WILLARD, with the distinct impression in his mind that the day's journey would be a lonely one, filled his case with cigars, and his pockets with sketching-materials. He climbed into the coach; the driver gave a long, tremulous blast on his horn, whirled his whip with a sharp snap, and so the start was made. They were trundled eastward in a clean, broad street, whence they turned southward, and approached a well-kept house. The young man's heart jumped into his throat as if in fierce despite of all his polished self-control; for there at the lawn gate stood the girl and the crippled man, ready for travel. Evidently they had just said good-by to the middle-aged woman, who formed the least notable angle of the group. The girl was nearest the road.
"You must come soon, dear aunt," she said, turning so that her exquisite profile was softly outlined against the scarlet fan interposed between it and the sun, and addressing the other woman.
"Yes, child, before long. Good-by."
They clasped hands, and deftly kissed each other, as women do; then there was a rustle at the coach's side, a fluttering of scarlet ribbons, a hint of heliotrope, and the girl settled herself in the seat in front of Willard. The lame man got to his place beside her with much difficulty.
There was a touch of the old time in the way they departed from Thomasville; the horses prancing, the coach rattling, and the driver loudly blowing his far-sounding horn. They crossed the railway near a grimy depot, passed along by the drill-ground of the military school, saw some picturesque negro-cabins, with coal-black pickaninnies playing by the front doors; and then they whirled into the pine wood, along a level white road, upon which the sand was fine and thick. On either hand the flat ground, as far as the eye could see between the thinly-set columnar tree-boles, had been burned over recently, and many old logs and decayed stumps were still smoking. A few miles farther on, the fire had been extinguished weeks before, and now the wild grass was springing up through the ashes. Tinkling cow-bells rang plaintively here and there, where scattered herds ranged free.
Willard's attention alternated from the monotonous but interesting landscape to the back of the shapely head and shoulders of the girl. He counted the knots of dark-scarlet ribbon: he wondered at the blue-blackness of her long, wavy hair. He silently declared that she was the most beautiful sight he ever had seen. No doubt she was; for she was a perfectly-formed child of the South, — innocent, unsophisticated in appearance, full of the bloom and sweetness and fervor of the climate. With all this, her demeanor was so stately and dignified, — so pleasingly reserved.
She addressed the lame man as Victor, and brother, pointing out to him whatever in the landscape happened to interest her. A very musical, baby-like voice was hers, full of a freshness and sincerity far removed from the affectation so common in the voices of society women. Willard noted with inward delight how perfectly she ignored his presence; how, when she turned her face to this side or that, she appeared utterly unaware that he sat so close behind her. The breath from her red, dewy lips almost reached his cheek; and sometimes the loose ends of her ribbons fluttered across his eyes. He sat there silent and still, taking in all the freshness and uniqueness of the charming vision, until at length the coach was stopped in front of a lonely country house, to allow a stout red-haired woman, who stood, basket in hand, by the roadside, to get in. She was of the class called Crackers, — the poor, illiterate white folk of the sandy pine lands of Georgia and Florida. She was going to Tallahassee with a large hamper of eggs to sell.
"With your permission, sir," said the lame man to Willard; and, with that gallantry never wanting in the South, he gave place by his sister to the woman, and took the unoccupied part of the young man's seat.
The hamper of eggs was taken charge of by the driver; and, with loud puffing and blowing, the stout dame clambered in, and got herself into position, where she obviously crowded her slender companion against the uncushioned side-posts of the rude coach.
"Lordee-e-e, but I am tired !" she exclaimed in a wheezing voice. "Huntin' o' hens' nests is no fun in these 'ere woods. But I 'spec' you never, likely, hunted 'em any. My gal, Laura Ann Canzada, she kin 'most beat me a-findin' of 'em. Guess you're quality, ain't ye? an' you don't have hens about, mebbe. Well, some folks must be quality, and some po'; an' I hope you don't mind me a-settin' by ye?"
"Oh, no, I assure you !" said the girl, turning quickly, and smiling very sweetly upon the broad red face. "It is no trouble: I like to have you sit by me. How many eggs have you?"
"Fifty-two dozen, an' ten over," replied the woman. "They're a good lot, an' 'ill bring a quarter a dozen. I need the money jest about now too; fur Laura Ann Canzada is a-goin' foi to git married, an' she needs some things. You know a body can't get married 'ithout some new things."
"See what beautiful lilies!" exclaimed the girl, turning quickly, and pointing to some pale, delicate flowers growing in the sand beside the road. There were clusters of blue violets also.
"Them's sand-lilies," said the woman: "they don't amount to nothin'."
"Oh ! I like them ever so much, they are so pure and sweet," rejoined the girl. "If I were out there, I should gather a bouquet of them."
"The Lor'!" said the woman contemptuously. "I wouldn't."
When a man loses his head, he usually fancies himself in some way bound to disclose the loss. We all may laugh at the victim; but just how long ago we were in a like fix, we do not care to contemplate.
Willard leaped right out over the wheel of the slow-going coach, and alighted well on his feet in the yielding sand. He went to the roadside, and gathered a great bunch of the lilies. The driver, seeing him out, stopped for him to get in again.
The Cracker woman took advantage of the stillness to fill and light a brown-clay pipe, which she began vigorously smoking. As good luck would have it, the wind carried the astringent whiffs away from the young lady.
By the time Willard had returned to the coach loaded with his floral treasure, the folly of his act had begun to dawn upon him. He actually paused and hesitated at the door. When. he sprang out, nothing in the act he contemplated had seemed difficult or out of propriety. Now the matter was totally reversed. It was not permissible, not to be thought of. He glanced at the young lady, and saw, or fancied he saw, an illy-concealed look of annoyance in her face. His first impulse, then, was to throw the flowers down; but a thought struck him. As he passed into the coach he put the lilies in the Cracker woman's lap, and said in a very gentle, deferential tone of voice, "Surely, madam, you cannot think those are ugly."
"W'y, the Lor' now ! I'm much erbleeged to ye," said the woman; and she actually blushed. "Them's not so mighty ugly. — Here, take some of 'em, miss: you said you'd like to have some." She handed two or three of the prettiest of them to the girl, who in turn blushed and hesitated. The ruse was so transparent, the trick so bold, that she scarcely knew what she ought to do. The whole thing was lost on her brother. He had not caught the essence of it. She saw as much by a quick, furtive glance. Really Willard had not expected this turn. It was not a ruse: he had only meant to get rid of the lilies as gracefully as possible. He quickly caught the probable interpretation, and regretted it. There had been nothing clever in the whole affair.
The driver came to the rescue with a great snap of his whip, starting his horses forward at a sweeping trot.
Willard saw the girl take the lilies, and hold them in a self-conscious way. She looked aside as if noting the sudden change taking place in the landscape; for they were now entering the beautiful hill country. In a basin fringed with water-oaks, bays, and magnolias, a little lake, not a half-mile distant, was shining like a great diamond. The road was no longer sand: it was cut in a dark chocolate soil, now deep down in cool, shady glens, anon on airy ridges, from which the broad plantations were visible for miles. They passed close by the ashes and ruins of what must have been one day a grand country mansion. The heavy round columns of stuccoed brick which had supported the roof of its long veranda were still standing, and one blackened wall was outlined against the foliage of some giant trees. The tenantless negro-quarter, with its hollow square of cabins, was mostly rotted down; and the unkempt orchards and fenceless fields told a most pathetic story of a departed time. And then the hills grew bolder, shot through by tangled ravines, and interrupted by deep ponds and lily-crowded marshes. They saw a snowy heron wading among the spatter-dock and lily-bonnets of a dull pool, and now and then a raft of duck scurried away among the cypress-stems on the margin of a lake. At length their road plunged right into one of the prettiest of those lakes, and they followed. Up came the bright water, higher and higher, until a little stream trickled
into the bed of the coach. They all had to lift their feet to keep from getting them wet. The horses moved slowly, stretching out their necks as if in deep enjoyment of the cool bath after their miles of toil. When they had emerged on the other side, they trailed a damp line in the dusty road for a long way.
At noon they stopped at a country-house, where the driver changed horses, and where the lunch each had brought with him was quietly, and to all appearances selfishly, discussed.
The girl ate little. Willard saw her gliding about in the grove of slender oaks hard by, like some happy dryad out for an airing after a long sleep in the heart of a tree.
The driver, harnessing his horses in the rude open stable, sang in a mellow voice a garbled version of the local favorite.
A tall, lank woman, quite young, but sallow and wrinkled, was hoeing in a vegetable-garden, whose fence of woven pine slats was overrun with luxuriant scuppernong-vines. Sitting on the farmhouse steps, a sun-tanned girl was nursing a chubby boy baby.
There was much evidence of a certain sort of thrift about this place; but it was the homespun, hollow, unprogressive sort. The house, the little barn, the fences, the people and their clothing, appeared to have been left over from the last century, an after-taste, so to speak, of the barren, tidy pioneer days. A high-wheeled one-ox cart, for instance, stood with its rude shafts resting against the fence. A heavy hand-loom, with an unfinished strip of copperas-colored cloth on its roller, rested under a lean-to shed. Even while Willard stood curiously gazing, a white-haired but nimble old woman climbed to the high seat of this rude engine, and began that "shuttle-bang, bang, shuttle-bang, bang," so familiar to the ear fifty years ago.
All these primitive elements, taken in connection with the dry, dusky, breezy landscape, the old fields, the shallow furrows in the ploughed lands, had the effect to impress Willard's mind with one side of Floridian life; for they were now in Florida. In fact, the whole face of things changes as soon as you cross the line. The Georgian roads are so nuch better, and the Georgian farmers and banters so much more modern and energetic. Even the Georgian pigs seem to have shorter loses, and less of the greyhound lightness of Dody, than their Florida cousins.
Once more on the road, the coach soon plunged into a cool, shady hollow, whence it followed the Indian red road up, up to the summit of an airy ridge; and presently, off some miles to the southward, the scattered spires and many-gabled roofs of Tallahassee were outlined against the blue sky and bluer hill-peaks beyond. The sun was nearly down. Lake Jackson shone like a mirror. In every direction broad plantations lay spread from hill to hill, like dull chocolate-colored cloths, upon which giants might repose. Here again they passed orchards of Le Conte pear-trees, and several young orange-groves. Then they were trundled down a long incline, and up a sharp acclivity, to the broad gateway leading into a tangled enclosure, where stood a stately, old-time mansion. Here the girl and her brother got out of the coach; and Willard watched them slowly pass along the broad walk between the trees, until suddenly a turn of the vehicle placed him in a beautiful street, looking down which he saw the spacious homes of Tallahassee. Now all was shade and breezy coolness. Long lines of oaks canopied the carriage-way, and the sidewalks had still other rows' for their especial need. Shrubs of many kinds were a-bloom, and the angular beds of the flower-gardens were gay with color. Mocking-birds were singing.
To Willard it was as if he had been plunged, all at once, into a new, strangely charming world. The spell of the Flower-land was upon him.
