Judy, although she was weak with fear, could not help thinking, “That is the noise on the stage that a mob tries to make.”
“Aunt Clay’s hands have struck work, and to think there is not a man on this place! I believe the blackguards know it! Load your pistol, Judy, and let us go to mother.”
Mother was already up, hastily gowned in her wrapper, and opening the front door when the girls came down the stairs. The intrepid lady walked out on the porch with seemingly no more fear than she had had the day before when she came forward to meet the wedding guests. Head erect, eyes steady and piercing, with a voice clear and composed, she said, “Why, boys, you look very tired and hot, and I know you are hungry. Sit down in the shade, on the porch steps and under the trees, and I will see what we can find for you to eat. Molly, go get that buttermilk out of the dairy. The jar is too heavy for you to lift, so take Buck and let him carry it for you.”
Mrs. Brown, with all of her courage, was never more scared in her life. All the time she was talking she had been looking in the crowd of black faces for a familiar one, and was glad to recognize Buck Jourdan, a good-natured, good-for-nothing nephew of Aunt Mary’s. At her command Buck stepped forward, and then a dozen more of the men came to the front, unconsciously separating themselves from the rest. Mrs. Brown saw that they were all negroes belonging in her neighborhood. At her calming words and proffer of food such a change came over the faces of the mob that they hardly seemed to be the same men. Their teeth showed now in grins instead of sinister snarls; they stacked their murderous looking weapons against the paulownia tree and sat down in the shade with expressions as peaceful as the wedding guests themselves had worn.
Molly and the stalwart Buck were back in an incredibly short time with the five-gallon jar of buttermilk and a tray of glasses not yet put away from yesterday’s feast. Mrs. Brown herself dipped out the smooth, luscious beverage, seeing that each man was plentifully served, while Molly went into the house to bring out all the cooked provisions she could find. Mrs. Brown beckoned the trembling and wondering Judy to her and whispered, “Go ring the farm bell as loud as you can. All danger is over now, I feel sure, but it is well to let the neighbors know that we are in some difficulty; and I fancy I heard a horse trotting on the turnpike, and whoever it is might hasten to us at the sound of a farm bell at this unusual hour.”
Judy flew to the great bell, hung on a high post in the back yard. She seized the rope, and then such a ding-dong as pealed forth! The bell was a very heavy brass one, and at every pull Judy, who was something of a lightweight, leaped into the air, reciting as she jumped, “Curfew shall not ring to-night.”
“That is enough, my dear. There is no use in getting help from an adjacent county, and I fancy every one in Jefferson County has heard the bell by this time,” said Mrs. Brown, stopping her before she had quite finished the last stanza, which Judy said was like interrupting a good sneeze.
Molly had found all kinds of food for the hungry laborers, who were more sinned against than sinning. They had gone in all good faith to the Clay farm to harvest the wheat according to the antiquated methods of the mistress, with scythes and cradles. When twelve o’clock, the dinner hour everywhere, came, they were told that they could not eat until they had finished. They had worked on until two, and then, infuriated with hunger and goaded on by the thought of the injustice done them, they had struck in a body and gone to the mansion to try to force Mrs. Clay to feed them; but they had been held back at the point of a pistol, by that lady herself. Then they had determined to get food where they could find it.
Mrs. Brown gathered this much from the men as, their hunger assuaged, they talked more connectedly.
“Th’ ain’t nothin’ like buttermilk to ease yo’ heart,” said Buck Jasper. “Mis’ Mildred Carmichael kin git mo’ outen her niggers fillin’ ’em full er buttermilk than her sister Mis’ Sary kin fillin’ ’em full er buckshot.”