“What a fib, Rosa,” said Charlie, when I told him what I had written. “You know you are not homely. You used to be, I’ll admit; but you are far from being so now. To be sure, you are not what many would call handsome, but you are decidedly good-looking. You’ve got handsome eyes, splendid hair (and he pulled one of my short, thick curls by way of adding emphasis to his words) and your complexion is not one half so sallow and muddy as it used to be. Depend upon it, this ‘Mrs. Angeline Delafield Lansing, of Cedar Grove’ will think you have deceived her.”
“Nonsense!” I replied, seating myself at the piano, which was now my constant companion, Mrs. Lansing having written that she was very particular about music.
Now, to tell the truth, I was not very much of a performer, but looking upon the South very much as I did upon the far West, I fancied that a small amount of showy accomplishments would pass for the real coin. Still I determined to play as well as possible, and so week after week I practised, until, when I had nearly given up all hopes of ever hearing from the lady again, I one day received a letter bearing the W—— post-mark, and containing a check on a Boston bank for money sufficient to defray my expenses. There were also a few hastily written lines, saying that “Mrs. Lansing considered our engagement as settled, but she should not expect me until the latter part of April, as she could not immediately get rid of her present governess, a painted, insipid creature from New York, and the veriest humbug in the world.”
“A sweet time you’ll have of it with madam,” said Charlie, “and once for all I advise you to give up going. Why, only think, April there is hotter than pepper, and of course you’ll take the fever and die.”
But I was not to be persuaded. The “sunny South” had for me a peculiar fascination; and then, too, there was another reason which, more than all others, prompted me to go. Georgia was the home of the dark man, as I called him, and though there was hardly a probability of my ever meeting him there, such a thing was still possible, and like Longfellow’s Evangeline, who, on the broad Mississippi, felt that each dip of the oar carried her nearer to her lost Gabriel, so each day I felt a stronger and stronger conviction that somewhere in the southern land I should find him.
In the meantime, Anna had been with us for a few weeks, but greatly changed from the Anna of former times. Listlessly she moved from room to room—never smiling, never weeping, and seldom speaking unless she were first addressed. To her, everything was dark, deep night, and such a gloom did her presence cast over us all, that though we would gladly have kept her with us, we still felt relieved when she left us for a home in Boston, where little Jamie soon became the idol of his grandmother, whose subdued cheerfulness had ere long a visible effect upon Anna. Cousin Will, too, had visited us, and after spending a short time had sailed with brother John for California, promising himself a joyous future, when he should return with money sufficient to purchase the old homestead, which he said should be mother’s as long as she lived.
It was a cold, dark, snowy morning in the latter part of April, when I at last started on my journey. The surface of the ground was frozen hard, the trees were leafless and bare, while but few green things gave token that spring was with us. It is not strange, then, that I almost fancied myself in another world, when after a prosperous sea voyage I one morning went on shore at Charleston, and first breathed the soft, balmy air of the South. Dense and green was the foliage of the trees, while thousands of roses and flowering shrubs filled the air with a perfume almost sickening to the senses. From Charleston to Augusta was a wearisome ride, for the cars were crowded and dirty, and there was to me nothing remarkably pleasing in the long stretches of cypress swamps and pine barrens through which we passed.
It was late in the evening when we reached the town of C——, from whence I was to proceed to W——, by stage. It was a most beautiful night; and for hours I watched the soft moonlight as it glimmered among the trees which lined either side of the narrow road, and whose branches often swept against the windows of our lumbering vehicle. It was long after sunrise when we arrived at W——, but so thickly wooded is the country around, that I obtained not a single glimpse of the town until I suddenly found myself “thar,” as the driver said, dismounting and opening the door of our prison-house. The hotel into which I was ushered, would, perhaps, compare favorably with our country taverns at the North; but at each step I took, I felt a more and more painful consciousness that home, my home, was far away.
After shaking the dust from my travelling dress, and slaking my thirst from the big gourd shell (my special delight), which hung by the side of a bucket of cool water which stood on a little stand in the parlor, I inquired for some one who would take to Mrs. Lansing my card, and thus apprise her of my arrival. The landlord immediately summoned a bright, handsome mulatto boy, who, after receiving my orders, and favoring me with a sight of his ivories, started off bare-headed, and for that matter bare-bodied too, for Cedar Grove, which the landlord pointed out to me in the distance, and which, with its dense surroundings of trees, looked to me delightfully cool and pleasant. After waiting rather impatiently for an hour or more, a large, old-fashioned carriage, drawn by two rather poor-looking horses, stopped before the door. It belonged to Mrs. Lansing; and the footman, jumping down from the rack behind, handed me a note, in which the lady begged me to come directly to her house, saying she was herself indisposed, or she would have come down to meet me, and also adding, that if I would excuse her she would rather not see me until supper-time, when she hoped to feel better.
At the extremity of Main street, we turned in at a ponderous gate, and after passing through two or three fields or lawns, stopped at last in front of Cedar Grove, which stood upon a slight eminence overlooking the town. In perfect delight I gazed around me, for it seemed the embodiment of my childish dreams, and involuntarily I exclaimed, “This is indeed the sunny, sunny South.” It was very beautiful, that spacious yard and garden, with their winding walks on which no ray of sunlight fell, so securely were they shaded, by the cedar and the fir, the catalpa, the magnolia, and the fig tree, most of them seen now by me for the first time in all their natural beauty, reminded one so forcibly of Eden. The house itself was a large, square building, surrounded on three sides by a piazza, which I afterwards found was the family sitting-room; it being there that they congregated both morning and evening. The building had once been white, but the paint was nearly all worn off, and it now presented a rather dilapidated appearance, with its broken shutters and decayed pillars, round which vines and ivy were twining. The floors within were bare, but scrupulously clean; while the rooms lacked the costly furniture I had confidently expected to see.