Sally Dows

For an impulsive moment Courtland felt like telling her then and there the story of his romantic quest; but the reflection that they were standing on a narrow ledge with no room for the emotions, and that Miss Sally had just put a nail in her mouth and a start might be dangerous, checked him. To this may be added a new jealousy of her previous experiences, which he had not felt before. Nevertheless, he managed to say with some effusion:—

“But I hope we are not too late NOW. I think my principals are quite ready and able to buy up any English or French investor now or to come.”

“Yo’ might try yo’ hand on that one,” said Miss Sally, pointing to a young fellow who had just emerged from the office and was crossing the courtyard. “He’s the English agent.”

He was square-shouldered and round-headed, fresh and clean looking in his white flannels, but with an air of being utterly distinct and alien to everything around him, and mentally and morally irreconcilable to it. As he passed the house he glanced shyly at it; his eye brightened and his manner became self-conscious as he caught sight of the young girl, but changed again when he saw her companion. Courtland likewise was conscious of a certain uneasiness; it was one thing to be helping Miss Sally ALONE, but certainly another thing to be doing so under the eye of a stranger; and I am afraid that he met the stony observation of the Englishman with an equally cold stare. Miss Sally alone retained her languid ease and self-possession. She called out, “Wait a moment, Mr. Champney,” slipped lightly down the ladder, and leaning against it with one foot on its lowest rung awaited his approach.

“I reckoned yo’ might be passing by,” she said, as he came forward. “Co’nnle Courtland,” with an explanatory wave of the hammer towards her companion, who remained erect and slightly stiffened on the cornice, “is no relation to those figures along the frieze of the Redlands Court House, but a No’th’n officer, a friend of Major Reed’s, who’s come down here to look after So’th’n property for some No’th’n capitalists. Mr. Champney,” she continued, turning and lifting her eyes to Courtland as she indicated Champney with her hammer, “when he isn’t talking English, seeing English, thinking English, dressing English, and wondering why God didn’t make everything English, is trying to do the same for HIS folks. Mr. Champney, Co’nnle Courtland. Co’nnle Courtland, Mr. Champney!” The two men bowed formally. “And now, Co’nnle, if yo’ll come down, Mr. Champney will show yo’ round the fahm. When yo’ ‘ve got through yo’ll find me here at work.”

Courtland would have preferred, and half looked for her company and commentary on this round of inspection, but he concealed his disappointment and descended. It did not exactly please him that Champney seemed relieved, and appeared to accept him as a bona fide stranger who could not possibly interfere with any confidential relations that he might have with Miss Sally. Nevertheless, he met the Englishman’s offer to accompany him with polite gratitude, and they left the house together.

In less than an hour they returned. It had not even taken that time for Courtland to discover that the real improvements and the new methods had originated with Miss Sally; that she was virtually the controlling influence there, and that she was probably retarded rather than assisted by the old-fashioned and traditional conservatism of the company of which Champney was steward. It was equally plain, however, that the young fellow was dimly conscious of this, and was frankly communicative about it.

“You see, over there they work things in a different way, and, by Jove! they can’t understand that there is any other, don’t you know? They’re always wigging me as if I could help it, although I’ve tried to explain the nigger business, and all that, don’t you know? They want Miss Dows to refer her plans to me, and expect me to report on them, and then they’ll submit them to the Board and wait for its decision. Fancy Miss Dows doing that! But, by Jove! they can’t conceive of her AT ALL over there, don’t you know?”

“Which Miss Dows do you mean?” asked Courtland dryly.

“Miss Sally, of course,” said the young fellow briskly. “SHE manages everything—her aunt included. She can make those niggers work when no one else can, a word or smile from her is enough. She can make terms with dealers and contractors—her own terms, too—when they won’t look at MY figures. By Jove! she even gets points out of those traveling agents and inventors, don’t you know, who come along the road with patents and samples. She got one of those lightning-rod and wire-fence men to show her how to put up an arbor for her trailing roses. Why, when I first saw YOU up on the cornice, I thought you were some other chap that she’d asked—don’t you know—that is, at first, of course!—you know what I mean—ha, by Jove!—before we were introduced, don’t you know.”

“I think I OFFERED to help Miss Dows,” said Courtland with a quickness that he at once regretted.

“So did HE, don’t you know? Miss Sally does not ASK anybody. Don’t you see? a fellow don’t like to stand by and see a young lady like her doing such work.” Vaguely aware of some infelicity in his speech, he awkwardly turned the subject: “I don’t think I shall stay here long, myself.”

“You expect to return to England?” asked Courtland.

“Oh, no! But I shall go out of the company’s service and try my own hand. There’s a good bit of land about three miles from here that’s in the market, and I think I could make something out of it. A fellow ought to settle down and be his own master,” he answered tentatively, “eh?”

“But how will Miss Dows be able to spare you?” asked Courtland, uneasily conscious that he was assuming an indifference.

“Oh, I’m not much use to her, don’t you know—at least not HERE. But I might, if I had my own land and if we were neighbors. I told you SHE runs the place, no matter who’s here, or whose money is invested.”

“I presume you are speaking now of young Miss Dows?” said Courtland dryly.

“Miss Sally—of course—always,” said Champney simply. “She runs the shop.”

“Were there not some French investors—relations of Miss Dows? Does anybody represent THEM?” asked Courtland pointedly.

Yet he was not quite prepared for the naive change in his companion’s face. “No. There was a sort of French cousin who used to be a good deal to the fore, don’t you know? But I rather fancy he didn’t come here to look after the PROPERTY,” returned Champney with a quick laugh. “I think the aunt must have written to his friends, for they ‘called him off,’ and I don’t think Miss Sally broke her heart about him. She’s not that sort of girl—eh? She could have her pick of the State if she went in for that sort of thing—eh?”

Although this was exactly what Courtland was thinking, it pleased him to answer in a distrait sort of fashion, “Certainly, I should think so,” and to relapse into an apparently business abstraction.

“I think I won’t go in,” continued Champney as they neared the house again. “I suppose you’ll have something more to say to Miss Dows. If there’s anything else you want of ME, come to the office. But SHE’LL know. And—er—er—if you’re—er—staying long in this part of the country, ride over and look me up, don’t you know? and have a smoke and a julep; I have a boy who knows how to mix them, and I’ve some old brandy sent me from the other side. Good-by.”

More awkward in his kindliness than in his simple business confidences, but apparently equally honest in both, he shook Courtland’s hand and walked away. Courtland turned towards the house. He had seen the farm and its improvements; he had found some of his own ideas practically discounted; clearly there was nothing left for him to do but to thank his hostess and take his leave. But he felt far more uneasy than when he had arrived; and there was a singular sense of incompleteness in his visit that he could not entirely account for. His conversation with Champney had complicated—he knew not why—his previous theories of Miss Dows, and although he was half conscious that this had nothing to do with the business that brought him there, he tried to think that it had. If Miss Sally was really—a—a—distracting element to contiguous man, it was certainly something to be considered in a matter of business of which she would take a managerial part. It was true that Champney had said she was “not that sort of girl,” but this was the testimony of one who was clearly under her influence. He entered the house through the open French window. The parlor was deserted. He walked through the front hall and porch; no one was there. He lingered a few moments, a slight chagrin beginning to mingle with his uneasiness. She might have been on the lookout for him. She or Sophy must have seen him returning. He would ring for Sophy, and leave his thanks and regrets for her mistress. He looked for a bell, touched it, but on being confronted with Sophy, changed his mind and asked to SEE Miss Dows. In the interval between her departure and the appearance of Miss Sally he resolved to do the very thing which he had dismissed from his thoughts but an hour before as ill-timed and doubtful. He had the photograph and letter in his pocket; he would make them his excuse for personally taking leave of her.

She entered with her fair eyebrows lifted in a pretty surprise.

“I declare to goodness, I thought yo’ ‘d ridden over to the red barn and gone home from there. I got through my work on the vines earlier than I thought. One of Judge Garret’s nephews dropped in in time to help me with the last row. Yo’ needn’t have troubled yo’self to send up for me for mere company manners, but Sophy says yo’ looked sort of ‘anxious and particular’ when yo’ asked for me—so I suppose yo’ want to see me for something.”

Mentally objurgating Sophy, and with an unpleasant impression in his mind of the unknown neighbor who had been helping Miss Sally in his place, he nevertheless tried to collect himself gallantly.

“I don’t know what my expression conveyed to Sophy,” he said with a smile, “but I trust that what I have to tell you may be interesting enough to make you forget my second intrusion.” He paused, and still smiling continued: “For more than three years, Miss Dows, you have more or less occupied my thoughts; and although we have actually met to-day only for the first time, I have during that time carried your image with me constantly. Even this meeting, which was only the result of an accident, I had been seeking for three years. I find you here under your own peaceful vine and fig-tree, and yet three years ago you came to me out of the thunder-cloud of battle.”

“My good gracious!” said Miss Sally.

She had been clasping her knee with her linked fingers, but separated them and leaned backward on the sofa with affected consternation, but an expression of growing amusement in her bright eyes. Courtland saw the mistake of his tone, but it was too late to change it now. He handed her the locket and the letter, and briefly, and perhaps a little more seriously, recounted the incident that had put him in possession of them. But he entirely suppressed the more dramatic and ghastly details, and his own superstition and strange prepossession towards her.

Miss Sally took the articles without a tremor, or the least deepening or paling of the delicate, faint suffusion of her cheek. When she had glanced over the letter, which appeared to be brief, she said, with smiling, half-pitying tranquillity:—

“Yes!—it WAS that poor Chet Brooks, sure! I heard that he was killed at Snake River. It was just like him to rush in and get killed the first pop! And all for nothing, too,—pure foolishness!”

Shocked, yet relieved, but uneasy under both sensations, Courtland went on blindly:

“But he was not the only one, Miss Dows. There was another man picked up who also had your picture.”

“Yes—Joyce Masterton. They sent it to me. But you didn’t kill HIM, too?”

“I don’t know that I personally killed either,” he said a little coldly. He paused, and continued with a gravity which he could not help feeling very inconsistent and even ludicrous: “They were brave men, Miss Dows.”

“To have worn my picture?” said Miss Sally brightly.

“To have THOUGHT they had so much to live for, and yet to have willingly laid down their lives for what they believed was right.”

“Yo’ didn’t go huntin’ me for three years to tell ME, a So’th’n girl, that So’th’n men know how to fight, did yo’, co’nnle?” returned the young lady, with the slightest lifting of her head and drooping of her blue-veined lids in a divine hauteur. “They were always ready enough for that, even among themselves. It was much easier for these pooah boys to fight a thing out than think it out, or work it out. Yo’ folks in the No’th learned to do all three; that’s where you got the grip on us. Yo’ look surprised, co’nnle.”

“I didn’t expect you would look at it—quite in—in—that way,” said Courtland awkwardly.

“I am sorry I disappointed yo’ after yo’ ‘d taken such a heap o’ trouble,” returned the young lady with a puzzling assumption of humility as she rose and smoothed out her skirts, “but I couldn’t know exactly what yo’ might be expecting after three years; if I HAD, I might have put on mo’ning.” She stopped and adjusted a straying tendril of her hair with the sharp corner of the dead man’s letter. “But I thank yo’, all the same, co’nnle. It was real good in yo’ to think of toting these things over here.” And she held out her hand frankly.

Courtland took it with the sickening consciousness that for the last five minutes he had been an unconscionable ass. He could not prolong the interview after she had so significantly risen. If he had only taken his leave and kept the letter and locket for a later visit, perhaps when they were older friends! It was too late now. He bent over her hand for a moment, again thanked her for her courtesy, and withdrew. A moment later she heard the receding beat of his horse’s hoofs on the road.

She opened the drawer of a brass-handled cabinet, and after a moment’s critical survey of her picture in the dead man’s locket, tossed it and the letter into the recesses of the drawer. Then she stopped, removed her little slipper from her foot, looked at THAT, too, thoughtfully, and called “Sophy!”

“Miss Sally?” said the girl, reappearing at the door.

“Are you sure you did not move that ladder?”

“I ‘clare to goodness, Miss Sally, I never teched it!”

Miss Sally directed a critical glance at her handmaiden’s red-coifed head. “No,” she said to herself softly, “it felt nicer than wool, anyway!”

CHAPTER III

In spite of the awkward termination of his visit,—or perhaps BECAUSE of it,—Courtland called again at the plantation within the week. But this time he was accompanied by Drummond, and was received by Miss Miranda Dows, a tall, aquiline-nosed spinster of fifty, whose old-time politeness had become slightly affected, and whose old beliefs had given way to a half-cynical acceptance of new facts. Mr. Drummond, delighted with the farm and its management, was no less fascinated by Miss Sally, while Courtland was now discreet enough to divide his attentions between her and her aunt, with the result that he was far from participating in Champney’s conviction of Miss Miranda’s unimportance. To the freedmen she still represented the old implacable task-mistress, and it was evident that they superstitiously believed that she still retained a vague power of overriding the Fourteenth Amendment at her pleasure, and was only to be restrained by the mediation of the good-humored and sensible Miss Sally. Courtland was quick to see the value of this influence in the transition state of the freedmen, and pointed it out to his principal. Drummond’s previous doubts and skepticism, already weakened by Miss Sally’s fascinations, vanished entirely at this prospect of beneficially utilizing these lingering evils of slavery. He was convinced, he was even enthusiastic. The foreign investors were men to be bought out; the estate improved and enlarged by the company, and the fair owners retained in the management and control. Like most prejudiced men, Drummond’s conversion was sudden and extreme, and, being a practical man, was at once acted upon. At a second and third interview the preliminaries were arranged, and in three weeks from Courtland’s first visit, the Dows’ plantation and part of Major Reed’s were merged in the “Drummond Syndicate,” and placed beyond financial uncertainty. Courtland remained to represent the company as superintendent at Redlands, and with the transfer of the English investments Champney retired, as he had suggested, to a smaller venture of his own, on a plantation a few miles distant which the company had been unable to secure.

During this interval Courtland had frequent interviews with Miss Sally, and easy and unrestrained access to her presence. He had never again erred on the side of romance or emotion; he had never again referred to the infelix letter and photograph; and, without being obliged to confine himself strictly to business affairs, he had maintained an even, quiet, neighborly intercourse with her. Much of this was the result of his own self-control and soldierly training, and gave little indication of the deeper feeling that he was conscious lay beneath it. At times he caught the young girl’s eyes fixed upon him with a mischievous curiosity. A strange thrill went through him; there are few situations so subtle and dangerous as the accidental confidences and understandings of two young people of opposite sex, even though the question of any sentimental inclination be still in abeyance. Courtland knew that Miss Sally remembered the too serious attitude he had taken towards her past. She might laugh at it, and even resent it, but she KNEW it, remembered it, knew that HE did, and this precious knowledge was confined to themselves. It was in their minds when there was a pause in their more practical and conventional conversation, and was even revealed in the excessive care which Miss Sally later took to avert at the right moment her mischievously smiling eyes. Once she went farther. Courtland had just finished explaining to her a plan for substituting small farm buildings for the usual half-cultivated garden-patches dear to the negro field-hand, and had laid down the drawings on the table in the office, when the young lady, leaning against it with her hands behind her, fixed her bright gray eyes on his serious face.

“I vow and protest, co’nnle,” she said, dropping into one of the quaint survivals of an old-time phraseology peculiar to her people, “I never allowed yo’ could just give yo’self up to business, soul and body, as yo’ do, when I first met yo’ that day.”