs led up to the veranda, Cinda and the babies appeared to greet them, and Tilda kissed her sister and said effusively:
“Oh, Cinda, you were sweet to ask us!”
“Don’t thank me! Thank Jenny! She’s mistress here now. I’m just a visitor, free to enjoy my grandchildren.” She had two-year-old Janet in her arms, Kyle tagging at her knee. “Aren’t they sweet, Tilda?”
“They’re darlings,” Tilda assured her. “Just perfectly lovely, both of them.”
“Oh, fiddlesticks! They’re nice enough, but they look too much like me to be beauties!” Jenny came out of the house, and heard, and smiled; and Cinda told her cheerfully: “If you wanted beautiful children, Honey, you should never have picked me as their grandmother.” Tilda thought Jenny herself was no beauty. Whatever had Clayton seen in her? How did people like Cinda and Jenny manage to win such nice husbands? She felt a familiar twinge of jealous pain.
Indoors they moved through the wide hall to the south veranda, Tilda carefully admiring all she saw while envy tortured her. Was she to spend her whole life oh-ing and ah-ing over other people’s possessions? Below the veranda the garden terraces descended steeply into the ravine where the creek ran. Cherry myrtle trees had been trimmed to make massive hedges, each a series of arches. The terraces curved to follow the contour of the hillside, with ivy and smilax on the slopes, and gravel walks, and Tilda saw Cherokee roses and honeysuckle in rich bloom, and the air was sweet with warmly drifting fragrances, flowing up the sunned slope to them. To Dolly’s delighted ejaculations, Vesta said lightly:
“Oh, that’s partly honeysuckle you smell, but it’s mostly just banana shrub and sweet shrub. They’re so sweet they’re sickening.”
She swept Dolly away, and Jenny said: “I’ll show you to your room, Aunt Tilda.” On the stairs she explained: “I’m putting you in the west wing, next to Mama. Dolly’ll be in with Vesta, and Vesta’s inviting some friends from town, so the east wing will be noisy. I thought you’d like to be quiet, more by yourself.”
The room was bright with the late sun; and Tilda said it was beautiful and she said Jenny was a dear to let her come, and to invite Dolly. “Dolly’s always so popular wherever she goes. She’ll have such a good time here.” Because she dreaded being left alone, she kept Jenny in talk while she removed the traces of her journey. “Aren’t you awfully off by yourselves here?” she asked. “Vesta said most of the plantations are across the river.”
“They are,” Jenny agreed. “But our land is as good as theirs, and we don’t have to worry about floods, or keep up a levee, and we’re high enough to be away from the vapors in the low land.”
“What do you raise, rice and cotton?”
“Cotton, and corn of course, and we make some naval stores, but no rice. There are some rice fields on this side of the river down in Green Swamp, but not many.”
When Tilda was ready, they came down together to supper, sandwiches and cakes and fruit conserve and tea served on the little tables in the gracious drawing room. The visit at the Plains began delightfully and Tilda watched with happy pride Dolly’s charming triumphs. The big house was presently as if besieged, young men from the plantations across the river riding over every day by twos and threes and fours. Vesta had, as Jenny promised, invited some of her friends to stay with her. “Dolly and I just simply can’t entertain all these nice boys all by ourselves, Aunt Tilda,” she explained. So the rooms in the east wing were full; and whenever the young horsemen appeared, an appropriate number of lovely, merry girls would—after laughing, brief delays—come trooping down the wide stairs to greet them.
One morning Tilda, even from her room at the other end of the house, heard a welcome particularly vociferous; and she hurried down to discover the occasion. It was Burr who had arrived; Burr and a handsome, laughing youngster whom Cinda introduced to Tilda as Rollin Lyle.
“He’s Burr’s very best friend at college in Columbia,” she explained; and in the same breath demanded: “But Burr, you scamp, what are you two doing here?”
Rollin Lyle, with a twinkle in his eye, protested: “Ma’am, how can you ask—when so many charming ladies——”
“Fiddlesticks! You can’t catch this cat with butter! You two have been up to something!”
Burr grinned redly, but Rollin drawled: “Why, ma’am, young gentlemen can’t bury themselves in books forever; so sometimes they play a little prank. Some rascal sprinkles hellebore in a recitation room to set us all sneezing, or rolls cannon balls down the stairs at midnight to spoil our sleep—they’re usually hot enough so that the proctor who tries to pick them up drops them mighty quick——”
Cinda good-humoredly interrupted. “You’ve been rusticated, the pair of you,” she said accusingly. “Now what have you been up to? Burr, answer me!”
Burr hesitated. “Well, you see, there was a slaminade——”
Dolly cried: “Slaminade? Whatever’s that, Burr?”
“Why, when one of the teachers makes himself unpopular—well, it’s like a serenade, only not so musical, beating tin pans under his window, whooping and yelling, racing your horses past his house. It’s all fun, but Old Bullet—”
“Who’s Old Bullet?” Dolly was again the questioner.
“Judge Longstreet, the President,” Rollin explained, and Tilda saw him smile at Dolly. She thought him about the nicest-looking young man she had ever seen. What a picture he and Dolly were together! “We all call him Old Bullet.”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!” Cinda exclaimed. “He’s a perfectly charming old gentleman.”
“Oh, we all like him,” Rollin assured her. “Like to call on him.” He smiled in faint apology. “It’s fun to get him started talking about old songs, because he’ll bring out his glass flute and play them for you; Indian tunes, and old Scotch ballads, and be so serious about it.”
“You scamp, making fun of him!”
Burr laughed. “I’m not so sure about that, Mama. I think half the time he’s making fun of us, thinking how ridiculous it is for us to come and listen to an old gentleman toot on a flute. He can be stern and serious when he wants to. This last lark, he took it seriously enough. He sent for us, one at a time, and asked if we knew who had a hand in the affair. Of course a lot of us did know—but of course none of us would tell him.” He looked at his mother, briefly abashed. “So he expelled about half the college. He said legally we were accessories and accomplices.”
Dolly cried in a charming indignation: “Why, that’s the most ridiculous thing! Of course you wouldn’t tell!” Tilda saw Cinda bite her lip, and then the young people moved away together, and Tilda said comfortingly:
“Don’t be distressed, Cinda.”
“Oh, I’m not distressed! I’m just trying not to let Burr see me laughing. Why do teachers take themselves and their lessons so seriously?”
“Who is that charming Mr. Lyle?”
“Rollin? His father’s Randolph Lyle, and Andrew Lyle was his grandfather. His mother was Martha Pettigrew. But there, you don’t know South Carolina families, of course. Mr. Lyle’s brother, Rollin’s uncle, is our factor in Charleston. They have enormous rice fields near Georgetown. I’ve heard Rollin say his father has six or seven plantations, and they make hundreds of tierces of rice every year, when the rice birds don’t eat it all before the harvest.”
Then Rollin would be wealthy, unless of course there were other brothers. “Have they a large family?”
“Oh, Rollin’s a good catch,” Cinda said dryly, “if Dolly can land him.
No, just one other son.”
Tilda flushed. “Well, I don’t care! You’re so rich you don’t have to think of such things, but I do.”
Cinda smiled. “There, I’m sorry. But you’re so transparent. Never mind. Dolly’s having a good time, isn’t she?”
There could be no doubt of this, and now with Burr and Rollin here and other young men and older ones appearing every day, the big house had few quiet hours. There were always extras for dinner and for supper. Jenny met calmly each demand upon her household, and Clayton was never too much occupied with the business of the plantation to play host. So the very air was musical with laughter, and each evening old Banquo brought his fiddle and there was the whisper of light dancing feet. Tilda, observing all that passed, saw that Vesta had a devoted swain in Tommy Cloyd. He was forever at her side, or if chance parted them his eyes followed her. Tilda thought Vesta, homely as she was, would probably jump at the chance to marry this mooning, love-struck youngster. She was so full of curiosity about these two that one day she questioned Cinda. “Of course you’ve noticed it,” she said.
“Of course,” Cinda agreed. “Oh, and that reminds me, I must call on Mrs. Cloyd. We’ll drive up there this morning.” On the way she told Tilda something about Tommy’s mother. “She’s a remarkable woman,” Cinda explained. “When Tommy’s father died Mrs. Cloyd calmly took over the management of the plantation. It was a small place, and short of hands; and at first she used to be up at daylight, even working in the fields with her people. She gave up seeing her friends and some of them, the silly ones, turned against her; but I’ve always liked her. Don’t be surprised at anything she does. I suppose it’s sort of a defiant gesture, but she does exactly what she chooses.”
House Divided Page 14