ONE
Frequently a well-used, high buggy was seen on the streets of the town, a vehicle of a slightly unfamiliar type, bought perhaps in some remote market. It would turn slowly around before the county offices and stand all afternoon under the shade of the tree at the doorway, a privileged conveyance. It was drawn by a well-conditioned horse, a tall bay that would step daintily along the stones of the street, and turn the wheels carefully. The owner, Mr. Tom Singleton, would buy easily at the stores, careless of bargains, asking for the best. Sometimes he would talk all afternoon with Anthony Bell, sitting on the gallery of the white house or under the elm tree. If Tom Singleton’s wife, Miss Doe, were present she would give great care to her leave-taking. She would mount to the buggy with ceremonious ease and seat herself, smiling at the accomplished act, scarcely belonging to the event, her smile lingering until the need for good-byes obliterated her inner vision of herself. She was a sister to Anthony Bell. Her name, Theodosia, had been shortened to Doe. The Singleton farm was ten miles from the town, northwest, down the valley.
Sometimes Mr. Tom would come to town in a carriage drawn by two fine brown mules. Then he would take Anthony Bell and the two girls, Theodosia and Annie, back to the farm for a visit.
The two mules trotted down the Quincy pike in the bright widely-spread glow of a late morning, the waves of heat rolling up from the macadam and turning about among the cooler undulations that flowed from the tall corn of the fields. Eight miles from the town and the carriage left the Quincy pike and entered a crossroad, and here the mules walked slowly under the roadside trees. The stone wall at the right was rich with moss and shadows. Two miles along this way, and Tom Singleton’s gate was set into the stone wall. Beyond, and the mules trotted evenly up a gravel road under American elms that were widely placed, the driveway leading to the farmhouse. Pines, lindens, locusts, tulip poplars and elms grew about the house in a pleasant confusion. The fox hounds, great mongrel beasts, walked in and out over the portico. From somewhere toward the rear a great jack, the breeding stallion, was braying at the arrivals.
“You can take the west room,” Miss Doe said, standing with her hands folded before her body when she welcomed her guests, when she had kissed each little girl as was her duty. “Anthony, he can take the east room. Lucas will carry up the valises.”
Upstairs Theodosia showed Annie the high bed in which they were to sleep, and in the east room another bed, as high, for their grandfather. They would lean out the window to look far over the west hills where other farms lay stretched over the rolling earth, white-fenced barnyards and remote houses about which old trees had gathered. The avenue down to the stone wall and the white gate turned lightly with its elm trees, the way they had come. They would look at the photographs of former Bells and Trotters and Montfords on the chamber walls, and would gaze at a chromo print of a ship standing above a great sea, caught suspended upon a wave. Once they explored all the upper rooms, opening all the doors, and finding a staircase to the attic, they went there to peer out at the land of the farms, thinking that they could see a hundred miles away. Annie was six years old. She would look at Theodosia for confirmation of each new wonder, as if she would say, “And is it so? Is it real?”
Theodosia saw her aunt’s vague hostility to her grandfather where it was carefully shawled under her function as hostess. The aunt would mount the stairs to see that all had been made neat in the rooms above, the visit an ostentation, reserved until the guests were at hand.
A negro girl, Prudie, cooked the meals, passing quickly from the cooking range to the tables, to the pantry. Her face shaded from one brown to another and the sweat ran in the neat wrinkles across her neck. She seemed neither glad nor sorry the guests had come. Miss Doe would give her pans of flour, sugar, or meal, or cuts of ham, all from the locked storeroom. “Be sure to take out a plenty,” she would say at the door, the keys in her fingers. When the uncle and the grandfather were away for a meal those left at home were served in the breakfast-room behind the dining-room, and Prudie instead of Lucas carried in the food. One day soon after the visit began Miss Doe sent the children to carry a message to a cabin back in the farm. Theodosia knew the way, for she had been for a walk in that direction with her uncle. There were clouds in the sky threatening a shower, and the aunt told the little girls to take the old cotton umbrella from the back porch.
They walked across the pasture and climbed over a gate into a cornfield, and it was pleasant to walk under the umbrella, treading on the shadow that moved with them down the field. The path was well beaten, for Prudie lived in the cabin with her mother, Aunt Deesie, and with Uncle Red. The cabin stood in a cove under some trees, a place where two hills began. Aunt Deesie was washing clothes in the yard, and all the lines were filled with white things hung to dry. A great kettle of boiling clothes steamed over a wood fire on the ground. The air about was pleasantly cool from the wooded hills behind the house, and a pleasant odor of lye soap spread about when the boiling kettle was dipped of its garments. Aunt Deesie was tall and strong, and she moved slowly among the tubs and kettles, keeping an even gait. On a quilt safely removed from the fire a small baby lay asleep, and two other small children ran about the yard or clung to Aunt Deesie’s skirt when Theodosia gave her message. These were Prudie’s children.
“Yes’m,” Aunt Deesie said. “Tell your Aunt Doe she didn’t send me down no blues. To clear the white clo’s. Tell your Aunt Doe all the blues is gone, the bluen.”