Twenty years were to elapse before I should spend another Christmas week in the country. We did not know this then. Not a hitch impeded the smooth unrolling of the weeks of expectation and the days of preparation for the holidays. We were to set out on Monday. On Friday, Spotswood drove up to our door, and Mary Anne, my mother’s own maid, alighted. That evening James Ivey reported for escort duty. Even elderly women seldom travelled alone at that date. About young girls were thrown protective parallels that would widen our college-woman’s mouth with laughter and her eyes with amazement. There were no footpads on the stage-road from Richmond to Powhatan, and had these gentry abounded in the forests running down to the wheel-tracks, stalwart Spotswood and a shot-gun would have kept them at bay. Maid and outrider were the outward sign of unspoken and unwritten conventions rooted in love of womankind. The physical weakness of the sex was their strength; their dependence upon stronger arms and tender hearts their warrant for any and every demand they chose to make upon their natural protectors.
We had none of these things in mind that joyful Monday morning when Uncle Carus, on one hand, and James Ivey on the other, helped us into the carriage. Carriage-steps were folded up, accordion-wise, and doubled back and down upon the floor of the vehicle when not in use. The clatter, as the coach-door was opened and the steps let down, was the familiar accompaniment of successive arrivals of guests at hospitable homes, and worshippers at country churches.
The trim flight fell with a merry rattle for the two happiest girls in the State, and we sprang in, followed by Mary Anne. We were wedged snugly in place by parcels that filled every corner and almost touched the roof. Presents we had been buying for a month with our own pocket-money and making in our few spare hours, were bound into bundles and packed in boxes. The wells under the cushioned seats were crammed with fragiles and confectionery, the like of which our lesser sisters and brothers had never tasted.
Uncle Carus prophesied a snow-storm. My mother used to say that he was a wise weather-prophet. We stubbornly discredited the prediction until we had left the city spires five miles behind us, and James Ivey’s overcoat and leggings (some called them “spatter-dashes”) were dotted with feathery flakes. Whereupon we discovered that there was nothing in the world jollier than travelling in a snow-storm, and grew wildly hilarious in the prospect. The snow fell steadily and in grim earnest. By the time we got to Flat Rock, where we were to have the horses and ourselves fed, the wheels churned up, at every revolution, mud that was crushed strawberry in color, topped with whiteness that might have been whipped cream; for the roads were heavy by reason of an open winter. This was Christmas snow. We exulted in it as if we had had a hand in the making. Our gallant outrider, albeit a staid youth of three-and-twenty, fell in with our humor. He made feeble fun of his own appearance as each wrinkle in his garments became a drift, and his dark hair was like a horsehair wig such as we had seen in pictures of English barristers. His bay horse was a match to our iron-grays, and the twelve hoofs were ploughing through a level fall of six inches before we espied the tremulous sparks we recognized as village windows.
Our throats ached with laughing and our hearts with great swelling waves of happiness, as we tumbled out of our seats—and our bundles after us—at the gate of the long, low house that might have been mean in eyes accustomed to rows of three-storied brick “residences” on city streets. Every door was flung wide; every window was red with fire and lamp light.
We had fried chicken and waffles, hot rolls, ham, beaten biscuits, honey, three kinds of preserves, and, by special petition of all the children, a mighty bowl of snow and cream, abundantly sweetened, for supper. This dispatched, and at full length, the journey having made us hungry, and the sight of us having quickened the appetites of the rest, we sat about the fire in the great “chamber” on the first floor, that was the throbbing heart of the home, and talked until ten o’clock. The faithful clock that hung above the mantel did not vary five minutes from the truth in that number of years; but it was dumbly discreet, never obtruding an audible reminder of the flight of hours. I saw one of the same pattern in a curio shop last week. The salesman asked fifty dollars for it.
The chimney in “the chamber” drew better than any other in the house. A fire was kindled on that hearth, night and morning, for nine months in the year. My mother maintained that the excellent health of her young family was due in part to that fact. A little blaze dispelled the lingering dampness of the morning and the gathering fogs of night. She knew nothing of germs, benevolent and malevolent, but she appreciated the leading fact that cold and humidity signify danger, heat and dryness go with health.
I coveted no girl’s home and apparel, as Mea and I snuggled down under our blankets on the mattress my father was so far in advance of his times as to insist should be substituted for a feather-bed in each bedroom occupied by a child. The “whim” was one of the “notions” that earned for him the reputation of eccentricity with conservative neighbors.
Our windows were casements, and rattled sharply in blasts that had thrashed the snow-storm into a tempest. The wind pounded, as with hammers, upon the sloping roof over our happy heads. Longfellow had not yet written
“My little ones are folded like the flocks,”