When the yachting visitors were gone that day and we were at the old home engrossed in the architecture of the Harrison colonial cradle, there came the long blasts of the steamer Pocahontas blowing for the Brandon landing. Not that she had any passengers or freight for Brandon perhaps, or Brandon for her, but because all these river estates are postoffices and the Pocahontas carries the river mail. After a considerable time (for even the United States mail moves slowly through the sleepy old garden), a coloured boy brought in a bag with most promising knobs and bulges all over it.
The postoffice at Brandon is over in the south wing where there are pigeon-holes and desks and such things. But the family mail is brought into the great dining-room and there, in the good plantation way, it is opened on the old mahogany.
The mail that morning made a very good directory of the present-day family at Brandon. There were letters and packages for the mistress of the plantation and for the daughter and the son living in the manor-house with her, and also for the other daughter and her husband, Mr. Randolph Cuyler, who live across the lawn in Brandon Cottage with its dormer windows and wistaria-draped veranda. Mrs. Harrison is the widow of Mr. George Evelyn Harrison, and the daughter of the late William Washington Gordon, who was the first president of the Central Railroad of Georgia and one of the most prominent men in that state.
Brandon to-day keeps up correspondence with relatives and friends in England and on the Continent, reads English papers and magazines, sends cuttings from rosebushes and shrubs across seas, makes visits there and is visited in turn. So, it was pleasant to have the reading of our own welcome letters diversified by bits of foreign news that came out of the bag for Brandon. We could imagine an expression of personal interest on the handsome face of Colonel Byrd, as he stood in court costume on the wall above us, when the wrappings were taken from a volume containing the correspondence of his old friend, the Earl of Orrery, and sent by the present Earl to Mrs. Harrison. In it were some of the Colonel's letters written from his James River home, and in which he spoke of how his daughters missed the gaieties of the English Court. The torn wrappings and bits of string were gathered up and a little blaze was made of them behind the old fire-dogs. Then we were shown more of Brandon.
Up quaint staircases in the wings we went to the roomy bedrooms with their ivy-cased windows, mellow-toned panelling, and old open fireplaces. As daily living at Brandon is truly in the paths of ancestral worthies, so, at night, there are venerable four-posters, richly carved and dark, to induce eighteenth century dreams in the twentieth century Harrisons. Massive mahogany wardrobes, bureaus, and washstands are as generations of forebears have used them.
Some of the bedrooms once had small rooms opening off from them, one on either side of the fireplace, each having a window. An English kinswoman of the family says that such rooms were called "powdering rooms." Through holes in the doors, the colonial belles and beaux used to thrust their elaborately dressed heads into these rooms, that they might be powdered in there without the sweet-scented clouds enveloping silks and velvets too.
From bedrooms to basement is a long way; but we would see the old stone bench down there where used to sit the row of black boys to answer bells from these rooms above. Just over the bench hangs still a tangle of the broken bell wires. When colonial Brandon was filled with guests, there must often have been a merry jangle above the old stone bench and a swift patter of feet on the flags. Standing there to-day, one can almost fancy an impatient tinkle. Is it from some high-coiffured beauty in the south wing with a message that must go post-haste—a missive sanded, scented, and sealed by a trembling hand and to be opened by one no steadier? or is it perhaps from some bewigged councillor with knee-buckles glinting in the firelight as he waits for the subtle heart-warming of an apple toddy?
Now, we were ready to go home; but we did not start at once. A stranger going anywhere from Brandon should imitate the cautious railways and have his schedule subject to change without notice. At the last moment, some new old thing is bound to get between him and the door. In our case, two or three of them did.
Somebody spoke of a secret panel. That sounded well; and even though we were assured that nothing had been found behind it, we went to the south wing to look at the hole in the wall. At one side of a fireplace, a bit of metal had been found under the molding of a panel in the wainscoting. It was evidently a secret spring, but one that had long since lost its cunning; stiff with age and rust, it failed to respond to the discovering touch. In the end, the panel had to be just prosaically pried out. And, worst of all, the dim recess behind it was empty.
When we had peered within the roomy secret space and had wondered what had been concealed there and what hands had pressed the hidden spring, we might really have started for the houseboat if it had not been for the skull story. But there, just underneath a window of the secret-panel room, was another place of secrets. It was a brick projection from the wall of such peculiar form as to have invited investigation. When some bricks had been removed and some earth taken out, a human skull showed white and ghastly. Then, at the touch of moving air, it crumbled away. That was no story to start anywhere on, even in broad daylight; so we had another.