Gabriella's memoirs might be writ large in four parts that would really be the history of the United States, just as a slender seam of gold can only be explained through the geology of the earth. But they can also be writ so small that each volume may be dropped, like certain minute-books of bygone fashions, into a waistcoat pocket, or even read, as through a magnifying glass, entire on a single page.
The first volume was the childhood book, covering the period from Gabriella's birth to the beginning of the Civil War, by which time she was fourteen years old: it was fairy tale. These earliest recollections went back to herself as a very tiny child living with her mother and grandmother in a big white house with green window-shutters, in Lexington—so big that she knew only the two or three rooms in one ell. Her mother wore mourning for her father, and was always drawing her to her bosom and leaving tears on her face or lilylike hands. One day—she could not remember very well—but the house had been darkened and the servants never for a moment ceased amusing her—one day the house was all opened again and Gabriella could not find her mother; and her grandmother, everybody else, was kinder to her than ever. She did not think what kindness was then, but years afterward she learned perfectly.
Very slowly Gabriella's knowledge began to extend over the house and outside it. There were enormous, high-ceiled halls and parlors, and bedrooms and bedrooms and bedrooms. There were verandas front and back, so long that it took her breath away to run the length of one and return. Upstairs, front and back, verandas again, balustraded so that little girls could not forget themselves and fall off. The pillars of these verandas at the rear of the house were connected by a network of wires, and trained up the pillars and branching over the wires were coiling twisting vines of wisteria as large as Gabriella's neck. This was the sunny southern side; and when the wisteria was blooming, Gabriella moved her establishment of playthings out behind those sunlit cascades of purple and green, musical sometimes with goldfinches.
The front of the house faced a yard of stately evergreens and great tubs of flowers, oleander, crepe myrtle, and pomegranate. Beyond the yard, a gravelled carriage drive wound out of sight behind cedars, catalpa, and forest trees, shadowing a turfy lawn. At the end of the lawn was the great entrance gate and the street of the town, Gabriella long knew this approach only by her drives with her grandmother. At the rear of the house was enough for her: a large yard, green grazing lots for the stable of horses, and best of all a high-fenced garden containing everything the heart could desire: vegetables, and flowers; summer-houses, and arbors with seats; pumps of cold water, and hot-houses of plants and grapes, and fruit trees, and a swing, and gooseberry bushes—everything.
In one corner, the ground was too shaded by an old apple tree to be of use: they gave this to Gabriella for her garden. She had attached particularly to her person a little negress of about the same age—her Milly, the color of a ripe gourd. So when in spring the gardener began to make his garden, with her grandmother sometimes standing over him, directing, Gabriella, taking her little chair to the apple tree,—with some pretended needle-work and a real switch,—would set Milly to work making hers. Nothing that they put into the earth ever was heard of again, though they would sometimes make the same garden over every day for a week. So that more than once, forsaking seed, they pulled off the tops of green things near by, planted these, and so had a perfect garden in an hour.
Then Gabriella, seated under the apple tree, would order Milly to water the flowers from the pump; and taking her switch and calling Milly close, she would give her a sharp rap or two around the bare legs (for that was expected), and tell her that if she didn't stop being so trifling, she would sell her South to the plantations. Whereupon Milly, injured more in heart than legs, and dropping the watering-pot, would begin to bore her dirty fists into her eyes. Then Gabriella would say repentantly:—
"No, I won't, Milly! And you needn't work any more to-day. And you can have part of my garden if you want it."
Milly, smiling across the mud on her cheeks, would murmur:—
"You ain' goin' sell yo' Milly down South, is you, Miss Gabriella?"
"I won't. But I'm not so sure about grandmother, Milly. You know she WILL do it sometimes. Our cotton's got to be picked by SOMEBODY, and who's to do it but you lazy negroes?"