BOOK ONE

Sapphira and her Household

BOOK I

I

The Breakfast Table, 1856

Henry Colbert, the miller, always breakfasted with his wife—beyond that he appeared irregularly at the family table. At noon, the dinner hour, he was often detained down at the mill. His place was set for him; he might come, or he might send one of the mill-hands to bring him a tray from the kitchen. The Mistress was served promptly. She never questioned as to his whereabouts.

On this morning in March 1856, he walked into the dining-room at eight o’clock,—came up from the mill, where he had been stirring about for two hours or more. He wished his wife good-morning, expressed the hope that she had slept well, and took his seat in the high-backed armchair opposite her. His breakfast was brought in by an old, white-haired coloured man in a striped cotton coat. The Mistress drew the coffee from a silver coffee urn which stood on four curved legs. The china was of good quality (as were all the Mistress’s things); surprisingly good to find on the table of a country miller in the Virginia backwoods. Neither the miller nor his wife was native here: they had come from a much richer county, east of the Blue Ridge. They were a strange couple to be found on Back Creek, though they had lived here now for more than thirty years.

The miller was a solid, powerful figure of a man, in whom height and weight agreed. His thick black hair was still damp from the washing he had given his face and head before he came up to the house; it stood up straight and bushy because he had run his fingers through it. His face was full, square, and distinctly florid; a heavy coat of tan made it a reddish brown, like an old port. He was clean-shaven,—unusual in a man of his age and station. His excuse was that a miller’s beard got powdered with flour-dust, and when the sweat ran down his face this flour got wet and left him with a beard full of dough. His countenance bespoke a man of upright character, straightforward and determined. It was only his eyes that were puzzling; dark and grave, set far back under a square, heavy brow. Those eyes, reflective, almost dreamy, seemed out of keeping with the simple vigour of his face. The long lashes would have been a charm in a woman.

Colbert drove his mill hard, gave it his life, indeed. He was noted for fair dealing, and was trusted in a community to which he had come a stranger. Trusted, butView Image of Page 8scarcely liked. The people of Back Creek and Timber Ridge and Hayfield never forgot that he was not one of themselves. He was silent and uncommunicative (a trait they didn’t like), and his lack of a Southern accent amounted almost to a foreign accent. His grandfather had come over from Flanders. Henry was born in Loudoun County and had grown up in a neighbourhood of English settlers. He spoke the language as they did, spoke it clearly and decidedly. This was not, on Back Creek, a friendly way of talking.

His wife also spoke differently from the Back Creek people; but they admitted that a woman and an heiress had a right to. Her mother had come out from England— a fact she never forgot. How these two came to be living at the Mill Farm is a long story—too long for a breakfast-table story.

The miller drank his first cup of coffee in silence. The old black man stood behind the Mistress’s chair.

"You may go, Washington," she said presently. While she drew another cup of coffee from the urn with her very plump white hands, she addressed her husband: "Major Grimwood stopped by yesterday, on his way to Romney. You should have come up to see him."

"I couldn’t leave the mill just then. I had customers who had come a long way with their grain," he replied gravely.

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"If you had a foreman, as everyone else has, you would have time to be civil to important visitors."

"And neglect my business? Yes, Sapphira, I know all about these foremen. That is how it is done back in Loudoun County. The boss tells the foreman, and the foreman tells the head nigger, and the head nigger passes it on. I am the first miller who has ever made a living in these parts."

"A poor one at that, we must own," said his wife with an indulgent chuckle. "And speaking of niggers, Major Grimwood tells me his wife is in need of a handy girl just now. He knows my servants are well trained, and he would like to have one of them."

"He must know you train your servants for your own use. We don’t sell our people. You might ring for some more bacon. I seem to feel hungry this morning."

She rang a little clapper bell. Washington brought the bacon and again took his place behind his mistress’s large, cumbersome chair. She had been sitting in a muse while he served. Now, without speaking to him, she put out her plump hand in the direction of the door. The old man scuttled off in his flapping slippers.

"Of course we don’t sell our people," she agreed mildly. "Certainly we would never offer any for sale. But to oblige friends is a different matter. And you’ve oftenView Image of Page 10said you don’t want to stand in anybody’s way. To live in Winchester, in a mansion like the Grimwoods’—any darky would jump at the chance."

"We have none to spare, except such as Major Grimwood wouldn’t want. I will tell him so."

Mrs. Colbert went on in her bland, considerate voice: "There is my Nancy, now. I could spare her quite well to oblige Mrs. Grimwood, and she could hardly find a better place. It would be a fine opportunity for her."

The miller flushed a deep red up to the roots of his thick hair. His eyes seemed to sink farther back under his heavy brow as he looked directly at his wife. His look seemed to say: I see through all this, see to the bottom. She did not meet his glance. She was gazing thoughtfully at the coffee urn.

Her husband pushed back his plate. "Nancy least of all! Her mother is here, and old Jezebel. Her people have been in your family for four generations. You haven’t trained Nancy for Mrs. Grimwood. She stays here."

The icy quality, so effective with her servants, came into Mrs. Colbert’s voice as she answered him.

"It’s nothing to get flustered about, Henry. As you say, her mother and grandmother and great-grandmotherView Image of Page 11were all Dodderidge niggers. So it seems to me I ought to be allowed to arrange Nancy’s future. Her mother would approve. She knows that a proper lady’s maid can never be trained out here in this rough country."

The miller’s frown darkened. "You can’t sell her without my name to the deed of sale, and I will never put it there. You never seemed to understand how, when we first moved up here, your troop of niggers was held against us. This isn’t a slave-owning neighbourhood. If you sold a good girl like Nancy off to Winchester, people hereabouts would hold it against you. They would say hard things."

Mrs. Colbert’s small mouth twisted. She gave her husband an arch, tolerant smile. "They have talked before, and we’ve survived. They surely talked when black Till bore a yellow child, after two of your brothers had been hanging round here so much. Some fixed it on Jacob, and some on Guy. Perhaps you have a kind of Family feeling about Nancy?"

"You know well enough, Sapphira, it was that painter from Baltimore."

"Perhaps. We got the portraits out of him, anyway, and maybe we got a smart yellow girl into the bargain." Mrs. Colbert laughed discreetly, as if the idea amused and rather pleased her. "Till was within her rights,View Image of Page 12seeing she had to live with old Jeff. I never hectored her about it."

The miller rose and walked toward the door.

"One moment, Henry." As he turned, she beckoned him back. "You don’t really mean you will not allow me to dispose of one of my own servants? You signed when Tom and Jake and Ginny and the others went back."

"Yes, because they were going back among their own kin, and to the country they were born in. But I’ll never sign for Nancy."

Mrs. Colbert’s pale-blue eyes followed her husband as he went out of the door. Her small mouth twisted mockingly. "Then we must find some other way," she said softly to herself.

Presently she rang for old Washington. When he came she said nothing, being lost in thought, but put her hands on the arms of the square, high-backed chair in which she sat. The old man ran to open two doors. Then he drew his mistress’s chair away from the table, picked up a cushion on which her feet had been resting, tucked it under his arm, and gravely wheeled the chair, which proved to be on castors, out of the dining-room, down the long hall, and into Mrs. Colbert’s bedchamber.

The Mistress had dropsy and was unable to walk. She could still stand erect to receive visitors: her dresses touched the floorView Image of Page 13 and concealed the deformity of her feet and ankles. She was four years older than her husband— and hated it. This dropsical affliction was all the more cruel in that she had been a very active woman, and had managed the farm as zealously as her husband managed his mill.

II

At the hour when Sapphira Dodderidge Colbert was leaving the breakfast table in her wheel-chair, a short, stalwart woman in a sunbonnet, wearing a heavy shawl over her freshly ironed calico dress, was crossing the meadows by a little path which led from the highroad to the Mill House. She was a woman of thirty-six or -seven, though she looked older—looked so much like Henry Colbert that it was not hard to guess she was his daughter. The same set of the head, enduring yet determined, the broad, highly coloured face, the fleshy nose, anchored deeply at the nostrils. She had the miller’s grave dark eyes, too, set back under a broad forehead.

After crossing the stile at the Mill House, Mrs. Blake took the path leading back to the negro cabins. She must stop to see Aunt Jezebel, the oldest of the Colbert negroes, who had been failing for some time. Mrs. Blake was always called where there was illness. She had skill and experience in nursing; was certainly a better help to the sick than the country doctor, who had never been away to any medical school, but treated his patients from Buchan’s Family Medicine book.

On being told that Aunt Jezebel was asleep, Mrs. Blake passed the kitchen (separated from the dwelling by thirty feet or so), and entered the house by the back door which the servants used when they carried hot food from the kitchen to the dining-room in covered metal dishes. As she went down the long carpeted passage toward Mrs. Colbert’s bedchamber, she heard her mother’s voice in anger—anger with no heat, a cold, sneering contempt.

"Take it down this minute! You know how to do it right. Take it down, I told you! Hairpins do no good. Now you’ve hurt me, stubborn!"

Then came a smacking sound, three times: the wooden back of a hairbrush striking someone’s cheek or arm. Mrs. Blake’s firm mouth shut closer as she knocked. The same voice asked forbiddingly:

"Who is there?"

"It’s only Rachel."

As Mrs. Blake opened the door, her mother spoke coolly to a young girl crouching beside her chair: "You may go now. And see that you come back in a better humour."

The girl flitted by Mrs. Blake without a sound, her face averted and her shoulders drawn together.

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Mrs. Colbert in her wheel-chair was sitting at a dressing-table before a gilt mirror, a white combing cloth about her shoulders. This she threw off as her daughter entered.

"Take a chair, Rachel. You’re early." She spoke politely, but she evidently meant "too early."

"Yes, I’m earlier than I calculated. I stopped to see old Jezebel, but she was asleep, so I came right on in."

Mrs. Colbert smiled. She was always amused when people behaved in character. Sooner than disturb a sick negro woman, Rachel had come in to disturb her at her dressing hour, when it was understood she did not welcome visits from anyone. How like Rachel!

For all Mrs. Blake could see, her mother’s grey-and-chestnut hair was in perfect order; combed up high from the neck and braided in a flat oval on the crown, with wavy wings coming down on either side of her forehead.

"You might get me a fresh cap out of the upper drawer, Rachel. I hate a frowsy head in the morning. Thank you. I can arrange it." She pinned the small frill of ribbon and starched muslin over the flat oval. "Now," she said affably, "you might turn me a little, so that I can see you."

Her chair was carved walnut, with a cane back and down-curved arms: one of the dining-room chairs, madeView Image of Page 17over for her use by Mr. Whitford, the country carpenter and coffin-maker. He had cushioned it, and set it on a walnut platform with iron castors underneath. Mrs. Blake turned it so that her mother sat in the sunlight and faced the east windows instead of the looking-glass.

"Well, I suppose it is a good thing Jezebel can sleep so much?"

Mrs. Blake shook her head. "Till can’t get her to eat anything. She’s weaker every day. She’ll not last long."

Mrs. Colbert smiled archly at her daughter’s solemn face. "She has managed to last a good while: something into ninety years. I shouldn’t care to last that long, should you?"

"No," Mrs. Blake admitted.

"Then I don’t think we need make long faces. She has been well taken care of in her old age and her last sickness. I mean to go out to see her; perhaps today. Rachel, I have a letter here from Sister Sarah I must read you." Mrs. Colbert took out her glasses from a reticule attached to the arm of her chair. She read the letter from Winchester chiefly to put an end to conversation. She knew her daughter must have heard her correcting Nancy, and therefore would be glum and disapproving. Never having owned any servants herself, Rachel didn’t at all know how to deal with them. Rachel had alwaysView Image of Page 18been difficult,—rebellious toward the fixed ways which satisfied other folk. Mrs. Colbert had been heartily glad to get her married and out of the house at seventeen.

While the letter was being read, Mrs. Blake sat regarding her mother and thought she looked very well for a woman who had been dropsical nearly five years. True, her malady had taken away her colour; she was always pale now, and, in the morning, something puffy under the eyes. But the eyes themselves were clear; a lively greenish blue, with no depth. Her face was pleasant, very attractive to people who were not irked by the slight shade of placid self-esteem. She bore her disablement with courage; seldom referred to it, sat in her crude invalid’s chair as if it were a seat of privilege. She could stand on her feet with a good air when visitors came, could walk to the private closet behind her bedroom on the arm of her maid. Her speech, like her handwriting, was more cultivated than was common in this back-country district. Her daughter sometimes felt a kind of false pleasantness in the voice. Yet, she reflected as she listened to the letter, it was scarcely false—it was the only kind of pleasantness her mother had,—not very warm.

As Mrs. Colbert finished reading, Mrs. Blake said heartily: "That is surely a good letter. Aunt Sarah always writes a good letter."

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Mrs. Colbert took off her glasses, glancing at her daughter with a mischievous smile. "You are not put out because she makes fun of your Baptists a little?"

"No. She’s a right to. I’d never have joined with the Baptists if I could have got to Winchester to our own Church. But a body likes to have some place to worship. And the Baptists are good people."

"So your father thinks. But then he never did mind to forgather with common people. I suppose that goes with a miller’s business."

"Yes, the common folks hereabouts have got to have flour and meal, and there’s only one mill for them to come to." Mrs. Blake’s voice was rather tart. She wished it hadn’t been, when her mother said unexpectedly and quite graciously:

"Well, you’ve surely been a good friend to them, Rachel."

Mrs. Blake bade her mother good-bye and hurried down the passage. At times she had to speak out for the faith that was in her; faith in the Baptists not so much as a sect (she still read her English Prayer Book every day), but as well-meaning men and women.

Leaving the house by the back way, she saw the laundry door open, and Nancy inside at the ironing-board. She turned from her path and went into the laundry cabin.

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"Well, Nancy, how are you getting on?" She habitually spoke to people of Nancy’s world with a resolute cheerfulness which she did not always feel.

The yellow girl flashed a delighted smile, showing all her white teeth. "Purty well, mam, purty well. Oh, do set down, Miz’ Blake." She pushed a chair with a broken back in front of her ironing-board. Her eyes brightened with eager affection, though the lids were still red from crying.

"Go on with your ironing, child. I won’t hinder you. Is that one of Mother’s caps?" pointing to a handful of damp lace which lay on the white sheet.

"Yes’m. This is one of her comp’ny ones. I likes to have ’em nice." She shook out the ball of crumpled lace, blew on it, and began to run a tiny iron about in the gathers. "This is a lil’ child’s iron. I coaxed it of Miss Sadie Garrett. She didn’t use it for nothin’, an’ it’s mighty handy fur the caps."

"Yes, I see it is. You’re a good ironer, Nancy."

"Thank you, mam."

Mrs. Blake sat watching Nancy’s slender, nimble hands, so flexible that one would say there were no hard bones in them at all: they seemed compressible, like a child’s. They were just a shade darker than her face. If her cheeks were pale gold, her hands were what Mrs.View Image of Page 21Blake called "old gold." She was considering Nancy’s case as she sat there (the red marks of the hairbrush were still on the girl’s right arm), wondering how much she grieved over the way things were going. Nancy had fallen out of favour with her mistress. Everyone knew it, and no one knew why. Self-respecting negroes never complained of harsh treatment. They made a joke of it, and laughed about it among themselves, as the rough mountain boys did about the lickings they got at school. Nancy had not been trained to humility. Until lately Mrs. Colbert had shown her marked favouritism; gave her pretty clothes to set off her pretty face, and liked to have her in attendance when she had guests or drove abroad.

"Well, child, I must be going," Mrs. Blake said presently. She left the laundry and walked about the negro quarters to look at the multitude of green jonquil spears thrusting up in the beds before the cabins. They would soon be in bloom. "Easter flowers" was her name for them, but the darkies called them "smoke pipes," because the yellow blossoms were attached to the green stalk at exactly the angle which the bowl of their clay pipes made with the stem.

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III

The Mill House was of a style well known to all Virginians, since it was built on very much the same pattern as Mount Vernon: two storeys, with a steep-pitched roof and dormer windows. It stood long and thin, and a front porch, supported by square frame posts, ran the length of the house. From this porch the broad green lawn sloped down a long way, to a white picket fence where the mill yard began. Its box-hedged walks were shaded by great sugar maples and old locust trees. All was orderly in front; flower-beds, shrubbery, and a lilac arbour trimmed in an arch beneath which a tall man could walk. Behind the house lay another world; a helter-skelter scattering, like a small village.

Some ten yards from the back door of the house was the kitchen, entirely separate from it, according to the manner of that time. The negro cabins were much farther away. The cabins, the laundry, and the big two storey smokehouse were all draped with flowering vines, now just coming into leaf-bud: Virginia creeper, trumpet vine, Dutchman’s pipe, morning-glories. ButView Image of Page 23the south side of every cabin was planted with the useful gourd vine, which grew faster than any other creeper and bore flowers and fruit at the same time. In summer the big yellow blossoms kept unfolding every morning, even after the many little gourds had grown to such a size one wondered how the vines could bear their weight. The gourds were left on the vine until after the first frost, then gathered and put to dry. When they were hard, they were cut into dippers for drinking, and bowls for holding meal, butter, lard, gravy, or any tidbit that might be spirited away from the big kitchen to one of the cabins. Whatever was carried away in a gourd was not questioned. The gourd vessels were invisible to good manners.

From Easter on there would be plenty of flowers growing about the cabins, but no grass. The "back yard" was hard-beaten clay earth, yellow in the sun, orderly only on Sundays. Throughout the working week clotheslines were strung about, flapping with red calico dresses, men’s shirts and blue overalls. The ground underneath was littered with old brooms, spades and hoes, and the rag dolls and home-made toy wagons of the negro children. Except in a downpour of rain, the children were always playing there, in company with kittens, puppies, chickens, ducks that waddled up from the millpond,View Image of Page 24turkey gobblers which terrorized the little darkies and sometimes bit their naked black legs.

When Sapphira Dodderidge Colbert first moved out to Back Creek Valley with her score of slaves, she was not warmly received. In that out-of-the-way, thinly settled district between Winchester and Romney, not a single family had ever owned more than four or five negroes. This was due partly to poverty—the people were very poor. Much of the land was still wild forest, and lumber was so plentiful that it brought no price at all. The settlers who had come over from Pennsylvania did not believe in slavery, and they owned no negroes. Mrs. Colbert had gradually reduced her force of slaves, selling them back into Loudoun County, whither they were glad to return. Her husband had needed ready money to improve the old mill. Here there were no large, rich farms for the blacks to work, as there were in Loudoun County. Many field-hands were not needed.

Sapphira Dodderidge usually acted upon motives which she disclosed to no one. That was her nature. Her friends in her own county could never discover why she had married Henry Colbert. They spoke of her marriage as "a long step down." The Colberts were termed "immigrants,"—as were all settlers who did not comeView Image of Page 25from the British Isles. Old Gabriel Colbert, the grandfather, came from somewhere in Flanders. Henry’s own father was a plain man, a miller, and he trained his eldest son to that occupation. The three younger sons were birds of a very different feather. They rode with a fast fox-hunting set. Being shrewd judges of horses, they were welcome in every man’s stable. They were even (with a shade of contempt and only occasionally) received in good houses;—not the best houses, to be sure. Henry was a plain, hard-working, little-speaking young man who stayed at home and helped his father. With his father he regularly attended a dissenting church supported by small farmers and artisans. He was certainly no match for Captain Dodderidge’s daughter.

True, when Sapphira’s two younger sisters were already married, she, at the age of twenty-four, was still single. She saved her face, people said, by making it clear that she was bound down by the care of her invalid father. Captain Dodderidge had been seriously hurt while out hunting; in taking a stone wall, his horse had fallen on him. He survived his injury for three years. After his death, when the property was divided, Sapphira announced her engagement to Henry Colbert, who had never gone to her father’s house except on matters of business. After the Captain was crippled andView Image of Page 26ailing, he often sent for young Henry to advise him about selling his grain, to write his business letters, and to keep an eye on the nominal steward. He had great confidence in Henry’s judgment.

Sapphira was usually present at their business conferences, and took some part in their discussions about the management of the farm lands and stock. It was she who rode over the estate to see that the master’s orders were carried out. She went to the public sales on market days and bought in cattle and horses, of which she was a knowing judge. When the increase of the flocks or the stables was to be sold, she attended to it with Henry’s aid. When the increase of the slave cabins was larger than needed for field and house service, she sold off some of the younger negroes. Captain Dodderidge never sold the servants who had been with his family for a long while. After they were past work, they lived on in their old cabins, well provided for.

When Sapphira announced her engagement, the family friends were more astonished than if she had declared her intention of marrying the gardener. They quizzed the negro servants, who declared that Mr. Henry had never been so much as asked into the parlour. They had never "caught" him talking to Miss Sapphy outside her father’s room, much less courting her.View Image of Page 27After all these years the strangeness of this marriage still came up in conversation when old friends got together. Fat Lizzie, the cook, had whispered to the neighbours on Back Creek: "Folks back home says it seem like Missy an’ Mr. Henry wasn’t scarcely acquainted befo’ de weddin’, nor very close acquainted evah since. Him bein’ kep’ so close at de mill," she would add suavely.

Since she did marry Henry, it was not hard to explain why Sapphira had moved away from her native county, where his plain manners, his calling, vague ancestry, even his Lutheran connections, would have made her social position rather awkward. Once removed several days’ journey from her old friends, she could go back to visit them without embarrassment. The miller’s unbending, somewhat uncouth figure need never appear upon the scene at all.

The bride chose Back Creek for her place of exile because she owned a very considerable property there, willed to her by an uncle who died when she was still a young girl. On this Back Creek estate there was a mill. It had stood there for some generations, since Revolutionary times.

This farm (and a great tract of forest land afterward sold off ) had been deeded by Thomas, Lord Fairfax, to a Nathaniel Dodderidge who came out to Virginia withView Image of Page 28Fairfax in 1747. Fairfax’s actual possessions in the colony were immense; something like five million acres of forest and mountain which had never been surveyed, watered by rivers, great and small, which had never been explored except by the Indians and were nameless except for their unpronounceable Indian names. There was discontent in the Virginia Assembly that so large a territory should be held in one grant. When Fairfax established his final residence in the Shenandoah Valley, he quieted this dissatisfaction by deeding off portions of his estate to desirable settlers, laying out towns, and in every way encouraging immigration.

To Nathaniel Dodderidge he deeded a tract of land on Back Creek. Neither Nathaniel nor any of his descendants had ever lived on this land. It was only after the capture of Quebec by young General Wolfe in 1759 that the mountainous country between Winchester and Romney was altogether safe for settlers. Bands of Indians under French captains had burned and slaughtered as near Back Creek as the Capon River.

When the danger of Indian raids was over, someone (his name was lost) built a water mill where Henry Colbert’s mill now stood. All through the Revolutionary War and ever since, a mill on that site had served the needs of the scattered settlers. The Dodderidges had letView Image of Page 29the Mill Farm to tenants for successive generations. Sapphira’s father had never seen the place. But before his death Sapphira herself, attended by a groom, rode up a four days’ journey on horseback to look over her inheritance. One morning she arrived at the Back Creek post office, where a spare room was kept for travellers. Sapphira unpacked her saddle-bags and settled herself for a stay of several days. She rode all over the Mill Farm and the timber land; had a friendly interview with the resident miller and told him she could not renew his lease, which had barely a year to run.

Before Sapphira’s marriage to Henry Colbert, carpenters were sent out from Winchester to pull down the old mill house (it was scarcely more than a cabin), and to build the comfortable dwelling which now stood there. When the new house was completed, Sapphira’s household goods were carted up from Chestnut Hill and settled in it. She and Henry Colbert were married at Christ Church, in Winchester, and drove directly to the new Mill House on Back Creek, omitting the elaborate festivities which customarily followed a wedding.

Though it was often said that Miss Dodderidge had broken away from her rightful station, she by no means dropped out of the lives of her family or lost touch withView Image of Page 30her friends. Until her illness came upon her, she made every year a long visit to the sister who lived at Chestnut Hill, the old estate in Loudoun County. Even now she was always driven to Winchester in March, to stay with her sister Sarah until after Easter. There she attended all the services at Christ Church, where Lord Fairfax, the first patron of the Virginia Dodderidges, was buried beneath the chancel. With the help of her brother-in-law and a cane she limped to the family pew, though she was obliged to remain seated throughout the service.

She was a comely figure in the congregation, clad in black silk and white fichu. From lack of exercise she had grown somewhat stout, but she wore stays of the severest make and carried her shoulders high. Her serene face and lively, shallow blue eyes smiled at old friends from under a black velvet bonnet, renewed or "freshened" yearly by the town milliner. She had not at all the air of a countrywoman come to town. No Dodderidge who ever sat in that pew showed her blood to better advantage. The miller, of course, did not accompany her. Although he had been married in Christ Church, by an English rector, he had no love for the Church of England.

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IV

Mrs. Colbert, in her morning jacket and cap, sat before her desk, writing a letter. She wrote with pauses for deliberation, which was unusual. She was not unhandy with the pen. When writing to her sisters she filled pages with small, neat script, having trained herself to "write small." Postage was accounted dear, and when she sent long letters to relatives in England it was an economy to put a great deal upon a sheet. This morning she was composing a letter to a nephew—a letter of invitation. It was meant to be cordial, but not too cordial. When she felt satisfied with it, she folded the sheet and sealed it with a dab of red wax. Envelopes were little in use. She rang the loud-voiced copper bell, always kept in the side pocket of her chair.

Old Washington appeared. "Yes, Missy?"

"I am minded to drive out, Washington. I have ordered the carriage, and Uncle Jeff must have it at the door presently. Find Till and tell her to come and get me ready."

"Yes, mam."

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Mrs. Colbert turned her letter face-down upon her desk. Till could read, and the Mistress did not wish her to see to whom the letter was addressed. When the neat black woman came to the door Mrs. Colbert said cheerfully:

"Now, Till, you must dress me to drive abroad."

"Yes, Missy. The black cashmere, I reckon? It’s a wonderful nice day outside, Miss Sapphy. It’ll do you good."

Till, Nancy’s mother, was a black woman of about forty, straight and spare. Her carriage and deportment and speech were those of a well-trained housekeeper. She knew how to stand when receiving orders, how to meet visitors at the front door, how to make them comfortable in the parlour and see to their wants. She had been trained as parlour maid by the English housekeeper whom Sapphira’s mother had brought with her from Devon when she came out to Virginia to marry her American cousin. The housekeeper had seen in Till a "likely" girl who could be taught. Since Mrs. Colbert had lost the use of her feet, Till had charge of everything in the house except the kitchen and fat Lizzie, the cook, whom no one but Mrs. Colbert could control.

Till set about dressing her mistress; took off the morning jacket and slipped a starched white petticoatView Image of Page 33and a cashmere dress over Mrs. Colbert’s head. "Don’t raise yourself up, Miss Sapphy. I’ll pull everything down when you has to rise."

"Now the feet, I suppose," said Mrs. Colbert with a shrug. She seldom permitted herself to sigh. "Not the silk stockings. I shan’t be getting out anywhere. But you can put on the new kid-leather shoes. They hurt me, but I must be getting used to them."

"Now just you wear the cloth slippers and be easy, Miss Sapphy. Let me wear the kid shoes round the house a few days more an’ break ’em in for you."

"Hush, Till. You mustn’t baby me," her mistress joked, looking wishfully at the cloth slippers which Till was flapping on her two hands like mittens. "Well, put them on me, but this is the last time. You can’t do much at breaking in the new pair, for you have small feet. Almost as small as mine used to be." She regarded her feet and ankles with droll contempt while Till drew on the stockings and tied a ribbon garter below each of her wax-white, swollen knees.

"There’s Jeff now," Till exclaimed, as she tied the strings of her mistress’s second-best bonnet. She helped her to rise for a moment and pulled down the full skirts. Washington came at call and pushed Mrs. Colbert’s chair through the long hall to the front door. OutsideView Image of Page 34stood the coach, freshly washed; it looked very much like the "four-wheeler" public cab of later days. On the box sat a shrivelled-up old negro in a black coat much too big for him, and all that was left of a coachman’s hat. A little black boy came running up to hold the horses, while Jeff descended to help his mistress.

Leaning between Jeff and Washington, Mrs. Colbert crossed the porch and stepped down into the carriage. She settled herself on the leather cushions, and Jefferson was about to close the door when she said quite carelessly:

"Jefferson, what have you got on your feet?"

Jeff crouched. He had nothing at all on his feet. They were as bare as on the day he was born. "Ah thought nobody’d see mah fe-e-t on de box, Missy."

"You did? Take me out driving like some mountain trash, would you? Now you get out of my sight and put on that pair of Mr. Henry’s boots I gave you. Step!"

Jefferson scuttled off like an old rat. Washington went to help the boy hold the impatient horses. Till was leaning in at the carriage door, putting a cushion under her mistress’s slippers and a rug over her knees.

"Till," said Mrs. Colbert confidentially, "I wish you would tell me why it’s so hard to keep leather on a nigger’s feet."

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"I jest don’t know, Miss Sapphy. The last thing I done was to caution that nigger about his boots. When I seen him wrigglin’ his old crooked toes yonder in the gravel, I was that shamed!" Till spoke indignantly. She was ashamed. Jeff was her husband, had been these many years, though it was by no will of hers.

Jeff came back, his pants stuffed into a pair of old boots which needed blacking, and hurriedly climbed on to the box.

"Jeff, you drive careful, now!" Till called. Washington and the black boy stepped back from the horses, and the coach rolled down the driveway. The drive led past the mill, and Sampson, the head mill-hand, came out to wave and call: "Pleasant drive to you, Miss Sapphy!"

To the household it was an occasion when the Mistress drove out. In this backwoods country there were few families Mrs. Colbert cared to call upon, and she had no special liking for rough mountain roads. When the wild laurel was in bloom, or the wild honeysuckle (Rhododendron nudiflorum), then she often drove up the winding road to Timber Ridge. She knew she looked to advantage when she stopped to pass the time of day with her neighbours through the lowered window of her coach. Very few people, even in Loudoun County,View Image of Page 36

had glass windows in their carriages. Moreover, on the coach door there was a small patch of colour, the Dodderidge crest: her "coat of arms," the Back Creek people called it. The children along the road used to stare wonderingly at that mysterious stamp of superiority.

This morning when Jefferson came to the place where the mill road turned into the highroad, he asked in his cracked treble:

"Which-a-way, Missy?"

She told him to the post office, so he turned west. When he had gone a mile, he slowed his horses to a walk. There was Mrs. Blake’s house, standing under four great maple trees, in a neat yard with a white paling fence. Two little girls ran out, calling: "Good morning, Gran’ma!"

Jefferson stopped the carriage, and Mrs. Colbert asked after their mother.

"Ma ain’t at home," said the older child. "She’s gone over to Peughtown. Mrs. Thatcher’s dreadful sick. They came for Ma in the night, and brought a horse for her."

"So you are all by yourselves? Suppose you get in and take a ride to the post office?"

The children shot quick glances at each other. The younger one, who was only eight, said timidly: "We’ve got just our old dresses on, Gran’ma."

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Her grandmother laughed. "Oh, never mind, this time! Jump in, the horses don’t like to stand. Molly’s curls are nice, anyhow."

The children climbed into the carriage, delighted at their good luck. Sometimes, when their grandmother was driving of a Sunday morning, she stopped and took them and their mother as far as the Baptist church; but very seldom had they driven out with her by themselves. This was Saturday, and Molly wished that all her schoolmates could be loitering along the road to see them go by. Her real name was Mary, but since she promised to be a pretty girl, her grandmother had taken a fancy to her and called her Molly. It was understood that this name was Mrs. Colbert’s special privilege; her mother and her schoolmates called her Mary. Her little sister was the only one who dared to use Grandmother’s name for her.

Uncle Jeff drew his horses up before the long, low, white-painted house where the postmistress lived and performed her official duties. The postmistress herself threw an apron over her head and came out to the carriage. She and Mrs. Colbert greeted each other with marked civility. They held very different opinions on one important subject.

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Mrs. Colbert drew from her reticule the letter she had written a few hours ago. "I brought this letter up to you myself, Mrs. Bywaters, because it is important, and I hope you will put it into the mailbag yourself."

"Certainly, Mrs. Colbert. Nobody but me ever handles the mail here. The bag goes from my hands into the stage-driver’s. I see you’ve got your little granddaughters along today."

"Yes, Mrs. Bywaters, this is a pleasant day for a drive. I’d heard you had your house new painted. How nice it looks!"

"Thank you. I had trouble enough getting it done, but it’s over at last. I had to tear down all my honeysuckle vines and lay them on the ground. I’m hoping they’re not much hurt."

"I hope not, indeed. They were a great ornament to your house, especially the coral honeysuckle. Now, Jefferson, we will stop at the store for a minute. Good day to you, Mrs. Bywaters."

The country store stood across the road from the post office. The storekeeper saw the carriage stop, and came out. Mrs. Colbert asked him to bring her a pound of stick candy, half wintergreen and half peppermint. Both little girls tried to look unconscious, but while their grandmother was talking to the storekeeper, BettyView Image of Page 39pinched Mary softly to express her feelings. The candy was brought out in a brown paper parcel, but it was not given to them until their grandmother let them out at their own gate. They thanked her very prettily for the candy and the drive.

"Jefferson, you may take me down the turnpike, and out to Mrs. Cowper’s on the Peughtown road. I want to ask after my carpets."

As she drove along, Mrs. Colbert was thinking it was fortunate that for once her daughter had been called to nurse in a prosperous family like the Thatchers, who would see that she was well repaid; if not in money, in hams or bacon or a bolt of good cloth. Usually she was called out to some bare mountain cabin where she got nothing but thanks, and likely as not had to take along milk and eggs and her own sheets for the poor creature who was sick. Rachel was poor, and it was not much use to give her things. Whatever she had she took where it was needed most; and Mrs. Colbert certainly didn’t intend to keep the whole mountain.

After a few miles of jolting over a rough by-road, she stopped for a call on Mrs. Cowper, the carpet-weaver. At the Mill House all worn-out garments, discarded table linen, and old sheets were cut into narrow strips, sewn together, and wound into fat balls. This was theView Image of Page 40 darkies’ regular evening work in winter. When a great many balls of these "carpet-rags" had accumulated, they were sent, with hanks of cotton chain, to Mrs. Cowper, who dyed them with logwood, copperas, or cochineal, then wove them into stout carpets, striped or plain.

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V

As soon as the Mistress had left the house, Till and her daughter Nancy fell to and began to give her bedroom a thorough cleaning; pushed the bed out from the wall, and washed the closet floors. All the windows were opened, and the rugs before the wash-basin stand and the dressing-table were carried into the back yard and beaten.

After Nancy had pinned a clean antimacassar on the back of the wheel-chair and put the Mistress’s slippers ready at the foot of it, her mother said they might as well "give the parlour a lick" before the carriage got back.

The two women, their heads tied up in red cotton handkerchiefs, went into the parlour and rolled up the green paper shades, painted with garden scenes and fountains. The sunlight streamed into the room. The parlour was long in shape, not square, with a low ceiling, the brick fireplace in the middle, under a wide mantel shelf. Horsehair chairs and sofas sat about with tidies on their backs and arms. Captain Dodderidge’s old mahogany desk filled one corner. Every inch of the floorView Image of Page 42was covered by a heavy Wilton carpet, figured with pink roses and green leaves. It was somewhat worn, as it had been "brought over" by Sapphira’s mother when she first came out to Virginia. Upon this carpet the two brooms went swiftly to work.

The room had an air of settled comfort and stability; visitors sensed that at once. The deep-set windows made one feel the thickness of the walls. A child could climb up into one of those windows and make a playhouse. Every afternoon Mrs. Colbert was brought into the parlour and sat here for several hours before supper. Here she could watch the light of the sinking sun burn on the great cedars that grew along the farther side of the creek, across from the mill. In winter weather, when the snow was falling over the flower garden and the hedges, that long room, with its six windows and its warm hearth, was a pleasant place to be.

With Nancy at one end and Till at the other, the parlour was soon swept. Till never dawdled over her work. The housekeeper at Chestnut Hill had taught her that the shuffling foot was the mark of an inferior race. After the sweeping came the dusting.

"Now, Nancy, run and fetch me a kitchen chair and a clean soft rag. I want to git at the po’traits, which I didn’t have time to do last week." Any other servant onView Image of Page 43the place would have stepped coolly on one of the fat horsehair chair-bottoms,—if, indeed, she had thought it worth while to dust the pictures at all, now that the Mistress could no longer reach up and run her fingers along the frames.

When the wooden chair was brought, Till mounted and wiped, first the canvases, then their heavy gilt frames. Her daughter stood gazing up at them: Master and Mistress twenty years ago. Mistress in a garnet velvet gown and real lace, wearing her long earrings and a garnet necklace: a vigorous young woman with chestnut hair and a high colour in her cheeks. The Master in a stock and broadcloth coat, his bushy black hair standing up as it often did now, his face broad and ruddy; he had changed very little. Nancy thought these pictures wonderful. She hoped the painter was really her father, as some folks said. Old Jezebel, her great-grandmother, had whispered to her that was why she had straight black hair with no kink in it.

Anyway, Nancy knew Uncle Jeff wasn’t her father, though she always called him "Pappy" and treated him with respect. Her mother had no children by Uncle Jeff, and fat Lizzie, the cook, had left Nancy in no doubt as to the reason. When Nancy was a little girl, Lizzie had coaxed her off into the bushes one Sunday to help herView Image of Page 44pick gooseberries. There she told her how Miss Sapphy had married Till off to Jeff because he was a "capon man." The child was puzzled, and thought this meant that Jeff had come from somewhere up on the Capon River. But Lizzie made the facts quite clear. Miss Sapphy didn’t want a lady’s maid to be "havin’ chillun all over de place,—always a-carryin’ or a-nussin’ ’em." So she married Till off to Jeff and "made it wuth her while, the niggers reckoned." Till got the light end of the work and the best of everything. And Lizzie didn’t believe that talk about the painter man; she told Nancy that one of Mr. Henry’s brothers was her real father. From that day Nancy had felt a horror of Lizzie. She tried not to show it, but Lizzie knew, and she got back at the stuck-up piece whenever she had a chance. She set her own daughter, Bluebell, to spy on Till’s girl.

Nancy had never asked Till who her father was. She admired her mother and took pride in what she called her mother’s "nice ways." The girl had a natural delicacy of feeling. Ugly sights and ugly words sickened her. She had Till’s good manners—with something warmer and more alive. But she was not courageous. When the servants were gossiping at their midday dinner in the big kitchen, if she sensed a dirty joke coming, she slipped away from the table and ran off into theView Image of Page 45garden. If she felt a reprimand coming, she sometimes lied: lied before she had time to think, or to tell herself that she would be found out in the end. She caught at any pretext to keep off blame or punishment for an hour, a minute. She didn’t tell falsehoods deliberately, to get something she wanted; it was always to escape from something.

Nancy was startled out of her reflections about her mysterious father by her mother’s voice.

"Now, honey, if I was you, I’d make a nice egg-nog when you hear the carriage comin’, an’ I’d carry it in to the Mistress when she’s got out of the coach an’ into her room. I’d take it to her on the small silvah salvah, with a white napkin and some cold biscuit."

Nancy caught her breath, and looked downcast. "Lizzie, she don’t like to have me meddlin’ round the kitchen to do anything."

"I’ll be out around the kitchen, an’ Lizzie dassent say anything to me. An’ if I was you, I wouldn’t carry a tray to Missus with no haing-dawg look. I’d smile, an’ look happy to serve her, an’ she’ll smile back."

Nancy shook her head. Her slender hands dropped limp at her side. "No she won’t, Mudder," very low.

"Yes she will, if you smile right, an’ don’t go shiverin’ like a drownded kitten. In all Loudoun County MissView Image of Page 46Sapphy was knowed for her good mannahs, an’ that she knowed how to treat all folks in their degree."

The daughter hesitated, but did not answer. For nearly a year now she had seemed to have no degree, and her mistress had treated her like an untrustworthy stranger. Before that, ever since she could remember, Miss Sapphy had been very kind to her, had liked her and had shown it. As they were leaving the parlour, Nancy murmured, more to herself than to her mother:

"I knows that fat Lizzie’s at the bottom of it, somehow. She’s always got a pick on me."

VI

The mill stood on the west bank of Back Creek: the big water-wheel hung almost over the stream itself. The creek ran noisily along over a rough stone bottom which here and there churned the dark water into foam. For the most part it was wide and shallow, though there were deep holes between the ledges. The dam, lying in the green meadows above the mill, was fed by springs, and a race conveyed the water to the big wooden wheel.

In the second storey of the mill flour and unground grain were stored; there it was safe in times of high water. The "miller’s room," on the first floor, was a recognized feature of every mill in those days; the man in charge slept there and kept an eye on the property, even when no grinding was going on at night. Henry Colbert had no foreman. He himself occupied the room, using it both as sleeping-chamber and office. Years ago he spent the night at the mill only in times of night grinding or high water. But latterly the mill room had become more and more the place where he actually lived.

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The mill room was all that was left of the original building which stood there in Revolutionary times. The old chimney was still sound, and the miller used the slate-paved fireplace in cold weather. The floor was bare; old boards, very wide, ax-hewn from great trees before the day of sawmills. There was no ceiling but the floor of the storeroom above, with its heavy, ax-dressed cross-beams. This wooden ceiling, its beams, and the wooden walls of the room were freshly whitewashed every spring. The miller’s furniture was whitewashed, so to speak, day by day, by the flour-dust which sifted down from overhead, and through every crack and crevice in the doors and walls. Each morning Till’s Nancy swept and dusted the flour away.

Here the miller had arranged everything to his own liking. The square windows were furnished with paper blinds, to keep out the four-o’clock summer dawn if he had been up late the night before. His narrow bed had been made of chestnut wood by Mr. Whitford, the neighbourhood carpenter and cabinet-maker, and it was a good piece of work. Bed-cords, hitched about neat knobs, took the place of springs. On the tightly drawn cords lay the mattress; a feather "tick" in winter, a corn-shuck one in summer. His "secretary" was also of chestnut. (Whitford liked to work in that wood.) ItView Image of Page 49was both writing-desk and bookcase. Above the desk four shelves held ledgers and account books,—and a curious assortment of other books as well. The high chest of drawers at which the miller shaved stood between the two west windows, looking toward the house, and his small wood-framed looking-glass hung from a nail driven in the plank wall behind. At seven o’clock every morning little Zach ran down from the house with the master’s shaving water in a steaming iron teakettle.

When Henry Colbert first took over the mill, his silent unconvivial nature was against him. A miller was expected to be jovial; to produce whisky, or at least applejack, when a man made a small payment on a long account. In time his neighbours found that though the new miller was stingy of speech, he was not tight with his purse-strings.

One rainy March day at about four o’clock in the afternoon (in Virginia one said four o’clock in the "evening") the miller was sitting at his secretary, going through his ledger. His purpose was to check off the names of debtors to whom he would not, under any circumstance, extend further credit. He found so many of these names already checked once, and even twice, that after frowning over his accounts for a long while,View Image of Page 50he leaned back in his chair and rubbed his chin. When people were so poor, what was a Christian man to do? They were poor because they were lazy and shiftless,— or, at best, bad managers. Well, he couldn’t make folks over, he guessed. And they had to eat. While he sat thinking, Sampson, his head mill-hand, appeared at the door, which was often left ajar in the daytime.

"Mr. Henry, little Zach jist run down from de house sayin’ de Mistress would like you to come up, if you ain’t too busy."

The miller closed his ledger, glad to escape. "Anything amiss, Sampson?"

"No, sah, I don’t reckon so. Zach, he said she was waitin’ in de parlour."

Colbert changed his old leather jacket for a black coat, brushed the flour-dust off his broad hat, and walked up through the cold spring drizzle which was making the grass green.

He found his wife dressed for the afternoon, with a lace cap on her head and her rings on her fingers, having her tea by the fire. (When she heard him open the front door she poured his cup, smuggling in a good tot of Jamaica rum, since he didn’t take cream.) Before he sat down, he took up a plate of toasted biscuit from the hearth and offered it to his wife. He drank his tea in a few swallows, though it was very hot.

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"Thank you, Sapphy. That takes the chill out of a body’s bones. It does get damp down there at the mill. Could you spare me another cup?"

Munching his biscuit, he watched her pour the tea. When she reached down for a small red cruet, well concealed on the lower deck of the table, he laughed and rubbed his hands together. "That’s why it tastes so good! I must try to get up here oftener when you’re having your tea. But it’s just about this time of day the farmers come in. The good ones are at work all morning, and the poor sticks never get around to anything at all till the day’s ’most gone."

"I’m sure the Master would always be very welcome company in the evenings," replied Mrs. Colbert, lifting her eyebrows, whether archly or ironically it would be hard to say.

"Don’t you put on with me, Sapphy." He reached down to the hearth for another biscuit. "You’re the master here, and I’m the miller. And that’s how I like it to be."

His wife looked at him with an indulgent smile, and shook her head. She stirred her tea gently for a few moments in silence. A log fell apart in the fire and shot up tall flames; the miller put the ends together with the tongs. "Henry," she said suddenly, "do you realize it’s getting on towards Easter?"

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"And you haven’t set out yet," he added. "Have you given up going for this year?"

"No, I wouldn’t disappoint Sister Sarah. But Jezebel’s been so low. I shouldn’t like to be away from home when it happened. I thought she would have gone before this."

Colbert glanced up in surprise. "Well, you needn’t put yourself out on Jezebel’s account. She may hang on till harvest. It seems like life won’t let go of her."

"If you feel that way, what’s to hinder my going this Friday? Then I would have all Holy Week with Sarah, and if I get no bad news from home I might stay a week longer. Sarah always entertains after Easter, you know, and I would meet my old friends."

"I can see no objection. The roads ought to be good, if this drizzle don’t set into a hard rain. While you’re in town you might have the carriage painted. It needs it."

"That’s a good idea. And this year I think I shall take Nancy along instead of Till. It would smarten her up, to see how people do things in town."

He considered a moment. "Very well, if you leave Till to look after my place down there. Don’t try any more Bluebell on me!"

His wife replied with her most ladylike laugh, a flash of fun in it. "Poor Bluebell! Is she never to have a chance to learn? Why are you so set against her?"

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"I can’t abide her, or anything about her. If there is one nigger on the place I could thrash with my own hands, it’s that Bluebell!"

The Mistress threw up her hands; this time she laughed so heartily that the rings on her fingers glittered. It was a treat to hear her husband break out like this.

"Well, Henry," as she wiped her eyes with a tiny handkerchief, "I will own to you that if it wasn’t for Lizzie’s feelings, I’d send that lazy girl off the place tomorrow. I’d give her away! But we’ve got the only good cook west of Winchester, and so we have to have Bluebell. Lizzie would always be in the sulks, and when a cook is out of temper she can spoil every dish, just by a turn of the hand. We would never sit down to a good dinner again. Besides, your Baptists would miss Lizzie and Bluebell in the hymns. And they are always being sent for to sing at funerals. I like to hear them myself, of a summer night."

The miller rose, put another log on the fire, and, by way of an attention, righted the clumsy wheel-chair a little. He took his wife’s plump hand and patted it. "Thank you for having me up, Sapphy. It’s done me good. The mill room gets very damp between seasons, and I forget to have Tap make a fire. You might send forView Image of Page 54me a little oftener." He turned up his coat-collar and reached for his hat, but his wife interfered.

"Go and get your shawl out of the hall press. Don’t go back to the mill and sit in a damp coat. It’s folly to expose yourself. You ought to have a fire every day this weather."

He went into the hall and returned with a great shawl of fine Scotch wool. It had once been dark green, but time and weather had put a dull gold cast into it. He folded it three-cornered, so that it covered his coat, and went out into the drizzle. Military men and prosperous townsmen wore overcoats, but farmers and countrymen wore heavy shawls, fastened with a large shawl-pin.

Sapphira sat looking out at the dripping trees and the thick amethyst clouds which hung low over the mill and blurred the tall cedars across the creek. She smiled faintly; it occurred to her that when they were talking about Bluebell, both she and Henry had been thinking all the while about Nancy. How much, she wondered, did each wish to conceal from the other?

Such speculations were mildly amusing for a woman who did not read a great deal, and who had to sit in a chair all day.

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She had given little time to reflection in the years when she was having her children and bringing them up. Even after they were married and gone, the management of the place had kept her busy. Every year there was the gardening and planting, butchering time and meat-curing. Summer meant preserving and jelly-making, the drying of cherries and currants and sweet corn and sliced apples for winter. In those days she often rode her mare to Winchester of a Saturday to be there for the Sunday service. It was because she had been so energetic, and such a good manager, that even from an invalid’s chair she was still able to keep her servants well in hand.

BOOK TWO

Nancy and Till

BOOK II

I

On Thursday morning two leather coach trunks were brought down from the garret, and Nancy was allowed, for the first time, to pack them, under Till’s direction. Besides the trunks, there was a handy Whitford-made wooden box for shoes, as the poor Mistress had to carry so many pairs. The bandboxes were to go inside the carriage.

By eleven o’clock on Friday morning Mrs. Colbert was dressed and bonneted. All the household gathered round the carriage to see her off. Fat Lizzie brought the lunch-box, for light refreshment on the road to Winchester. The miller came up from the mill to lift his wife into the carriage. Nancy, in her Sunday bonnet and shawl, stood by, expecting to sit on the box with Uncle Jeff, but Mrs. Colbert told her she was to ride inside. The servants called good wishes as Jeff drove off, and Henry walked beside the coach as far as the mill. Nancy had cast an appealing glance at her mother when she learned she was to sit beside the Mistress. But Till knew the Dodderidge manners; if the girl was taken as a companion, she would be treated as such.

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After Till had closed the Mistress’s room, she went down to the mill to "straighten up" for Mr. Henry. She had her own sense of the appropriate, and she thought the miller’s room right for him, in the same way that Captain Dodderidge’s saddle room had always been right. She approved of the polished chestnut bedstead, and the counterpane in large blue and white squares, woven by the same Mrs. Cowper who made carpets. The four brass candlesticks, by which the miller read after dark, were clean and shining; only a little tallow from last night had dripped down the stems. The deep chair beside the reading-table was made of bent hickory withes, very strong and well fitted to the back. Till had wanted to make cushions for this chair, but the Master told her cushions were for women. She was glad to see that Nancy had kept Mr. Henry’s copper pieces bright: she knew he set great store by these.

Between the whitewashed uprights that held the board walls together, the miller had fitted wooden shelves. On these he kept sharp and delicate tools, which the mill-hands were on no account allowed to touch, and a row of copper bowls and tankards which had been his grandfather’s.

Nancy had been keeping the mill room in order ever since she was twelve years old. There was nothing downView Image of Page 60there that could be damaged or broken, the Mistress had remarked to Till; yet the work would be training of a sort.

This morning Till examined everything critically; the bed-cords, the sheets and blankets, the hand washbasin, the drawer with soap and towels for the miller’s private use. She couldn’t have kept the room better herself, she thought. On her way back to the house Till fell to wondering for the hundredth time why Nancy had fallen out of favour with the Mistress. To be sure, until lately Miss Sapphy had pampered the girl too much; but it wasn’t a Dodderidge trait to turn on anybody they had once taken a fancy to. Nancy herself, Till knew, suspected fat Lizzie as the trouble-maker, but she had never said why.

Old Washington could have given Till some hint as to how this change in the Mistress had come about; but Washington was close-mouthed. Long service had taught him that tattling was sure to get a house-man into trouble.

Nearly a year ago, in the month of May, an unfortunate incident had occurred. The Mistress, sitting at the table after her husband had finished his breakfast and gone to the mill, heard loud voices from the kitchen. The windows and doors were open to let the freshView Image of Page 61spring air blow through the house. She recognized fat Lizzie’s rolling tones and suspected she was bullying one of the other servants. Washington was standing behind the Mistress’s chair. She beckoned him to help her rise, took his arm, and limped painfully to the back door.

This was what she heard (not Lizzie’s voice, now, but Nancy’s): "You dasn’t talk to me that way, Lizzie. I won’t bear it! I’ll go to the Master."

Then Lizzie, with a big laugh: "Co’se you’ll go to Master! Ain’t dat jest what I been tellin’ you? You think you mighty nigh owns dat mill. Runnin’ down all times a-day and night, carryin’ bokays to him. Oh, I seen you many a time! pickin’ vi’lets an’ bleedin’-hearts an’ hidin’ ’em under your apron. Yiste’day you took him down de chicken livers fur his lunch I fried for Missus! You’re sure runnin’ de mill room wid a high han’, Miss Yaller Gal, an’ you’se always down yonder when you’se wanted."

"’Tain’t so! I always hurries. I jest stays long enough to dust de flour away dat gits over everything, an’ to make his bed cumfa’ble fur him."

"Lawdy, Lawdy! An’ you makes his bed cumfa’ble fur him? Ain’t dat nice! I speck! Look out you don’t do it once too many. Den it ain’t so fine, when somethin’ begin to show on you, Miss Yaller Face."

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Through Lizzie’s lewd laughter broke the frantic voice of a young thing bursting into tears.

"I won’t stay here to listen to your nasty tongue! An’ him de good kind man to every nigger on de place. Shame on you, you bad woman!" Nancy rushed out of the kitchen sobbing, her face buried in her hands. She did not see her mistress standing in the doorway.

That very night Nancy was ordered to bring her straw tick up from Till’s cabin and sleep on the floor outside Mrs. Colbert’s bedroom door. She had been sleeping there ever since.

Through the summer, lying outside the Mistress’s door was not a hardship,—the girl had always slept on the floor. But when the winter came on, drafts blew through the long hall up at the big house, and even when she went to bed with her yarn stockings on and had heavy quilts over her, the cold kept her awake in the long hours before daybreak.

On nights when the miller did not go down to the mill, but slept in the Mistress’s room, and she was not supposed to need a servant ready at call, Nancy was sent running across the back yard to Till’s cabin, with her tick in her arms and a glad smile on her face. She loved that cabin, and all her mother’s ways. Till and old Jeff slept in the "good room" where there was a bedstead.View Image of Page 63Nancy spread her mattress on the kitchen floor, where she could watch the firelight flicker on the whitewashed walls as the logs burnt down. There she felt snug, like when she was a little girl. And toward morning she could hear all the homelike noises close at hand: Uncle Jeff snoring, the roosters crowing, the barn dogs barking. Her mammy would maybe come and put an extra quilt over her, and then she would drift off to sleep again.

A few days after Nancy had begun to make her bed outside her mistress’s door, the miller came to his breakfast one morning with a grim face. He greeted his wife soberly, sat down, and began to eat his ham and eggs in silence. When his second cup of coffee had been put at his place, he said quietly:

"You may go, Washington, until your mistress rings for you."

As soon as they were alone he lifted his eyes and looked across the table at his wife.

"Sapphira, do you know who has been coming down to clean the mill room lately?"

She looked up artlessly from her plate. "I think it was Bluebell. Don’t tell me she meddled with your things!"

"Bluebell; the laziest, trashiest wench on the place!"

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"She’ll learn, Henry. If she doesn’t take hold, I’ll send Till down to make her step lively."

"She’ll do no stepping at all in the mill. If I see her there again, I’ll put her out. Nancy is to look after the mill room, as she always has done."

"But Nancy is old enough now to be trained for a parlour maid. If you won’t have Bluebell, try one of Martha’s girls. Till has all the housekeeping to do now, since I can’t get about. She needs Nancy here."

The miller was silent for a moment. His first flush of anger had passed. When he looked up again, he spoke quietly.

"Of course the blacks on this place belong to you, and I have never interfered with your management of them. But I warn you, Sapphira, that I will not have any of the wenches coming down to the mill. I don’t mean to break in another girl. Nancy is quiet and quick. She knows how I want things, and she puts them that way. I must ask you to spare her to me for a little while every morning."

Mrs. Colbert laughed lightly. "Oh, certainly, if you feel that way about it. Why take a small matter so seriously? It’s of no importance to me who makes my bed," she added with just a shade of scorn.

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"Yes, it is. You wouldn’t have anybody but Till fix your room. It’s not my bed I care about. It’s the girl’s quiet ways and respectful manner, and that she never stops to gossip with my mill-hands."

He said no more, but went out into the hall and took up his wide-brimmed hat—this morning white with two days’ flour-dust.

When Nancy first began to take care of the mill room, she usually went down while the Master was at breakfast. Sometimes she had to go earlier, to take his freshly ironed shirts and underwear and put them in his chest of drawers before he locked it for the day. After a while she fell into the habit of going early, because she got a smile, along with his "Good morning, child." After her mother and Mrs. Blake, there was no one in the world she loved so much as the Master. She had never had a harsh word from him—not many words at any time, to be sure. But his kindly greeting made her happy; that, and the feeling she was of some use to him.

Once, on a spring morning when the yellow Easter flowers (jonquils) were just bursting into bloom, she had gathered a handful on her way to the mill and put them in one of the copper tankards on the shelf. SheView Image of Page 66thought the yellow flowers looked pretty in the copper. The miller had already gone to breakfast. She didn’t know whether she ought to leave them there or not; he might not like her taking such a liberty.

The next morning the flowers were still in the tankard. The miller was stropping his razor. He turned round as she came in.

"Good morning, child. I wonder who brought me some smoke-pipes down here?"

Nancy’s yellow cheeks blushed pink. "I just happened to see ’em as I was runnin’ down, Mr. Henry. I put ’em in water to keep ’em fresh. An’ I reckon I forgot ’em."

"Just leave them there. I like to see flowers in that stein. My father used to drink his malt out of it."

After that, when she could do so unobserved, Nancy often stopped to pick a bunch of whatever flowers were coming on, and took them down to the mill under her apron.

The miller was a little disappointed when Nancy did not tap at his door before he started for the house, but he never suggested that she come earlier, or delayed his departure by one minute. His silver watch was always beside him while he shaved, and when the hand reached five minutes to eight he put on his hat. The Colbert menView Image of Page 67had a bad reputation where women were concerned. That was why, in spite of her resemblance to the portrait painter from Cuba, Nancy was often counted as one of the Colbert bastards. Some people said Guy Colbert was her father, others put it on Jacob. Although Henry was a true Colbert in nature, he had not behaved like one, and he had never been charged with a bastard.

The miller lived a rather lonely life, indeed. After supper he usually sat for an hour in the parlour with his wife, then went back to the mill and read. The pages of his Bible were worn thin, and the margins sprinkled with cross-references. When he had lit the four candles on his table and settled himself in his hickory chair, he read with his mind as well as his eyes. And he questioned. He met with contradictions, and they troubled him. He found a comforter in John Bunyan, who also had been troubled. Sometimes he had a bad night, and was awake and dressed a long while before little Zach ran down from the house with his kettle of shaving water. Then he used to watch to see the yellow girl come winding along the garden path: so happy she was —free from care, like the flowers and the birds. He had never realized, until Bluebell took her place for two days, how much love and delicate feeling Nancy putView Image of Page 68into making his bare room as he liked it. Even when she was scarcely more than a child, he had felt her eagerness to please him. As she grew older he came to identify her with Mercy, Christiana’s sweet companion. When he read in the second part of his book, he saw Nancy’s face and figure plain in Mercy.

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II

On the evening after Mrs. Colbert’s departure for town, Till felt lonely and downcast. All day she had been busy and resolutely cheerful. Now, as the sun was going down behind the hills, she sat on the doorstep of her cabin watching the long twilight come on.

This was the first year she had ever missed the Easter trip to Winchester with her mistress. She was glad Nancy had been chosen, because it seemed to mean that Miss Sapphy’s unaccountable harshness toward the girl was melting. But deep in her heart Till felt slighted and left behind. It was always a great treat for her to stay in Judge Halstead’s town house, and to help serve at the dinner parties which Mrs. Halstead gave after Easter. The third sister, Mrs. Bushwell, who now owned Chestnut Hill, came to Winchester at that time, bringing her maid and coachman, and from them Till could hear about everything that had happened at home since last Easter; "home" being always Chestnut Hill.

This mill farm on Back Creek had never been home to Till. She liked, as she said to herself, to live among "folks," not among poor farmers and backwoods people.View Image of Page 70 The finer accomplishments she had learned from Mrs. Matchem, those of which she was most proud, had little chance here. Before the Mistress became an invalid, things were better. Then friends from Winchester often came to stay overnight or to spend a week; there was some satisfaction in keeping the brass and silver bright, the stores of bed linen and table linen bleached. In those days Miss Sapphy used to go back to Chestnut Hill almost every summer for a long visit with her sister, and Till went with her.

Sitting there on her doorstep and remembering happier times, Till found herself shivering. She got up and went into the cabin. When she came back, she had a wool-stuffed bed-quilt about her shoulders. On a still twilight in spring and summer, clouds of fleecy mist curled over the low meadow down where the mill dam was. All Till’s secret discontent with the Mill Farm she expressed by the quiet statement that it was "damp." Even on a sunny wash-day the sheets were longer drying than they should be. In the fall the hoar frost was heavier here than over at Mrs. Blake’s place on the big road. When Till and the Mistress came back from their Easter fortnight in town, and no fires had been lighted in the parlour, they found damp spots on the English wall-paper.

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"They’ve had moisture up here," Miss Sapphy would remark cheerfully. "All the better for the early roses." She would never admit that it was damper here than elsewhere.

But to Till the heavy atmosphere brought a heaviness of heart. She was not, under any circumstances, a gay darky. In early childhood, at Chestnut Hill, she had suffered a frightful shock. One night, lying in her trundle bed, she was watching her mother dress for the servants’ New Year’s party. She saw her mother’s finery catch fire from a candle; saw her, in flames, run screaming out into the winter wind. The poor woman was fatally burned before the men could overtake her and beat out the fire. As for the child, the negroes declared she had been struck dumb and would never speak again. She said not a word when they tried to comfort her, but looked at them with terrified eyes. Mrs. Matchem, the housekeeper, took Till up to the big house and put her into a cot in her own room. There, away from the emotional darkies, she began to sleep naturally again, and was soon a quick-witted, observant little girl,—but a grave and serious one. So was Mrs. Matchem serious. Till was devoted to her; strove to imitate her in speech and manner. Matchem impressed it upon her that there was all the difference in the world between doing thingsView Image of Page 72exactly right and doing them somehow-or-other. The little black girl would stand looking up at the tall Devonshire woman, taking these precepts devoutly to heart. To the sly whispers of the under servants that an easier way was just as good, she steeled herself as if the Bad Man himself were whispering in her ear.

After Captain Dodderidge died, and Miss Sapphy married and went out to Back Creek, her sister, Mrs. Bushwell, bought in Chestnut Hill. All Mrs. Bushwell’s interest was in the stables; she left the management of the house entirely to Matchem. Till stayed on, working under Matchen until she was fifteen. Then Sapphira Colbert made a trade for her.

One summer, when she drove down to Chestnut Hill for her yearly visit, Mrs. Colbert took with her a young negro who had a great knack with horses. For two winters she had hired him out to the new blacksmith on Back Creek. This smith had come over from Pennsylvania, and his skill was a wonder to that sleepy community. He could not only shoe and doctor horses; he built good carts and wagons. Mrs. Colbert easily convinced her sister that a boy trained under such a smith would be very useful in her stables. She was willing to part with him in exchange for the girl Till, and a hundred dollars to boot. Mrs. Bushwell, surprised by this liberalView Image of Page 73offer, closed the deal at once. But Matchem looked down her long nose and compressed her lips.

Till was not unhappy at the prospect of travel and new scenes. She set off in the coach, eager and journey-proud. But from the first night of her arrival at the Mill Farm she had felt buried in the deep woods. For years to come she was homesick for Mrs. Matchem and the open, breezy, well-planted country she had left behind her.

When Sapphira married her off to Jefferson, who was so much older, and whose incapacities were well known among the darkies, Till accepted this arrangement with perfect dignity. How much it hurt her pride no one ever knew; perhaps she did not know herself. Perhaps the strongest desire of her life was to be "respectable and well-placed." Mrs. Matchem had taught her to value position. It was the right thing for a parlour maid and lady’s maid to be always presentable and trim of figure. None of the heavy work of a big country house was put upon Till. She always wore a black dress and white apron, neat shoes and stockings. Some years after she had moved her belongings from her attic chamber in the big house over to Jeff ’s cabin, the Cuban painter came along to do the portraits. He was a long while doing them.

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Sitting on the doorstep huddled in her quilt, Till heard a mournful sound come from the deep woods across the creek: the first whippoorwill. She sighed. How she hated the call of that bird! Every spring she had to listen to it, coming out of this resigned, unstirring back-country. Another spring, and here she still was, by the mill-pond and the damp meadows.

Up yonder, at the end of a long road winding through the woods, the level line of Timber Ridge rose like a blue wall. When you had crossed the ridge and gone on a ways, you came to the Capon River. Till had been that far, when the Mistress stayed at Capon Springs to take the baths. On beyond that was Romney, where people of some account lived, she had heard. In front of her, across the creek, she could see the wavering slopes of the North Mountain; no roads up there, just a few wheel-tracks through woods that never ended. Cabins, miles apart; corn patches and potato patches; pumpkins, maybe. Till believed the poor white trash up there lived mostly on the squirrels they shot, and the pig or two they fed on acorns. Down here in the valley, along the big road that led to Winchester, there were some sightly farmhouses, certainly, where well-to-do families lived. When you got as far as Hayfield church, the woods began to open up, and the country looked more human.

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But it wasn’t until she caught sight of the red brick springhouse over the Town Spring, a little this way out of Winchester, that Till felt she was back in the world again.

How she loved the first glimpse of cobble-paved streets, with no mud on them! You drove into town by Water Street, lined on either side with neat mansard houses built of pale grey limestone; grey, but almost blue, and not dressed so smooth as to take all the life out of the rugged stone. Such genteel houses they were, opening directly on the street, with green window shutters, and brass knockers; a little walled garden and a hydrant behind each house. Water Street seemed to welcome you to town.

After you drove on and passed Christ Church, then you came to where the quality lived; where Judge Halstead lived; where Miss Sapphy and Nancy were this very night. There the houses had porticos with tall columns, and were set in lawns shaded by flowering trees. How often, when Judge Halstead’s "mansion" was lit up for a party, Till had stood at the foot of the stairway in the big hall, waiting to show the ladies to the upper chambers and help them take off their wraps. Whenever the manservant heard the crunch of wheels on the driveway and threw open the front door. . . .

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Just then Till heard a very different sound, close at hand. Old Jeff came shuffling along in the dusk. He stopped and stood uneasily before the seated figure.

"It’s a-gittin’ right late, deery," he said in his squeaky voice.

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III

As his wife was always in Winchester for Holy Week, the miller customarily took his Easter dinner with his daughter and granddaughters. This year Easter Sunday fell early (the twenty-third of March), but it was a bright, sunshiny morning, and warm for the season. He walked across the meadow to accompany Mrs. Blake and her little girls to church. The children told him joyfully that Mr. Fairhead, the preacher (who was also their schoolmaster), was coming to dinner. It would be like a party; for Mr. Fairhead was not old and dismal like most preachers, and did not say a long grace while the chicken was getting cold.

The church was a forlorn weather-boarded building with neither spire nor bell, standing on a naked hillside where the rains had washed winding gutters in the gravelly slope. It had once been painted red, but the boards were now curling from lack of paint. It looked like an abandoned factory left to the mercy of the weather. In the basement underneath, the country day school was kept.

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The miller and his daughter went up four warped plank steps and entered the church. Once within, they separated. All the men and boys sat on one side of the aisle, the girls and women on the other. The pews were long benches, with backs but no cushions. There was no floor covering of any kind, there were no blinds at the dusty windows. The peaked shingle roof was supported by whitewashed rafters. Up under this roof, over the front door, was the gallery where the coloured people sat. It was a rule among the farmers who owned slaves to send them to church on Sunday.

While Mrs. Blake knelt for a few moments in silent prayer, Mary and Betty sat restlessly trying to peep over the hats and sunbonnets in front of them to catch sight of their dear Mr. Fairhead, who was in the splint-bottom chair behind the pulpit, waiting for his congregation to assemble.

When the scuffling tramp of heavy shoes on the bare floor had ceased, Mr. Fairhead rose and said: "Let us pray." He closed his eyes and began his invocation. In the untempered light which poured through the bare windows he looked a very young man indeed, with rosy cheeks and yellow hair. He had been sent out into the backwoods to teach the country school and to "fill the pulpit," though he had not yet been ordained. DuringView Image of Page 79the long summer vacations he lived in Winchester and read divinity with old Doctor Sollers, coming out to Back Creek on horseback every Saturday to conduct the Sunday service.

After the prayer he gave out the hymn, read it aloud slowly and distinctly, since many of his congregation could not read. When he closed his hymnbook, the congregation rose. Old Andrew Shand, a Scotchman with wiry red hair and chin whiskers, officially led the singing. He struck his tuning-fork on the back of a bench and began: "There is a Land of Pure Delight," at a weary, drawling pace. But the Colbert negroes, and the miller himself, immediately broke away from Shand and carried the tune along. Mr. Fairhead joined in, looking up at the gallery. For him the singing was the living worship of the Sunday services; the negroes in the loft sang those bright promises and dark warnings with such fervent conviction. Fat Lizzie and her daughter, Bluebell, could be heard above them all. Bluebell had a pretty soprano voice, but Lizzie sang high and low with equal ease. The congregation downstairs knew what a "limb" she was, but no one, except Andy Shand, ever complained because she took a high hand with the hymns. The old people who couldn’t read could "hear the words" when Lizzie sang. Neither could LizzieView Image of Page 80read, but she knew the hymns by heart. Mr. Fairhead often wondered how it was that she sounded the letter "r" clearly when she sang, though she didn’t when she talked.

Could wé but stánd where Móses stóod And viéw the lándscape ó’er Not Jórdan's stréam nor deáth's could flóod Would fríght us fróm that shóre.

When Lizzie rolled out the last verse and sat down, the young preacher looked up at the gallery, not with a smile, exactly, but with appreciation. He often felt like thanking her.

As for Andy Shand, he hated Lizzie and all the Colbert negroes. His animosity extended to the Colberts themselves; even about Mrs. Blake he was "none so sure."

After the congregation was dismissed, Mr. Fairhead and the miller walked down the road together, deep in conversation. Mrs. Blake and her girls followed behind. She knew her father enjoyed the company of an educated man like Fairhead; that was why she had asked the preacher to dinner. Their talk, as she listened to it, was plain farmer talk, to be sure; about the early season, and the prospects for wheat and hay. Presently the miller began to ask about the country school and Mr. Fairhead’sView Image of Page 81pupils. There were bright boys among them, the young man insisted, some who rode over to school from as far as Peughtown. There were even boys from the mountain who would do fairly well if they had half a chance. There was Casper Flight—Here Colbert held up his hand.

"Never say Flight to me, Mr. Fairhead. I’ve ground that man’s miserable bit of corn and buckwheat ten years for nothing, and on top of that he hangs around the mill and steals honest men’s grist. My Sampson has caught him time and again crawling down from the storeroom at night with a bag in his hand."

"I know all about him, Mr. Colbert. But if you could see how that corn and buckwheat was raised, you wouldn’t grudge grinding it for nothing. They’ve got no horse, and this boy Casper breaks up the ground in their corn patch and buckwheat field himself. He pulls the plough, and his mother follows at the plough handles and holds the share in the earth. Last spring I got Mr. Giffen up on the ridge to lend Casper a horse, to put in his buckwheat. His father came home unexpectedly, knocked the boy down, took the horse out of the plough, and rode up to Capon River to go fishing."

"I’m glad you told me, sir. If there’s any good can come out of the Flights, God knows I’d like to help itView Image of Page 82along. I could give this boy work around the place in busy times, but you know none of those mountain boys will work along with coloured hands."

"Yes, I know." Mr. Fairhead sighed. "It’s the one thing they’ve got to feel important about—that they’re white. It’s pitiful."

Whenever Colbert had a talk with David Fairhead, he wished he could see more of him. He had several times asked the young man to supper at the Mill House, but he observed that Fairhead was not at ease in Sapphira’s company. He was shy and on his guard, and Sapphira had seemed possessed to puzzle him with light ironies. Since he was from Pennsylvania, she considered him an inferior. Yet her manner with inferiors (with the cobbler, the butcher, the weaver, the storekeeper) was irreproachable. When the old broom-pedlar or the wandering tinsmith happened along, they were always given a place at the dinner table, and she knew just how to talk to them. But with Fairhead she took on a mocking condescension, as if she were all the while ridiculing his simplicity. Therefore, Henry figured it out, she did not really regard him as an inferior, but as an equal—of the wrong kind. Fairhead boarded with Mrs. Bywaters, at the post office, and Sapphira knew that he was "Northern" at heart. She laughed and told Henry she could "smell it on him."

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Oh, yes, she admitted, he was not an ignoramus, like the country schoolteachers who had been there before him. She was glad Mary and Betty had a teacher who did not chew tobacco in the schoolroom or speak like the mountain people. He had doubtless been raised a gentleman—of the Pennsylvania kind. But he was a mealy-mouth, say what you would; and if she made him uncomfortable, it was because he hadn’t the wit to come back at her. "How can I talk to a man who blushes every time I poke fun at him, or at anybody else? You’d better give it up, Henry." So the schoolmaster was not invited to the Mill House again.

BOOK THREE

Old Jezebel

BOOK III

I

On the first day after her return from town Mrs. Colbert summoned Till and told her she meant to go out to see Aunt Jezebel this morning. "I will have a look around the yard first. Send Nancy in to dress me, and tell Tap to have the boys here in about an hour."

The "boys" were young negroes whom Tap called in from the barn or the fields to help him carry the Mistress. On each side of her chair were two iron rings; into these the boys thrust dressed hickory saplings and bore Mrs. Colbert about the place. Tap was one of the millhands, but he loved to wait on ladies. He was a handsome boy, and he knew the Mistress thought so. He used to make his assistants clean up on these occasions. "Take off dat sweaty ole rag an’ put on a clean shirt fo’ de Missus."

This morning the sunshine was so bright that the Mistress carried a tiny parasol with a jointed handle. Her bearers took her along the brick walks bordered by clipped boxwood hedges,—which were dark as yew except for the yellow-green tips of new growth. Mrs. Colbert visited all the flower-beds. The lilac arbour wasView Image of Page 87now in bud, the yellow roses would soon be opening. The Mistress sent Tap for her shears and cut off sprays from the mock-orange bushes, which were filling the air with fragrance. With these in her lap she moved on, until she was carried into old Jezebel’s cabin and her chair put down beside the bed.

"You know who it is, don’t you, Aunt Jezebel?"

"Co’se I does, Miss Sapphy! Ain’t I knowed you since de day you was bawn?" The old woman turned on her side to see her mistress better.

She had wasted since Sapphira saw her last. As she lay curled up in bed, she looked very like a lean old grey monkey. (She had been a tall, strapping woman.) Her grizzled wool was twisted up in bits of rag. She was toothless, and her black skin had taken on a greyish cast. Jezebel thought she was about ninety-five. She knew she was eighteen when she was captured and sold to a British slaver, but she was not sure how many years passed before she learned English and began to keep account of time.

Mrs. Colbert put the sprays of syringa down on the pillow, close to the old woman’s face. "The mock-oranges are out, I thought you’d like to smell them. There’s not a man on the place can tend the shrubs like you did."

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"Thank ’ee, mam. I hepped you set out most all de shrubs on dis place, didn’ I? Wasn’t nothin’ when we first come here but dat ole white lilack tree."

"Those were good times, Auntie. I’ve been housebound for a long while now, like you."

"Oh, Missy, cain’t dem doctors in Winchester do nothin’ fur you? What’s dey good fur, anyways?" She broke off with a wheeze.

"There now, you mustn’t talk, it catches your breath. We must take what comes to us and be resigned."

"Yes’m, I’se resigned," the old woman whispered.

Mrs. Colbert went on soothingly: "When I sit out on the porch on a day like this, and look around, I often think how we used to get up early and rake over the new flower-beds and transplant before it got hot. And you used to run down to the creek and break off alder branches, and we’d stick them all around the plants we’d set out, to keep the sun off. I expect you remember those things, too."

The old negress looked up at her and nodded.

"Now I’m going to read you a Psalm that will hearten us both." Mrs. Colbert took from her reticule her glasses-case and a Prayer Book, but she opened neither as she repeated: "The Lord is my shepherd."

Jezebel watched her intently, her eyes shining bright under eyelids thin as paper.

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When the Mistress finished the Psalm, she called for Nancy, who was waiting in the cabin kitchen in case she might be needed.

"Are the boys outside?"

Then she turned again to the bed. "Have you quilts enough, Jezebel? Do they keep you warm?"

"Yes, Missy, the niggahs is mighty good to me. Dey keeps a flatiron to my feet, an’ a bag a hot salt undah my knees. Lizzie, she sends Bluebell down to set wid me a lot. Dat he’ps to pass de time. Her an’ Bluebell comes and sings to me, too."

"But Till tells me you don’t eat anything. You must eat to keep up your strength."

"Don’t want nothin’, Missy."

"Can’t you think of anything that would taste good to you? Now think a minute, and tell me. Isn’t there something?"

The old woman gave a sly chuckle; one paper eyelid winked, and her eyes gave out a flash of grim humour. "No’m, I cain’t think of nothin’ I could relish, lessen maybe it was a li’l pickaninny’s hand."

Nancy, crouching in a corner, broke out with a startled cry and ran to the foot of the bed. "Oh, she’s a-wanderin’ agin! She wanders turrible now. Don’t stay, Missy! She’s out of her haid!"

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Mrs. Colbert raised her eyes and gave the girl a cold, steady look. "No need for you to be speaking up. I know your granny through and through. She is no more out of her head than I am." She turned back again to the bed, took up Jezebel’s cold grey claw, and patted it. "Good-bye till another time, Auntie. Now you must turn over and have a nap."

She beckoned to the four hands standing outside, and they came with their hickory poles and carried her away.

II

Jezebel was the only one of the Colbert negroes who had come from Africa. All the others were, as they proudly said, Virginians; born and raised on the Dodderidge place or on the estates of their Loudoun County neighbours. But Jezebel was brought over from Guinea, that gold coast of the slave-traders, in the seventeen-eighties—about twenty years before the importation of slaves became illegal. She was sold to her first master on the deck of a British slaver in the port of Baltimore.

Her native village in Africa lay well inland, some four days’ journey from the sea. It was raided and destroyed by a coast tribe which early in the history of the traffic had become slave-hunters for the slavers. That night of fire and slaughter, when she saw her father brained and her four brothers cut down as they fought, old Jezebel now remembered but dimly. It was all over in a few hours; of the village nothing was left but smoking ashes and mutilated bodies. By morning she and her fellow captives were in leg chains and on their march to the sea.

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When they reached the coast they were kept in the stockade only long enough to be stripped, shaved all over the body, and drenched with sea water. An English vessel, the Albert Horn, lay at anchor out in the gulf, with nearly a full cargo of negroes stowed on board. The wind was good, and the skipper was waiting impatiently for the booty of this last raid.

Jezebel and the other captives were rowed out in small boats and put on board in leg chains; they came from a fierce cannibal people, and had not been broken in by weeks of discipline in the stockade.

When the Albert Horn was under sail, and the blue lines of the inland mountains began to grow dim, the fetters were taken off the female captives. They were not likely to make trouble.

The Albert Horn, built for the slave trade, had two decks. The negroes were stowed between the upper and lower decks, on a platform as long and as wide as the vessel; but there was only three feet ten inches between the shelf on which they lay and the upper deck which roofed them over. The slaves made the long voyage of from two to three months in a sitting or recumbent position, on a plank floor, with very little space, if any, between their bare bodies. The males were stowed forward of the main hatch, the women aft. All wereView Image of Page 93kept naked throughout the voyage, and their heads and bodies were shaved every fortnight. As there was no drainage of any sort, the slaves’ quarters, and the creatures in them, got very foul overnight. Every morning the "’tween decks" and its inmates were cleaned off with streams of sea water from the hose. The Captain of the Albert Horn was not a brutal man, and his vessel was a model slaver. Except in rough weather, the males, ironed two and two, were allowed out on the lower deck for a few hours while their platform was being scrubbed and fumigated. At the same time, the women were turned out on the lower after deck without chains.

On the first night after the Albert Horn got under way, the sailors gave Jezebel the name she had borne ever since. When the two hands detailed to watch the after ’tween decks had seen that all the females were lying in the spaces assigned to them, they put out their lanterns and went on deck to take the air. A little later the second mate, hearing shrieks and screams from the women’s quarters, ran down from his cabin to find the guards flogging a girl they had dragged out from a heap of rolling, howling blacks.

"It’s this here Jezebel made all the row, sir," one of the men panted.

The mate made a dash and drove at her throat toView Image of Page 94throttle her, but she was too quick for him. She snapped like a mastiff and bit through the ball of his thumb.

Next morning the mate felt an ominous throbbing in his hand. He reported the fracas to the Captain, saying he didn’t see anything for it but to throw the female gorilla overboard. She could never be tamed.

The skipper feared his mate might be in for a bad infection; but he had a third interest in the cargo, and he wasn’t anxious to throw any of it overboard. He thought he would like to see a girl who could stand up against two men and the cat.

"Clean her off and put a bridle on her, and bring her up," he told the mate. Himself, he never went near the slave deck; he couldn’t stand the smell.

Jezebel was brought up in heavy irons for his inspection. Her naked back was seamed with welts and bloody cuts, but she carried herself with proud indifference, and there was no plea for mercy in her eyes. The skipper told the seamen in charge to loosen the noose round her neck. As he walked up and down, smoking his pipe, he looked her well over. He judged this girl was worth any three of the women,—as much as the best of the men. Anatomically she was remarkable, for an African negress: tall, straight, muscular, long in the legs. The skipper had a kind of respect for aView Image of Page 95well-shaped creature; horse, cow, or woman. And he respected anybody who could take a flogging like that without buckling.

After she was thus isolated, the girl gave no more trouble,—though she always laughed aloud when the second mate passed with his arm in a sling. The voyage was long and rough. Jezebel was knocked about and drenched by heavy seas, and was sometimes seasick, but she made no complaint. When the seamen hosed out the scupper, she took off her jacket and invited the stream of salt water over her body. Except for a few long scars on her back and thighs, there was nothing now to show what had happened the first night she came on board.

When the Albert Horn at last reached Baltimore, her skipper kept her out at anchor until buyers from Maryland and Virginia could be notified and arrive. Jezebel, he noticed, regarded the water line of the city with lively curiosity, quite different from the hopeless indifference on the faces of her fellow captives.

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"She’ll make the best sale of the lot," he told the mate.

In the first boat-load of purchasers who came out to inspect the skipper’s cargo, there was a Dutch dairy farmer. He brought with him the country doctor of his neighbourhood. The dairyman and his friend, the doctor, were in no hurry. They looked over a great number of negroes. To Jezebel they gave a searching physical examination, talking together in the low Dutch vernacular, and asking no questions of the skipper. The dairyman called attention to the whip scars on her body, and beckoned the second mate.

"Disposition?" he asked.

"The niggers who captured her did that. She put up a fight. Strong as an ox."

The Dutchman himself looked very like an ox, but the doctor looked kind and shrewd. He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a deerskin pouch, from which he took two squares of maple sugar. One he put in his own mouth, and smacked his lips. The other he offered to Jezebel with a questioning smile. She opened her jaws. At this the second mate, standing by, looked the other way. The doctor put the sugar on Jezebel’s tongue. She crunched it, grinned, and stuck out her tongue for more. The doctor gave his friend the deciding nod. TheView Image of Page 97Dutchman paid the skipper’s price, took Jezebel into Baltimore, and stowed her in the heavy wagon in which he had come to town.

When he reached home, he set about breaking in his new wench. On the journey from Baltimore he had discovered that her personal manners were too strong for even a Dutch farmer’s household, so he lodged her in the haymow over the cow barn. She learned to milk the cows and to do all the stable work, but she was kept in the barn and was never allowed to touch the butter. The dairy farmer died in an outbreak of smallpox; his widow promptly sold Jezebel. She had been owned by several masters and had learned some English before the Dodderidge farm steward bought her. She went to the Dodderidges the year that Sapphira was born, and had been in the family ever since.

Until Jezebel was eighty years old, Sapphira had entrusted her to oversee the gardens at the Mill Farm. As late as last spring she still got out to sit in the sun and watch the boys who did the shrubbery and shaped the hedges. In wintertime she stayed in her cabin, sewed carpet-rags, and patched the farm-hands’ shirts and breeches. She meted out justice by giving a slack boy a rough seat in his breeches, and a likely boy a smooth seat. When Manuel, since dead, had come to her whiningView Image of Page 98 that "his pants wasn’t comf’able," she gave him a scornful look and said:

"You ain’t no call to be comf’able, you settin’ down de minute a body’s back’s turned. I wisht I could put dock burs in yo’ pants!"

III

One morning in April Mrs. Blake arrived at the Mill House very early; she had been sent for soon after daybreak. She found her mother in the dining-room, awaiting her.

"Well, Rachel, it’s come at last. They tell me she went very quietly. I want you to go through the linen-press and take what is needed. Open the green chest in the garret and find one of the embroidered nightgowns I used to wear when I was a girl. They’ll be big enough for poor Jezebel now. If they’re yellow with lying so long, Nancy can bleach one with alum and hang it in the sun. Will Saturday be soon enough for the funeral? The weather’s not too warm?"

Her daughter agreed it was not. Mrs. Colbert motioned to the old man standing behind her chair. "Washington, tell Lizzie to come here."

In a few moments Lizzie appeared, having slipped on a clean apron and rubbed her face vigorously with the Master’s rumpled breakfast napkin. She was barefoot, as usual, and was struggling to swallow a last mouthful of batter-cake. No matter at what hour sheView Image of Page 100was sent for, she was sure to be swallowing a last mouthful of something.

"Yes, Miss Sapphy?" Her hands were meekly crossed over her clean apron.

"Lizzie, I expect you to do me credit this time. I won’t have any skimping for the watchers, as there was when Manuel died."

Lizzie stared with astonishment and broke out fervently.

"Lawd-a’mighty, Miss Sapphy! Jest as if I’d think of bein’ savin’ fo’ ole Aunt Jezebel! It never would cross my thought! Why, dat Manuel was jist a no-’count young boy, Missy."

"Boy or no boy, you put disgrace on me, and it was talked about all up and down the Creek. Cold batter-cakes and ponhos¹ for the watchers; who ever heard of such stinginess! Now remember, there will be two nights to cook for. You are to boil a ham and fry up plenty of middling meat. Mrs. Blake will tell you how many loaves of light bread² to bake, and there must be plenty of corn bread, and sugar-cakes and ginger-cakes. Master is going to invite all Mr. Lockheart’s niggers to come over and sit up, and likely some of Jezebel’s grandchildren will come out from Winchester."

*	Scrapple.
*	"Light" bread meant bread of wheat flour, in distinction from corn bread.

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"Yes mam!" Lizzie rolled her eyes that shone like black-and-white china marbles. "Yes mam! I sho’ly will put my bes’ foot for’ard fo’ ole Aunt Jezebel an’ all de yeahs she carry. But dat triflin’ li’l Manuel wa’nt no ’count nohow, an’ his pappy not much bettah—"

Mrs. Colbert held up her plump hand. "That will do, Lizzie. Remember this; if you don’t do me credit at Jezebel’s wake, I will send Bluebell back to Loudoun County for good, as sure as I sit here."

Lizzie put her two hands over her great bosom as if she were taking an oath. Sending Bluebell over to Loudoun County meant selling her there, and Lizzie knew it.

A few moments later Mrs. Blake, passing the kitchen on her way to Jezebel’s cabin, heard Lizzie’s malicious giggle. She stopped and looked in at the door. Lizzie was whispering to Bluebell, who sat drooping over the kitchen table, her elbows spread wide apart, as she sat day in and day out, supposedly helping her mother.

The Colberts, like all well-to-do families, had their own private burying-ground. It lay in a green field, andView Image of Page 102was enclosed by a wall,—flat slabs of brown stone laid one upon another, with a gate of wrought iron. A wide gravelled path divided the square plot in two halves. On one side were the family graves, with marble headstones. On the other side was the slaves’ graveyard, with slate headstones bearing single names: "Dolly," "Thomas," "Manuel," and so on.

The mounds of masters and servants alike were covered with thick mats of myrtle. At this season innumerable sprays of new green shoots and star-like pale-blue blossoms shot out from the dark creeping vines which clung so close to the earth.

On Saturday afternoon the procession formed to carry Jezebel to the end of all her journeyings. Everyone was in black; the family, the neighbours from up and down the Creek, the Colbert negroes, and the slaves from down in the Hayfield country. Mrs. Blake’s little girls had few dresses of any kind, so they were draped in black shawls lent by their grandmother. Mrs. Colbert herself wore the black crêpe she reserved for funerals. She was carried in her chair, and the miller, in his Sunday coat, walked beside her. They followed immediately behind the coffin, which was borne by four of Jezebel’s great-grandsons, come out from Winchester.

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While they stood about the grave, Mr. Fairhead made a short address. He recalled Jezebel’s long wanderings; how she had come from a heathen land where people worshipped idols and lived in bloody warfare, to become a devout Christian and an heir to all the Promises. Perhaps her long old age had been granted her that she might fill out in years the full measure of a Christian life. After his last prayer, Lizzie and Bluebell sang "In the Sweet By and By," and the company dispersed. Jefferson and Washington, as the oldest servants, stayed behind with the great-grandsons to fill up the grave.

That night there was a big supper in the kitchen for the Colbert negroes and all the visitors; a first and second sitting at table. The darkies were always gay after a funeral, and this funeral had pleased everyone. "Miss Sapphy sho’ly give Jezebel a beautiful laying away," they all agreed.

Washington, serving his master and mistress in the big house, noticed that they, too, were more animated than usual, expressing their satisfaction that things had gone so well and that Jezebel’s young kinsmen had been able to come and carry her. The Master sat long at table; had two helpings of pudding and drank four cups of tea. When at last he rose, his wife said persuasively:

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"Surely you don’t mean to go back to the mill tonight, Henry, with your good clothes on."

"Yes, I think I must. I have been away all day. I want to speak to those boys from town and give them a little money. They will be starting back late tonight. Good night, Sapphira. I expect you are tired, and I hope you sleep well."

"The same to you," she said with a placid smile, which changed to an expression of annoyance while her eyes followed him to the door. As she sat there alone, her face grew hard and bitter. A few hours ago,when she was being carried out of the graveyard after the burial, she had seen something which greatly disturbed her. Behind the dark cedars just outside the stone wall, her husband and Nancy stood in deep conversation. The girl was in an attitude of dejection, her head hanging down, her hands clasped together, and the Master, whatever he was saying, was speaking very earnestly, with affectionate solicitude. Sapphira had put her handkerchief to her eyes, afraid that her face might show her indignation. Never before had she seen him expose himself like that. Whatever he was pressing upon that girl, he was not speaking as master to servant; there was nothing to suggest that special sort of kindliness permissible under such circumstances. He was not utteringView Image of Page 105condolences. It was personal. He had forgotten himself. Now, as she sat at the table, opposite his empty chair, she felt her anger rising. She rang her bell for the old butler.

"Washington, you may take me to my room. Send Till to me."

Till got Mrs. Colbert into her ruffled nightgown, and stood brushing out her heavy hair. She felt there was something wrong. She began to talk soothingly about the old days at Chestnut Hill. The Mistress scarcely heard her. As she walked toward her bed on Till’s arm, she paused at the window, drew aside the long chintz curtains, and looked out toward the mill. There was a red patch in the darkness down there; the lights in the miller’s room were burning. She let the curtain fall and continued her way to the wide four-post bed. Till said good-night, blew out the candles, and went away.

Left alone, the Mistress could not go to sleep. Her training and her own good sense had schooled her to know that there are very few situations in life worth getting wrought up about. But tonight she was angry. She was hurt—and remorseful. Because she was hurt, her mind kept going back to Chestnut Hill and her father. She wished she had been kinder to him in the years when he was crippled and often in pain. SheView Image of Page 106wished she had shown him a little tenderness. His eyes used to ask for it sometimes, she remembered. She had been solicitous and resolutely cheerful; kept him up to the mark, saw that his body servant neglected nothing. But she knew there was something he wanted more than he wanted clean linen every morning, or to have his tea just as he liked it. She had never given in to him, never humoured his weakness. In those days she had not known the meaning of illness. To be crippled and incapacitated, not to come and go at will, to be left out of things as if one were in one’s dotage—she had no realization of what that felt like, none at all. Invalids were to be kept clean and comfortable, greeted cheerily; that was their life.

The longer she lay awake thinking of those things in the far past, the more lonely and wretched and injured she felt herself to be tonight. Her usual fortitude seemed to break up altogether. She reached for it, but it was not there. Strange alarms and suspicions began to race through her mind. How far could she be deceived and mocked by her own servants in her own house? What was the meaning of that intimate conversation which had gone on under her very eyes this afternoon?

Unable to lie still any longer, she got cautiously out of bed, reaching for her cane and her armchair. PushingView Image of Page 107the chair along beside her, she got to the window and again held back the curtain. The ruddy square of light still burned in the dark mill. She sat down in the chair and reflected. Hours ago she had heard Nancy put her straw tick outside the door. But was she there now? Perhaps she did not always sleep there. A substitute?— There were four young coloured girls, not counting Bluebell, who might easily take Nancy’s place on that pallet. Very likely they did take her place, and everyone knew it. Could Till, even, be trusted? Besides, Till went early to her cabin—she would be the last to know.

The Mistress sat still, scarcely breathing, overcome by dread. The thought of being befooled, hoodwinked in any way, was unendurable to her. There were candles on her dressing-table, but she had no way to light them. Her throat was dry and seemed closed up. She felt afraid to call aloud, afraid to take a full breath. A faintness was coming over her. She put out her hand and resolutely rang her clapper bell.

The chamber door opened, and someone staggered in.

"Yes mam, yes mam! Whassa matter, Missy?"

Nancy’s sleepy, startled voice. Mrs. Colbert dropped back in her chair and drew a long, slow breath. It was over. Her shattered, treacherous house stood safe aboutView Image of Page 108her again. She was in her own room, wakened out of a dream of disaster.—But she must see it through, what she had begun.

"Nancy, I’m taken bad. Run out to the kitchen and blow up the coals and put the kettle on. Then go for your mother. I must get my feet into hot water."

Nancy scurried down the long hall and out to the kitchen. She was wide awake now, and alarmed. She wasn’t a girl to hold a grudge.

Till came, sooner than her mistress would have thought possible. Nancy brought the foot-tub and the big iron teakettle. Till sat on the floor rhythmically stroking her mistress’s swollen ankles and knees, murmuring: "It’s all right, Missy. They is no worse than common. It’s just a chill you caught, waitin’ out there by the graveside."

When the Mistress was again put to bed, Till begged to stay with her. But Mrs. Colbert, comforted by the promptness and sympathy of her servants, thanked them both, said the pain was gone now, and she would sleep better alone. As they helped her from her chair she had looked once more from her window: the miller’s lights were still burning in the west room of the mill. Was the man worrying over some lawsuit he had never told her about, she wondered? Or was he, perhaps, reading hisView Image of Page 109religious books? She knew he pondered at times upon how we are saved or lost. That was the disadvantage of having been raised a Lutheran. In her Church all those things had been decided long ago by heads much wiser than Henry’s. She had married the only Colbert who had a conscience, and she sometimes wished he hadn’t quite so much.

Behind the square of candlelight down there, the miller, in his mill clothes, was sitting with his Bible open on the table before him, but he was no longer reading. Jezebel’s life, as Mr. Fairhead had summed it up, seemed a strange instance of predestination. For her, certainly, her capture had been a deliverance. Yet he hated the whole system of slavery. His father had never owned a slave. The Quakers who came down from Pennsylvania believed that slavery would one day be abolished. In the North there were many people who called themselves abolishers.

Henry Colbert knew he had a legal right to manumit any of his wife’s negroes; but that would be an outrage to her feelings, and an injustice to the slaves themselves. Where would they go? How would they live? They had never learned to take care of themselves or to provide for tomorrow. They were a part of the Dodderidge property and the Dodderidge household. Of all theView Image of Page 110negro men on the place, Sampson, his head mill-hand, was the only one who might be able to get work and make a living out in the world. He was a tall, straight mulatto with a good countenance, thoughtful, intelligent. His head was full behind the ears, shaped more like a melon lying down than a peanut standing on end. Colbert trusted Sampson’s judgment, and believed he could get a place for him among the Quaker mills in Philadelphia. He had considered buying Sampson from Sapphira and sending him to Pennsylvania a free man.

Three years ago he had called Sampson into his room one night, and proposed this plan to him. Sampson did not interrupt; he stood in his manly, responsible way, listening intently to his master. But when it was his turn to speak, he broke down. This was his home. Here he knew everybody. He didn’t want to go out among strangers. Besides, Belle, his wife, was a slack worker, and his children were little. He could never keep them in a city as well off as they were here. What ever had put such a notion in Mister Henry’s head? Wasn’t he real smart about his work? Belle, he knew, wasn’t much account to help down at the house, but she was good to the chillun, an’ she didn’t do no harm. Anyhow, he’d a’most sooner leave the chillun than leave the mill, when they’d got everything fixed up so nice and could bolt finer white flour than you could buy in town.

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"I guess I’d miss you more than you’d miss the mill, Sampson. We’ll say no more about it, if that’s how you feel," said the miller, rising and putting his hand on Sampson’s shoulder. There it ended. Sampson never afterward referred to this proposal, nor did his master.

On this night after Jezebel’s burial, Henry Colbert had been reading over certain marked passages in the Book he accepted as a complete guide to human life. He had turned to all the verses marked with a large S. Joseph, Daniel, and the prophets had been slaves in foreign lands, and had brought good out of their captivity. Nowhere in his Bible had he ever been able to find a clear condemnation of slavery. There were injunctions of kindness to slaves, mercy and tolerance. Remember them in bonds as bound with them. Yes, but nowhere did his Bible say that there should be no one in bonds, no one at all.—And Henry had often asked himself, were we not all in bonds? If Lizzie, the cook, was in bonds to Sapphira, was she not almost equally in bonds to Lizzie?

The miller knew the hour must be getting late. His big silver watch he had left up at the house, on his wife’s dressing-table. But he and the negroes could tell time by the stars. At this season of the year, if the Big Dipper had set under the dark spruce-clad hills behind Rachel’sView Image of Page 112house, it would be past midnight. He opened his north window and looked out. Yes, the Dipper had gone down. The air of the soft, still, spring night came in at the window. There was no sound but the creek, pouring steadily over its rocky bottom. As he stood there, he repeated to himself some verses of a favourite hymn:

God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform. * * * * * * * * * Deep in unfathomable mines Of never failing skill, He treasures up His bright designs And works His sovereign will.

We must rest, he told himself, on our confidence in His design. Design was clear enough in the stars, the seasons, in the woods and fields. But in human affairs—? Perhaps our bewilderment came from a fault in our perceptions; we could never see what was behind the next turn of the road. Whenever he went to Winchester, he called upon a wise old Quaker. This man, though now seventy, firmly believed that in his own lifetime he would see one of those great designs accomplished; that the Lord had already chosen His heralds and His captains, and a morning would break when all the black slaves would be free.

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BOOK FOUR

Old Jezebel

BOOK IV

I

One breezy afternoon Mrs. Blake was footing it round the last loop of the "Double S," on her way to Timber Ridge. At the end of the steep grade she sat down on a mossy stump, took off her sunbonnet, and gave herself up to enjoyment of the spring day.

In the deep ravine below the road a mountain stream rushed coffee brown, throwing up crystal rainbows where it gurgled over rock ledges. On the steep hillside across the creek the tall forest trees were still bare,— the oak leaves no bigger than a squirrel’s ear. From out the naked grey wood the dogwood thrust its crooked forks starred with white blossoms—the flowers set in their own wild way along the rampant zigzag branches. Their unexpectedness, their singular whiteness, never loses its wonder, even to the dullest dweller in those hills. In all the rich flowering and blushing and blooming of a Virginia spring, the scentless dogwood is the wildest thing and yet the most austere, the most unearthly.

Mrs. Blake was thinking this out to herself as she sat on the stump. She gave scarcely a glance at the View Image of Page 117wild honeysuckle all about her, growing low out of the gravelly soil, pink and rose colour, with long, trembling stamens which made each blossom look like a brilliant insect caught in flight. When at last she took her basket and travelled upward, she left the turnpike and followed a by-road along the crest of the Ridge. Up here the soil was better; planted fields and little green meadows lay along her path. May apples grew in the damp spots; their blossoms, like tiny pond lilies, gave out a heavy, almost sickening sweetness. Here and there stood a well-built farm-house, with carefully tended yard and garden. Along the rail fences the locust trees were in bloom. The breeze caught their perfume and wafted it down the road. Every Virginian remembers those locusts which grow along the highways: their cloud-shaped masses of blue-green foliage and heavy drooping clusters of cream-white flowers like pea blossoms. Excepting the very old trees, the giants, the locusts look yielding and languid, like the mountain boy lounging against the counter when he goes to the country store. Yet, from the time they are big enough to cut, they make the toughest fence posts a farmer can find, and in the timber trade the yellow locust is valued for its resistance to moisture.

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From the Ridge road Mrs. Blake could look down over hills and valleys, as if she were at the top of the world. She liked to go up there at any time of the year, and she liked to go on foot and alone. Even in her best days, before her husband died, when she lived in Washington and never came home to Back Creek for a visit, she used sometimes to be homesick for these mountains and the high places. This afternoon she was on the Ridge in answer to a sick call, but it was not a serious one, and she meant to enjoy herself.

Last evening a pale little girl, barefoot, in a carefully mended dress, had slipped silently into Mrs. Blake’s kitchen without knocking. For all that her hair was braided and her face was washed, she was a distressful little creature, with dark circles about her eyes. There was something at once furtive and innocent in her face. She told Mrs. Blake how Granny let the flatiron fall on her foot t’other day, an’ now her toe was festerin’. Would Miz Blake maybe come up an’ see if they ought to send for Doctor Brush? And now Mrs. Blake was on her way to see. She had bandages and turpentine ointment and arnica in her basket; but she had also a fruit jar full of fresh-ground coffee, half a baking of sugar cakes, and a loaf of "light" bread. The poor folks on the Ridge esteemed coffee and wheat bread great delicacies. ThisView Image of Page 119visit was not to be entirely wasted on a sore foot. Indeed, Mrs. Blake suspected that the foot was maybe not very bad, and that old Mrs. Ringer had sent for her because she had not seen her for a long time and wanted a visit with her.

Mrs. Blake herself looked forward to this visit. Mrs. Ringer was better company than many people who were more fortunate; who came of better blood, and had farms and raised sheep and pigs for market. There were some families on the Ridge who were comfortably off, owned a few negroes to do the work, and held themselves very high. If you called at the Pembertons’, for instance, you were kept waiting half an hour in the parlour while the ladies dressed and powdered their faces. When at last they appeared, with their mourning-bordered handkerchiefs and jet earrings, they minded their manners so carefully that the talk was very dull.

Now, Mandy Ringer had lived a hard life, goodness knew, but misfortune and drudgery had never broken her spirit. She was as thin as a grasshopper, and as lively as one. She had probably never spent a dull day. When she woke in the morning, she got into her calico dress in a flash and ran out to see what her garden had done overnight. Then she took a bucket and went to milk Sukey in the shed. Her son, though he was a cripple,View Image of Page 120would have done it for her, but in that country it was the custom for the women to do the milking. Mrs. Ringer wouldn’t have trusted either of her two daughters to take care of Sukey. That little white-faced cow kept the log house going when everything else failed, and her calves brought in the only actual money the old woman ever saw.

Mrs. Ringer was born interested. She got a great deal of entertainment out of the weather and the behaviour of the moon. Any chance bit of gossip that came her way was a godsend. The rare sight of a strange face was a treat: a pedlar with a pack on his back, or a medicine-vendor come from across the Alleghenies with his little cart. Mrs. Ringer couldn’t read or write, as she was frank to tell you, but the truth was she could read everything most important: the signs of the seasons, the meaning of the way the wood creatures behaved, and human faces. She once said to Mrs. Blake when they were talking things over: "If the Lord’ll jist let me stay alive, mam, an’ not put me down into a dirty hole, I kin bear anything."

She had borne a good deal, certainly. Her son was a poor cripple, and both her daughters had been "fooled." That seldom occurred twice, even in the most shiftless households. Disgrace to the womenfolk brought anyView Image of Page 121family very low in that country. But Mandy Ringer couldn’t stay crushed for long. She came up like a cork,—probably with no better excuse than that the sun came up. Her spirits bubbled into the light like a spring and spread among the cresses.

Rachel Blake had always been drawn toward expansive, warm-hearted people. And she had known many such folks in her time, when she lived in Washington City before her husband died.

As she turned in at a low log house with a big outside rock chimney, Mrs. Ringer, her foot done up in rags, hopped lightly to the door to greet her.

"Now ain’t you most a angel to come all the way up the hills to see us! I declare I had a’most give you up, but Lawndis he tole me not to despair. An’ he would go so fur as to shave fur you."

At this a brown-skinned man with a crooked back and a clubfoot came forward. "Yes, Miz Blake, when the wind turned an’ blowed the clouds away, I reckoned you’d be along to see Mother." His voice was mellow and grave, and there was true courtesy in the way he looked at the visitor, placed a chair for her, and relieved her of her basket.

Mrs. Blake examined the sore foot and declared there was nothing worse than a bad bruise. She applied herView Image of Page 122ointment and a clean bandage, and took from her basket a pair of old carpet slippers. "You’ll be easy in these, Mrs. Ringer. Put them on and keep them on. Don’t on any account go about barefoot. Now I’m a little weary after my walk, and if Lawndis will kindle a fire I’m going to make some coffee for us."

After the son had a fire going, he took up his hat. "If you’ll excuse me, Miz Blake, I’ll go out in the garden an’ do some weedin’. You and Mother’ll feel freer to talk by yourselves. She ain’t seen much comp’ny lately." He limped out of the house, careful not to put on his hat until he was well outside the door.

Mrs. Ringer spread a white cloth on the kitchen table and got out her blue chiney cups and plates. Before the water was boiling Lawndis came back with a stone crock in his hands. "Here, Mother. I seem to remember Miz Blake don’t like her coffee without cream. If you’ll skim some off, I’ll take the crock back to the springhouse. We got a real cold springhouse, mam, better’n most folks up here. It’s quite a piece away, but that’s where the spring is."

"Your son surely has nice manners, Mrs. Ringer," remarked Mrs. Blake, as she watched him limping across the garden with the milk.

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"Yes’m, Lawndis is a good boy, if I do say it. An’ he gits a power a’ work done, fur a lame man. Ain’t it a pity I didn’t have no luck with my gals?"

This was a delicate subject. Mrs. Blake did not wish to discuss it. "Where are the girls today?" she asked politely, as if there were nothing queer about them.

"Ginnie, she’s got work up at Capon Springs, helpin’ clean the hotel fur summer visitors. Up there they ain’t heered about her trouble, maybe. I don’t know where Marge is this minute, but she’s likely off in the woods some’ers, ’shamed to have you see her. It would all a-been different, Miz Blake, if my Lawndis was a strong man. Then he could a-tracked down the fellers an’ fit with ’em, an’ made ’em marry his sisters. But them raskels knowed my pore gals hadn’t nobody to stand up fur ’em. Fellers is skeered to make free with a gal that’s got able men folks to see she gits her rights."

Mrs. Blake still sought to avoid discussing these misfortunes, since there was nothing she could do to remedy them. She said blandly: "Well, whatever happened, I know Lawndis would never be hard on his sisters. Now do tell me, Mrs. Ringer, who did you name your boy after? I’ve often wondered, and never thought to ask you."

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"Lawndis? Why, after the preacher. Can’t you remember, when you was a little girl there come a preacher a-holdin’ revivals through these parts? He held meetin’s every night fur a week an’ more at Bethel Church, an’ I never missed a sermon. I ain’t never heered sich sermons before nor since. When the next baby come, I called him after that preacher."

Yes, Mrs. Blake remembered the preacher; he wore a long-tailed coat, even on horseback, and his name was Leonidas Bright. The hill people could do queer things with unfamiliar names.

At this moment the pale little girl who had come to Mrs. Blake’s yesterday stole down the ladder from the loft over the kitchen and shyly approached the table. In her hand was a little wooden box full of quartz crystals she had picked up on the stony hillsides.

"Is these di’monds, Miz Blake, mam? Kin I see ’em fur money?"

"No, child, I’m afraid they’re not diamonds. They’re just as pretty, though."

"Now, Becky, what need you come troublin’ Miz Blake fur? I told you they ain’t di’monds. You run back upstairs an’ mind the baby, an’ here’s a cake fur you Miz Blake fetched me. Is he asleep?"

"Yes'm."

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Mrs. Blake slipped the child a second cake, and she went noiselessly up the ladder.

The grandmother gave a cackling little laugh. "That’s the fashion up here now. Since the Bethel robbery everybody thinks they kin make a fortin sellin’ somethin’. It’s come down even to pore Becky."

"What robbery are you talkin’ about, Mrs. Ringer?"

Mrs. Ringer put down the cup halfway to her lips. "You ain’t meanin’ you never heered of the Bethel communion service bein’ stole?"

"I surely never heard a word about it."

Mrs. Ringer’s face glowed. "Well, I’m su’prised, mam! It’s a disgrace to us all up here, an’ we can’t hardly talk of nothin’ else. Last Sunday night, after preachin’, the whole communion service, the silver plate an’ the silver goblet an’ the little pitchers, was taken. An’ now his triflin’ relations is tryin’ to put it off on Casper Flight, as good a boy as ever lived, because he has the door key so he kin sweep out the church an’ keep it clean. Now we all know a winder was broke out the night the deed was done, so what has Casper’s key got to do with it, I’d like to know? Would he break a winder, when he had a key?"

Mrs. Blake was thoroughly interested. "You mean the Flight boy that comes to Mr. Fairhead’s school? Why, his teacher can’t say enough good of him."

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"That’s him I mean. He’s bein’ persecuted by them louts of cousins of his’n, them ugly Keyser boys that runs a still. Who’s they to act up for the church, when they was never inside one? Unless"—here Mrs. Ringer paused and shook her finger at Mrs. Blake as she added impressively—"unless they was inside Bethel Church last Sunday night, after meetin’."

"But why are the Keysers trying to put it on Casper? You say they’re cousins."

"Now, Miz Blake, who kin hate worse’n cousins? We all know that. They hates him jist on account of his bein’ a good boy, and tryin’ to make somethin’ of hisself, walkin’ all the way down to Back Creek to learn to read an’ write. Nobody in their fam’ly could ever read ’n’ write, an’ damned if anybody ever will. It’s pure spite, an’ I tell Lawndis I know Buck Keyser broke that winder an’ clomb in an’ robbed the Lord, as well as if I’d seen him do it. He’s got them things hid away some’ers, an’ one day he’ll tromp over the Alleghenies where he ain’t knowed, an’ sell ’em."

Mrs. Blake sniffed audibly. "Well, he won’t get much for ’em. That Bethel communion set ain’t silver at all. It’s plated stuff, and poor plate at that, I can tell you."

Mrs. Ringer started in her chair. "Is that so, Miz Blake! Now, nobody but you would a-knowed. LordyView Image of Page 127me, I wisht I could a-had your chance, mam. It’s city life that learns you, an’ I’d a-loved it! So with all their deviltry they ain’t got no fortin hid away, an’ fur all the talk they’ve raised, it don’t amount to much more’n pore Becky’s di’monds! There is a kind-a justice in this world after all, now ain’t there?"

Their talk turned naturally to the classic example of belated justice: the murder of the pedlar at the red brick house on the Ridge Road, and its exposure after twenty years. While Mrs. Ringer was telling all she remembered of the two wretched women who had killed the pedlar for his pack, Lawndis appeared at the door, sweaty and panting.

"Maw, I’m afeered them Keysers is got Casper. I heered trouble over in the woods, an’ Buck’s big haw-haw. He’s got the meanest laff ever was, when he’s out fur devilment. I’m a-goin’ over."

Mrs. Ringer sprang up. "Then I’m a-goin’ with ye."

"No you ain’t, Maw. You’re lamed with your foot."

"I reckon I’m no lamer’n you air. Come along, Miz Blake, we’ll all go. They ain’t no business in our woods."

Mrs. Blake picked up her basket. "Take one of Lawndis’ canes, Mandy, and spare your foot all you can." She set out with the two cripples, down the garden, past the springhouse, and over toward the wood where they heard ugly, taunting voices.

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They had not gone far when they came upon the three Keysers and their captive. A young boy, perhaps fifteen or sixteen, was stripped naked to the waist and bound tight to a chestnut sapling. Three men were lounging about the tree making fun of him. The brother called Buck had his sleeves rolled up and his shirt open, showing a thick fleece of red hair on his chest and forearms. He was laughing and cracking a lash of plaited cowhide thongs. The boy tied to the tree said not a word in answer to Buck’s taunting questions. He made no sound at all, did not even look up when Mrs. Blake came swishing through the bushes. For all he had set his teeth tight together, she could see his lower jaw trembling.

Mrs. Ringer spoke first. "Now what air you Keysers up to?"

Big Buck had a very smooth way with him when he took the trouble. He had certainly not expected to see Mrs. Blake from Back Creek, and her appearance put a different light on things. He pulled off his hat and spoke easy.

"Nothin’ but a fam’ly matter, folks. This young feller’s been charged with takin’ the communion set. His maw’s a Keyser, an’ it’s fur us to settle with him. You know yourselves his paw’s no account, an’ that Baptist preacher he goes to school to don’t seem to a-learnedView Image of Page 129him to keep his hands off things. Time fur the fam’ly to learn him a little. He’s got to tell where them things is hid."

Mrs. Blake had kept a steady eye on Buck, and now she spoke.

"Then you’d better go and get ’em, Buck Keyser, and put ’em back where they belong, for they’re poor plated stuff, and you’ll get nothing for them but trouble."

Buck’s face didn’t change, but his two brothers looked at each other.

"That’s what I’m after doin’, Miz Blake, onct I git ’em out-a him." With that he swung his lash and gave Casper a cut on the bare shoulder. The boy made no sound, but poor Lawndis was so worked upon that he burst out crying and threw his arms round the prisoner to shield him with his own back. "Don’t you dast hit him agin! I can’t fight ye, I’m jist a pore mock of a man, but you’ll have to finish me afore you tech him."

Mrs. Blake knew Lawndis would be sick for a week after such an outbreak. "Shame on you, Buck Keyser!" she said, going up to him and putting her hand on his hairy arm. "It’s Lawndis will get the most punishment out of this, and you know it. What did you come on their place for, to act your foolishness? What have you got against Lawndis?"

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"We ain’t got nothing agin Lawndis. This whimperin’ boy come hidin’ in the Ringer woods, ’cause he’s a coward an’ can’t take a lickin’. We was after him, an’ come on him here, that’s how. Don’t act the fool, Lawndis. I’ll take care of my kin some’ers out-a your woods. He’ll git his ticklin’ when there’s no ladies around. Come on, boys. Good day to you, Miz Blake."

Mrs. Blake told Lawndis to go back to the house and drink the coffee that was left. While the two women untied the Flight boy and hunted for his shirt, Mrs. Ringer whispered: "Like as not they brought him into our woods a purpose. They was feelin’ devilish, an’ what’s the good a-actin’ devilish if nobody sees you? They knows Lawndis is soft that-a-way, an’ can’t see a sparrer fall. It’s a mercy you was here, Miz Blake. I reckon they don’t want to git in too bad with your Paw."

On her way down the "Double S" and the "holler" road, Mrs. Blake told herself she must have a talk with David Fairhead about Casper. Perhaps it wasn’t wise to encourage him. "I don’t know whether that boy’s strong enough to master what’s around him," she said to herself. "A man’s got to be stronger’n a bull to get out of the place he was born in. I just hope I won’t dream tonight the way Casper stood against that tree, with his lower jaw tremblin’."

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II

To see Mrs. Blake working about her house and garden, a stranger would scarcely guess that she had lived the happiest years of her life in Washington, and had known a wider experience of the world than her more worldly mother.

Rachel was sixteen years old when Michael Blake rode through Frederick County soliciting votes. He was already a member of the Virginia State Legislature, and was a nominee for the United States Congress. He spent some days at the Mill Farm, where he was warmly welcomed. Henry Colbert approved of Blake’s record and his principles, and the Mistress was charmed by his good manners, his handsome face and blue eyes. When he said good-bye and rode up into the Capon River country, she missed him.

In two weeks he came back to the Mill Farm. He had made up his mind. He had made it up, indeed, on his first visit, but he had disclosed his intentions to no one, not even to Rachel. When, on this second visit, he asked the miller and Sapphira for their daughter’s hand, they were speechless from astonishment. After the interviewView Image of Page 132in which they gave their consent, Mrs. Colbert retired to her room and bolted the door for an hour to regain her composure.

She had never hoped for anything so good for Rachel. She had often doubted whether she would succeed in getting her married at all. Two older daughters she had married very well. But she could see nothing in this girl likely to be attractive to young men. Rachel was well enough looking, in her father’s masterful way, but no one could call her pretty. She was reserved to a degree which her mother called sullenness, and she had decided opinions on matters which did not concern women at all. She was her father’s favourite; that was natural, since she was just like him. But this happy, fair-complexioned young Blake, with his warm laugh and mellow voice— Well, Mrs. Colbert reflected, there is no accounting for tastes. Blake was Irish, and the Irish often leap before they look.

When she had recovered herself, Mrs. Colbert sat down to write the amazing news to her sisters.

While she was at her desk, the young man was with Rachel. He had found her in the flower garden, separating tufts of clove pinks. He wiped her hands on his handkerchief and led her into the lilac arbour. Seated beside her on the rustic bench, he told her his story in the manner of the period.

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On the first night of his first visit, he said, when he sat opposite her at the supper table, it all happened. He had watched her face in the candlelight and found it hard to reply to her mother’s friendly questions, or to keep his mind on the conversation. He had stayed on at the house until he was afraid he might wear out his welcome. After he rode away, he could think of nothing but Rachel whenever he was alone. He was thirty years old, and had never before met a girl whom he wished to marry. Indeed, he admitted, he "liked his liberty." Now everything was different. Her father and mother had given their consent. But he must have her own, spoken from the heart.

"Do you think you could come to love me, really love me, Rachel?" His voice was wistful, almost sad.

She looked up and met his blue eyes fearlessly, something intense flashed into her own. "I do already, Michael."

"My sweetheart! May I have one kiss?"

She put her hands on his shoulders, holding him back, and with that almost fierce devotion still shining in her eyes said pleadingly: "Please, Michael, please! Not until the words have been said."

No reply could have made him happier. He caught her two hands and buried his face in them.

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This was in the eighteen-thirties, when loose manners were very loose, and the proprieties correspondingly strict. Young bachelors who were free in their morals were very exacting that the girl they chose for a wife should be virginal in mind as well as in body. The worst that could be said of an unmarried girl was that "she knew too much."

Immediately after Michael’s election as Representative for the —th District, the young couple were married and went to Washington to live in a small rented house. The devotion Michael read in Rachel’s eyes when she refused him the betrothal kiss soon became her whole life: there was nothing of her left outside it. In every sense he was her first love. More than that, he had taken her from a home where she had never been happy. She felt for him all that was due to a rescuer and a saviour. Until he came, her heart was cold and frozen.

When Rachel was twelve years old, she had chanced to overhear a conversation which coloured her thoughts and feelings ever afterward. In those days she used often to walk to the post office to get the mail, although she knew this annoyed her mother. Rachel was deeply attached to the postmistress, then a young woman who had lately been left a widow with three little boys. OneView Image of Page 135morning she was sitting on Mrs. Bywaters’s shady front porch, behind the blooming honeysuckle vines, when she saw a handsome old gentleman ride up to the hitch-post, dismount, and tie his horse. That was Mr. Cartmell, Mrs. Bywaters’s father. As he walked up the gravel path to the porch steps, his daughter saw him and came out to greet him. They went into the house together, leaving the door open behind them. Rachel liked to listen to Mr. Cartmell; his talk had a flavour of old-fashioned courtesy.

"I came with something on my mind today, daughter," he began. "Your mother and I think you have it too hard up here, since Jonah went. What with looking after the mail, and attending to your children and the housework, there is too much for one woman to do. Our old neighbour, Mr. Longfield, tells me he is willing to part with one of Abigail’s daughters. But he would never sell her off to strangers. In busy seasons your mother often hires her from the Longfields, and finds her capable and willing. I would like to buy Mandy for you, and bring her up here myself. You would have a smart girl to help you, and she would have a good home."

There was a pause. Then Mrs. Bywaters said: "Could we hire Mandy from the Longfields for a couple years, maybe?"

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"I made such a proposal to Mr. Longfield, but he needs a considerable sum of money at once. He is forced to sell Mose, his body servant, into Winchester. You will remember our neighbour was somewhat inclined to extravagance. He has got behind."

Another pause. "You have never owned any slaves yourself, Father," she said thoughtfully, as if considering.

"You know my feeling on that matter, Caroline. But down with us, in the Round Hill neighbourhood, it is always easy to hire help from farmers who have too many negroes. Up here there are few slave-owners, and a raw white girl from the mountains would be of little help to you."

This time there was no pause. Mrs. Bywaters spoke quietly but firmly. "It’s kindly thought of you, Father, and kindly spoken. But neither you nor I have ever owned flesh and blood, and I will not begin it. I am young and strong, and I’ll make shift to manage. Peace of mind is what I value most."

Little Rachel Colbert, sitting breathless on the porch, heard Mr. Cartmell rise from his squeaky splint-bottom chair and say: "You are my own daughter, Caroline. We will manage." The deep emotion in his voice, and the hush which followed, made Rachel realize that she had been eavesdropping, listening to talk that was privateView Image of Page 137and personal. She fled swiftly through the yard and out to the road. Her feet must have found the way home, for she gave no heed to where she was going. A feeling long smothered had blazed up in her—had become a conviction. She had never heard the thing said before, never put into words. It was the owning that was wrong, the relation itself, no matter how convenient or agreeable it might be for master or servant. She had always known it was wrong. It was the thing that made her unhappy at home, and came between her and her mother. How she hated her mother’s voice in sarcastic reprimand to the servants! And she hated it in contemptuous indulgence. Till and Aunt Jezebel were the only blacks to whom her mother never spoke with that scornful leniency.

After that morning on Mrs. Bywaters’s porch, Rachel was more than ever reserved and shut within herself. Her two aunts disapproved of her; she dreaded the yearly visit to them. At home, she knew that all the servants were fond of her mother, in good or ill humour, and that they were not fond of her. She was not at all what the darkies thought a young lady should be. Till’s good manners were barely sufficient to conceal her disappointment in Miss Sapphy’s youngest daughter.

Michael Blake had dropped from the clouds, as it were, to deliver Rachel from her loneliness, from life inView Image of Page 138a home where she had not a single confidant. She often wondered how she had borne that life at all. Once settled in the narrow rented house on R Street, she no longer brooded upon real or imagined injustices. Her mind and energy, and she was endowed with both, were wholly given to making for Michael the kind of home he wanted, and doing it on very little money.

Representative Blake was, he admitted, "fond of the pleasures of the table." Rachel became expert in cookery. Everything he liked, done as he liked, appeared in season on his dinner table. He lunched at an oyster bar near the Capitol, and dined at eight in the evening. His wife had the whole day to prepare his favourite dishes. She put herself under the instruction of a free mulatto woman from New Orleans, whose master had manumitted her when he was dying in Washington. Sarah now made her living by cooking for dinner parties.

Every morning, on his way to the Capitol, Michael stopped at the big market and sent home the choicest food of the season. In those days the Washington markets were second to none in the world for fish and game: wild ducks, partridges, pheasants, wild turkeys . . . the woods were full of wildfowl. The uncontaminated bays and rivers swarmed with fish: Potomac shad, Baltimore oysters, shrimps, scallops, lobsters, and terrapin. In theView Image of Page 139spring the Dutch truck gardeners brought in the first salads and asparagus and strawberries.

A group of Louisiana planters who came to Washington every winter kept Michael’s cellar supplied with good wines. These Southerners often dined at the Blakes’, grateful for an escape from the bleakness of Washington hotels. They usually brought with them a young French officer who had some humble post at the French Legation. Too poor to marry, Chénier lived wretchedly in a boarding-house. His devotion to Mrs. Blake and her good dinners became a positive embarrassment, the subject of many a jest at Michael’s breakfast table.

The planters came up to Washington unaccompanied by their families. At the round dinner table in the Blakes’ narrow dining-room would be seated five or six men, never more than seven, in broadcloth and shining linen. The Louisianians wore frilled shirts with diamond studs, the officer his shabby dress uniform. There was no place set for a woman, not even for the hostess. The hostess was below stairs in the brick-floored basement kitchen. Her companions were the glowing coal range, a sink with a hydrant pump, shelves of copper cooking vessels, and an adjacent "cold pantry" full of food and drink. There she achieved a dinner for epicures,View Image of Page 140 with no help but Sarah, the mulatto, who also served in the dining-room.

At the end of the dinner, when the dessert had been carried up by the stately mulatto, then there was a call for the hostess. Slipping off her long white apron and dashing a little powder over her face, Rachel went upstairs to drink a glass of champagne with the guests. If she did not appear soon after the dessert, the young Frenchman ran down to the kitchen and brought her up on his arm. Her husband and his friends rose to toast her. Hot and flushed as she was, their faces by this time were quite as rosy, and, to their slightly contracted pupils, the young woman who had given them such a dinner was beautiful.

Rachel enjoyed the iced wine and the warm praise,— and she enjoyed the gaiety. For after she joined the party, it became distinctly gayer, however lively it had been before. She sat in Michael’s chair, and he stood behind her, filled her glass, and coaxed her to eat his dessert, beaming with his pride in her.

After the first glass she did not feel tired. Her responsibilities over, she relaxed and leaned back in Michael’s big chair, laughing at the funny stories,—her father’s deep laugh. She begged them to sing for her, "Little Brown Jug:" and "Auld Lang Syne." Like many personsView Image of Page 141of a serious temper, she loved being with people who were easily and carelessly merry.

In due time the children came along; first a son, Robert, the well-beloved. A second boy died in infancy. Then came the two girls, Mary and Betty. During those happy years Rachel had but one anxiety: her husband’s extravagant tastes and his carelessness about keeping the tradesmen paid up. Michael reassured her as to the future. He carried what he termed "a heavy life insurance," used to show her the premium cheques before he sent them off. In the months before a new baby came, there was no entertaining, and Rachel was able to cut the household expenses,—though Michael largely defeated her thrift by bringing her presents.

Even in those years there was something of the devotee in Rachel. The will to self-abnegation which showed itself later was in her then, though it took the form of untiring service to a man’s pleasure and of almost idolatrous love for her first-born. Perhaps she was conscious of a certain chill in her own nature and was afraid of being insufficient to her pleasure-loving husband. His rich enjoyment of life had an irresistible charm for her.

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Rachel had been married thirteen years when Michael thought he could afford to accept the long-pressed invitation of his Southern friends to visit them in New Orleans. He persuaded his wife to let him take the boy along with him. Robert was then eleven, handsome and gay like his father. Rachel knew the trip would be a fine experience for him; she ought not to hold him back. She went to Baltimore to see them sail. When the last whistle blew, and the steamboat began to move out into the bay, she could see Michael standing in the stern, and beside him the boy, waving his new Scotch cap with ribands.

Letters came often; those from Robbie were especially cherished. The date of their return was fixed, but they did not come by the boat on which Rachel expected them. There was something in the newspapers about an epidemic down there, but it was immediately denied. After Mrs. Blake had waited through an anxious fortnight, a visitor knocked at her door,—one of the old New Orleans friends who had come up to Washington to tell her what he could not write. Only the day before Michael was to start for home, the boy fell ill. His father, who never left him for a moment, would not believe it was yellow fever, until the child began to vomit black blood. Forty-eight hours afterward Michael BlakeView Image of Page 143himself died of the contagion. They were both buried in the Protestant cemetery in New Orleans.

Henry Colbert first learned of his son-in-law’s death from a paragraph in the Baltimore Sun,—the paper was already a week old. He went at once to Winchester and took the train for Washington. He found Rachel in her bed, the daylight shut out, her door locked. She had refused to admit her doctor and Michael’s lawyer. Sarah, the mulatto woman, had come to stay in the house and was taking care of the two children.

The miller put his shoulder under the wheel. Michael’s life-insurance policy had lapsed; the last two premiums had not been paid. There was little left for the widow but her furniture and a few debts. Blake’s friends made up a generous purse for her. Henry Colbert paid off the creditors and brought Rachel and her children home to Back Creek. They stayed at the Mill Farm while Mr. Whitford built the house by the road in which Mrs. Blake had lived ever since.

During the months when the house was a-building the miller and his wife grew very fond of Mary and Betty. Mrs. Colbert’s relations with her daughter were pleasanter than they had ever been before. To be sure, there were things in the past which she could not forView Image of Page 144get. Gravest of them was that Rachel had not once invited her mother, then not an invalid but a very active woman, to come to Washington to visit her. Among Virginians such a slight could never be forgiven. That Mrs. Blake’s city house was small and cramped was no excuse. Your near kin were expected to entertain you, even though they had to sleep on cots in the hall and give you their sleeping-chamber. To be in Washington, visitors would cheerfully put up with any discomfort. That your own daughter lived there, and you did not visit her, required explanation to your relatives and friends.

When Rachel came back to the Mill Farm, widowed and poor, her mother found it easier to overlook past differences than she would have done a few years before. Mrs. Colbert’s illness had not yet come upon her, but she had had warnings. Already she had given over horseback riding, though women of that time often kept to the saddle when they were well in their seventies.

During the six years that had gone by since Mrs. Blake’s return, the Back Creek people had grown used to seeing her come and go along the roads and mountain paths, on her way to some house where misfortune had preceded her. If a neighbour, unable to restrain curiosity, asked any question about how people lived in Washington, she replied simply:

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"I hardly remember. All that is gone. I’d take it kindly of you not to bring it back to me. This is my home now, and I want to live here like I had never gone away."

The postmistress, whom she had so loved as a child, was the only neighbour with whom she ever talked freely. They were drawn together by deep convictions they had in common.

Mrs. Bywaters, though she was poor, subscribed for the New York Tribune. Since she was in Government employ, this was an indiscreet thing to do. Even her father, Mr. Cartmell, thought it unwise. The papers came to her heavily wrapped and addressed in ink. She kept them locked in her upper bureau drawer and often gave Mrs. Blake interesting numbers to carry home in her basket. They were handy to start a fire with, she said.

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BOOK FIVE

Martin Colbert

BOOK V

I

On the first day of June the Romney stage, more than an hour late, crossed Back Creek and stopped before the tollgate. A girl with a broad, flat, good-natured face came out to lift the rickety gate and collect the toll. The driver leaned down from his high seat to pass the time of day with her. This courtesy he never omitted, no matter how much he was behind in his schedule. While the driver was chatting, one of his five passengers jumped out at the rear end of the stage: a young man, well dressed and good-looking. He walked forward and interrupted.

"I say, driver, isn’t that turn-off the road to the mill?"

"Shorely is, sir."

"Then I’ll walk over from here. Take my trunk on to the post office, please, and leave it. My uncle will send for it."

"Your uncle?"

"Yes; Mr. Colbert, at the mill."

"So that’s how it is; you’re a Colbert." The driver shifted his tobacco to the other cheek. "Which on ’em is your paw?"

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"Jacob. I’m Martin Colbert."

"Is that so!" He looked the young man over with interest. "Ever been out here before?"

"Yes, when I was a youngster. Good day, driver. Don’t forget to put my trunk off." The young man saw no reason for tarrying; there was no one in sight but the toll-girl, noticeable only for her flat red face. Martin lifted his hat to her, however, and set off down the stony by-road before the stage started. The driver leaned over to say to the girl: "The miller won’t be none too tickled to see him, I reckon! Feller must ’a’ got into some scrape agin, or he wouldn’t be comin’ out here, with a trunk, too! He’s a turrible wild one."

The stage rattled on toward the post office, where it was to change horses. The flat-faced girl turned and went slowly down the mill road after the stranger, peering to right and left; but he was already hidden from sight by the tall sassafras bushes which grew thick all along the rail fence.

Young Colbert walked along carelessly, finding exercise agreeable after the jolting of the stage. Sometimes he hummed a tune, sometimes he chuckled and ducked his shoulders. He was amused to find himself actually on his way to the Mill House, one of the dreariest spots in all Virginia, he reckoned. "The joke’s on me," his giggle seemed to say.

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Just now he was lucky to have any place to go where he would be comfortable and well fed, and rid of his creditors. He was a tall, well-enough built fellow, but there was something soft about the lines of his body. He carried himself loosely at the shoulders and thighs. His clothes were town clothes, but strolling along unobserved he behaved like a country boy. When he laughed at his present predicament, he hitched up his trousers by his gallowses where his waistcoat hung open. He was easily diverted; no fixed purpose lurked behind his chuckle, though there was sometimes a flash of slyness in his whisky-coloured eyes. He stopped to watch a mud-turtle waddle across the road, and rolled the old fellow over on his back to see him kick—then relented and turned him right side up. When he got near the mill, Martin buttoned his waistcoat, wiped the dust from his face, and straightened his shoulders. He did not stop at the mill, but went directly on to the house. Till met him at the front door with genuine cordiality, restrained by correctness.

"The Mistress is waiting for you in the parlour, Mr. Martin. We expected you before this."

"Sorry, Till. The stage was late starting; had to wait for passengers from Martinsburg. All the folks well here?"

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"They’re all as usual, sir." She opened the door into the parlour, where Mrs. Colbert was sitting near the fireplace, now closed by a painted fire-board. She smiled graciously and held out her hand. Martin hurried across the room, and gallantly kissed her on the cheek.

She shook her finger at him. "You’ve kept me waiting for you a long while, Martin. You were certainly in no hurry to make me a visit. I first wrote you before Easter, and here we are coming into June."

"It’s been a right busy time on the place, Aunt Sapphy." He was still standing beside her chair. She reached out and felt his palm. "I don’t find any calluses."

He laughed gaily. "Oh, we have plenty of fieldhands— too many!"

Washington came in with the tea-tray and put it on the table beside the Mistress. The visitor drew up a chair and sat down opposite his aunt, crossing his legs and falling into an attitude of easy indolence which diverted her. She liked a dash of impudence in young men whom she considered attractive; and Martin, she was thinking, was the best favoured of the younger Colberts. Just then she happened to notice that his boots were very dusty.

"Why, Martin, didn’t you ride your mare out?"

"No, ma’am. I came on the stage and walked over from the tollgate."

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"The stage? You must have been very uncomfortable. Why didn’t you ride Merrylegs, and send your box by the stage? It’s a pleasant ride."

"I sold Merrylegs this spring. Had a good offer and needed the money."

While he helped himself to sandwiches she studied his face.

"Are you sure you sold her, Mart?" she asked shrewdly.

He had not expected this question. He gave her a quick glance, and ducked his head with a grin which seemed to say: "You’ve caught me now!"

"Well, anyhow, I parted with her, Aunt Sapphy."

"Cards, I’ll be bound!"

"No, honour bright. It was a racing bet. I’m not much of a card man. But I lose my head at the races." He looked at her frankly, holding out his teacup with an "If you please." Easy, confidential, a trifle free in manner, as if she were not an old woman and an invalid. That was how she liked it. She told herself that Martin’s visit would be very refreshing. She almost believed she had urged him to come solely because she liked to have young people about.

"No matter. We can let you have a mount. Henry keeps a good riding horse to go in to Winchester on business. He doesn’t like to be bothered with the carriage.View Image of Page 153 I always preferred to go on horseback when I went to town for Sunday service."

"You pretty nearly lived on horseback, didn’t you? Oh, down with us they still tell about how you used to take the fences."

"Yes, I liked riding, but I never gave myself over body and soul to horses, as the Bushwells appear to do."

"That’s right. They just live for the stables. The house and grounds would shock you now. People say they used to keep the place up as long as you went to visit there. But Chestnut Hill has never been the same since old Matchem died."

Till appeared at the door and said that Martin’s box had come.

Mrs. Colbert beckoned her. "Call Nancy to take Mr. Martin up to his room and unpack his things for him. She keeps your uncle’s room at the mill, Martin, and she will do yours, and look after your laundry. Young men are none too orderly, I seem to remember. Now I will rest for an hour before supper."

Martin went up the wide staircase leading from the long hall. Upstairs he saw an open door, and a young mulatto girl standing at attention outside.

"And are you Nancy? Good evening, Nancy. I hear you are going to take care of me." He stood still and looked hard at her.

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A wave of pink went over her gold-coloured cheeks, and her eyes fell. "If I can please you, sir," she said quietly, waiting for him to enter the chamber.

"Oh, you do please me!" he laughed.

Going into the room, Martin glanced about: large, airy, not too much furniture, canopy bed with fresh muslin curtains. He opened one of the front windows and looked out over the yard, the mill, the woods across the creek. Beyond the woods the blue, wavy slopes of the North Mountain lay against the sky. The upper porch ran along outside the room; he put one leg out through the open window. "Am I allowed to go on the veranda, girl? Very strict rules in this house, I’ve heard tell."

"Certainly, sir. There’s a door in the hall goes out to the upper porch," she said quickly, correcting an implied reproach on the house.

Martin drew in his foot. "That will be more convenient. And now you can unpack my trunk."

"It’s locked, sir."

"Lordy, I forgot!" His sole-leather trunk had been placed on a chair. He unlocked it and threw back the lid. "There. Now you put my clothes where you think they ought to go, and I’ll watch you, so I’ll know where to find them." He pulled off his coat and waistcoat, threwView Image of Page 155them on the bed, and sat down in the usual guest-chamber rocking-chair. Nancy took the discarded upper garments and hung them in the clothes-press. She opened the bureau drawers and stood timidly hesitating before the trunk.

"Would you like your collars an’ neckcloths kept in the upper drawer, sir?"

He was just lighting a cigar. "Follow your own notion. We have a slut of a housekeeper at home. I never know where to find anything."

She went noiselessly to work, moving back and forth between the bureau and the press. Young Colbert sat with his feet on the low window sill, enjoying his cigar.

"Does my aunt object to smoking?" he asked presently.

"Oh, no, sir! She likes to have the gen’lemen smoke."

After putting away the shirts and nightshirts, Nancy lifted the top tray and stood perplexed by the confusion she found below.

"If you don’t mind, sir, I’ll take the coats an’ pants downstairs direc’ly, an’ press ’em."

"That’s a good idea."

The shoes and boots she found stuffed full of dirty socks and soiled underwear. She made a bundle of the rumpled linen and put it outside the door. She was embarrassed because the guest watched her so closely.

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"Anybody ever tell you you’re a damned pretty girl, Nancy?" she heard as she stooped over the trunk.

"No, sir."

Martin would have done better to change his tone. But he did not see her face, and went on teasingly:

"You tryin’ to make me believe none of these country jakes around here been makin’ up to you? You can’t fool me!"

"There’s good, kind folks on Back Creek, Mr. Martin."

"You don’t say, honey!" Martin laughed, stretching his loose shoulders.

"You don’t say, honey!" Martin laughed, stretching his loose shoulders.

Nancy didn’t like his laugh, not at all! She took up an armful of coats and trousers, snatched the pile of soiled linen outside the door, and vanished so quickly that when the young man turned from throwing his cigar end out of the window, he was amazed to find her gone.

II

Mrs. Colbert had Zach sent down to the mill to ask her husband to come up early before suppertime. When his wife told him that his nephew had come to visit them, he showed neither pleasure nor annoyance. Hospitality, in those days, was one of the decencies of life. Whoever came, friend or stranger, was made welcome and cared for according to his place in the world. Henry saw that his wife was wearing her velvet gown, so he unquestioningly changed his shirt and put on his black suit. When Martin came downstairs, his uncle met him in the spacious hall, gave him a hearty handshake, and told him he was glad to see him.

Washington announced supper and wheeled the Mistress to her place at table. The miller noticed that a bottle of his best Madeira was on the sideboard. As soon as the two men were seated, Washington filled the wineglasses. Martin lifted his, saying:

"To the lady of the house, Uncle Henry," bowing to his aunt, who smiled graciously. His uncle also smiled.

Supper was served at seven o’clock in summer, and throughout the hour Sampson’s twelve-year-old Katie,View Image of Page 158barefoot, in a stiffly starched red calico dress, walked round and round the table waving a long flybrush made of a peacock’s tail. Even in town houses the flybrush was part of the table service.

Katie had seldom heard such animated conversation at supper. Mrs. Colbert had reserved all her inquiries about Loudoun County families until her husband should be present. She wished Martin to make a good impression. He was full of gossip and told a story well. He complimented his uncle on his wine, and drank it liberally. The abstemious miller drank two glasses and left the third standing full. His wife, who always had a little wine with her supper, signalled Washington to bring on another bottle.

Martin’s stories were never quite indecent, and always characteristic of old Loudoun County neighbours. When he was talking about Captain Bushwell’s fine horses, he happened to say: "Fact is, his trainers say nowadays Bushwell sleeps in the stables." Suddenly remembering that the miller was said to sleep at the mill, he caught himself up with a giggle, blushed, and ducked his shoulders.

Sapphira promptly covered his blush by asking him about Hal Gogarty, a dare-devil young Irishman whose stables rivalled Bushwell’s.

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"Gogarty? ’Course you know about his runaway last summer?"

"Runaway? I didn’t know he ever had one. It’s funny Sister Bushwell didn’t tell me about it when I saw her in town at Easter."

Gogarty, she knew, delighted in driving a coach-and-four over the roughest roads in the Blue Ridge Mountains. People down there took more interest in horses than in anything else.

Martin said Gogarty had a party of visitors up from the Tidewater country. (Loudoun County people were thought to be a little jealous of the older and richer families in Tidewater Virginia.) Gogarty had wanted to give his guests a little excitement, since they made it plain that in staying with him they were tasting frontier life. He arranged to take them on a coaching party, and asked Martin to go along and sit on the box with him, whispering that he meant to make it a pretty rough trip. They set out with six passengers.

"That drive," Martin went on, "took in some of the worst roads in the mountains, Uncle Henry, and you know the best are none too good. Nobody can handle four horses better than Gogarty. We went like the wind. Up hill and down dale. The women laughed and screamed, but Hal never let on he heard them. He’dView Image of Page 160have come out all right, too, except for a funny thing. Just as we were coming down a long hill at a pretty good pace, a young deer jumped out of the bushes right in front of the horses. Of course they reared and shied. Hal kept his head, nothing got tangled. But the right front wheel smashed on a big rock beside the road. He couldn’t stop the horses on the minute, so we bumped along on a dished wheel till the spokes flew out and we turned over. Then the horses went plumb crazy. Hal held on to the lines and sawed the bits, while I got forward and cut the traces. I thought I’d be kicked to death, and I did get a bad shin plaster. Our passengers were pretty well bumped up, but nobody was much hurt. One girl got her nose broken; she was a pretty girl, too. I was mighty sorry; so was Hal. It was that damn-fool deer made all the mischief. Who ever heard of a deer acting so?" Martin looked from his uncle to his aunt.

"Certainly, no one," his aunt replied with a twinkle. "It must have been got up on Hal’s account. Those folks from the Tidewater do hold their heads high, though I’ve never seen just why they feel called upon."

The miller had laughed at the story, but he looked at his wife, not his nephew. Martin’s laugh showed an upper front tooth of a bluish cast; it was set on a woodenView Image of Page 161pivot and did not fit his gum snugly. There was a story about this tooth, and the miller did not like to be reminded of it.

Martin, on his way to and from the hunts over in Clarke County, had found a pretty, homespun girl in the Blue Ridge. She used to meet him in the woods, and, as the mountain folk put it, "he fooled her." Her two brothers lay for him in the thickets along the road to give him a horsewhipping. When they jumped out from cover and caught his mare by the bit, he saw he was in for it.

"You’re in the right, boys," he said amiably, "but no whip. Come at me with your fists, an’ I’ll do the best I can, one against two. That’s fair enough."

They took him at his word, and did him in completely. They put their mark on him by knocking out one of his white teeth. (White teeth were not common in that tobacco-chewing country.) The brothers left him unconscious beside the road, but they let his horse go home to give the alarm.

Everyone in the Blue Ridge country and in Winchester knew the story of Martin’s blue tooth. Many of them agreed with Sapphira: that Martin deserved what he got, but that spirited young men were wild and always would be.

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Sampson’s Katie, walking round and round the supper table with her flybrush, wondered what had come over her folks. "Jist a-laffin’ an’ a-laffin’." She was so delighted, so distracted, that more than once she let her peacock feathers dip on Miss Sapphy’s high headdress. Even the Master laughed at the stories about his old neighbours; a deep laugh from the belly up, it did a body good to hear it. The Mistress’s laugh was always pleasant (when she was not laughing scornfully, as a form of reprimand): tinkling, ladylike, but with something cordially appreciative, like the occasional flash in her eyes.

Martin’s laugh was just on the edge of being vulgar— rather loose, caught-in-the-act as it were. Old Washington, standing behind his mistress’s chair, reflected that this was a pretty figger of a young man, but he wasn’t a full-growed gen’leman yet.

Katie, excited as she was by the talk, had even keener joys in anticipation. Her eyes gloated over the good things Mr. Washington carried in to the table. She knew she would get a taste of them, though Bluebell always had the best of what went back to the kitchen. Lizzie had promised to make ice cream enough for everybody. Tap had brought squares and chunks of ice in a wheelbarrow up from the icehouse,—a dark, sawdustView Image of Page 163 filled cave under one wing of the mill. Since six o’clock old Jeff had been seated behind the laundry cabin, turning the big freezer. In winter, whenever there was a snowfall, Lizzie made "snow-cream" for the Mistress— beating the fresh, clean snow into a bowl of thick cream well flavoured with sugar and brandy. But she made ice cream only on special occasions.

The family sat so long at table that the after-supper visit in the parlour was brief that night. The Mistress admitted that she was tired.

"I seldom spend such a lively day, Martin. I had a long wait for my guest, and a very pleasant tea and supper after he got here. I like having young people with me," she added, patting his hand. She rang for Washington and told him to send Nancy upstairs to turn down Mr. Martin’s bed and see that he had everything to make him comfortable.

When Martin went to his room, Nancy had already taken off the starched pillow shams and was folding up the counterpane.

"Do you like the bolster left on, sir, or jest the pillows?"

"Just the pillows. Never leave the bolster on. Take it away with you, can’t you?"

"Yes indeed, sir. Is two candles enough for you? Good night, Mr. Martin."

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As she was going toward the door, with the long bolster upright in her arms, Martin caught her round the shoulders and kissed her on the mouth. She let the heavy roll of feathers slide to the floor and pushed against his chest with both hands.

"Oh, please, sir, please!"

Though the candlelight was dim, he saw she was really frightened.

"Now, my girl, what’s there to make a fuss about? That’s the way we say good-night down where I live. You ask my aunt." She was already at the door. "Wait a minute." He pointed to the bolster lying on the carpet. "You take that thing with you, and waken me half an hour before breakfast. Don’t forget."

III

One morning when Mrs. Blake was just about to put her bread in the oven, Nancy, with a basket on her arm, appeared at the kitchen door. Bidden to come in, she did so, rather hesitatingly.

"I jist stopped for a minute, Miz’ Blake. I’m a-goin’ up to the Double S. Miss Sapphy’s sent me to pick some laurel for her." She spoke wanderingly and rather mournfully, Mrs. Blake noted.

"Is Mother not feeling well? She always likes to drive up the road and see the laurel herself."

"Yes, mam. Maybe she don’t feel right well. You’re jist puttin’ your bread in, ain’t you." There was no question in her voice, but sorrowful comment.

"The oven’s not hot yet, but it soon will be." Mrs. Blake lifted the stove lid to put in another stick.

Nancy gasped and put out her hand beseechingly. "Oh, Miz’ Blake, wait a minute, please mam do! I don’t hardly know what to say, but I’m afraid to go up the holler road this mornin’."

"Afraid? What of? Blacksnakes?"

"No’m, I ain’t afraid of no snakes."

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Mrs. Blake dropped the stick back into the woodbox. The girl was afraid of something, sure enough. One could see it in her face, and in the shivering, irresolute way she stood there.

After covering her loaves with a white cloth, Mrs. Blake took her seat by the kitchen table. "Now sit down, Nancy, and tell me what’s ailing you. Don’t stand there cowerin’, but sit down and speak out."

"Yes’m," meekly. "It ain’t I minds goin’ up there; it’s jist a nice walk. Only Miss Sapphy told me to go right before Mr. Martin."

"Well, what’s that got to do with it?"

"She knowed he was goin’ ridin’ this mornin’. He had his leggin’s on."

She stopped, and Mrs. Blake waited. In a moment Nancy burst out: "Oh, Miz’ Blake, he’ll shorely ride up there an’ overtake me in the woods!" She hid her face in her hands and began to cry. "You don’t know how it is, mam. He’s always a-pesterin’ me, ’deed he is. I has to do his room for him, an’ he’s always after me. I’m ’shamed to tell you. He’ll be shore to overtake me up in the woods. I lost heart when I seen you was about to bake. I thought maybe you’d walk along up with me."

"The baking can wait. I’ll just check the damper and go along with you. I’d like to see that laurel myView Image of Page 167self. Now you quit crying. I’ll go upstairs and slip on another dress."

Once in her own chamber, Mrs. Blake sat down to think. Her face was flushed, and her eyes blazed with indignation. She could not remember when Mrs. Colbert had not driven daily up the Hollow road to the "Double S" while the laurel was in bloom. Of course she would take her usual drive up there tomorrow, as she had done yesterday. But today she was sending Nancy. Why?

Mrs. Colbert had turned on Nancy; that was well known. Now she had the worst rake in the country staying in her house, and she was sending the girl up into the woods alone, after giving him fair warning. Did her mother really want to ruin Nancy? Could her spite go so far as that?

Rachel Blake closed her eyes and leaned her head and arms forward on her dresser top. She had known her mother to show great kindness to her servants, and, sometimes, cold cruelty. But she had never known her to do anything quite so ugly as this, if Nancy’s tale were true. But there was no time to puzzle it out now. She must meet the present occasion. She quickly changed her dress and came downstairs with a basket on her arm.

"Now step along, Nancy, and brighten up. We’ll go flower-picking to please ourselves."

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It was still early morning; a little too warm in the sun, but wonderfully soft and pleasant in the shade. The winding country road which climbed from the post office to Timber Ridge was then, and for sixty years afterward, the most beautiful stretch in the northwestern turnpike. It was cut against gravelly hillsides bright with mica and thinly overgrown with spikes of pennyroyal, patches of rue, and small shrubs. But on the left side of the road, going west, the hillsides fell abruptly down to a mountain stream flowing clear at the bottom of a winding ravine. The country people called this the Hollow, or "Holler," road. On the far side of the creek the hills were shaded by forest trees, tall and not too thickly set: hickory and chestnut and white oak, here and there hemlocks of great height. The ground beneath them was covered with bright green moss and flat mats of wintergreen full of red berries. Out of the damp moss between the exposed tree roots, where the shade was deep, the maidenhair fern grew delicately.

The road followed the ravine, climbing all the way, until at the "Double S" it swung out in four great loops round hills of solid rock; rock which the destroying armament of modern road-building has not yet succeeded in blasting away. The four loops are now denuded and ugly, but motorists, however unwillingly, must swing round them if they go on that road at all.

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In the old times, when Nancy and Mrs. Blake were alive, and for sixty years afterward, those now-naked hills were rich in verdure, the winding ravine was deep and green, the stream at the bottom flowed bright and soothingly vocal. A tramp pedlar from town, or a poor farmer, coming down on foot from his stony acres to sell a coonskin, stopped to rest here, or walked lingeringly. When the countrymen mentioned the place in speech, if it were but to say: "I’d jist got as fur as the Double e-S-S," their voices took on something slow and dreamy, as if recalling the place itself; the shade, the unstained loveliness, the pleasant feeling one had there.

Mrs. Blake and Nancy reached the curve of the first "S," and sat down on a log to rest, looking across the creek at the forest trees, which seemed even taller than they were, rising one above another on the steep hillside. There was no underbrush, except such as was prized in kings’ gardens: the laurel itself. Even in those days of slow and comfortless travel, people came across the Atlantic to see the Kalmia in bloom; the wayward wild laurel which in June covered the wooded slopes of our mountains with drifts of rose and peach and flesh colour. And in winter, when the tall trees above were grey and leafless, the laurel thickets beneath them spread green and brilliant through the frosty woods.

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"Well, Nancy," said Mrs. Blake after they had been sitting silent for a while, "we can’t do better than this. The creek’s narrow here, and we can easy get across on the stones."

They had not been long among the flowering bushes when Mrs. Blake heard the sharp click of horseshoes on the higher loops of the "Double S." She held up a warning finger. The hoofbeats came closer, and finally stopped. Presently there was a scraping sound of gravel and pebbles falling; the rider had found a gully where he could tie his horse.

The laurel-gatherers went on steadily about their work, bending down high branches and letting them fly back again. In a few moments young Martin crossed the creek. He must have seen two sunbonnets over there in the dark green bushes, but he doubtless thought Nancy had brought one of the coloured girls along with her.

Mrs. Blake pushed back her bonnet and confronted him with that square brow so like the miller’s. Martin met the surprise admirably. His face brightened; he seemed delighted. Dropping his riding whip, he snatched off his cap.

"Why, Cousin Rachel! Have I caught you at last! Here I’ve been at the mill nearly two weeks, and you’ve never once sent word you’d like to see me. Is that the way to treat kin-folks?"

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She gave him her hand, which he held longer than she liked.

"You do come to the Mill House, don’t you?" he asked.

"Yes, I do. But I’ve been occupied. At this time of year I’m canning cherries."

"You’ll let me come over and see you some night after supper? I have messages for you. I had to go to Alexandria some time back" (she knew why), "and I went on to Washington. The House was in session, and I met some of Cousin Michael’s old friends. They hadn’t enough good to say of him, really."

"You’d hear naught else of him," said Mrs. Blake dryly.

"Certainly not. But a man may be a fine fellow, and still not leave friends who will ask nothing better than to sit and talk about him six years after his death. Not many of us will leave friends who’ll be missing us after six or seven years."

"Not many," assented Mrs. Blake. "And how did the gentlemen come to know you were related to Mr. Blake by marriage?"

"I looked up his friends, naturally. You see, they were all so glad to have any news of you and how you were doing. They asked after you every time I saw them, and sent you a great many messages."

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"Thank you. Nancy and me have got our baskets full now, and your horse is pawing on the rocks over there. We’d better be going."

"Can’t I carry you home behind me? You can ride without a pillion."

"No, thank you. I partly came for the walk."

"Miss Nancy, maybe, would like to get home before her flowers wilt?" He had the brass to make this suggestion as he stooped to pick up his riding whip. "No? Then let me carry the basket to Aunt Sapphy while the flowers are fresh."

Nancy reluctantly handed him the basket. Mrs. Blake frowned, wondering why she gave in to him.

"That’s a good girl!" Martin smiled at her, ran down the ravine, and crossed the creek with the basket in his hand. In a few moments they heard his horse trotting down the road.

During the homeward walk Mrs. Blake said little, but her face was flushed and grim. You could put nothing past a Colbert, she told herself bitterly. The effrontery of this scapegrace, to go to Washington and use Michael’s name to introduce himself! Been to Alexandria lately! Of course he had, and everyone knew why! It was to get that blue tooth put in, to replace the one the girl’s brothers had knocked out of his head on the Blue RidgeView Image of Page 173road. A doctor in Alexandria was known the country round for successful pivot work. With this ignominious brand showing every time he opened his mouth, Mart Colbert had gone to Washington and nosed about the Capitol until he found some of Michael’s friends and claimed kinship. She had half a mind to tell Nancy the whole story, as a warning. But the girl was already frightened; and when she was distracted and fidgety she was likely to break things, forget orders, and exasperate her mistress.

As they parted at her gate, Mrs. Blake did say this much:

"Nancy girl, if I was you I wouldn’t go into the woods or any lonesome place while Mr. Martin is here. If you have to go off somewhere, come by, and I’ll go along. If I happen to be away, take Mary and Betty with you. I’ll give them leave."

"Yes mam, Miz’ Blake. I won’t. Thank you, mam." Nancy drew her slender shoulders together as if she were cold. Some dark apprehension in her voice told more than she could say in words.

IV

While he was dressing next morning Martin wondered whether his ride had been spoiled by accident or by conspiracy. Had his Cousin Rachel, whom he always found a bore, gone into the woods on her own account, or had the girl entreated her company? Well, no matter. He was a match for the two of them. The only person he didn’t want to offend was his Aunt Sapphy, who had urged him to visit her, and who seemed almost to be playing into his hand. As he shaved his ruddy cheeks he forgot everything except that he wanted his ham and eggs.

Mrs. Colbert was awaiting him in the dining-room. Now that Martin was here, she rose early in order to be dressed and coiffed before she joined him at breakfast. After breakfast Martin wheeled his aunt out on the porch to take the air, excused himself, and went upstairs to his room, where he expected to find Nancy making his bed. But she was not there, and the bed was still as he had left it.

Nancy was playing truant: that morning, when she came up from the miller’s room, she had caught up aView Image of Page 175basket and run away to the old cherry trees behind the smokehouse. Finding no ladder handy, she went into the smokehouse to get Pappy Jeff ’s wooden chair. Jeff was there himself, tending the fire in a big iron kettle set deep in the earth floor. All day long, through spring and summer, the smoke from hickory chunks went up to cure and season the rows of hams and bacon hanging from the rafters of the roof.

"Pappy, kin I have your cheer to climb up a cherry tree?"

Jeff rose from his squatting position. "Sho’ly, sho’ly, honey. I don’t espect no comp’ny."

But at that very moment Sampson’s tall figure darkened the doorway. "See, now," Jeff chuckled, "I ain’t done said no comp’ny, an’ here come Sampson! Run along, chile, him an’ me’s got a little bizness to fix. He don’t need no cheer. He kin squat on the flo’, like me."

Sampson carried the chair out for her and planted it under a tree. Nancy scrambled nimbly up to the first big limb, where she could sit comfortably; could reach the cherries shining all about her and bend down the branches over her head. The morning air was still so fresh that the sunlight on her bare feet and legs was grateful. She was light-hearted this morning. She loved to pick cherries, and she loved being up in a tree. SomeView Image of Page 176way no troubles followed a body up there; nothing but the foolish, dreamy, nigger side of her nature climbed the tree with her. She knew she had left half her work undone, but here nobody would find her out to scold her. The leaves over her head laughed softly in the wind; maybe they knew she had run away.

She was in no hurry to pick the cherries. She ate the ripest ones and dropped the hard ones into her basket. Presently she heard someone singing. She sat very still and gently released the branch she was holding down. He was coming from the stables, she thought.

Down by de cane-brake, close by de mill,

Dar lived a yaller gal, her name was Nancy Till.

Should she scramble down? Likely as not he would go along the path through the garden, and then he could not see her for the smokehouse. He wouldn’t come prowling around back here among the weeds. But he did. He came through the wet grass straight toward the cherry trees, his straw hat in his hand, singing that old darky song.

Martin had gone to the kitchen to complain that Nancy had not done his room, and Bluebell told him Nancy was out picking cherries. There never was a finer morning for picking cherries or anything else, heView Image of Page 177was thinking, as he went out to the kitchen garden and round the stables. He didn’t really intend to frighten the girl, though he owed her one for the trick she played him yesterday.

"Good morning, Nancy," he called up to her as he stood at the foot of the tree. "Cherries are ripe, eh? Do you know that song? Can you sing, like Bluebell?"

"No, sir. I can’t sing. I got no singin’ voice."

"Neither have I, but I sing anyhow. Can’t help it on a morning like this. Come now, you’re going to give me something, Nancy."

His tone was coaxing, but careless. She somehow didn’t feel scared of him as he stood down there, with his head thrown back. His eyes were clear this morning, and jolly. He didn’t look wicked. Maybe he only meant to tease her anyhow, and she just didn’t know how young men behaved over in the racing counties.

"Aren’t you going to give me something on such a pretty day? Let’s be friends." He held up his hand as if to help her down.

She didn’t move, but she laughed a soft darky laugh and dropped a bunch of cherries down to him.

"I don’t want cherries. They’re sour, and I want something sweet."

"No, Mr. Martin. The sour cherries is all gone. These is blackhearts."

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"Stop talking about cherries. You look awful pretty, sitting up there."

Nancy giggled nervously. Martin was smiling all the time. Maybe he was just young and foolish like, not bad.

"Who’s your beau, anyhow, Nancy Till?"

"Ain’t got none."

"You goin’ to be a sour old maid?"

"I reckon I is."

"Now who in the world is that scarecrow, comin’ on us?"

Nancy followed his eyes and looked back over her shoulder. The instant her head was turned Martin stepped lightly on the chair, caught her bare ankles, and drew her two legs about his cheeks like a frame. Nancy dropped her basket and almost fell out of the tree herself. She caught at the branch above her and clung to it.

"Oh, please get down, Mr. Martin! Do, please! Somebody’ll come along, an’ you’ll git me into trouble."

Martin laughed. "Get you into trouble? Just this? This is nothin’ but to cure toothache."

The girl had gone pale. She was frightened now, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t pull herself up with him holding her so hard. Everything had changed in a flash. He had changed, and she couldn’t collect her wits.

"Please, Mr. Martin, please let me git down."

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Martin framed his face closer and shut his eyes. "Pretty soon.—This is just nice.—Something smells sweet—like May apples." He seemed murmuring to himself, not to her, but all the time his face came closer. Her throat felt tight shut, but she knew she must scream, and she did.

"Pappy! Oh, Pappy! Come quick!"

The moment she screamed, Martin stepped down from the chair. Old Jeff came running round the end of the smokehouse, up to the foot of the tree where Nancy sat, still holding on to the limb above her. "Whassa matter, chile? Whassa matter?"

Sampson followed more deliberately, looking about him,—looking at Martin Colbert, which it was not his place to do.

Nancy said she was "took giddy like" in the tree, and was afraid she would faint and fall. Sampson got on the chair and lifted her down, but before he did so he took it in that there were already wet boot tracks on the seat. Martin, standing by, remarked that if the girl had had any sense, he would have helped her get out of the tree.

"Co’se you would, Mr. Martin," Jeff jabbered. "Young gals has dese sick spells come on ’em, an’ den dey ain’t got no haid. Come along, honey, you kin walk, Pappy’ll he’p you."

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Sampson picked up the chair and carried it back to the smokehouse. Martin strolled down the path, muttering to himself. "God, I’d rather it had been any other nigger on the place! That mill-hand don’t know where he belongs. If ever he looks me in the face like that again, I’ll break his head for him. The niggers here don’t know their place, not one of ’em."

That afternoon Martin went for a ride. He was a trifle uncomfortable in mind. He knew he had made a blunder. He hadn’t meant to do more than tease her. But after he caught her and felt against his cheeks the shiver that went over her warm flesh, he lost his head for an instant. He knew she must be pursued carelessly and taken at the right moment, off her guard. He was vexed that he had let a pleasant contact, an intoxicating fragrance, run away with him. Never mind; he would keep at a distance for a while, as if he had forgotten the cherry tree.

Riding home by the road from the post office, he spied Bluebell over yonder in the big vegetable garden. Immediately he dismounted and led his horse across the field toward her.

"Hello, Bluebell, what are you up to?"

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"I’se a-pickin’ lettuce fo’ yo’ supper, Mr. Martin." The slim black girl straightened up and stood with her bare feet wide apart between rows of lettuce.

"You don’t get outdoors much, do you? I always see you in the kitchen."

"Yes, sir. I’se mos’ly heppin’ Mammy." This was spoken plaintively, as if she had a hard life.

Martin laughed. He knew she was useless, except as a companion to Lizzie.

"You find time to sing, though. Aunt Sapphy’s going to have you and Lizzie come into the parlour and sing for me some night. I like to hear you. Maybe I could teach you some new songs. I’m not just crazy about these hymn tunes."

Bluebell grinned. "Oh, we sings ‘Home, Sweet Home,’ an’ ‘The Gipsy’s Warming.’"

Martin chuckled. "It’s ‘warning,’ not ‘warming,’ my girl."

"Yes, sir. Seems jist alike when you sings it."

"Look-a-here, Bluebell, why don’t they send you up to fix my room and make my bed for me? That yaller gal’s no account, and solemn as a funeral. I don’t like solemn girls around me."

Bluebell giggled. "Dey says how I ain’t so handy wid de bedrooms. Marster, he won’t let me come a-nigh hisView Image of Page 182room at de mill. He prefer Nancy." She gave a sly suggestiveness to "prefer," lifted her eyebrows and twisted her shoulders languidly.

"He does? I can’t understand that. She don’t suit me." Martin patted his restive horse to quiet him. "You say she always takes care of the mill room for Uncle Henry?"

"’Deed she do. He won’t have nobody else roun’ him. Oh Lawdy no! I dassen’ set foot in de place. Yes sir, Nancy do all de housekeepin’ at de mill. Why, ev’ybody know dat. She carry down his washin’ an’ shine his brass mugs, an’ take him bowkays. Laws, ah don’ know what all she don’ do at de mil-l-l."

"Damn this horse! Give me some of that green stuff to keep him still, will you?" Martin was interested.

But Bluebell took a twist of brown paper from a pocket in her very full skirt and produced a lump of crumbly brown sugar.

"Dis’ll quiet him. I mos’ly carries a little to keep on han’."

Martin winked. "Comes in handy to be round the kitchen, don’t it? But tell me, don’t that make the other girls jealous, her going to the mill so much? Are you and Nancy good friends?"

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"We gits along," languidly. "We’s mos’ly friendly. Mammy don’ have no patience wid her, ’cause she’s stuck up, havin’ white blood. When de Missus use’ to favour her terribul, dat set all de culled folks agin her. But it ain’t so now no mo’. Miss Sapphy turned on Nancy some while back."

"Why, what had Nancy done?"

Bluebell shrugged indifferently.

"Ah don’ know. Ah don’ foller nobody’s doin’s. Some folks s’picions de Marster favour her now, an’ de Missus don’ relish her goin’ down to de mill so much. Ah don’ know. Ah never listens to no talk."

"That’s a good rule. And you’re a smart girl, Belle. Don’t anybody round here call you Belle?"

"No, sah. Dey always calls me Bluebell. Dey’s anoder Belle on de place; Sampson’s wife, what is de haid mill-han’."

"Then I’ll call you Bluebell. I certainly wouldn’t call you by the name of anything belongin’ to that Sampson. Now I’m going to ask Aunt Sapphy to let you fix my room for me. The yaller gal puts on too many airs."

Martin turned and led his horse toward the hitchpost. He walked rapidly, and there was more energy in his step than common. When little Zach ran up to take his bridle, he threw him the reins without a glance, butView Image of Page 184he looked very angry, and he was talking out loud to himself. Zach caught a few words:

"By God, if I thought that old sinner had been there before me—"

The little nigger boy stared after the young man, wondering what had put him out.

BOOK SIX

Sampson Speaks to the Master

BOOK VI

I

Though Martin’s visit proved to be a long one, his uncle saw very little of him. He never asked the young man to come down to the mill; indeed, he put his nephew out of his mind as much as possible. He realized that it meant a great deal to Sapphira to have this foolish, lively young fellow about the place. Certainly, Martin was very attentive to her; chatted with her on the porch in the morning, had tea with her in the afternoon, played cribbage with her after supper.

One night when the miller was sitting at his reading-table, he heard a knock at his door. In answer to his "Come in," Sampson appeared.

"Yes, Sampson. What is it?"

The tall mulatto stood uneasily before him. "Master Henry, I’d like to speak to you about something I got on my mind, but I don’t rightly know if it’s my place to."

"Speak out, Sampson."

"Mr. Henry, I’m ’fraid Mr. Martin worries Nancy a right smart."

The miller looked up and frowned. "Worries her? What do you mean? How worries her?"

"Well, sir, you know how them young fellers is. They likes to fool round a pretty girl, even if she’s coloured. I don’t say he means no harm, but she ain’t used to them ways, an’ she seems kind-a scared-like all the time. I know you wouldn’t want to see harm befall her."

"Shut the door there behind you, Sampson. Now tell me: have you seen anything amiss?"

"Not rightly speaking, sir. But awhile back Nancy was pickin’ cherries in one of them big trees behind the smokehouse. Me an’ Jeff was in the smokehouse, an’ we heard her holler like she was hurt or somethin’. We both run out an’ seen Mr. Martin standin’ at the foot of the tree. Before we come, he’d been standin’ on the cheer Nancy took to climb up with. I seen the mud off his boots on the cheer-bottom. The gal was scared fo’ sho’, Mr. Henry. She was tremblin’ like a leaf an’ taken sick like. I took her down, an’ Jeff hepped her to the cabin. I may be wrong, but I didn’t like it."

The miller’s face had taken on a dark flush. "I’ll keep an eye on my nephew, Sampson. Sometimes a girl will make a fuss over nothing, you know."

"Yes, sir. I never seen Nancy do nothin’ free nor unbecomin’ when she comes an’ goes."

"Nor have I. She’s a good girl, and I’ll look after her."

"Thank you, sir. Good night, Mr. Henry." Sampson withdrew, but his face told that he was not reassured.

The miller closed his book and began to move slowly about the room. In a flash he realized that from the first he had distrusted his nephew, though he had never thought of him in connection with Nancy. To him Nancy was scarcely more than a child. It was his habit to refer to her in that way. In reality, of course, she was a young woman. His three daughters had married when they were younger than Nancy was now. Wrath flamed up in him as he paced the floor; against his nephew and the father who begot him, against all his brothers and the Colbert blood. His own father he could hold in reverence; he was an honest man, and the woman who shared his laborious and thrifty life was a good woman. But there must have been bad blood in the Colberts back on the other side of the water, and it had come to light in his three brothers and their sons. He knew the family inheritance well enough. He had his share of it. But since his marriage he had never let it get the better of him. He had kept his marriage vows as he would keep any other contract.

The miller got very little sleep that night. When the first blush of the early summer dawn showed above the mountain, he rose, put on his long white cotton milling coat, and went to bathe in the shallow pool that always lay under the big mill-wheel. This was his custom, afterView Image of Page 191the hot, close nights which often made sleep unrefreshing in summer. The chill of the water, and the rays of gold which soon touched the distant hills before the sun appeared, restored his feeling of physical vigour. He came back to his room, leaving wet footprints on the floury floor behind him. Having dressed and shaved, he put on his hat and walked down along the mill-race toward the dam. He did not know why, but he felt strongly disinclined to see Nancy this morning. He did not wish to be there when she came to the mill; it would not be the same as yesterday. Something disturbing had come between them since then.

For years, ever since she was a child, Nancy had seemed to him more like an influence than a person. She came in and out of the mill like a soft spring breeze; a shy, devoted creature who touched everything so lightly. Never before had anyone divined all his little whims and preferences, and been eager to gratify them. And it was for love, from dutiful affection. She had nothing to gain beyond the pleasure of seeing him pleased.

Now that he must see her as a woman, enticing to men, he shrank from seeing her at all. Something was lost out of that sweet companionship; for companionship it had been, though it was but a smile and a glance, a greeting in the fresh morning hours.

II

It was a little past midnight, and Sapphira had been asleep for an hour or more, when she was rudely awakened. Nancy had burst in at her door and was calling out, like someone startled.

"Yes, Miss Sapphy, here I is. Whassa matter, mam?"

"Nothing at all is the matter. Have you gone crazy, Nancy, waking me up out of my sleep like this?"

"Oh, you called out, Missy. You sho’ly did. An’ I was havin’ bad dreams about you."

"Be more careful what you eat, and don’t come to me with your bad dreams. You know if I’m once wakened it’s hard for me to get to sleep again."

"I’m dreadful sorry, Missy. I was sure I heard you callin’, an’ I feared you was taken bad, maybe. No, mam, I won’t come in thoughtless agin. Maybe I better run down to Ma’s cabin tonight, if I’m a-goin’ to be res’less an’ disturb you?"

"You go right back to your own bed, and control yourself properly. I won’t have such crazy behaviour."

"Yes, mam." Nancy went out and closed the door softly behind her. She sat down on her pallet andView Image of Page 193wrapped a quilt about her shoulders. She did not lie down; she would wait until it was time to roll up her bed and put it in the back closet. Her rushing in upon her mistress had been a ruse. She had heard no call, but she had heard something—a cautious, barefoot step on the wide stairway which led from the upper chambers down into the open hall where she lay on her pallet before the Mistress’s door. The stair treads always creaked a little; the dampness of the air kept the wood from drying thoroughly.

When the Mistress sent her back to bed, Nancy told herself that if she heard that stealthy step again, she would run down the hall and out the back door, over to her mammy’s cabin. She believed someone upstairs was listening as intently as she. It was a horrible feeling. If she had the start of him, she knew she could outrun him. But then there was the curved oak banister of the stairway, smooth as glass; anybody could slide down it without making a sound. Once he was in the hall, she wouldn’t have the start of him. He would be there.

At last the first grey daylight came through the wide windows at the foot of the stairs. It gave her a feeling of safety so sweet that she cuddled her head in her pillow and dozed a little. For hours the object of her terror had been fast asleep in his upstairs chamber. When he heard View Image of Page 194the sound of voices in his aunt’s room, he had shrugged his shoulders and gone back to bed.

As the grey light grew stronger, Nancy rose very softly and dressed,—a simple process, since in summer she went barefoot and slept in her sleeveless "shimmy" (chemise). She had only to tie her petticoat round her waist and slip her calico dress over her head. She tiptoed down the long hall and ran out into the flower garden. The sun was just coming up over the mountain. Fleecy pink clouds were scattered about the sky, and the distant hills had turned gold. A curling mist hung over the low meadows down by the mill dam. The dew from the shrubbery was dripping in splashes upon the brick walks, and on the boxwood hedges the silvery spiderwebs trembled with glistening waterdrops. The tea roses and bleeding-hearts hung heavy, as if they would never rise again. Nobody was stirring in the negro cabins; their overgrowth of trumpet vines and gourd vines was so wet that by running into them you could take a shower bath. It made your skin pretty, washing your face and arms in the dew.

Oh, this was a beautiful place! Nancy didn’t believe there was a lovelier spot in the world than this right here. She felt so joyful that her heart beat as hard as it did last night when she was scared. She loved everybodyView Image of Page 195in those vine-covered cabins, everybody. This morning she would be glad to see even fat Lizzie and Bluebell. After all, they were home folks. And down yonder was the mill, "and the Master so kind and so true." That was in a song Miss Sapphy used to sing before she got sick, and to Nancy those words had always meant Mister Henry. Was it possible that she might have lost all this happiness last night, the night just gone? But it was still hers: the home folks and the home place and the precious feeling of belonging here. Maybe that fright back there in the dark hall had been just a bad dream. Out here it didn’t seem true.

Look-a-there! the smoke was coming out of Sampson’s chimley a’ready. He was up, getting breakfast for his children, and his wife, who managed to be sick most of the time. All the niggers knew that Sampson not only got the breakfast: in the small hours of the night he baked all the bread for his family. What patience the man had! And he never raised his low, kind voice against anybody.

One morning, soon after the above incident, the miller found his wife sitting alone at breakfast, and learned that his nephew had ridden off to Winchester for the day.

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"I hope he won’t use my horse too hard," he remarked. "When is he coming back?"

"Tomorrow, I think."

The miller was silent for a moment, then said with a shade of impatience, "How long is Mart going to hang around here, anyway?"

"We can’t very well ask our kin how long they intend to stay with us, can we?"

"Maybe not, but he’s been here about six weeks, and that’s a long visit."

Sapphira smiled. "I remember my father used to tell how Benjamin Franklin said: ‘Hospitality, like fish, stinks after three days.’ That may be true in the North, but we don’t feel that way in Virginia, I hope."

"Sapphira, I’ve had about enough of Martin’s company. I never liked his father’s ways, and I don’t like his. What does he want here, anyway?"

"Maybe the boy wants a refuge,—from creditors."

"Or from the men of families where he’s brought disgrace," her husband muttered.

She shook her finger at him. "Now, don’t be too hard on him, Henry. Your brothers were all like that, you know. And Martin has a gentlemanly side which they had not. I am certainly not very lively company for a young blade to spend his evenings with, but if he is dullView Image of Page 197here he never shows it. Certainly I shall miss him when he is gone."

"Well, if you take pleasure in his company, I shan’t say anything. But he will demoralize the servants. His way with the young darkies is too free. He goes into the woods across the creek to hunt mushrooms with that trifling Bluebell."

"If the servants go wrong from any visitor in the house, it’s their own fault. I think they know their place better. Bluebell is a lazy, lying nigger as ever was, but I’ve found her smart enough to look out for herself. I doubt whether Martin would so demean himself, but it’s no affair of mine." Sapphira laughed softly. It was almost as good as a play, she was thinking; the way whenever she and her husband were thinking of Nancy, they invariably talked about Bluebell.

III

Haying time was coming on, and now the miller turned farmer. He left the mill to Sampson and spent the mornings about the barns and stables; looking after the condition of the horses, mending the racks, seeing that Taylor cleared the haylofts of old straw and aired them for the new crop. Every year, in haying time and harvest, he gave his mill-wheels a rest. He believed the work in the open air was good for his health.

As he left the barn one morning, and was going through the negro quarters, he passed by the laundry cabin where Nancy did fine laundering for the Mistress. Hearing voices within, the girl’s voice and his nephew’s, he stopped short by the rain-barrel and listened.

Martin was speaking in a drawling, bantering way. "How about my fine shirts you were going to wash and iron for me, Miss Nancy Till?"

"Yes, sir. The Mistress told me to. If you’ll please put ’em out in the hall for me, I’ll do ’em up today."

"Now look-a-here, my girl, you just hunt in the press and find them for yourself. I don’t keep account of my shirts. If you take care of my room, you look out for my washing. I ain’t my own chambermaid."

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The miller stepped forward and glanced in at the open door. Nancy was at the ironing-board, her eyes fixed on her work. Martin, in his riding breeches, was lounging on an old broken chair, his back against the wall and his legs stretched out in front of him. His face was turned away, but his lordly, lazy attitude and the rough familiarity of his voice were not lost upon his uncle. Colbert set his teeth and hurried through the yard down to the mill.

"Sampson," he called, "this fine weather won’t last much longer, maybe. I told Taylor we would begin on the long meadow tomorrow, and you and me will go out with the men. It’ll likely be a hot day, and we must get to work early, before the grass is dry. The women can turn it afterward. You’ll have to go and hunt up the scythes. It’s Taylor’s business, but he hasn’t done it. I could only find six, and there’ll be eight of us in the field."

Sampson smiled reassuringly. "I ’specs I can find ’em, sir. The boys sneaks ’em away fur one thing an’ another. But I’ll find ’em."

Early the next morning Mrs. Blake’s little girls were awakened by the ringing sound of whetstones on scythe blades. The long meadow between their house and the mill was always the first field to be cut. The mowers had assembled down by the rail fence, where the sassafrasView Image of Page 200bushes screened the field from Back Creek. The miller went round the group and felt the edge of every blade. "Now, boys, I reckon we’re ready to begin. Look out and keep the line straight."

The darkies scattered to their places, spat into their palms, and gripped the hand-holds. Colbert and Sampson were in the centre, and after the Master had cut the first swath the men threw themselves into the easy position of practised mowers, and the long grass began to fall. They advanced from east to west, steadily, like a good team at the plough. Colbert allowed only the seasoned mowers to work with him; the young fellows he hired out in hay-time to learn under his neighbours. As the darkies swung their scythes, they made a deep sound from the chest, the "Huh-huh" they made when they chopped wood; but they never paused except to spit into their hands.

The sun had been up several hours when the line of mowers got as far as the little iron spring which seeped up in the meadow, with a patch of tiger lilies growing round it. Here the Master beckoned the hands to come and take a drink. The water was cold and strongly flavoured with iron. The darkies passed the gourd around more than once, and stood easy; straightening their backs, and wiping their sweaty faces on shirt-sleevesView Image of Page 201already wringing wet. Every man of them kept an old hat of some sort on his head. After they had rested a few minutes, they pulled up their breeches at the waist and went back to their places. When the line moved on, the black-spotted orange lilies stood straight and tall above the fallen grass.

By and by the men began to look up anxiously at the sun: only a little spell now. They kept in line, but they certainly advanced more slowly. A cheering "Halloo" rang out across the field. The men stopped and straightened up with a grateful sigh, looking toward the Mill House stile. Yonder came young Martin, carrying in each hand a gallon jug, and behind him came Nancy and Bluebell and Nelly and Trudy and little Zach, all with baskets.

It was the custom for the mowers to have their dinner in the field. The scythes were left beside the swath last cut, and the hands gathered in the shade under a wide-spreading maple tree. In every hayfield one big tree was left for that purpose. It was always called "the mowers’ tree."

After they had spread a red tablecloth on the grass and laid out the provisions, the women went away. The jugs Martin had brought were full of cold tea. The Master poured himself a full gourd, but the men drank from the jug,—it went round from mouth to mouth.

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As they fell to their dinner, a pitiful figure of a negro came toward the group, not approaching directly, but circling to right and left and looking down in the grass as if he were hunting for some lost object. The darkies grinned and nudged one another. "Dar’s Tansy Dave. ’Bout time he was drappin’ ’long."

The Master spoke to Sampson. "Call him up, poor fellow."

In a voice that was quiet and yet carried far, the yellow man called: "Master says hurry up, Dave, or there won’t be nothin’ left."

The scarecrow man, bare-legged, his pants torn away to the knee, his shirt a dirty rag, approached slowly, his head hanging down. He muttered something about "been havin’ a sort-a spell lately, an’ didn’t know as he ought-a eat nothin’."

The Master spoke up: "This is a good dinner, Dave. Set down an’ eat all you want. We’ve got plenty."

Dave’s mournful face brightened as he looked hungrily at what was spread on the red cloth. He took the chunks of corn bread and fried middling meat Sampson handed him, and drew apart from the others; just on the edge of the shade line he sat down and ate his food.

After dinner the hands lay under the tree and slept for an hour; lay on their backs, with their old hats overView Image of Page 203their faces. The miller sat leaning against the trunk and watched the ragged visitor steal across the mown field and hide himself in the sassafras bushes along the rail fence. He was thinking it was a dreary business to be responsible for other folks’ lives. Time was when poor Dave, that half-witted ghost of a man, was one of the happiest boys on the place. He and Tap were the ringleaders in all the farm festivals. Dave was very clever with his mouth-organ, and he used to play for the darkies to dance on the hard-packed earth in the back yard. It was six years now since he began to go to pieces.

Six years ago a lady from Baltimore, Mrs. Morrison, had come to board with a relative three miles down the creek. She brought with her her coloured maid, Susanna, who used to come over to dance with the Colbert darkies. She was a taking wench, with big soft eyes and an irresistible giggle—light on her feet, and a pretty dancer. Colbert and Sapphira sometimes went out to watch her dance, while Dave played his mouth-organ, and the other darkies "patted" with their hands. Dave always escorted her home. Lizzie told the Mistress that every night after supper Dave changed his shirt and went down the creek to court Susanna, and before he started he rolled over and over in the tansy bed, "to make hisself smell sweet." The nickname "Tansy Dave"View Image of Page 204had stuck to him long after he ceased to go a-courting, and after he no longer tried to make hisself smell sweet.

When Mrs. Morrison was packing to go back to the city, Dave came to Sapphira and begged her to buy Susanna, so that he could marry her. They were "promised," he said, and Susanna wanted to stay. At first his mistress laughed at him. But he cried like a little boy; threw himself on the floor and declared he "would run away and foller her if she was took off on the cars." Mrs. Colbert was melted by the boy’s desperation; she told him to get up and behave himself, and she would think it over. She did think it over, and talked about it to Henry that night. Both agreed it would be foolish to buy another girl, when they had too many already. But early next morning Sapphira wakened her husband to tell him she had decided to buy Susanna if the woman would take a reasonable price for her. The girl was a good seamstress, and she could do all the fine sewing about the house.

Sapphira ordered the carriage and drove away soon after breakfast. The miller doubted her success, but he said nothing. Susanna’s mistress had once come to the Baptist church, and he did not like her arrogant manner, or the look of her. She had a small, hard face, white as flour.

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When Sapphira returned, she sent down to the mill for her husband. She was greatly put out. The woman had told her at once that she thoroughly disapproved of slave-owning. When her late husband’s shipping interests took him from Bath, Maine, to Baltimore, she had found it necessary to purchase two negroes for house service. In Baltimore there was no other way to get good servants. She would not sell Susanna at any price. The girl was trained for work in a town house. And after she got back to Baltimore she would never think of this crazy nigger again.

Susanna and her mistress left the neighbourhood, and Dave ran away as he had threatened. He walked to Winchester and got on the "cars." When he reached Harpers Ferry and was told he must wait there for the big train that went on to Washington, he lost heart. After a few days he came wandering home, but he was never the same boy again. He went from bad to worse; spent days, often weeks, in the mountains, wherever there was a still and moonshine whisky. Nowadays he lived in the mountains the summer through. In the fall he came down to the mill to borrow Sampson’s gun and go hunting. Dave could perfectly imitate the call of the wild turkey, and he brought those wary birds home for the table; the Mistress was very fond of them. ColbertView Image of Page 206often wondered at Sapphira’s forbearance with Dave. When he traded his clothes for whisky and slunk home without a shirt to his back, she would make him go wash himself in the creek, burn his rags, and put on a whole pair of pants and a new "hickory" shirt. Soon he would disappear again and not come back till winter. Taylor was pretty sure to find him in the barn some morning after the first hard freeze, buried deep in the hay. Sapphira saw that he was clothed and fed through the winter. Even Lizzie had pity on him, but she would not let him come into the kitchen to eat with the other hands. She filled a little bucket with victuals and handed it out to him.

The men finished cutting the long meadow before sundown. That night the miller excused himself early from the supper table, admitting that he was tired. He would "limber up" in a few days, he told his wife, but tonight his arms and back ached from unaccustomed exercise.

Once in his room at the mill, he threw himself upon his bed and lay still, watching the lingering twilight die. He looked forward to the next two weeks, which would take the soreness out of his back and mind. It was goodView Image of Page 207for him to be out in the fields; to feel his strength drunk up by the earth and sun, and to set the pace for younger men at cutting grass and wheat.

This was a troubled time for Henry Colbert when he was alone with his thoughts. He was too often preoccupied with what Sampson had told him. Now and then the actual realization of Martin’s designs would flash into his mind. The poison in the young scamp’s blood seemed to stir something in his own. The Colbert in him threatened to raise its head after long hibernation. Not that he was afraid of himself. For nothing on earth, even by a glance, would he trouble that sweet confidence and affection which had been a comfort to him for so long. But it was not now the comforting thing it had been. Now he tried to avoid Nancy. Her light step on the old ax-dressed boards of the mill floor, her morning smile, did not bring the lift of spirit they used to bring.

He told himself that in trying to keep a close watch on Martin, he had begun to see through Martin’s eyes. Sometimes in his sleep that preoccupation with Martin, the sense of almost being Martin, came over him like a black spell.

How was he to get rid of the fellow? In those days, and in that country, a man could not put his nephew out of the house unless he had flagrantly outraged hospitality.View Image of Page 208 The miller had thought seriously of trying to buy Martin off. That seemed the likeliest possibility, though the approach would be awkward: offering a near kinsman money to clear out of the neighbourhood. Nevertheless he had gone to Winchester the week before the hay was ripe, and had drawn from the bank a larger sum of money than he customarily kept on hand. It was now locked in his secretary drawer. He liked to feel that it was there, ready.

Before he undressed for the night Colbert took from the shelf a book he often read, John Bunyan’s Holy War,—a copy printed in Glasgow in 1763. He opened the book at a passage relating to the state of the town of Mansoul after Diabolus had entered her gates and taken up his rule there:

"Also things began to grow scarce in Mansoul: now the things that her soul lusted after were departing from her. Upon all her pleasant things there was a blast, and a burning instead of a beauty. Wrinkles now, and some shews of the shadow of death, were upon the inhabitants of Mansoul. And now, O how glad would Mansoul have been to enjoyed quietness and satisfaction of mind, though joined with the meanest condition in the world."

Next he turned to the pages describing the state of Mansoul after she had been retaken and reclaimed by Prince Emmanuel, the Son of God:

"When the town of Mansoul had thus far rid themselves of their enemies, and of the troublers of their peace, a strict commandment was given out, that yet my Lord Willbewill, should search for, and do his best, to apprehend what Diabolonians were yet alive in Mansoul. . . . He also apprehended Carnal-sense, and put him in hold; but how it came about I cannot tell, but he brake prison and made his escape; yea, and the bold villain will not yet quit the town, but lurks in the Diabolonian Dens at days, and haunts like a Ghost, honest men’s houses at nights."

In this book he found consolation. An honest man, who had suffered much, was speaking to him of things about which he could not unbosom himself to anyone.

BOOK SEVEN

Nancy's Flight

BOOK VII

I

The wheat harvest was nearly over. Nancy and her companions had been carrying dinner to the mowers, in the big wheat field on the other side of Back Creek. On her way home Nancy slipped from the company and ran through Mrs. Blake’s yard to her kitchen door. Mary and Betty had finished washing the dishes, and their mother was preparing to roast coffee beans in the oven. After one look at Nancy’s face, she told the children they could go down the road and watch Grandfather cutting his wheat. When they were gone, she turned to the yellow girl.

"What’s the matter now, child? Has that scamp been pestering you again? Set down and tell me."

Nancy dropped into a chair. "Oh, I’m most drove out-a my mind, I cain’t bear it no longer, ’deed I cain’t! I gets no rest night nor day. I’m goin’ to throw myself into the millpawnd, I am!" She bowed her head on her arms and broke into sobs.

"Hush, hush! Don’t talk so, Nancy, it’s wicked. Stop your crying, and tell me about it." She stood over the girl, stroking her quivering shoulders until the sobsView Image of Page 213grew more throaty and, as it were, dried up. Nancy lifted her face.

"Miz’ Blake, you’s the only one I got to talk to. He’s just after me night an’ day, till I wisht I’d never been bawn."

"I guess a good many of us wish that, sometimes. But we come right again, and bear our lot. Have you said anything to my father?"

"How could I, Miz’ Blake? I’d die a’ shame to speak it before that good ole man. I got nobody I kin come to but you."

"Then you must try to make it plain to me, Nancy. Can’t you keep out of his way?"

"It’s worst at night, Miz’ Blake. You know I sleeps outside Miss Sapphy’s door, an’ he’s right over me, at the top of the stairs. One night I heard him comin’ down the stairs in his bare feet, an’ I jumped up an’ run into the Mistress’s room, makin’ out I thought I heered her callin’ me. She was right cross ’cause I’d waked her up, and sent me back to my bed, an’ I layed there awake till mornin’. If I was to sleep sound, he could slip in to me any time. If I hollered, the Mistress would put it all on me; she’d say I done somethin’ to make him think I was a bad girl. Another time I heard him slippin’ down at night, an’ I jumped an’ run to old Mr. Washington.View Image of Page 214You know he sleeps on a cot in the wine closet. He give me his bed, an’ he set up all night in the hall. So I cain’t run in to the Mistress agin, an’ I hates to go to Mr. Washington. He needs his rest. Why, Miz’ Blake, there ain’t no stoppin’ Mr. Martin. He kin jist slip into my bed any night if I happens to fall asleep. I got nobody to call to. I cain’t do nothin’!"

Here Nancy sprang from her chair and stood with her hands pressed against her forehead and her blue-black hair.

"I tell you, I’d druther drown myself before he got at me than after! Only I want somebody as’ll speak up for me to the Master, an’ tell him I didn’t do it from wickedness. Please, mam, tell him how I was drove to it."

When she spoke of the Master, she began to cry again, and could not go on.

Presently Mrs. Blake said quietly but resolutely: "I’m a-going to get you away from all this, Nancy. Mind you, no more talk about the mill dam. You’re young and have life before you. I’ve seen how things were going, and I’ve been figuring on how to get you away from the mill. You’ve not been real happy over there for a good while back."

"No’m, not since she turned on me." Nancy spoke absently, as if talking to herself. "It ain’t nothing she doesView Image of Page 215to me. I don’t know what it is, but she never looks at me no more. She’s jist turned on me."

Mrs. Blake took her by the shoulders, as if to rouse her. "Now you must listen to me, Nancy. Would you be brave enough to go away from here to a better place, where you’d be safe? I can’t run Mart Colbert out of the neighbourhood, but I think I can get you away. Would you go?"

"I’d go anywheres to git away from him. I’d sooner go down to Georgia an’ pick cotton, ’deed I would."

"It won’t come to that, Nancy. Just you hold out a little longer, and I’ll get you out of these troubles. Have you said anything to Till?"

Nancy looked up at her with wondering, startled eyes. "To Maw? How could I, mam?"

Mrs. Blake turned away and began to put slow wood in her stove to get on with her roasting. "Here come my girls up the road. You better let them go along home with you. Maybe Mother’s missed you, but if they’re with you, nothing will be said."

After Nancy and the children were gone, Mrs. Blake sat down to watch over the pans of browning coffee. She understood why Nancy did not go to Till for advice and protection. Till had been a Dodderidge before ever she was Nancy’s mother. In Till’s mind, her first dutyView Image of Page 216 was to her mistress. Ever since Mrs. Colbert had become an invalid, Till’s position in the house was all-important; and position was dear to her. Long ago Matchem had taught her to "value her place," and that became her rule of life. Anything that made trouble between her and the Mistress would wreck the order of the household.

Nancy had come into the world by accident; the other relation, that with the Dodderidges, Till regarded as one of the fixed conditions you were born into. Beginning with Jezebel, her kin had lived under the roof and protection of that family for four generations. It was their natural place in the world.

Yes, Mrs. Blake knew why Till shut her eyes to what was going on over at the Mill House. And she realized once more that she herself was by nature incapable of understanding her mother. Ever since she could remember, she had seen her mother show shades of kindness and cruelty which seemed to her purely whimsical. At this moment Mrs. Blake could not for the life of her say whether Mrs. Colbert had invited this scapegrace to her house with the deliberate purpose of bringing harm to Nancy, or whether she had asked him merely for the sake of his company, and was now ready to tolerate anything that might amuse him and thus prolong his stay.View Image of Page 217This was quite possible, since Mrs. Colbert, though often generous, was entirely self-centred and thought of other people only in their relation to herself. She was born that way, and had been brought up that way.

Yet one must admit inconsistencies. There was her singular indulgence with Tansy Dave, her real affection for Till and old Jezebel, her patience with Sampson’s lazy wife. Even now, from her chair, she took some part in all the celebrations that darkies love. She liked to see them happy. On Christmas morning she sat in the long hall and had all the men on the place come in to get their presents and their Christmas drink. She served each man a strong toddy in one of the big glass tumblers that had been her father’s. When Tap, the mill boy, smacked his lips and said: "Miss Sapphy, if my mammy’s titty had a-tasted like that, I never would a-got weaned," she laughed as if she had never heard the old joke before.

When the darkies were sick, she doctored them, sent linen for the new babies and had them brought for her to see as soon as the mother was up and about. Recalling these things and trying to be fair to her mother, Mrs. Blake suddenly rose from her chair and said aloud:

"No, it ain’t put on; she believes in it, and they believe in it. But it ain’t right."

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II

By the next morning’s stage Mrs. Bywaters sent an important letter to David Fairhead, asking him to come out to Back Creek as soon as possible. He rode up to her gate next evening on his old grey horse. That night Mrs. Blake and Mr. Whitford, the carpenter, met at the post office to confer with him. When they were seated in the postmistress’s private parlour, where they would not be disturbed, Mrs. Blake revealed her bold purpose. Mrs. Bywaters sat by to encourage her.

To the two women the plan seemed a desperate undertaking. No negro slave had ever run away from Back Creek, or from Hayfield, or Round Hill, or even from Winchester. But Mr. Fairhead was reassuring. He told them the underground railroad was now busier than ever before. The severe Fugitive Slave Law, passed six years ago, had by no means prevented slaves from running away. Its very injustice had created new sympathizers for fugitives, and opened new avenues of escape. From as far away as Louisiana, negroes were now reaching Canada; the railroads and the lake steamboats helped them. If a negro once got into Pennsylvania or Ohio, he seldom failed to go through.

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Fairhead explained to Mrs. Blake how simple it would be to get Nancy from Winchester to Martinsburg, and from there into Pennsylvania. While she sat by, he wrote a letter to his cousin in Martinsburg, who would be very glad to assist her. This letter would go off by the stage tomorrow morning.

Mr. Whitford said he could manage for Mrs. Blake as far as Winchester. He had a light canvas-covered spring-wagon in which he carried coffins to distant burying-grounds. Chairs for two women could be put inside under the canvas, and they could make the drive to town unseen by anyone. Travelling late at night, they would reach Winchester in good time to take the morning stage for Martinsburg.

Mrs. Blake went home greatly reassured. But the hardest thing to arrange, the interview she most dreaded, was still before her.

The following night she set out for the mill by the creek road, where she would scarcely be likely to meet any of the house servants. Once at the mill, she went to the north window of her father’s room. He was within, sitting at his table; not reading, but gazing moodily at the floor.

"Can I come in, Father?" she asked quietly.

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"Is that you, Rachel? Wait a minute." He came out to the platform where the wagons were unloaded, took her hand, and led her through the dark passage to his room. When he closed the door he shot the bolt.

Mrs. Blake sat down and drew a long breath. "Well, Father, I’ve come over to have a talk with you. I blame myself I didn’t come before this. I reckon you know what it’s about."

She looked to him for recognition, but he sat frowning at the floor. It tried her that he gave her no encouragement, when he certainly must know what was on her mind. She was tired, and the road round by the creek had seemed long.

"Father," she broke out indignantly, "are you going to stand by and see a good girl brought to ruin without lifting a finger?"

The miller crossed the room and shut down the open window. His face had flushed red, and so had Mrs. Blake’s. She went on with some heat.

"You surely know that rake Mart Colbert is after Nancy day and night. He’ll have her, in the end. She’s a good girl, but the Colbert men never let anything get away. He’ll catch her somewhere, and force her."

Her father clenched his two powerful fists. "No he won’t! It’s only by the mercy of God I haven’t strangled the life out of him before now."

"Then why don’t you do something to save her?"

He made no reply. His daughter sat watching him in astonishment. His darkly flushed face, his clenched hands gave her no clue to what was going on in his mind; struggle of some sort, certainly. She had always known him quick to act, had never seen him like this before.

"I may be overstepping my duty," she said at last, "but I couldn’t sit with my hands folded and see what’s going on here. She’s come to me for help, and I couldn’t hold back. I’m a-going to get Nancy away from here and on the road to freedom."

He looked up now, and met her eyes with a flash in his own. "If only it were possible, Rachel—"

"Well, it is possible. Mr. Fairhead’s offered to help me. It ain’t so hard as it seems to us out here. Slaves are running away in plenty now. He’s got Quaker friends that will get the girl into Pennsylvania. About five miles out of Martinsburg there’s a ferry will take me and Nancy across the Potomac. When we get across, a conveyance will meet us and carry her on from house to house. In a day and a night I can get her into safe hands."

"And then what’s to become of her?"

"The Quakers will get her somehow over into New York State an’ put her on the cars. There’s a railroadView Image of Page 222runs right up through Vermont into Canada, out-a reach of slave-catchers. He says the railroad men are glad to help. It’s a-going on all the time now. They hide runaway slaves in the baggage cars an’ take ’em clear through to Montreal."

"Montreal? Now what would a young girl like her do in a big strange city? An’ they talk nothing but French up there, I’ve heard. You must be gone crazy, Rachel. There she’d come to harm, for certain. A pretty girl like her, she’d be enticed into one of them houses, like as not." The miller wiped his forehead with his big handkerchief. The closed room was getting very hot.

"Father, I can tell you there’s many folks in big cities that are a sight kinder than some folks on this farm. You know Mother bears a hard hand on Nancy, and has for a good while back. How the girl’s stood it, I don’t know. God forgive me, but it looks to me like she’d brought that scamp here a-purpose, an’ she’s tried right along to throw the girl in his way. She knows Nancy lays unprotected out in the open hall every night, where he can sneak down to her. He’s tried it more’n once, an’ the pore thing had to run in to old Washington in the wine closet, an’ he let her have his cot. Another time,—"

The miller sprang to his feet, knocking over the chair behind him. "Hush, Rachel, not another word! You andView Image of Page 223me can’t talk about such things. It ain’t right. What do you come telling this to me for, if you’ve fixed it up with Mr. Fairhead and Whitford? I can’t be a party to make away with your mother’s property."

"I come to you because we need money, a hundred dollars, to get her safe through into Canada. An’ I ain’t got it. If I had, I’d turn to nobody."

Henry Colbert walked slowly about the room, his eyes downcast. He was ashamed to show such irresolution before his daughter. She would think he grudged the money, maybe. The money was there, in his secretary. It made her plan possible, made it almost an accomplished fact; a loss that could never be made up to him. He had been humouring himself with the hope that, once Martin was out of the way, things might be as they used to be. But every word his daughter said made him know Nancy could never be the same again, could never be happy here. He must face it.

"Rachel," he said presently in his natural voice, "nothing must pass between you and me on this matter; neither words nor aught else. Tomorrow night I will go to bed early, and I will leave my coat hanging on a chair by the open window here—" he raised the north window and propped it up on its stick. "Now I will walk home with you."

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"No, Father, thank you. We might meet somebody. I’d sooner we weren’t seen together tonight."

The following night Mrs. Blake came again to the mill by the creek road. Her father’s room was dark, but the window was open. She put in her hand, took out the coat that hung on the chairback, and felt through the pockets. From the inside pocket she took a flat package of bank-notes.

The miller, in his bed, heard her come and go. He lay still and prayed earnestly, for his daughter and for Nancy. Not a sparrow falleth to the ground without Thy knowledge. He would never again hear that light footstep outside his door. She would go up out of Egypt to a better land. Maybe she would be like the morning star, this child; the last star of night. . . . She was to go out from the dark lethargy of the cared-for and irresponsible; to make her own way in this world where nobody is altogether free, and the best that can happen to you is to walk your own way and be responsible to God only. Sapphira’s darkies were better cared for, better fed and better clothed, than the poor whites in the mountains. Yet what ragged, shag-haired, squirrel-shooting mountain man would change places with Sampson, his trusted head miller?

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III

Mr. Whitford was to be at Mrs. Blake’s house at one o’clock in the morning. Starting at that hour, he would be unlikely to meet travellers on the road, and he would get into Winchester well before daylight. He and his passengers were to have an early breakfast with the old Quaker who was a friend of the miller and of Mr. Fairhead. From the Quaker’s house they would take the stage for Martinsburg. If Mrs. Blake chanced to meet an acquaintance on the street or in the stage, it was quite natural that she should be going to Martinsburg on a visit, attended by her mother’s maid.

Nancy was to come over to Mrs. Blake’s about midnight. When all was still at the Mill House, she got up from her pallet, dressed in the dark, and slipped out of the back door, carrying her shoes and stockings in one hand, and in the other an old pillowcase stuffed with her spare clothes and her few belongings.

When she got to the stile, she sat down behind it and put on her shoes. It was the dark of the moon, and anyone crossing the meadow could not easily be View Image of Page 226recognized. But if she met anyone, the fact that she was wearing her winter shawl and a hat would arouse curiosity. To travel as Mrs. Blake’s lady’s maid, she must be dressed for town. Her hat was an old black turban of Mrs. Colbert’s. Till had put a red feather on it when Nancy accompanied her mistress to Winchester at Easter.

Mrs. Blake was sitting on her doorstep, waiting, and her house was dark. She drew a sigh of relief when she saw a figure come out of the meadow and cross the road. She met Nancy at the gate, took her into the parlour, pulled down the blinds, and lighted a candle.

"Now, Nancy, here’s my old carpet sack. I’m going to give it to you for your own, and you can pack away in it whatever you’ve got in your bundle there. From now on we must look spruce, like we was going visiting. I’m glad you’ve got a feather in your hat. It’s real becoming to you, and it was a good hat in the first place, when Mother got it. I see you’ve brought along one of the old reticules. That will be handy to carry the letters I’ve written out for you to show to the Quaker folks, and maybe to the railroad men, telling how you’re a deserving girl and I stand behind you. But when I give you your money, in Martinsburg, you must put it in your stockings. Never let it off your body."

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"Oh, Miz’ Blake, the reticule ain’t mine! Miss Sapphy give it to me yisterday, with three pairs a-her good silk stockings for me to darn. I did mean to darn ’em today, but some way I jist couldn’t git down to it. I been kind-a flighty in the haid like. I’ll mend ’em as soon as I git there, an’ send ’em back by stage, or somehow." Nancy was nervously packing the carpetbag as she spoke.

Mrs. Blake glanced up, and then stepped quickly into the kitchen to get command of herself. She thought how vague, even to her, was this "there" that Nancy spoke of—there was Canada, wasn’t it? Mrs. Blake herself had never been farther north than Baltimore. She had always thought of Boston as very, very far north. And Montreal was away, away longer off than Boston. And Nancy spoke of sending things back by stage! For a moment she felt her courage sink.

When she returned to the parlour, she set about straightening the tidies on the chairs, speaking over her shoulder in a matter-of-fact tone. "You better leave your darning right here. I’ll mend ’em up neatly and send ’em over. Things often get lost on the stage. Listen! There’s Mr. Whitford for sure. He’s stopped his horses at our gate. I’ll get my things on."

A few minutes later Mrs. Blake walked out of her door in her Sunday best, even to black gloves, andView Image of Page 228Nancy walked behind her, carrying the carpet sack. Mr. Whitford helped them into the back of his wagon and then untied his horses. Very soon the team splashed through Back Creek. Mrs. Blake had a moment of apprehension and glanced at Nancy. But the girl seemed worn out and dulled by the day’s excitement; her head drooped forward on her knees as if she were dozing. It was not until they were passing the old Elliot place, and a jolt over a limestone ledge threw her chair to one side, that she wakened up.

The houses along the road were all dark. The first lighted windows were in the disreputable tavern near Hoag Creek, a place where bad men got together: moonshiners and sheep-stealers and fist-fighters who wore brass knuckles in a fight, drank bad whisky, and threw dice and told dirty stories about decent folk until daybreak. The sound of horses’ hoofs on the road at this late hour brought the revellers reeling and shouting out into the road.

"Hold on, stranger, give us a ride up the Gap! Who be ye? Issa damned Gov’ment officer! Pull him in an’ fill him up, fellers. He’s after moonshiners, an’ we’ll show him some."

"We’ll give him a whole bellyful-a moonshine!"

Bill Hooker, who had only one eye and bragged heView Image of Page 229had never cut his hair, caught the horses by the bits, but they kicked at him, and he fell in the road.

"Drag him out," Whitford called, "and go back where you came from. I’m Whitford, of Back Creek, and I’m carrying a coffin home."

The rowdies let out a spiritless yell or two, and stumbled back toward the tavern.

"Hope you wasn’t scared, Mrs. Blake," said Whitford. "It’s funny; those fellows don’t blink an eye at murder, but they don’t like to interfere with a corpse."

IV

In Martinsburg Mr. Taverner, Mr. Fairhead’s cousin, met the stage and took Mrs. Blake and her companion to his house, where his wife made them very comfortable.

After dark he drove the two women out to the ferry in his buggy. He had warned the ferryman that he would be sending two friends across tonight, so the ferryman asked no questions. He said "Good evening, mam," to Mrs. Blake, and held out his hand to help her into the boat. Nancy followed. She had never been in a boat before, never seen any stream wider than Back Creek.

The Potomac ran strong here, leaped over ledges and boulders with a roaring sound like a waterfall. It was cold out on the river, and the churned water threw up a light spray. Nancy’s winter shawl was not heavy enough to keep out the chill; Mrs. Blake could feel her shivering as they sat on the narrow seat. The boat swayed and swung on its wire, however carefully the ferryman used his oars to right it. Once Mrs. Blake thought they certainly had broken loose. When they reached shallow water, the ferryman tied up hisView Image of Page 231 boat and helped the two women to climb up the rocks to level ground. He called: "Hello," but there was no answer.

"We got a little cabin here, where passengers waits. Their folks is sometimes late comin’. You better come in an’ set down on the bench till your folks come. Don’t be skeered of nothin’; I’ll be around. Mr. Taverner told me one of the passengers was to go back. I’ll be right around where you kin call me."

Mrs. Blake and Nancy sat huddled together in the damp little hut which smelled of tobacco smoke and rotting wood. A cricket was chirping sharply inside, and outside was the perpetual, agitating rush of the river,—a beautiful sound when you are not frightened, but Nancy was. And Mrs. Blake was disappointed. So far, the journey had been swift and pleasant, but this halt was a little disturbing. She could feel the courage oozing out of the girl beside her. It might be best to say something, something practical, to divert Nancy’s thoughts. She asked her to feel whether her garters were tied tight, and her money safe in her stockings. In a flash she knew she had said the wrong thing. The girl wilted altogether.

"Oh, Miz’ Blake, please mam, take me home! I can’t go off amongst strangers. It’s too hard. Let me go back an’ try to do better. I don’t mind Miss Sapphy scoldin’.View Image of Page 232 Why, she brought me up, an’ now she’s sick an’ sufferin’. Look at her pore feet. I ought-a borne it better. Miz’ Blake, please mam, I want to go home to the mill an’ my own folks."

"Now don’t talk foolish. What about Martin?"

"I kin keep out-a his way, Miz’ Blake. He won’t be there always. I can’t bear it to belong nowheres!"

"You’ve been a brave girl right along, an’ you mustn’t fail me now. I took a big risk to get you this far. If we went back, Mother would never forgive you—nor me. It would be worse than before. These Quaker folks will be kind to you, an’ you’ll be bright an’ happy, like you used to be. If you ain’t happy when you get to your journey’s end, I’ll fetch you back somehow. Don’t give way, after all Mr. Fairhead and Mr. Whitford have done for you. Remember, you were ready to throw yourself in the mill dam."

"Yes’m," the girl breathed. But Mrs. Blake didn’t believe she had heard her at all. She couldn’t take anything in; her mind was frozen with homesickness and dread. After that they sat in silence.

The nerve-racking suspense did not go on much longer. Through the rushing of the river Mrs. Blake thought she heard the rattle of wheels and hoofs over a stony road.

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"Listen, I believe they’re coming now. Listen!" She hurried out of the cabin, dragging Nancy after her.

An old chaise emerged from the dark wood, and the driver got out. He was a coloured man, she knew at once from his voice; a negro preacher, as it proved, and a freed man. In greeting Mrs. Blake he took off an old beaver hat, which he wore as the sign of his calling.

"Is this Miz’ Blake? I’m ’fraid I kep’ you waitin’, mam. I had some trouble on de way. De road, from Williamsport on, is very bad, an’ they’s been heavy rains. De folks sent me along to drive, ’cause Reverend Fairhead wrote how de gal was young an’ easy skeered. I am a minister of de gospel, well known hereabouts, an’ dey figgered she wouldn’t feel so strange wid me."

"I’m glad you came, Uncle. The girl’s lost heart a little. She’s never been away from home before, an’ she’s afraid with strangers."

The tall black man turned to Nancy and put a hand on her shoulder. "Dey ain’t strangers, where you’re goin’, honey. Dey calls theyselves Friends, an’ dey is friends to all God’s people. You’ll be treated like dey had raised you up from a chile, an’ you’ll be passed along on yo’ way from one kind fambly to de next. Dey got a letter all ’bout you from de Reverend Fairhead, an’ dey all feels ’quainted. We must be goin’ now, chile.View Image of Page 234We want to git over the line into Pennsylvania as early tomorrer as we kin." There was something solemn yet comforting in his voice, like the voice of prophecy. When he gave Nancy his hand, she climbed into the chaise. He put her bag in after her, then turned to Mrs. Blake, still holding his hat over his chest.

"An’ you, lady, the Lawd will sho’ly bless you, fo’ He said Hisself: Blessed is the merciful."

He untied his team and waited a moment, but Nancy never said a word; not to him, not to Mrs. Blake. She had stood dumb all the while the old man spoke to her, as if she were drugged; indeed she was, by the bitterest of all drugs. The preacher clucked to his horses, seeing that the girl had no word of farewell to say. But as they started off, Mrs. Blake called out to her:

"Good-bye, Nancy! We shall meet again."

BOOK EIGHT

The Dark Autumn

BOOK VIII

I

Mrs. Bywaters’s youngest son walked into Mrs. Blake’s yard one morning with a letter. She was sitting in her parlour by an open window, sewing. He took off his cap and went to speak to her through the window:

"Good day, Mrs. Blake. I brought a letter for you. Mother said it must have been slipped into the letter-box late last night, for she didn’t find it till she was stamping the mail for the stage this morning. She thought it might be important, so she sent me down with it."

"Thank you, Jonathan. That was real thoughtful of your mother."

After Jonathan went away, Mrs. Blake sat contemplating the envelope he had brought. It was addressed in her mother’s neat handwriting. She had heard nothing from the Mill Farm since her return from Winchester by stage three days ago—except from Bluebell. That spineless darky girl (doubtless sent by Lizzie) had come across the meadow after dark and guilelessly asked Mrs. Blake if she had seen nothin’ of Nancy lately.View Image of Page 239Nobody at home had seen her, an’ they was a-gittin’ right worried. Taylor he thought they ought to drag the mill dam, but Trudy said maybe she was a-stayin’ over to Miz Blake’s, or was some’ers Miz Blake knowed about.

No, Mrs. Blake knew nothing of Nancy’s whereabouts, and Bluebell had better run along home, as Mrs. Blake was going to a prayer meeting at the church.

"Yes’m. I’s a-goin’. We cain’t find out nothin’ at home, ’cause Miss Sapphy ain’t once spoke Nancy’s name since we foun’ her bed empty one mawnin’. An’ Till ain’t spoke her name, nuther. When Maw axed her where was Nancy, she jist tole her to mind her business. But we ’speck Till had some talk wid de Missus, ’cause right from the fust day Till’s been doin’ Master’s room an’ Mr. Martin’s. Seem like Till don’t miss her gal much. Las’ night when Taylor axed her mus’ he drag de mill dam, she tole him he could do what he pleased, an’ not to come pesterin’ her."

Mrs. Blake resolutely put on her bonnet and pointed to the kitchen door. When Bluebell went out, she shut it behind her and drew the bolt. This was the only word she had had from the mill people.

The letter Jonathan had brought was doubtless something final, since it bore a stamp and came through theView Image of Page 240post office. People on Back Creek did not send letters to their neighbours through the post. A note to be sent up or down the road was not even put into an envelope. It was folded, turned down at one corner, and carried to the addressee by one of the boys or girls about the place. Government stamps were considered an extravagance. At last Mrs. Blake opened the letter and read:

Mistress Blake is kindly requested to make no further visits at the Mill House.

Sapphira Dodderidge Colbert

Well, that was best, Mrs. Blake agreed, as she folded up the paper. Her mother would meet this situation with dignity, as she had met other misfortunes. She would not set the slave-catchers on to track Nancy. She would not question anyone. She knew, of course, that the girl could never have got away without help, and this letter told that she understood who had contrived her escape. The Colbert darkies must know that Mrs. Blake’s house had been closed for two days, and that Mary and Betty stayed with Mrs. Bywaters while their mother was away. She was sorriest for the hurt this would be to her mother’s pride. Nancy’s disappearance would be the talk of the neighbourhood. Every time Mrs. Colbert drove outView Image of Page 241she would meet inquiring faces. The whisperings and surmises among her own servants would be a trial to her. Mrs. Blake knew how her mother hated to be overreached or outwitted, and she was sorry to have brought another humiliation to one who had already lost so much: her activity on horse and foot, her fine figure and rosy complexion.

The property loss Mrs. Colbert would bear lightly. Tansy Dave was certainly a property loss, and she had never complained or tried to punish him. But if he had actually run away and stayed in Baltimore, his mistress would likely enough have had him seized and brought back.

A girl like Nancy, refined and very pretty, skilful with her needle and in chamber work, would easily fetch a thousand dollars, maybe more. But Mrs. Blake did her mother the justice to believe that this money out was not the thing that cut to the quick. She unfolded the letter again, and as she looked at it, tears rose slowly to her eyes.

"It’s hard for a body to know what to do, sometimes," she murmured to herself. "I hate to mortify her. Maybe I ought to a-thought about how much she suffers, and her poor feet, like Nancy said to me that night in theView Image of Page 242dark cabin by that roaring river. Maybe I ought to have thought and waited."

All through the month of August Mrs. Blake was busy sewing for her girls, to get them ready for school. She saw no one from the Mill House except her father, who walked home with her from church every Sunday. Nancy’s name was never mentioned between them.

One Sunday morning fat Lizzie caught Mrs. Blake outside the church door and came at her. "Howdy, Miz Blake. Now maybe you knows when Nancy is comin’ home? I axed Miss Sapphy only yiste’day, an’ she says to me she s’posed Nancy’d come back from Ches’nut Hill when she was sent fur. Now Tap come up wid a nigger from Ches’nut Hill in Winchester, an’ he tells Tap dey ain’t never seen sight a’ Nancy down dar. It begins to look like Taylor’s right, an’ she drownded herse’f in de dam. He says dat’s all a pack a’ lies ’bout dem risin’ to de top in fo’ days. She might easy a-ketched on a big root an’ be down dar still."

By this time a dozen eager listeners had gathered round, and Mrs. Blake gave Lizzie a dark look. "Here comes your master. You had better ask him."

Lizzie turned and saw the miller coming up the path. With a "God a’mighty!" she hurried into the churchView Image of Page 243and up the narrow stairs to the gallery as fast as a woman of her figure could go.

After the first October frosts, when everyone went into the woods to gather chestnuts and hickory nuts, Mrs. Blake and her two little girls happened to come upon a nutting party from the Mill House. Till was among them. She met Mrs. Blake with such warmth as she seldom betrayed and called her by her given name.

"It’s surely nice to lay eyes on you agin, Miss Rachel. It does me good to see you lookin’ fine and hearty."

Mrs. Blake asked after her mother’s health.

"I’m right worried about her, Miss Rachel. Doctor Clavenger comes out from Winchester every week to see her. Sometimes he draws the water off, an’ then she’s easier. She don’t git up for breakfast no more. She stays in bed all day till I dresses her an’ takes her into the parlour for tea."

Their talk was suddenly interrupted by shouts and scrambling. Tap, the nimblest of the mill boys, had climbed a tall chestnut tree and was thrashing the branches with a pole. The little darkies shouted as the nuts showered down, and all the women fell on their knees and began scratching among the dried leaves and stuffing the nuts into their bags and baskets. Till and Mrs. Blake picked side by side, and once when they wereView Image of Page 244bending over close together, Till asked in a low, cautious murmur: "You ain’t heard nothin’, Miss Rachel?"

"Not yet. When I do hear, I’ll let you know. I saw her into good hands, Till. I don’t doubt she’s in Canada by this time, amongst English people."

"Thank you, mam, Miss Rachel. I can’t say no more. I don’t want them niggers to see me cryin’. If she’s up there with the English folks, she’ll have some chance."

II

No one on Back Creek could remember a finer autumn; frosts before sunrise, summer heat at noon, chill nights. All morning the mountain lay in a soft blue haze, and in the afternoon broad fans of heavy golden sunlight warmed its back and flanks. The colour on the hillsides, in the low meadows, and along the streams had never been more brilliant. Little rain fell in October, and the trees held their leaves. The great maples in Mrs. Blake’s yard were like blazing torches; scarlet leaves fluttered softly down to the green turf, leaving the boughs above still densely covered.

With November the weather changed. Heavy rains set in. There was scarcely a clear day. The earth was soon soaked, the meadows became boggy, and all the streams rose. Back Creek over-flowed its low banks and rushed yellow and foaming into the mill road. The schoolroom under the Baptist Church, set deep in the hillside, became very damp. Suddenly David Fairhead’s school was closed; nearly half his pupils were in bed with ulcerated throats or diphtheria.

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It was a rare winter when there was not an out-break of diphtheria in Hayfield or Back Creek or Timber Ridge. This year it came before winter began. Doctor Brush rode with his saddle-bags all day long from house to house, never bothering to wash his hands when he came or went. His treatment was to scour throats with a mixture of sulphur and molasses, and to forbid his patients both food and water. If he found "white spots," he declared the case diphtheria, and the patient was starved until the spots were gone. Few children survived his treatment.

Late one evening in the week after the school had been closed, Mr. Whitford was driving his covered spring-wagon along the big road, carrying two coffins up to Timber Ridge. As he passed Mrs. Blake’s house he saw that her front door stood wide open, and a flickering light came from the parlour windows. This was a signal to passers-by that help of some sort was needed within. As he slowed his team, Mrs. Blake herself ran out into the road to hail him.

"We’re in trouble here, Mr. Whitford. Both my girls are sick, and I want you to carry word to the post office. Yes sir, they’ve been ailing with colds since yesterday, but tonight, just after supper, they were taken very bad. Maybe Mrs. Bywaters can come down to help me. AndView Image of Page 247maybe she can send one of her boys along with you to hunt for the doctor. He’s likely somewhere on the ridge. I daren’t leave the house, and not a soul has come along the road till you."

"I’ll get somebody here in no time, Mrs. Blake. Don’t you worry, mam." Mr. Whitford whipped up his horses.

At the post office there was a brief consultation between Mrs. Bywaters and David Fairhead. Most people, though not all, believed that diphtheria was "catching." Clearly the postmistress, who had to be on duty and see people every day, should not go where there was a contagious disease. Fairhead said he would go: Whitford could carry him back to Mrs. Blake’s, then drive up to Timber Ridge, deliver his coffins, and trail Doctor Brush until he found him.

When Fairhead reached Mrs. Blake’s house, he found her in an upstairs bedroom, holding the wash-basin for Betty, who was nauseated. After she laid the child back on her pillow, she rose and said: "Oh, I’m glad it’s you, David." She fronted him with a strange, dark look which frightened him. He was very fond of these children. He stood still and tried to think. Mrs. Blake had got the girls into their nightgowns, braided their hair, and put them into two cots in the room they shared together. Fairhead told her he felt sure they ought not to be in the same room.

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"There’s the spare room, across the hall, David. The bed’s made up. You can carry Mary over and put her in it."

Toward morning Mr. Whitford brought word that Doctor Brush would stop at Mrs. Blake’s about sun-up, if she would have a good breakfast and plenty of coffee ready for him. The doctor came, looked down the girls’ throats, found his "white spots," and seated himself in the dining-room to enjoy his breakfast. Immediately David Fairhead started for the mill.

The miller was standing before his little looking-glass, in the act of shaving, when Fairhead called to him through the open window.

"Mr. Colbert, I’ve come from Mrs. Blake’s house. Both her little girls are sick with bad throats. Doctor Brush is over there now. I thought you might like to talk to him before he leaves."

The miller put down his razor, caught up his coat, and set off with David across the meadow. When he came home an hour later, he went directly to his wife’s room and sat down beside her.

"Sapphira, I was called over to Rachel’s. The trouble has reached her house. Both the girls are down with it."

She rose on her pillows and gave him a searching look. "You mean it’s diphtheria?"

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"That’s what Brush says."

"Brush! Why, the man’s a complete ignoramus! It may be measles, for all he knows. Have you sent to town for my doctor?"

"No. I’ve only just got back from Rachel’s. I thought I’d better consult you. It’s come so sudden I’ve hardly had time to realize it."

"But why haven’t you sent for Clavenger?" She reached under her pillow for the bell and rang it vigorously. Old Washington answered.

"Washington, send somebody down to the mill for Tap. This minute, as fast as you can get him here. Now, Henry, you must start Tap off for Winchester on your own horse. Who has Rachel got over there to help her?"

"David Fairhead left Mrs. Bywaters’s in the middle of the night and went down. He is going to stay with them. He’s a better nurse than any of the women around here."

His wife scarcely heard him. "There comes Tap. Call him in here. I want to talk to him, and you see to saddling Victor."

Tap came to the chamber door, which the Master had left ajar, and called softly through the crack: "You wants to see me, Miss Sapphy?"

"Yes, I do. Come in."

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The boy came in, holding a rag of a hat in his two hands. The darky men never went about the place without some sort of hat on their heads.

"Now, Tap, listen to me," she began sternly. Tap stood rigid; he opened his eyes, prepared for a scolding. "I’m sending you to town to get Doctor Clavenger. My two granddaughters are very sick."

The black boy stared at her, his shoulders went slack. "Not Miz Blake’s li’l gals, mam?" he asked wistfully.

"Yes, Mary and Betty have diphtheria, and you must go and get Doctor Clavenger here as quick as you can. You can ride faster than Mr. Henry or Sampson, because you are lighter. I can’t write to Doctor Clavenger, my hand is too bad" (she held it up), "so you must explain to the doctor that children are dying around here every day, and I will never forgive him if he don’t get out to us before night. You understand this is serious, Tap?"

Tap squeezed his crumpled hat tighter to his chest. "You kin depen’ on me, Miss Sapphy. I’ll git de doctah, I’ll fetch ’im back. You kin depen’ on me." His naturally lively voice had sunk to something deep and shadowy. He slipped out of the room, and only a few minutes later his mistress saw him flash down the driveway on Victor, the fast trotter.

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Word of why Tap was going to town had got through the house, and Till came unbidden to Mrs. Colbert. She stood at the foot of the bed in her usual correct attitude, her hands under her white apron.

"Kin I do anything, Miss Sapphy?"

"Yes, Till, you can. I want you to go over to Mrs. Blake’s and see how things are. Mr. Henry has been over, but men don’t notice very close. And you take one of the boys along, to carry a bundle of clean sheets and pillowcases. Rachel can’t have many ahead, because she’s always giving them away. While you’re there, look around sharp for what’s needed. Don’t ask Rachel, but just see for yourself. And if you’re not afraid, slip in and peep at the children, and tell me how they look."

"It ain’t likely I’d be afraid, Missy. Who must I tell to wait in, if you rings your bell?"

Mrs. Colbert gave a dry, sad little laugh: "Well, there isn’t anybody but you, now, Till. You might ask Washington and Trudy to sit outside in the hall."

III

Tap came back from Winchester, but he came alone. Doctor Clavenger had been called to Berryville to do a critical operation which the local doctor dared not undertake. Mrs. Clavenger, his wife, sent a letter to Mrs. Colbert, promising that as soon as her husband got home he would mount a fresh horse and start for Back Creek. She thought, indeed she felt sure, that he would be there by midday tomorrow. To the miller and Fairhead, who were awaiting him at Mrs. Blake’s, tomorrow seemed a long way off.

It was heart-breaking to see the children suffer, and to hear them beg for water. Their grandfather could not bear it. He went home, and digging down into the sawdust of the icehouse under his mill, he found some lumps of last year’s ice. It was going soft, maybe a little wormy, but he brought it over and let the girls hold bits of it in their mouths. He was not afraid of Doctor Brush, and he had authority as the head of his family. The ice helped them through the long afternoon.

Fairhead insisted on sitting up with the patients that night. Mrs. Blake would relieve him at four o’clock inView Image of Page 253the morning. The two had an early supper together in the kitchen. As Mrs. Blake went up the back stairs, she called down: "I’ve made a chicken broth for you, David, and left it there on the table to cool. Put some hickory sticks in the stove to hold the fire, and you can warm it up any time in the night you feel the need of it."

Fairhead went out into the yard to get the cool air into his lungs. Sick-rooms were kept tightly closed in those days. The blue evening was dying into dusk, and silvery stars were coming out faintly over the pines on the hill. Fairhead was deeply discouraged. He believed Doctor Clavenger would know just what to do; but tomorrow might be too late.

Clavenger was everything that poor old Brush was not: intelligent, devoted to his profession—and a gentleman. He had come to practise in Frederick County by accident. While he was on the staff of a hospital in Baltimore, he fell in love with a Winchester girl who was visiting in the city. After he found that she would never consent to live anywhere but in her native town, he gave up the promise of a fine city practice and settled in Winchester. A foolish thing to do, but Clavenger was like that.

While Fairhead was walking up and down the yard, he kept an eye on the windows of Mrs. Blake’s upstairsView Image of Page 254 bedroom. As soon as the candlelight shone there, it would be time for him to go to his patients. He circled the house, picked up some sticks from the wood-pile, and was about to go into the kitchen when he saw through the window something which startled him. A white figure emerged from the stairway and drifted across the indoor duskiness of the room. It was Mary, barefoot, in her nightgown, as if she were walking in her sleep. She reached the table, sank down on a wooden chair, and lifted the bowl of broth in her two hands. (She must have smelled the hot soup up in her bedroom; the stair door had been left open.) She drank slowly, resting her elbows on the table. Streaks of firelight from the stove flickered over her and over the whitewashed walls and ceiling. Fairhead knew he ought to go in and take the soup from her. But he was unable to move or to make a sound. There was something solemn in what he saw through the window, like a Communion service.

After the girl had vanished up the stairway, he still stood outside, looking into the empty room, wondering at himself. He remembered how sometimes in dreams a trivial thing took on a mysterious significance one could not explain. He might have thought he had been dreaming now, except that, when at last he went inside, he found his soup bowl empty.

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Fairhead climbed the stairs slowly and went to Betty’s room. After he had washed out her throat with a clumsy thing called a swab, he got the last morsel of ice (wrapped in sacking on the window sill) and put it in her mouth. She looked up at him gratefully and tried to smile. He whispered that he would soon come back to her, took the candle, and crossed the hall to Mary’s room. He did not know what he might find there. He listened at the crack of the door; dead silence. Shading the light with his hand, he went in softly and approached the bed. Mary was lying on her side, fast asleep. Last night she had not slept at all, but tossed and begged for water. Her mother, who had sat up with her, said she was delirious and had to be held down in bed. Fairhead leaned over her; yes, the evil smell was on her breath, but anyhow he was not going to waken her to wash her throat. He went back to Betty, who liked to have him turn her pillow and sit near her.

Mary slept all night. When Mrs. Blake came in at four in the morning and held her candle before the girl’s face, she knew that she was better.

Doctor Clavenger rode up to the hitch-block about noon. He had dismounted and tied his horse before Fairhead could cross the yard to greet him. The doctor looked as fresh as if he had not been without sleep forView Image of Page 256 more than thirty hours. He said the ride out had rested him, adding: "It’s beautiful country." There was even a flush of colour in his swarthy cheeks, and as he shook hands he gave David a warm, friendly look from his hazel eyes, which in some lights were frankly green.

"I am glad to find you here, David. You will be a great help to me, as you were when Doctor Sollers had pleurisy. Now, in the first place, can you get word to the mill and ask Mr. Colbert to send over a fresh horse for me? I am hoping he can take my mare to his stable and rest her overnight. I will ride her back to town tomorrow."

"Yes, sir. Till is in the kitchen. She will carry the message."

"Good." He took the young man’s arm and walked slowly toward the house. At the front door he stopped, turned round, and stood looking back at the blue slopes of the North Mountain. "How much better the line of the mountain is from here than from Mrs. Colbert’s yard!" He traced the long backbone of the ridge in the air with his finger. After taking a deep breath, he went inside.

When he greeted Mrs. Blake in the hallway, he asked very courteously for a pitcher of fresh water and two glasses; his ride, he said, had made him thirsty. David dropped the saddle-bags he was carrying and ran outView Image of Page 257to the springhouse for cold water. Doctor Clavenger thanked him and drank with evident gratification. Then he delicately waved Mrs. Blake to the stairway and followed her, carrying the pitcher and the two glasses, which she supposed were to be used for medicines. But the first thing he did was to lift Mary on his arm and hold a glass one-third full to her lips. She swallowed it eagerly and easily. He laid her down, crossed the hall, and did the same for Betty. When she choked and gurgled, he said soothingly: "That’s very good. Some of it went down; enough for this time."

Mrs. Blake and Fairhead both stood by while he examined his patients, but he asked few questions of them. He was deliberate and at ease. He looked at the children, even at their throats, very much as he had looked at the mountain—sympathetically, almost admiringly, David thought. If Mrs. Blake spoke up to give him information about the course of their illness, he raised his hand in gentle rebuke. He talked to the children, however, while he was working over them, talked soothingly, as if he had come to make things pleasant for them. Even when they saw the swabs coming, they felt no dread. His swabs were very different from Doctor Brush’s, and he did not use sulphur and molasses. He stayed with them nearly two hours, and as he left he blew a kiss to each with: "Be good girls for me, until I come tomorrow."

When he went downstairs, he gave Mrs. Blake and Fairhead clear and positive instructions, saying in conclusion:

"Leave the windows open as I put them, Mrs. Blake. This is a fine day at last,—let the air and sunlight into their rooms. They will not take cold, but if you are afraid of that, put more blankets over them. And tell your father he must try to find more bits of ice in that cave of his, for the little girls."

Fairhead went with the doctor to the hitch-post, where the miller’s horse stood in readiness. "Doctor Clavenger, could you spare me a moment? There’s something I think I ought to tell you."

The doctor sat down on the lower step of the hitch-block, leaned back against the second step, and relaxed into a position of ease, as if he meant to spend the afternoon there looking at the mountain. When David began to tell him what he had seen in the kitchen last night, he listened attentively, with his peculiar expression of thinking directly behind his eyes. He did not once interrupt, but when David ended with: "and I can’t believe she is any the worse for it," the doctor gave him a quizzical smile.

"We’d best keep this a secret between ourselves, here on Back Creek. The child was hungry. Your warmView Image of Page 259broth satisfied that craving, and she went to sleep. Her system began to take up what it needed. That’s very simple. What surprises me is that you were struck dumb outside the window and did not go blundering in and take the child’s chance away from her." The doctor stepped up on the block (he was a short man) and swung his leg over the saddle.

Late the next afternoon Mrs. Colbert was sitting by the parlour fire, her chair turned so that she could look out of the north windows. Since midsummer she had, without comment, changed her habit of life. Now she did not leave her bed until tea-time. She was watching the meadow path, anxiously awaiting her husband’s return. He had been over at Rachel’s since morning, and Doctor Clavenger, she knew, had come out soon after midday. She could not understand why some word of how he found the children had not been sent her.

At last she saw the miller coming across the meadow. She shook her head and sighed. His slow gait, the slackness of his shoulders, told her that he brought no good news. As he came through the yard he did not look up or glance toward the windows. She heard him open and close the front door, but he did not come in to her at once. When he came he did not speak, but stood by her chair, stooping down to warm his hands at the fire.

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"Poor Rachel," he brought out at last, "little Betty has gone."

"Oh, Henry! Couldn’t Clavenger do anything?"

"I reckon not. It was so sudden. It happened while he was there. I was in Mary’s room, and all at once he came to the door and lifted his finger, looking at me sharp. I went back with him, and in a minute she was gone; just slipped away without a struggle, like she was dropping asleep. At first we couldn’t believe it."

"And Mary?"

"She is better. Clavenger says she will get well. We must be thankful. But Betty was my little dear."

Mrs. Colbert reached out and caught his hand. "I know, Henry. I know. But these things are beyond us. One shall be left and the other taken. It’s beyond us." She was silent for a moment. Suddenly she gripped his cold fingers and broke out with something of her old masterfulness: "And, Henry, Mary will get so much more out of life!"

"More for herself, maybe," the miller sighed. "But I doubt if she will be as much comfort to others. The gentle spirit has left us."

"Sit down, dear. Get my old hassock yonder and sit low, close to the fire. Your hands are like ice. This is a time when we must both think." She reached under theView Image of Page 261tea-table for the red flask and poured the rum into her empty teacup. He drank it obediently. She knew he was too tired to talk, so they sat in silence. When Washington came in for the tray, she put her finger to her lips and pointed to the hot-water jug. He understood that meant fresh tea for the Master. In a few moments he brought it, and left without making a sound. Supper was ready, but he saw this was no time to speak of it.

All this while the Mistress was thinking, turning things over in her mind. She had not seen Rachel since Nancy’s disappearance, months ago. She was wondering how far she could count upon herself. At last, when she had quite made up her mind, she put her hand on her husband’s drooping shoulder.

"Henry, it will be hard for Rachel and Mary over in that house now. Everything will remind them. Why not ask them to come here and spend the winter with us? I would like to have them, on my own account. I’m not as able as I was last year. Rachel is very proud, but I expect if you told her I have failed, and we ought to have someone here, she would come. Mary would be nice company for me. I miss the child when I don’t see her. And if anything was to happen to me, the place wouldn’t run down and be so lonesome like for you. Till is a good housekeeper, but the other darkies wouldn’t mind herView Image of Page 262one week if there wasn’t a woman of the family to stand behind her. You’d soon have bedlam here. Rachel and Till together would keep things up as they ought to be."

Colbert felt a chill run through him. Sapphira had never before spoken to him of the possibility that something might happen to her this winter. Though now she mentioned this very casually, it struck terror to his heart. He seemed in a moment to feel sharply so many things he had grown used to and taken for granted: her long illness, with all its discomforts, and the intrepid courage with which she had faced the inevitable. He reached out for her two hands and buried his face in her palms. She felt his tears wet on her skin. For a long while he crouched thus, leaning against her chair, his head on her knee.

He had never understood his wife very well, but he had always been proud of her. When she was young, she was fearless and independent, she held her head high and made this Mill House a place where town folks liked to come. After she was old and ill, she never lowered her flag; not even now, when she knew the end was not far off. He had seen strong men quail and whimper at the approach of death. He, himself, dreaded it. But as he leaned against her chair with his face hidden, he knew how it would be with her; she would makeView Image of Page 263her death easy for everyone, because she would meet it with that composure which he had sometimes called heartlessness, but which now seemed to him strength. As long as she was conscious, she would be mistress of the situation and of herself.

After this long silence, in which he seemed to know that she followed his thoughts, he lifted his head, still holding fast to her hands, and spoke falteringly. "Yes, dear wife, do let us have Rachel here. You are a kind woman to think of it. You are good to a great many folks, Sapphy."

"Not so good as Rachel, with her basket!" She turned it off lightly, tweaking his ear.

"There are different ways of being good to folks," the miller held out stubbornly, as if this idea had just come to him and he was not to be teased into letting go of it. "Sometimes keeping people in their place is being good to them."

"Perhaps. We would all do better if we had our lives to live over again." She was silent for a moment, then added thoughtfully: "Take it all in all, though, we have had many happy years here, and we both love the place. Neither of us would be easy anywhere else."

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BOOK NINE

Nancy's Return

(Epilogue—Twenty-five years later)

BOOK IX

I

Twenty-five years had passed since Mrs. Blake took her mother’s slave girl across the Potomac. The Civil War, which came on so soon after Nancy ran away, was long gone by when Back Creek folks saw the yellow girl again.

In all that time the country between Romney and Winchester had changed very little. The same families were living on their old places. There were new people at the Colbert mill, of course, and several new brick houses with ambitious porticos now stood on the turnpike between Winchester and Timber Ridge. But the wooden foot-bridge over Back Creek hung just as it did in the Colberts’ time, a curious "suspension" bridge, without piles, swung from the far-reaching white limb of a great sycamore that grew on the bank and leaned over the stream. Mrs. Bywaters, though now an old woman, was still the postmistress. She had not been removed in the "carpetbag" period, when so many questionable Government appointments were made. During the war years, when Federal troops were marching up and down the valley, her well-known Northern View Image of Page 267sympathies stood the Confederate soldiers in good stead. When they were home on leave, they could always hide from search parties in her rambling garrets. Her house was exempt from search.

The war made few enmities in the country neighbourhoods. When Willie Gordon, a Rebel boy from Hayfield, was wounded in the Battle of Bull Run, it was Mr. Cartmell, Mrs. Bywaters’s father, who went after him in his hay-wagon, got through the Federal lines, and brought him home. While the boy lay dying from gangrene in a shattered leg (Doctor Brush never attempted an amputation, and Doctor Clavenger was far away on Lee’s staff), the Hayfield people, regardless of political differences, came in relays, night and day, and did the only thing that relieved his pain a little: they carried cold water from the springhouse and with a tin cup poured it steadily over his leg for hours at a time.

Mr. Whitford’s son enlisted in the Northern army, as his father’s son might be expected to do. His nearest neighbour, Mr. Jeffers, had a son in Ashby’s cavalry. The fathers remained friends, worked their bordering fields, and talked to each other across the rail fence as they had always done. Both men admired young Turner Ashby of Fauquier County, who held the Confederate line from Berkeley Springs to Harpers Ferry,—so nearView Image of Page 268home that word of his brilliant cavalry exploits came out to Back Creek with the stage-driver. The war news from distant places came slowly, sometimes long after the event, but Stonewall Jackson and Ashby, both operating in Frederick County, gave people plenty to talk about.

Ashby fell in the second year of the war, shot through the heart after his horse had been killed under him, leading a victorious charge near Harrisonburg, on the sixth day of June. Even today, if you should be motoring through Winchester on the sixth of June, and should stop to see the Confederate cemetery, you would probably find fresh flowers on Ashby’s grave. He was all that the old-time Virginians admired: Like Paris handsome and like Hector brave. And he died young. "Shortlived and glorious," the old Virginians used to say.

After Lee’s surrender, the country boys from Back Creek and Timber Ridge came home to their farms and set to work to reclaim their neglected fields. The land was still there, but few horses were left to work it with. In the movement of troops to and fro between Romney and Winchester, all the livestock had been carried away. Even the cocks and hens had been snapped up by the foragers.

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The Rebel soldiers who came back were tired, discouraged, but not humiliated or embittered by failure. The country people accepted the defeat of the Confederacy with dignity, as they accepted death when it came to their families. Defeat was not new to those men. Almost every season brought defeat of some kind to the farming people. Their cornfields, planted by hand and cultivated with the hoe, were beaten down by hail, or the wheat was burned up by drouth, or cholera broke out among the pigs. The soil was none too fertile, and the methods of farming were not very good.

The Back Creek boys were glad to be at home again; to see the sun come up over one familiar hill and go down over another. Now they could mend the barn roof where it leaked, help the old woman with her garden, and keep the wood-pile high. They had gone out to fight for their home State, had done their best, and now it was over. They still wore their army overcoats in winter, because they had no others, and they worked the fields in whatever rags were left of their uniforms. The day of Confederate reunions and veterans’ dinners was then far distant.

When Nancy came back after so many years, though the outward scene was little changed, she came back toView Image of Page 270a different world. The young men of 1856 were beginning to grow grey, and the children who went to David Fairhead’s basement school were now married and had children of their own.

This new generation was gayer and more carefree than their forbears, perhaps because they had fewer traditions to live up to. The war had done away with many of the old distinctions. The young couples were poor and extravagant and jolly. They were much given to picnics and camp-meetings in summer, sleighing parties and dancing parties in the winter. Every ambitious young farmer kept a smart buggy and a double carriage, but these were used for Sunday church-going and trips to Winchester and Capon Springs. The saddle-horse was still the usual means of getting about the neighbourhood. The women made social calls, went to the post office and the dressmaker, on horseback. A handsome woman (or a pretty girl) on a fine horse was a charming figure to meet on the road; the close-fitting riding-habit with long skirt, the little hat with the long plume. Cavalry veterans rose in the stirrup to salute her as she flashed by.

II

It was a brilliant, windy March day; all the bare hills were still pale fawn colour, and high above them puffy white clouds went racing like lambs let out to pasture in the spring. I was something over five years old, and was kept in bed on that memorable day because I had a cold. I was in my mother’s bedroom, in the third storey of a big old brick house entered by a white portico with fluted columns. Propped on high pillows, I could see the clouds drive across the bright, cold blue sky, throwing rapid shadows on the steep hillsides. The slats of the green window shutters rattled, the limp cordage of the great willow trees in the yard was whipped and tossed furiously by the wind. It was the last day I would have chosen to stay indoors.

I had been put into my mother’s bed so that I could watch the turnpike, then a macadam road with a blue limestone facing. It ran very near us, between the little creek at the foot of our long front yard and the base of the high hills which shut the winter sun from us early.

It was a weary wait for the stage that morning. Usually we could hear the rattle of the iron-tired wheels andView Image of Page 272 the click of the four shod horses before they came round the curve where the flint milestone with deep-cut letters said: ROMNEY — 35 MILES. But today there was a high wind from the west. Maybe we could not hear the stage coming, Mrs. Blake remarked to Aunt Till.

For I was not alone in the room. Two others were there to keep me company. Mrs. Blake sat with her hands lying at rest in her lap. She looked almost as if she were in church. Aunt Till was sitting beside her; a spare, neat little old darky, bent at the shoulders but still holding herself straight from the hips. The two conversed very little; they were waiting and watching, just as I was. Occasionally my mother came in, going with her quick, energetic step to the window and peering out. She was young, and she had not the patience of the two old women.

"Don’t get excited," she would say to me. "It may be a long while before the stage comes."

Even my father was awaiting the stage. He had not gone out to cut timber with the men today, but had sent them into the woods with Moses, son of the Colberts’ old Taylor, as the boss. Father was down in his basement tool-room under the portico steps, tinkering at something. Probably he was making yellow leather shoes forView Image of Page 273the front paws of his favourite shepherd dog—she wore out so many, racing up and down the stony hillsides in performing her duties.

There was as much restlessness inside the house as there was outside in the wind and clouds and trees, for today Nancy was coming home from Montreal, and she would ride out from Winchester on the stage. She had been gone now for twenty-five years.

Ever since I could remember anything, I had heard about Nancy. My mother used to sing me to sleep with:

Down by de cane-brake, close by de mill,

Dar lived a yaller gal, her name was Nancy Till.

I never doubted the song was made about our Nancy. I knew she had long been housekeeper for a rich family away up in Canada, where it was so cold, Till said, if you threw a tin-cupful of water into the air, it came down ice. Nancy sometimes wrote to her mother, and always sent her fifty dollars at Christmas.

Suddenly my mother hurried into the room. Without a word she wrapped me in a blanket, carried me to the curved lounge by the window, and put me down on the high head-rest, where I could look out. There it came, the stage, with a trunk on top, and the sixteenView Image of Page 274hoofs trotting briskly round the curve where the milestone was.

Mrs. Blake and Aunt Till had followed my mother and now stood behind us. We saw my father running down the front yard. The stage stopped at the rustic bridge which crossed our little creek. The steps at the back were let down, my father reached up to hand someone out. A woman in a long black coat and black turban alighted. She carried a hand-satchel; her trunk was to go to Till’s cabin on the old mill place. They crossed the bridge and came up the brick walk between the boxwood hedges. Then I was put back into bed, and Mrs. Blake and Till returned to their chairs. The actual scene of the meeting had been arranged for my benefit. When I cried because I was not allowed to go downstairs and see Nancy enter the house, Aunt Till had said: "Never mind, honey. You stay right here, and I’ll stay right here. Nancy’ll come up, and you’ll see her as soon as I do." Mrs. Blake stayed with us. My mother went down to give Nancy the hand of welcome.

I heard them talking on the stairs and in the hall; my parents’ voices excited and cordial, and another voice, low and pleasant, but not exactly "hearty," it seemed to me,—not enough so for the occasion.

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Till had already risen; when the stranger followed my mother into the room, she took a few uncertain steps forward. She fell meekly into the arms of a tall, gold-skinned woman, who drew the little old darky to her breast and held her there, bending her face down over the head scantily covered with grey wool. Neither spoke a word. There was something Scriptural in that meeting, like the pictures in our old Bible.

After those few moments of tender silence, the visitor released Aunt Till with a gentle stroke over her bent shoulders, and turned to Mrs. Blake. Tears were shining in the deep creases on either side of Mrs. Blake’s nose. "Well, Nancy, child, you’ve made us right proud of you," she said. Then, for the first time, I saw Nancy’s lovely smile. "I never forget who it was took me across the river that night, Mrs. Blake."

When Nancy laid aside her long black coat, I saw with astonishment that it was lined with grey fur, from top to toe! We had no coats like that on Back Creek. She took off her turban and brushed back a strand of her shiny, blue-black hair. She wore a black silk dress. A gold watch-chain was looped about her neck and came down to her belt, where the watch was tucked away in a little pocket.

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"Now we must sit down and talk," said my mother. That was what one always said to visitors. While they talked, I looked and listened. Nancy had always been described to me as young, gold-coloured, and "lissome"— that was my father’s word.

"Down by de cane-brake, close by de mill, Dar lived a yaller gal—" That was the picture I had carried in my mind. The stranger who came to realize that image was forty-four years old. But though she was no longer lissome, she was other things. She had, I vaguely felt, presence. And there was a charm about her voice, though her speech was different from ours on Back Creek. Her words seemed to me too precise, rather cutting in their unfailing distinctness. Whereas Mrs. Blake used to ask me if she should read to me from my "hist’ry book" (Peter Parley’s Universal), Nancy spoke of the his-to-ry of Canada. I didn’t like that pronunciation. Even my father said "hist’ry." Wasn’t that the right and easy way to say it? Nancy put into many words syllables I had never heard sounded in them before. That repelled me. It didn’t seem a friendly way to talk.

Her speech I counted against her. But I liked the way she sat in her chair, the shade of deference in her voice when she addressed my mother, and I liked to see her move about,—there was something so smooth andView Image of Page 277 measured in her movements. I noticed it when she went to get her handbag, and opened it on the foot of my bed, to show us the pictures of her husband and three children. She spoke of her mistress as Madam, and her master as Colonel Kenwood. The family were in England for the spring, and that was why Nancy was able to come home and visit her mother. She could stay exactly six weeks; then she must go back to Montreal to get the house ready for the return of the family. Her husband was the Kenwoods’ gardener. He was half Scotch and half Indian.

Nancy was to be at our house for the midday dinner. Then she would walk home with her mother, to stay with her in the old cabin of her childhood. The "new miller," as he was still called, though he had now been running the mill for some seventeen years, was a kind man from over the Blue Ridge. He let Till stay on in her cabin behind the Mill House, work her own garden patch, and even keep a pig or two.

When my mother and father and Mrs. Blake went down to dinner, Nancy and Till sat where they were, hand in hand, and went on talking as if I were not there at all. Nancy was telling her mother about her husband and children, how they had a cottage to themselves at the end of the park, and how the work was divided between the men and the maids.

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Suddenly Till interrupted her, looking up into her face with idolatrous pride.

"Nancy, darlin’, you talks just like Mrs. Matchem, down at Chestnut Hill! I loves to hear you."

Presently they were called downstairs to the second table, to eat the same dinner as the family, served by the same maid (black Moses’ Sally). My mother gave me an egg-nog to quiet me and pulled down the blinds. I was tired out with excitement and went to sleep.

During her stay on Back Creek Nancy came often with her mother to our house. She used to bring a small carpetbag, with her sewing and a fresh apron, and insisted upon helping Mrs. Blake and Moses’ Sally in whatever housework was under way. She begged to be allowed to roast the coffee. "The smell of it is sweeter than roses to me, Mrs. Blake," she said laughing. "Up there the coffee is always poor, so I’ve learned to drink tea. As soon as it’s browned, I’ll grind a little and make us all a cup, by your leave."

Our kitchen was almost as large as a modern music-room, and to me it was the pleasantest room in the house,—the most interesting. The parlour was a bit stiff when it was not full of company, but here everything was easy. Besides the eight-hole range, there was agreat fireplace with a crane.View Image of Page 279 In winter a roaring fire was kept up in it at night, after the range fire went out. All the indoor and outdoor servants sat round the kitchen fireplace and cracked nuts and told stories until they went to bed.

We had three kitchen tables: one for kneading bread, another for making cakes and pastry, and a third with a zinc top, for dismembering fowls and rabbits and stuffing turkeys. The tall cupboards stored sugar and spices and groceries; our farm wagons brought supplies out from Winchester in large quantities. Behind the doors of a very special corner cupboard stood all the jars of brandied fruit, and glass jars of ginger and orange peel soaking in whisky. Canned vegetables, and the preserved fruits not put down in alcohol, were kept in a very cold cellar: a stream ran through it, actually!

Till and Nancy usually came for dinner, and after the dishes were washed they sat down with Mrs. Blake in the wooden rocking-chairs by the west window where the sunlight poured in. They took out their sewing or knitting from the carpetbag, and while the pound cake or the marble cake was baking in a slow oven, they talked about old times. I was allowed to sit with them and sew patchwork. Sometimes their talk was puzzling, but I soon learned that it was best never to interruptView Image of Page 280 with questions,—it seemed to break the spell. Nancy wanted to know what had happened during the war, and what had become of everybody,—and so did I.

While she sat drawing her crochet hook in and out, she would say: "And what ever did become of Lizzie and Bluebell after Miss Sapphy died?"

Then Till would speak up: "Why, ain’t I told you how Mr. Henry freed ’em right after Missy died, when he freed all the niggers? But it was hard to git rid of free niggers befo’ the war. He surely had a sight a’ trouble gittin’ shet of them two! Even after he’d got Lizzie a good place at the Taylor House hotel in Winchester, they kep’ makin’ excuse to stay on, hangin’ ’round the kitchen. In the end he had to drive ’em into town himself an’ put ’em down at the hotel, an’ tole ’em fur the las’ time they wasn’t needed at the mill place no more. You know he never did like them two niggers. He took a wonderful lot a’ trouble gittin’ good places fur his people. You remembers Sampson, honey?"

"Why, of course I do, Mother. He was Master’s steadiest man." At this moment Till would likely be on her feet in a twinkle with: "Before I begin on Sampson, I’ll just turn the bread fur you, Mrs. Blake. I seem to smell it’s about ready."

When all the pans had been changed about, Till would sit down and continue:

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"Well, Mr. Henry got Sampson a wonderful good place up in Pennsylvany, in some new kind of mill they calls roller mills. He’s done well, has Sampson, an’ his childern has turned out well, they say. Soon as the war was over, Sampson come back here, just to see the old place. The new miller treated him real clever, and let him sleep in old Master’s mill room—he don’t use it only like a kind of office, to see folks. Sampson come to my cabin every day he was here, to eat my light bread. ‘Don’t never trouble yourself to cook me no fancy victuals, Till,’ he’d say. ‘Just give me greens an’ a little fat pork, an’ plenty of your light bread. I ain’t had no real bread since I went away.’ He told me how in the big mill where he works the grindin’ is all done by steam, and the machines runs so fast an’ gits so hot, an’ burns all the taste out-a the flour. ‘They is no real bread but what’s made out-a water-ground flour,’ he says to me."

"And Tap, whatever became of him, Mrs. Blake?"

Then followed a sad story. I knew it well. Many a time I had heard about Tap, the jolly mill boy with shining eyes and shining teeth, whom everybody liked. "Poor Tap" he was always called now. People said he hadn’t been able to stand his freedom. He went to town ("town" always meaning Winchester), where every day was like circus day to a country-bred boy, and picked upView Image of Page 282various jobs until the war was over. Early in the Reconstruction time a low German from Pennsylvania opened a saloon and pool hall in Winchester, a dive where negroes were allowed to play, and gambling went on. One night after Tap had been drinking too much, he struck another darky on the head with a billiard cue and killed him. The Back Creek farmers who remembered Tap as a boy went to his trial and testified to his good character. But he was hanged, all the same. Mrs. Blake and Till always said it was a Yankee jury that hanged him; a Southern jury would have known there was no real bad in Tap.

Once Nancy looked at Mrs. Blake with a smile and asked her what had become of Martin Colbert. I had never heard of him. Mrs. Blake glanced at her in a way that meant it was a forbidden subject. "He was killed in the war," she said briefly. "He’d got to be a captain in the cavalry, and the Colberts made a great to-do about him after he was dead, and put up a monument. But I reckon the neighbourhood was relieved."

More than anything else, Nancy wanted to know about the last days of her old master and mistress. That story I could almost have told her myself, I had heard about them so often. Henry Colbert survived his wife for five years. He saw the beginning of the Civil War,View Image of Page 283 and confidently expected to see the end of it. But he met his death in the haying season of 1863, when he was working in the fields with the few negroes who begged to stay on at the Mill Farm after the miller had freed all his wife’s slaves. The Master was on top of the hayrack, catching the hay as Taylor forked it up to him. He stepped backward too near the edge of the load and fell to the ground, striking his head on a limestone ledge. He was unconscious when the field-hands carried him into the house, and he died a few hours later.

When my parents went for a long horseback ride, they sometimes took me as far as Till’s cabin, and picked me up again on their way home. It was there I heard the old stories and saw Till’s keepsakes and treasures. They were stowed away in a pinewood chest with a sloping top. She had some of the miller’s books, the woolly green shawl he had worn as an overcoat, some of Miss Sapphy’s lace caps and fichus, and odd bits of finery such as velvet slippers with buckles. Her chief treasure was a brooch, set in pale gold, and under the crystal was a lock of Mr. Henry’s black hair and Miss Sapphy’s brown hair, at the time of their marriage. The miller himself had given it to her, she said.

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In summer Till used to take me across the meadow of the Colbert graveyard, to put flowers on the graves. Each time she talked to me about the people buried there, she was sure to remember something she had not happened to tell me before. Her stories about the Master and Mistress were never mere repetitions, but grew more and more into a complete picture of those two persons. She loved to talk of Mrs. Colbert’s last days; of the reconciliation between the Mistress and Mrs. Blake that winter after Betty died, when Mrs. Blake and Mary stayed at the Mill House. The Mistress knew she had not long to live. The tappings had become more frequent; Doctor Clavenger came out from Winchester twice a week now. He told Till he had never known anyone with that kind of dropsy to live so long as Mrs. Colbert; he said it was because her heart was so strong. But the day would come when the pressure of the fluid would be too heavy, and then her heart would stop.

"She kept her bed most all day that last winter," Till would go over it, "an’ she liked to stay by herself, but she didn’t complain none. When I’d come into her room in the mornin’ early, she’d always say: ‘Good mornin’, Till,’ jest as bright as could be. Right after she’d had her breakfast, she liked Miss Mary to run in an’ talk to her for a while. After that, she liked to be by herself. Around three o’clock in the evenin’ I went in toView Image of Page 285 dress her. It was hard on her, and took her breath dreadful, but she wouldn’t give in, an’ she never got out of temper. When I’d got her dressed, Mr. Henry an’ Sampson used to come up from the mill to lift her into her chair an’ wheel her into the parlour. Mrs. Blake an’ Mary would come in to have tea with her, an’ right often Mr. Henry stayed for a cup. Missy was always in good spirits for tea, an’ it seemed like her an’ Mrs. Blake got more comfort out-a one another than ever before, talkin’ about old times and the home folks in Loudoun County. An’ Miss Mary was real fond of her grandma. If she’d knowed there’d been hard words ever, she’d forgot it. She had the right way with Miss Sapphy, an’ it meant a heap, havin’ her in the house that last winter; she was so full of life."

From the way Till spoke of Mrs. Blake’s long visit, hints that she dropped unconsciously, one understood that there was always a certain formality between Mrs. Colbert and her daughter—a reserve on both sides. After tea, for the hour before supper, the Mistress preferred to be alone in the parlour. There were many snow-falls that winter, on into March. Mrs. Colbert liked to sit and watch the evening light fade over the white fields and the spruce trees across the creek. When Till came in with the lights, she would let her leave onlyView Image of Page 286 four candles, and they must be set on the tea-table so placed that the candle-flames inside were repeated by flames out in the snow-covered lilac arbour. It looked like candles shining in a little playhouse, Till said, and there was the tea-table out there too, all set like for company. When Till peeped in at the door, she would find the Mistress looking out at this little scene; often she was smiling. Till really believed Miss Sapphy saw spirits out there, spirits of the young folks who used to come to Chestnut Hill.

And the Mistress died there, upright in her chair. When the miller came at supper-time and went into the parlour, he found her. The strong heart had been overcome at last. Though her bell was beside her, she had not rung it. There must have been some moments of pain or struggle, but she had preferred to be alone. Till thought it likely the "fine folks" were waiting outside for her in the arbour, and she went away with them.

"She oughtn’t never to a’ come out here," Till often said to me. "She wasn’t raised that way. Mrs. Matchem, down at the old place, never got over it that Miss Sapphy didn’t buy in Chestnut Hill an’ live like a lady, ’stead a’ leavin’ it to run down under the Bushwells, an’ herself comin’ out here where nobody was anybody much."

THE END

View Image of Page 287 In this story I have called several of the characters by Frederick County surnames, but in no case have I used the name of a person whom I ever knew or saw. My father and mother, when they came home from Winchester or Capon Springs, often talked about acquaintances whom they had met. The names of those unknown persons sometimes had a lively fascination for me, merely as names: Mr. Haymaker, Mr. Bywaters, Mr. Householder, Mr. Tidball, Miss Snap. For some reason I found the name of Mr. Pertleball especially delightful, though I never saw the man who bore it, and to this day I don’t know how to spell it.

WILLA CATHER

Acknowledgments

The textual editing of Sapphira and the Slave Girl is exceptional in the Cather Edition in the variety of prepublication texts that exist for it. The textual editors wish to thank those who permitted us to make use of documents in their collections: a collector who prefers not to be named for nine partial manuscripts and typescripts; the Alderman Library of the University of Virginia for three manuscript fragments; the Archives and Special Collections of Drew University for its nearly complete typescript; and the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library for the galley proofs. In addition, we are grateful to the staffs of Love Library, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, particularly those in Archives and Special Collections; the Heritage Room, Bennett Martin Public Library, Lincoln; the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin; the Houghton Library, Harvard University; and the Nebraska State Historical Society.

Alex Pettit (University of North Texas) brought his expertise and keen eye to his inspection of our materials on behalf of the Committee on Scholarly Editions.

Ann Romines would first like to acknowledge the late Susan J. Rosowski, whose early enthusiasm and support made this project possible. Important assistance in Frederick County, Virginia, came from Rebecca Ebert at the Handley Regional Library; Kay Muse Bolliger; the late William Chapin, historian of Hollow Road; John Jacobs and Woodward Bousquet of Shenandoah University; and Frances Lowe of the Winchester Star. Susan and David Parry shared their voluminous knowledge of Willow Shade, and Lucia Woods Lindley shared photographs. David Porter and Janis Stout answered many questions. In Nebraska, the Cather Foundation facilitated research, and Kari Ronning, Charles Mignon, Guy Reynolds, and Elizabeth Burke of the University of Nebraska’s Cather Project were valued collaborators. At George Washington University, Dean Edward Caress of the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences granted early research support. Gelman Library—especially the Washingtoniana collection—provided research assistance, and colleagues John Vlach, James Miller, and James Horton gave research guidance. The National Archives and the Washingtoniana collection at the Martin Luther King Library in Washington, D.C., aided research, as did the Alderman Library at the University of Virginia and Jane Goldstein at the New York Society Library. The Americanist scholars of Ann Romines’s writing group, Phyllis Palmer and Susan Strasser, were attentive and invaluable first readers and critics for the Historical Essay and Explanatory Notes, and Marilyn F. Romines gave sisterly support, forbearance, and wise advice throughout the many years of this project.

Many people and institutions have kindly made illustrations available for this volume. We are grateful to the late Dr. Bernice Slote, the late Helen Cather Southwick, and Dr. Mary Ray Weddle, who generously gave their collections of family photographs and other materials to the Archives of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, which made them available to us. The Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial and Educational Foundation and the Nebraska State Historical Society permitted us to make use of photographs they hold as well. The Handley Regional Library, Winchester, Virginia, kindly allowed us to reproduce photographs in their collections, as did the Winchester–Frederick County Historical Society, the Thomas Balch Library in Leesburg, Virginia, and the Alexandria-Washington Lodge No. 22, A.F. & A.M. The New York Society Library, the New York Municipal Archives, the Library of Virginia, and the Barrett Library of the University of Virginia all made materials from their archives available to us, as did the Archives and Special Collections of the Drew University Library. Kay Muse Bolliger and Joyce Muse Cornell, Lisa Marcus, David and Susan Parry, Ann Romines, and Lucia Woods contributed images from their collections.

The textual editors wish to acknowledge the generous help and hospitality of the late Merrill Skaggs of Drew University; Andrew Scrimgeour, Dean of Libraries at Drew University; Masato Okinaka, conservator, Drew University Library; and library staff members Lucy Marks and Jocelyne M. Rubinetti were most helpful. We also appreciate the contribution of Jennifer Hallowell of Drew University, who made the first collation of the Sapphira typescript; Elizabeth Burke of the University of Nebraska assisted materially with the conflation. Textual editor Mignon remembers the guidance and support of his Kent School English master, Cliff Loomis, and would like to recognize the ongoing support of Mickey Stern, who went out of his way to express his interest in this work.

In the early stages of the preparation of the Willa Cather Scholarly Edition, consultations with several people were especially helpful to the editors. In Willa Cather: A Bibliography (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982), Joan Crane provided an authoritative starting place for the identification and assembly of basic materials, then in correspondence was unfailingly generous with her expertise. The late Fredson Bowers (University of Virginia) advised us about the steps necessary to organize the project. David J. Nordloh (Indiana University) provided advice as we established policies and procedures and wrote our editorial manual. As editor of the Lewis and Clark journals, Gary Moulton (University of Nebraska–Lincoln) generously provided expertise and encouragement. Conversations with Richard Rust (University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill) were helpful in refining procedures concerning variants.

We appreciate the assistance of Katherine Walters, Mary Ellen Ducey, and Carmella Orosco, of Archives and Special Collections, University of Nebraska–Lincoln; Dr. Steven P. Ryan, former director of the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial and Educational Foundation, Red Cloud; and Ann Billesbach, first at the Cather Historical Center, Red Cloud, and later at the Nebraska State Historical Society, Lincoln. And we wish to acknowledge our indebtedness to the late Mildred R. Bennett, whose work as founder and president of the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial and Educational Foundation ensured that Cather-related materials in Webster County would be preserved and whose knowledge guided us through those materials.

For their administrative support at the University of Nebraska– Lincoln we thank Chancellor Harvey Perlman and Vice Chancellor Barbara A. Couture; Gerry Meisels, John G. Peters, Brian L. Foster, and Richard Hoffmann, successively deans of the College of Arts and Sciences; David C. Manderscheid, Dean of Arts and Sciences; John Yost, formerly vice-chancellor for research; and John R. Wunder, former director of the Center for Great Plains Studies. We are especially grateful to Stephen Hilliard, Linda Ray Pratt, and Joy Ritchie, who as chairs of the Department of English provided both departmental support and personal encouragement for the Cather Edition.

For funding during the initial year of the project we are grateful to the Woods Charitable Fund. For research grants during subsequent years we thank the Nebraska Council for the Humanities; the Research Council, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, the University of Nebraska Foundation, and the Department of English, University of Nebraska–Lincoln. We deeply appreciate the generous gift from the late Mr. and Mrs. William Campbell in support of the Cather Edition.

The preparation of this volume was made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agency.

Historical Apparatus

Historical Essay

Willa Cather’s twelfth and final novel, Sapphira and the Slave Girl, published in 1940, is her most complex engagement with memory. In it, Cather returns to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where she spent the first nine years of her childhood, to family history (particularly the maternal line), to the intricacies of slaveholding culture, and to her earliest recollections of people, customs, houses, landscapes, and stories. Cather wrote this book during what she called the worst period of her life (Cather to Dorothy Canfield Fisher, 5 March [1939]), years of anxiety and crushing personal losses. Writing the novel was a respite from these troubles, she told correspondents. This engagement with early memories had an almost devotional quality; it eased and steadied her.1 In Cather’s life, Sapphira and the Slave Girl might seem to demonstrate the saving powers of memory. At the same time, the writing of this last novel immersed Cather in a world of political and personal tensions and conflict. The book is set in 1856, with an epilogue set in the author’s own early childhood, about 1881. In the 1850s, the last full decade of slavery in Virginia, the abolitionist move

At the same time, the writing of this last novel immersed Cather in a world of political and personal tensions and conflict. The book is set in 1856, with an epilogue set in the author’s own early childhood, about 1881. In the 1850s, the last full decade of slavery in Virginia, the abolitionist movement was gathering force, spurred by the enforcement of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act.2 Cather’s grandparents and great-grandparents, all Virginians, were on various sides of the controversies surrounding slavery that culminated in the Civil War. Their profound differences continued to be a topic of family discussion during Willa’s childhood and adolescence. Furthermore, Cather’s choice of an aging protagonist, Sapphira Colbert, who is being overtaken by an immobilizing disease, recalls one of the catastrophes of her recent personal life, her mother’s three-year illness and death in 1931. The novel’s portrayal of troubled parent-child relations, particularly between daughters and mothers, echoes tensions Cather described as an inevitable component of life in even the happiest of families (Not Under Forty 135–36). Such tensions had been part of Cather’s personal and familial history. Her decision to include her child-self as a character in a first-person epilogue is unprecedented in her previous fiction, and it too destabilizes what might otherwise appear the smooth surfaces of her third historical novel in recent years.

Those previous historical novels, Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) and especially Shadows on the Rock (1931), although much admired, had taken a drubbing from influential Marxist critics in the 1930s. Granville Hicks accused Cather of "supine romanticism" that turned away from the "industrial civilization" of the present in escapist "flight" (147). Cather was particularly stung by this strain of criticism and, uncharacteristically, decided to reply in public, with an extended letter in Commonweal in 1936, the year she began work on Sapphira and the Slave Girl.3 "What has art ever been but escape?" she asked. The artist is "‘useful’ . . . only as all true poets are, because they refresh and recharge the spirit of those who can read their language" ("Escapism" 18, 20).

This vigorous defense of "escapism" as a condition of art, along with Cather’s often-quoted statement that her life as an artist was launched when she "began to remember" (Sergeant, Willa Cather 107), might point toward her last novel as a consummate demonstration of the artful, escapist uses of memory. But by placing an aging, autocratic female slaveholder and her adolescent female slave on the border of the soon-to-be Confederacy, in a climate of extreme urgency, Cather produced her most politically confrontational book. Sapphira and the Slave Girl exhibits the omissions and evasions, as well as the continuities, of personal and cultural memory.

Willa Cather's Virginia

The Virginia memories and family stories that Cather identified as the primary material of Sapphira are rooted in the earliest days of European settlement there. Cather’s native country was a distinctive corner of Virginia’s northern Shenandoah Valley: the Back Creek Valley, in western Frederick County. By 1670, Indian residents (Susquehannocks, Hurons, and, finally, Iroquois) had left their villages in this part of the Shenandoah Valley. The League of the Iroquois aimed to depopulate the region in order to retain hunting grounds for their exclusive use and to facilitate fur trade with the French and English (Kerns 14).

Until 1730 the Back Creek Valley remained unsettled by Europeans. Its eastern boundary, the rugged Great North Mountain (twenty miles long from north to south), was then considered "the outer limit of the western frontier." In the early 1730s a few European settlers began to venture into this unmapped area. One of the first was Willa Cather’s great-great-grandfather Jeremiah Smith (1711–87), who came from New Jersey with two other men through a gap in Great North Mountain (Kerns 85–86). Smith, a young Englishman, was the first of Cather’s known ancestors in Virginia; her Virginia history begins with his arrival.

Jeremiah Smith became one of the best-known figures in the history of the Shenandoah Valley; stories about him were prominent in local folklore, and Willa Cather would have heard them, perhaps from her grandmother Caroline Smith Cather, Smith’s granddaughter.4 Remembered as an early explorer of the region, Smith carried the chains for a land survey as early as 1735 (O’Dell 200) and served as a "pilot" for early surveyors. He made his most enduring contribution to local history and topography in 1742, when he laid out the first wagon road from Winchester west, through the Back Creek Valley to Romney. That road became a major thoroughfare, the Northwestern Turnpike (now U.S. Route 50). It ran directly by Willa Cather’s childhood home, Willow Shade.

In Sapphira, Cather sketches a shorthand version of the early days of European settlement of Back Creek Valley in her account of the history of Sapphira Colbert’s inherited estate there (28–29). She describes a country very much like that Jeremiah Smith must have encountered: "acres of forest and mountain which had never been surveyed, watered by rivers, great and small, which had never been explored except by the Indians and were nameless except for their unpronounceable Indian names" (29). Cather’s account of Back Creek Valley before 1770 is dominated by warfare between settlers and Indians, some of it a part of the French and Indian War, in which the Shenandoah Valley was a major battleground. Again, Jeremiah Smith was a legendary figure in stories of these conflicts. He was known as an "Indian fighter," a captain in the local militia who defended his community against the raids that drove many early settlers out of the area in the 1750s. In the early 1740s, Smith’s (first) wife and son had been kidnapped by Indians. According to oral history, the wife died in captivity and the son was reared by Indians and adopted their culture; as an adult he reportedly rejected his father’s overtures, accusing Smith of "atrocities committed against Indians" and of "‘taking and abusing’ Indian land" (Kerns 62).

Jeremiah Smith married two more times and fathered eleven more children; many of his descendants remained in the area and helped to perpetuate the stories about him. And although Smith came to the Shenandoah Valley without financial assets and lived on Back Creek as a squatter for his first ten years there, he became one of the largest landowners in the area. About 1750 he received the first of several land grants from Thomas, Lord Fairfax, the local proprietor of more than five million acres (see explanatory note to p. 28).5 Jeremiah Smith eventually amassed 1,113 contiguous acres (Kerns 72); all the major Virginia sites Cather describes in Sapphira, including her childhood home at Willow Shade, stood on land that was once his property.

Around 1742, Jeremiah Smith built a three-bay log house facing Back Creek and Great North Mountain, strategically located near a mountain spring, with good visibility of Indians who might approach from the mountains. A map made for a 1749–50 land survey clearly shows this house, labeled with Smith’s name, on the spot where it still stands (see illustration 4). It is the earliest surviving dwelling in the Back Creek area. The house was enlarged and remodeled about 1800, and again between 1840 and 1850, when it assumed its current appearance as a long, symmetrical, quintessentially Georgian structure, one room deep (see illustration 6) (Hofstra, Planting). This durable and elegant house, resembling a simplified version of George Washington’s Mount Vernon, is the model for "the Mill House," the most important site in Sapphira. Since about 1787, a gristmill had stood near the house, on Back Creek. In 1836 this mill and the adjacent Mill House were sold to another of Cather’s relatives, her maternal great-grandfather Jacob Funk Seibert. In 1856, the year in which Sapphira is set, Seibert and his second wife, Ruhamah, ran the mill and occupied the house.

Jeremiah Smith’s concerns and property provide much of the historical background of Sapphira, as well as its Back Creek Valley locale. Other ancestors are even more fully implicated in the novel, and the differences among them mirror the novel’s deepest conflicts. These forebears represent many of the major groups of European settlers who inhabited early Frederick County: English, German, and Irish. The first Cather in the area, for example, was Jasper Cather, who emigrated from what is now known as Northern Ireland around 1760 and settled on the Virginia frontier in a spot now part of southwestern Pennsylvania (Kerns 277). According to family tradition, Jasper Cather was a schoolteacher and later fought in the Revolution (Bennett 3). By 1766 he had left his original Pennsylvania residence because of the border warfare and had settled in Hampshire County (now in West Virginia), adjacent to Frederick County; he acquired several farms there. By the 1790s he was permanently established in the Back Creek Valley, on Flint Ridge near Hayfield. There he and his third wife, Sarah Moore, reared several children, including Willa Cather’s great-grandfather James Cather, who married another Irish immigrant, Ann Howard, and maintained the Cather residence at Flint Ridge, attending a nearby Presbyterian church. James and Ann were still living at Flint Ridge when Willa Cather was born in 1873 (see illustrations 14 and 15).6

Another important strand in Willa Cather’s Virginia history was German; it came through her maternal grandmother, Rachel Elizabeth Seibert Boak. German settlers were numerous in Frederick County. Cather’s German great-great-great-grandfather Wendel Seibert was born in 1721 in the territory of Saarland, adjacent to France.7 Cather, a life long Francophile, emphasized the French associations of her German ancestors, saying that they came from nearby Alsace.8 (This French emphasis may have intensified in the late 1930s when she was writing Sapphira and deeply concerned about the coming of World War II in Europe.) Wendel Seibert, a blacksmith, immigrated to Pennsylvania in 1738 and settled in what is now Berks County, receiving a land grant from William Penn in 1755 and establishing a family with his wife, Catharine Reis. They too were touched by the Indian wars of the 1750s; one young son was blinded (probably scalped) in a raid, and a daughter was held captive for a period. After serving in the Revolution, Wendel Seibert sold his Pennsylvania land in 1796 and moved to Berkeley County, Virginia, where several of his sons and nephews had settled. He died there in 1802 (Bell 35–37; Brown). The Seiberts had attended Reformed churches in Germany and continued to do so in America when possible; where there was no established Reformed church, they attended Lutheran services.

One of Wendel Seibert’s grandsons, Jacob Funk Seibert (1779–1858), was the father of Willa Cather’s grandmother Boak, one of the major influences on Cather’s childhood. Jacob Seibert was a miller and farmer in Berkeley County; there he married his second wife, Ruhamah, in 1813. Around 1836 the Seiberts and their children moved to Frederick County and began running the mill on Back Creek. They were Cather’s primary models for the central characters of Sapphira, Henry and Sapphira Colbert.

Ruhamah Seibert was the daughter of M. Joseph Lemmon and Rachel Henshaw Lemmon. Through her mother’s family, the Henshaws, Ruhamah could claim a distinguished English ancestry, as did the Sapphira of Cather’s novel. (Many early Virginians, especially in the eastern and earlier-settled portions of the state, were of English ancestry.) The Henshaws’ royal lineage may be traced back to Henry III, king of England from 1216 to 1272. The first members of this family in America were two orphan boys, Joshua and Daniel Henshaw. In 1653 the executor of these boys’ inheritance claimed (for his own financial gain) that they had died of the plague in London; in fact, he secretly sent the children, aged seven and five, to New England, where they were educated in the Dorchester, Massachusetts, household of the Congregational Puritan minister Richard Mather, father of Increase Mather and grandfather of Cotton Mather. The older of the two boys, Joshua, married Elizabeth Sumner of Dorchester (whose family included a governor of Massachusetts) and spent his life there. Joshua and Elizabeth’s son John Henshaw immigrated to Philadelphia, but in the words of a family historian, he did not prosper there "and hearing of the great fertility of the valley lying between the Blue Ridge and the Great North Mountain which was called by General Washington . . . ‘The Garden of America,’" he relocated in that valley, near Winchester (Henshaw 151). In 1766 this John Henshaw also received a Frederick County land grant from Lord Fairfax; he and his son Nicholas established a gristmill and sawmill there. Nicholas’s son William, a prominent officer in the Revolution, was the father of Ruhamah Seibert’s mother, Rachel Henshaw Lemmon.

Willa Cather’s Virginia ancestors also provided a cross-section of the major religious groups in Frederick County, many of which are significantly present in Sapphira. The Church of England, to which the Henshaws belonged, was Virginia’s state religion until the Revolution, when the Episcopal Church was organized as its "American successor," and it remained the religion associated with Virginia’s plantation aristocracy. Significantly, no Episcopal parish was ever organized among the relatively plain people of Back Creek Valley. Sapphira, the surviving aristocrat of Cather’s novel, maintains her Episcopal affiliation, but she must journey to Winchester to attend services at elegant Christ Church, established in 1738 (see explanatory note to p. 30). Her husband, Henry, is a "dissenting" Lutheran, as were many of the German immigrants to Frederick County, but he attends the local Baptist church, with his daughter Rachel and the Colbert slaves. Willa Cather’s grandfather Cather and his sister Sidney Cather Gore, who were born into James and Ann Cather’s Presbyterian household, both joined the Hebron Baptist Church in Back Creek Valley as young adults; by the mid-nineteenth century Baptists had become numerous in the area. Willa Cather herself attended Hebron Baptist Church with her family as a child, and it is the model for the Reverend Fairhead’s Baptist church, which figures importantly in the novel (see explanatory note to p. 20). In addition, there were many Quakers in Frederick County; they had been "the most dominant religious influence" there in the eighteenth century (Kerns 33–34). The mother of Willa Cather’s maternal grandfather, William Lee Boak, was Eleanor Lee, a member of a prominent Quaker family, and Boak himself may have been a Quaker ("Obituary"), as were several Cather relatives. No major character of Sapphira is a Quaker, but the Quaker presence is evident in the book. Most Quakers opposed slavery, and Quaker influence encourages Henry Colbert’s questioning of slavery and supports Rachel Blake’s plans to help the slave girl Nancy escape via the Underground Railroad.

All of Willa Cather’s ancestors in Frederick County were farming families, and some of the men also worked as millers, as did Henry Colbert of Sapphira. Farming was the most common occupation in rural Frederick County. The county developed a strong agricultural economy; by 1850 its largest products were wheat (311,060 bushels) and corn (199,242 bushels) (Kalbian 58–59; DeBow 323). Obviously, there was need for grain mills and millers in the area. The eastern portion of the original county, where wealthy Lord Fairfax settled at Greenway Court (now in Clarke County), had been "developed by an aristocratic class of settlers" from tidewater Virginia (see explanatory note to p. 160) who established plantations and sometimes had large slave holdings. The central region of the county, which included the county seat and major market town, Winchester, was dominated by smaller farms, where some residents employed slaves "on small-scale farm operations, as well as in various industries, such as milling." Both these regions boasted a limestone rock base and fertile soil that was suited to farming (Kerns 17, 20).

But the westernmost strip of the county is a part of Appalachia; the Appalachian Mountains form the western border of the Back Creek Valley watershed. There the soil is "poor, and the fragile shale rock base causes drainage problems. Agriculture was practiced on a small scale by subsistence farmers." This region attracted less affluent settlers, who could usually only manage a marginal existence on their rocky mountain farms (Kerns 17–20). The Appalachian strip of Frederick County included the village of Back Creek Valley (called Back Creek in Cather’s novel), Timber Ridge, and all the major sites of Sapphira. In 1851, Willa Cather’s paternal grandparents, William and Caroline Cather, built their sturdy and commodious brick house, Willow Shade, at the northern tip of Great North Mountain, literally on the dividing line between the Appalachians and the adjacent, prosperous small-farm region. The Cather homeplace on Flint Ridge was nearby, slightly to the east, and the Jeremiah Smith house, in 1851 owned by the Seiberts, was just on the western side of Great North Mountain, in the little community of Back Creek Valley. By 1856 all of Willa Cather’s ancestors who were to serve as prototypes for the novel’s characters were living in this borderland region of Frederick County, trying to claim some of the prosperity that the central and eastern portions of the county were enjoying, as railroads opened up new markets in Baltimore and Washington. But the depressed Appalachian economy remained close at their backs; it is represented in Sapphira by poor mountain families like those of Mrs. Ringer and Casper Flight, as well as the struggling farmers who cannot pay their bills to the miller, Henry Colbert.

As in the rest of Virginia, slavery was a well-established institution in Frederick County, although on a relatively modest scale. In 1850 the county’s total population was 15,975, of whom 12,769 were white, 912 were free persons of color, and 2,294 were slaves (DeBow 320). The 1860 census showed that the number of slaves in the county had slightly declined, although the total population had increased to 20,938 persons, of whom 2,259 were slaves. Those slaves were owned or employed by 405 persons, about 2 percent of the total county population, with an average ownership of five slaves each. The largest numbers of slaveholders resided in Winchester and in the eastern region of the county, where plantation traditions were stronger (Hutton 359–60). Farther west, in the Back Creek Valley and on the adjacent small farms, the prevalent grain crops "did not require the constant attention tobacco [a common crop in other regions of Virginia] demanded so it was not economically feasible to maintain a large workforce year round," and few farmers owned large numbers of slaves (Ebert 5).

Willa Cather’s ancestors played various roles in the drama of slavery’s last decades in Virginia, a drama that is at the center of Sapphira’s plot. Cather’s father and her grandfather and great-grandfather Cather never owned slaves, and they opposed slavery. Free blacks, usually children or adolescents, lived and worked in the households of both James and William Cather, as census records show.9 In antebellum Virginia, the county Overseers of the Poor had jurisdiction over free blacks, including the power to remove them from the state or to sell them as slaves if they could not support themselves. "Therefore, the Overseers of the Poor were active in arranging indentures for young free blacks. Their primary concern was that the free blacks learn a trade so they would not be a drain on the community’s resources" (Ebert 35). Records of such indentures are incomplete, but at least one exists for James Cather, who took a ten-year-old "Negro" girl, Jane Harris, into his household as an apprentice in 1830, agreeing to provide her with "good wholesome diet, cloathing, and cleanly washing and lodging, suitable to her degree during the whole term of servitude," and to see that she be taught "common Housework and the art of weaving." When Jane Harris reached the age of eighteen, the indenture was to end and she was to be paid twelve dollars. The apprentice was enjoined to serve her "Master well and faithfully" and to behave as "a good and faithful Apprentice ought to do" (Indenture). James Cather’s signature also appears on a surviving certificate of freedom for a young African American man in 1851 (Certificate). (Free blacks in Virginia were required to carry and regularly to renew certificates of freedom.) This evidence suggests that James Cather supported Frederick County’s free black community (although in an inevitably paternalistic manner) by providing support and vocational training for youths who lived in his household as indentured servants. Such an arrangement would have had obvious economic benefits for the "master" as well, providing him with inexpensive labor.

Growing up in James and Ann Cather’s household, their son William would have lived in some domestic intimacy with African American children and workers, an arrangement he continued in his own household. When the Civil War approached, James Cather initially opposed Virginia’s secession from the Union. However, since he was still a supporter of states’ rights, as he had been as a member of the Virginia legislature in the 1840s, he finally chose to vote with the majority, for secession. Despite his antislavery convictions, James Cather supported the Confederacy during the Civil War. However, his son William, Willa’s grandfather, was a strong supporter of the Union,10 and both William’s sons, George and Willa’s father, Charles, avoided the Confederate draft by moving into nearby West Virginia during the last months of the war.

On her mother’s side, Willa Cather’s Virginia ancestors included slaveholders. Cather repeatedly stated that the character of Rachel Blake in Sapphira, who had "known" since childhood that slavery was "wrong" and abetted the escape of her mother’s slave, was based on her grandmother Boak.11 Rachel Boak’s husband apparently did not share her convictions, however. Census records show that William Lee Boak, Cather’s maternal grandfather, was a slaveholder. In 1840 the Boaks, who had married in 1830, were living in Martinsburg, in Berkeley County, where William ran a hotel, and their household included five slaves. About 1845 the Boaks and their children moved to Washington, D.C., where William worked as a clerk at the Government Land Office and, presumably with his wife’s assistance, kept "Mr. Boak’s boarding house" (Pippenger 161) in a rented dwelling near the Capitol. The 1850 slave census for the District of Columbia recorded that William Lee Boak owned one male slave. So Rachel Seibert Boak lived all or most of her childhood and married life, until her husband’s death in 1854, in slaveholding households. (We have found no record of her ever owning slaves herself.) When the Civil War came she supported the Confederacy, and her three surviving sons enlisted in the Confederate army. One of them, James William Boak, died from wounds received in 1862 at Second Manassas.

As early as 1820, when Rachel Seibert Boak was four years old, her father, Jacob Funk Seibert, had owned three slaves in Berkeley County. By 1850, when Jacob and Ruhamah Seibert were living on Back Creek at the Mill Farm depicted in Sapphira, he owned five slaves. During the following decade, when slave ownership was declining in Frederick County, the Seibert slave holdings increased. Jacob died in 1858, and the 1859 inventory of his property listed nine slaves, one of whom died later that year (Buck). (This was Jane Sibert, a woman of twenty-one who, with her baby, was valued at one thousand dollars and was the most valuable Seibert slave.) Ruhamah Seibert inherited her husband’s slaves; in the 1860 slave census they numbered seven. She was among thirty slaveholders listed in the Back Creek Valley district. The district’s largest slaveholder, with fourteen slaves, was Willa Cather’s great-uncle William Smith, half brother of her grandmother Caroline Smith Cather. In 1860 only three persons in the district owned more slaves than Ruhamah Seibert.

At least two of Ruhamah Seibert’s slaves remained in her household as employees after emancipation; they are listed there in the 1870 census. One, Thomas Parrott, was seventy-five in 1870 and a miller by occupation; he was probably the eldest slave, "Tom," listed in the 1859 inventory of Jacob Seibert’s estate, and he may have been a prototype for Sampson, the miller’s trusted assistant and "steadiest man" (288) in Sapphira. The other former slave in Ruhamah Seibert’s postwar household (listed as "Matilda" in the 1859 estate inventory) was Matilda Jefferson, who, according to the 1850 and 1860 Virginia slave censuses, had belonged to the Seiberts at least since 1850. Matilda Jefferson, fifty-eight in 1870, was the prototype for Till, Sapphira’s housekeeper and most trusted slave, and mother of the slave girl Nancy. (In the novel, by Sapphira’s arrangement, Till is married to another Colbert slave, a "capon man" named Jefferson.) In a 1940 letter, Cather described "Aunt Till" as a member of the Cather family during her Virginia childhood (Cather to Ferris Greenslet, 13 December 1940), and "Aunt Till" is an important character in Sapphira’s autobiographical epilogue, telling tales of her former mistress, Sapphira. During her childhood years at Willow Shade, young Willa probably heard such stories of Ruhamah Seibert, Sapphira’s prototype, from the actual Aunt Till, Matilda Jefferson, as well as Ruhamah’s daughter Rachel Seibert Boak and her granddaughter Mary Virginia Boak Cather. "While they talked," Willa Cather wrote, "I looked and listened" (277).

Willa Cather drew on many details of the Seibert house hold in her Virginia novel. When Willa was born on 7 December 1873, her great-grandmother Ruhamah Seibert’s death at the Mill Farm, at the age of eighty-one or eighty-two, was a recent event, having occurred only six weeks before. Like Rachel Blake of Sapphira, Rachel Boak appears to have been closer to her father than to her mother; she gave his full name to one of her sons, Jacob Funk Seibert Boak, although she apparently did not choose to name a daughter for her mother.12 When Jacob Seibert made his will in February 1856 he left his widowed daughter, Rachel Boak, the house in Back Creek Valley where she was then living, having come to Frederick County after her husband’s death in Washington, D.C. He made no such specific bequest to any of his several other children, leaving the residue of the estate to his "beloved wife Ruhamah Seibert" (Will of Jacob Seibert). He apparently knew that it would not be feasible for Rachel Boak to come to the Mill Farm to live with her mother after his death, even though it would have been quite usual for a widowed mother and daughter to share a home. In fact, other adult and married Seibert children did live with their mother, Ruhamah, including a daughter and her husband. Rachel Boak was still living in the house her father left her in 1873, when her grandchild Willa Cather was born there. A few months later, Charles Cather and his young family moved into his parents’ house, Willow Shade, while the elder Cathers made their first trip to Nebraska, where they would move permanently in 1877. Rachel Boak moved to Willow Shade with her daughter’s family, and she remained with them until her death, in Nebraska, in 1893.

Willa Cather was a child of Reconstruction; the picture of antebellum Virginia she paints in Sapphira was necessarily a product of secondhand memory (and of research and invention as well). She wrote to a friend that little of the book was fiction; instead, it was so closely woven from family and neighborhood tales that she could scarcely distinguish her personal contribution to the whole (Cather to Viola Roseboro’, 9 November 1940). Some facts of local history are omitted or altered in the novel; for example, the fictional Colberts own more slaves than the actual Seiberts—or any other Back Creek Valley residents—did in the 1850s. Yet Sapphira’s aristocratic demeanor and authoritative, "masterly" management of her estate clearly echo the actual Ruhamah Seibert, who managed her substantial Back Creek property after her husband’s death (the 1860 and 1870 censuses list her, not her resident adult son, as head of the household). And although Cather edited Sapphira rigorously to prevent the novel from being clogged with minutiae of social history (Cather to Ferris Greenslet, 13 December 1940), regional historians have largely confirmed its evocation of Back Creek Valley and of Frederick County history, economy, and culture.13

One notable exception to this, however, is the novel’s assertion that "No negro slave had ever run away from Back Creek, or from Hayfield, or Round Hill, or even from Winchester" (222). This statement is incorrect. As John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger have shown in Runaway Slaves, instances of slaves’ running away were very frequent in the antebellum South. In fact, there are documented instances of Frederick County slaves who escaped to Canada before 1850 and then wrote accounts of their experience, in letters or for publication, that were circulated back in Virginia (see explanatory note to p. 219). This suggests that the family and neighborhood stories which were Cather’s major source for Sapphira presented a curtailed view of slaves’ experience, limited perhaps by the tellers’ experiences and perspectives and by what they were willing to discuss with a little white girl.

Remembering Virginia

Three women storytellers helped to keep Willa Cather’s childhood memories and experiences of Virginia vivid and accessible until, in her mid-sixties, she began to write Sapphira. All of them—a slave, a poor white Appalachian, and a daughter and wife of slaveholders—served as prototypes for important characters in the novel and perhaps as models for Cather’s art. The most enigmatic of the three is Matilda Jefferson, on whom the character of Till is based. In the 1856 body of the novel, Till appears as a taciturn and inaccessible slave who seems most fully present to her demanding mistress, Sapphira, and withholds from her daughter, Nancy, even the story of the girl’s paternity. To the child Willa Cather of the book’s postwar epilogue, however, this same Till is a generous and forthcoming storyteller, full of tales about the postwar fortunes of the other Colbert slaves and of admiring, minutely detailed stories about young Willa’s great-grandparents, Till’s former owners. Her ambivalent position in the novel may replicate the strain and difficulty—if not the impossibility—of accessing African Americans’ experience of slavery in a novel by a white Virginian who was born in 1873. Yet Cather’s description of Till in the epilogue admiringly presents her as an narrative artist who might be a model for Cather’s own work in Sapphira: "Her stories about the Master and Mistress were never mere repetitions, but grew more and more into a complete picture of those two persons" (292)—a work of art that grows from accretions of memory, much as Cather described her own novel. In letters, Cather cited "Aunt Till’s" stories as a major source for the book.

Mary Ann Anderson, who lived on Timber Ridge and sometimes worked in the Cather household during Willa’s childhood, was a gifted storyteller as well; Edith Lewis recalls Cather’s describing her talk as "full of fire and wit, rich in the native idiom . . . many of these stories Willa Cather remembered all her life" (11). On her first return to Virginia, in 1896, Cather had several satisfying visits with this beloved friend of her early childhood, who told her with much rich detail what had become of the Back Creek people Cather remembered (Cather to Mrs. Ackroyd, 16 May 1941). Edith Lewis confirms that Mrs. Anderson was "the original of Mrs. Ringer in Sapphira," the mountain woman who was "born interested" (11). When Cather lectured at the Bread Loaf School of English in 1922, she identified her "first teacher in narrative" as "an old mountain woman" in Virginia, who must have been Mary Ann Anderson. This woman, she said, "could neither read or write, but knew the life of the mountain, the folk phrases which no one had written nor could write, but which are the product of years and generations" (Bennett 208–9). Such local storytelling was a major narrative model for Sapphira.

One of Mary Ann Anderson’s daughters, Marjorie, moved to Nebraska with the Cathers and remained in their household as a servant until her death in 1924 (see illustration 24). Marjorie Anderson, of whom Willa Cather was particularly fond, is the subject of her elegiac poem "Poor Marty" and was the prototype for the "bound girl," Mandy, in "Old Mrs. Harris." But Cather’s "most complete portrait" of Marjorie is as Mahailey, the Virginia-born servant in One of Ours (Lewis 11). When World War I begins, in that novel, Mahailey recalls her own firsthand war experiences, as a Virginia child during the Civil War with five brothers in the Confederate army; one of those tales, of a local boy who was wounded in battle and died of gangrene, Cather used again in the epilogue of Sapphira (One of Ours 177–78; Sapphira 268). By retelling Virginia stories in Nebraska, Marjorie Anderson must have helped to keep them fresh in Cather’s memory.

The most influential elder storyteller of Willa Cather’s early life was probably her grandmother Boak, a constant presence throughout her childhood. Like old Mrs. Harris in Cather’s 1931 story of that name, Rachel Boak assumed much of the responsibility for child care in her daughter’s household, and until she attended Red Cloud High School, Willa Cather received most of her education at home, from her grandmother Boak. Many stories that are integral to Sapphira—including that of Rachel Blake’s decision to help her mother’s slave escape—could have come from no one but Rachel Boak, whom Cather repeatedly identified as the prototype for Rachel Blake. In a deleted introduction to the epilogue of Sapphira, Cather emphasized that such stories were a part of the domestic fabric of her early years: "stories of the War and the ‘old slave times’ were the nursery tales of our childhood" ("Sapphira"; see illustration 52). Cather’s closest Red Cloud friend, Carrie Miner Sherwood, recalled the local children’s fondness for Grandmother Boak, a "little southern lady" who would "tell and retell" tales of the Civil War in Virginia. "She held us spellbound" (Hoover 150). According to Sherwood, "Willie inherited a great deal of her story telling from her Grandmother Boak" (Hoover 148).

In Sapphira’s autobiographical epilogue, Willa Cather’s maternal grandmother (who is called Rachel Blake, although —as maternal grandmother of an "I" who is Willa Cather herself—she is presumably Rachel Boak) presides over the Willow Shade kitchen, a place where storytelling is often under way. There, Rachel Blake and Aunt Till recall the past and answer Nancy’s questions. Cather portrays her maternal grandmother as an accomplished storyteller. Yet, like Till, Rachel Blake is sometimes identified with the suppression, not the expression, of stories. For example, when the visiting Nancy asks what became of the rake Martin Colbert, who tried to rape her, "Mrs. Blake glanced at her in a way that meant it was a forbidden subject" (283), at least when young Willa is present. Earlier, in 1856, Rachel Blake declined to tell stories about her married life in Washington, answering questions with "I hardly remember. All that is gone. I’d take it kindly of you not to bring it back to me" (145–46). Similarly, the Cather-Boak family history is vague on the details of Rachel Seibert Boak’s life before the Civil War. Mildred Bennett, researching The World of Willa Cather in the late 1940s, when many family members and friends were still alive, was able to come up with only the vaguest speculations: "Family friends think that Mrs. Boak for a time ran an exclusive boarding house in Richmond or in Washington, D.C." (6). This suggests that Rachel Boak, like Rachel Blake, may have had little to say in her later years about her married life and the early years of her widowhood. Southern historian W. Fitzhugh Brundage reminds us of "the propensity of groups to suppress as well as to recall portions of the past. Within collective memories dialectic exists between the willfully recalled and deliberately forgotten past" (6). In the stories that Rachel Boak shared with other southern women and passed on to the children in her household, we may see such a dialectic— remembering some stories, suppressing others—at work. This tradition of selective silence is part of the southern inheritance Willa Cather brought to her last novel.

In the spring of 1883, when Willa Cather was nine years old, her parents decided to join Charles Cather’s parents, brother, and other family members in Webster County, Nebraska. This decision seems to have been precipitated by the burning of the sheep barn at Willow Shade, which, although sometimes explained as an instance of spontaneous combustion (Bennett 18), may have been an act of arson. In 1952 a Frederick County woman wrote to Willa Cather’s Red Cloud friend Carrie Miner Sherwood that Charles Cather, who had been a Virginia friend of her father’s, "left this country and moved to Red Cloud because of some mean low down gossip. The Cather and Boak families are a hily respect strain of irisch people" (Hannum).

Sapphira’s epilogue asserts that "the war made few enmities in the country neighbourhoods" (274) and describes cordial postwar relations between Union and Confederate supporters in Back Creek Valley.14 However, by the war’s end "the majority" of Frederick Countians had anti-Union sympathies, "primarily because of the harsh treatment they had received from Union troops" (Kalbian 73). William Cather, a staunch Union supporter whose sons did not fight in the war, was less financially and personally devastated by it than were other local families. As county sheriff in the postwar years, appointed by the locally unpopular Union military government, William Cather chose his sons and nephew as deputies, and he had ample opportunities to make enemies for himself and his family—as well as to make profits (some of which he shared with his neighbors, as when, in 1865, he built a school for local children and hired a teacher).15 His wife’s nephew Aristotle Smith described him as "quite a financier" ("Notebook" n.p.). Whatever tensions precipitated Charles and Mary Virginia Cather’s decision to move to Nebraska, it seems certain that their decision had been in the making for at least ten years, during which other Cather family members had immigrated to Nebraska, along with a significant contingent of their Frederick County neighbors. In Nebraska the Cathers sought both economic gain and a more healthful climate for William and Caroline Cather’s daughters, three of whom had contracted tuberculosis (from which they eventually died) in damp Back Creek Valley.16 From early childhood, Willa Cather must have heard stories of her relatives’ new lives in Nebraska, and she must have been at least dimly aware that a move there was a possibility for her own household. However, none of these tensions or possibilities is present in the Willow Shade household that Cather depicts in the epilogue of Sapphira. That household, based on Cather’s earliest memories, is idyllically self-contained and richly self-sufficient, and the child Willa occupies a position of privilege in it.17 By 1881, the probable date of the epilogue, the actual Willa Cather had two younger brothers, but there is no mention of these siblings—potential rivals for an indulged oldest daughter—in the novel. Although life in Reconstruction Virginia was very much a life after the fall (of the Confederacy, at least), the Willow Shade of the epilogue seems edenic from the viewpoint of a rapt and privileged white child. (Only a few matters that the child does not know how to interpret—such as the separate servings of meals for whites and blacks and Till’s enigmatic final words—suggest otherwise.)

For the child Willa Cather, it seems, the fall was the departure from Virginia. According to Edith Lewis, that leave-taking was "tragic for a child of her nature—loving passionately, as she did, every tree and rock, every landmark of the countryside, all the familiar faces, all their ‘things’ at Willowshade [mostly sold at auction], all their ways" (8). Thirty years later, just after the publication of O Pioneers!, Cather described leaving Virginia in language which suggests that the intensity of that early loss was still immediate to her: "I would not know how much a child’s life is bound up in the woods and hills and meadows around it, if I had not been jerked away from all these." She described the extremity of her homesickness and her decision that "I would not eat much until I got back to Virginia and could get some fresh mutton" ("Willa Cather Talks of Work," Bohlke 10), suggesting that, during her first days in Nebraska, she longed to return home. But Cather did not return to Virginia until thirteen years later, and she never lived there again.

When they arrived in Nebraska after the long railway journey with their family, Charles and Virginia Cather first settled at his parents’ farmhouse in Catherton Township, a sparsely settled portion of Webster County about twelve miles from the county seat, Red Cloud. After their arrival, William Cather returned to Virginia for a long visit and his son Charles began to work his farm. Some of the Cathers’ neighbors were recent immigrants from Scandinavia, France, Bohemia, Russia, and Germany. Other neighbors bore familiar Frederick County names;18 many of the Cathers’ Virginia neighbors and relatives had also decided to try their fortunes in Webster County. The township was named "Catherton" in honor of its first settler, Charles Cather’s brother George, and the area quickly became known as "New Virginia." Willa Cather’s first formal education in Nebraska was at a brief term of the "New Virginia School."

On 14 September 1906 a Red Cloud newspaper, the Webster County Argus, ran a serial feature, "The Virginians," which emphasized the importance of these early Virginia settlers. The feature began:

The story of the Virginians in the western part of the county gathers naturally around two grand old men, Uncle William Cather and Uncle James Lockhart. These two old gentlemen were friends and neighbors in the vicinity of the world-famed Winchester, in the beautiful valley of the Shenandoah. Each of them was a man of considerable prominence in the locality, of pronounced convictions; the one, a determined union man, the other, a state’s rights man; the one, a loyal follower of Lincoln, the other, a resolute partisan of the Lees. (1)

This front-page article, published more than thirty years after William Cather’s arrival in Webster County, indicates how pertinent Virginia history and legends remained for the Frederick County immigrants and for the feature’s author. It emphasizes the effects of the Civil War on the Shenandoah Valley and the Cathers’ and Lockharts’ wartime allegiances. The first installment then traces the history of the Cather family as it continued in Webster County, showing how these "Virginians" became "men of significance in the county’s history" and enumerating their descendants, including "Miss Willa . . . who has written her name where it has been read throughout America" (1).

Willa Cather’s own anonymous autobiographical sketch (written in the third person for a Knopf publicity booklet) emphasized the ways her Virginia backgrounds shaped her vivid and sympathetic responses to the much more heterogeneous community she encountered in Nebraska:

Had she [Willa Cather] been born in that community, she doubtless would have taken these things for granted. But she came to this strange mixture of peoples and manners from an old conservative society; from the Valley of Virginia, where the original land grants made in the reigns of George II and III had been going down from father to son ever since, where life was ordered and settled, where the people in good families were born good, and the poor mountain people were not expected to amount to much. The movement of life was slow there, but the quality of it was rich and kindly. There had been no element of struggle since the Civil War. Foreigners were looked down upon, unless they were English or persons of title. An imaginative child, taken out of this definitely arranged background and dropped down among struggling immigrants from all over the world, naturally found something to think about. (Willa Cather 2)

Cather’s final novel both renders and questions every feature of the sketch. The fixity of class and property is variously apparent, most extremely in the central case of a "slave girl" so hamstrung by her hereditary position as Sapphira’s property that her only alternative is to take the enormous risk of running away. The "rich and kindly" rhythms of a settled life are palpable in the novel; they make Back Creek a beloved homeplace even for the abused Nancy. The proposition that, in Virginia, "people in good families were born good" is scrutinized as Cather examines her family history, especially through the complex and problematic character of Sapphira Colbert. And the local belief that "foreigners" are to be "looked down upon" is borne out in the novel by Back Creek’s assumption that Henry Colbert, a plain man of Flemish descent, is inferior to the "heiress" Sapphira, who boasts an English crest on her carriage—even though Colbert’s decency and humanity are far more apparent than his wife’s. In Sapphira it is the intrepid Rachel Blake who questions the Virginia fixities most trenchantly, when she identifies her mother’s family tradition of slavery as "not right" and encourages and abets Nancy in becoming a fugitive immigrant to Canada. Yet Rachel—who had herself failed to sustain an independent life in the city of Washington—understands all too well the difficulties of challenging a fixed order. "A man’s got to be stronger’n a bull to get out of the place he was born in," she thinks (131).

Even after their move to Nebraska, the Cathers remained a southern family. In the spring of 1885, Charles and Virginia Cather moved their family from the farm in Catherton Township to the railroad town of Red Cloud (population about twenty-five hundred). There Charles, who had studied law in Baltimore, wrote abstracts, sold insurance, and made loans. Occasional visits and frequent, detailed letters, as well as the Winchester newspaper, kept the transplanted Nebraska Cathers in close touch with Virginia kinfolk and customs. Stories of Virginia remained a family staple; both grandmothers told Civil War tales, and Charles Cather re counted his boyhood memories of the war years, when Willow Shade—despite his parents’ Union sympathies—had served as a hospital for sick and wounded Confederate soldiers (Elsie Cather to Meta Cather, 8 February 1961). Mary Virginia Boak Cather had brought a Confederate flag and her dead brother’s Confederate uniform to Nebraska; she continued her stories of his wartime exploits and those of her other two brothers in the Confederate army. When Willa Cather was photographed, as a teenager, in a Civil War cap, she was presumably wearing part of her uncle’s uniform (see illustration 1). When the Cather children and their playmates established a "play town" in Red Cloud, they conducted their "civic transactions" with "the Confederate bills which the Cather family had used for packing dishes in the trip from Virginia" (Bennett 173; see illustration 53). A surviving Red Cloud high school theme by the youngest Cather daughter, Elsie, who was born in Nebraska, suggests the southern flavor of the young author’s household: it is a comic but ardent tale of an animated umbrella that preserves the honor of the Confederacy.19 Carrie Miner Sherwood, who first met Willa Cather during the Cathers’ first year in Nebraska, recalled that her new friend was full of southern tales: "She used to tell me so many wonderful stories of the South and Virginia when I was a little girl" (Hoover 147).

The southern-inflected routines and rituals of the Cather household continued in Red Cloud. Rachel Boak, Virginia Cather, and Marjorie Anderson prepared "Old Virginia recipes" (Lewis 12) in the kitchen, where the apparently most used cookbook was a worn 1850s volume the family had brought from Virginia.20 Willa Cather’s closest fictional portrait of her childhood home in Red Cloud is the picture of the Templeton family in her 1931 story "Old Mrs. Harris," which, according to Edith Lewis, "might well have been called Family Portraits" (6). The Templetons, who maintain many "feudal" southern domestic customs in a small Colorado town, often find themselves at odds with their neighbors in "a snappy little Western democracy" (133). The Cathers, too, occasionally encountered disapproval of their Virginia ways in Red Cloud. According to Mildred Bennett’s sources, "Willa, even as a child, sensed that some of the neighbors thought her mother haughty. . . . She was well aware that her mother was behaving in the Southern genteel tradition." In 1889, when Charles Cather was involved in a local political tempest, the Red Cloud Chief called him "Cholles Cather," in a "jibe at Virginia accents" (Bennett 29, 25). In the Red Cloud school, Willa Cather became aware that her own speech was different from that of her classmates and "hastened to get rid of her slight Southern accent" (Lewis 18).21

Writing Virginia

As an adult, Willa Cather most frequently identified herself with her years in Nebraska, although it is notable that her anonymous autobiographical sketch, written in the early 1920s, gives considerable space to her Virginia origins. Standard accounts of her career have tended to give short shrift to her complicated legacy of Virginia memories; for example, Edwin and Lillian Bloom concluded that "almost until the end of her career," Cather chose "to ignore the South" (7). But almost from the beginning, Cather’s fiction suggests otherwise. When she began to write stories at the University of Nebraska, memories of Virginia were among her first-used resources, along with more recent memories of immigrant neighbors in Nebraska. "The Elopement of Allen Poole" (1893), published in a university magazine when Cather was nineteen, is set in a Blue Ridge locale clearly based on Frederick County, Virginia, and tries (somewhat awkwardly) to represent local mountain dialect. The protagonist is a poor white bootlegger (a common local occupation noted in Sapphira) who is shot by a revenuer en route to his elopement. The story’s narrator affects easy familiarity with southern manners and class conventions: "It takes a man of the south to do nothing perfectly, and Allen was as skilled in that art as were any of the F.F.V.’s who wore broadcloth" (19–20). (An F.F.V. is a member of a First Family of Virginia, as Cather—perhaps erroneously—assumed her readers would know.)

The most striking feature of this early story is its precise evocation of a place the young author has not seen for ten years. Readers of Sapphira will recognize many local particulars— such as Bethel Church, Timber Ridge (here renamed Limber Ridge), the swinging bridge over Back Creek—and above all the botanical, environmental specificity, all of which foreshadow the Virginia novel Cather would publish forty-seven years later: "sleepy pinewoods, slatey ground. . . . the laurels . . . just blushing into bloom. . . . the fields of wheat and corn, and among them the creek. . . . the mowers swinging their cradles. . . . the Blue Ridge . . . against the sky" (20). As in the epilogue of Sapphira, local geology, wild and cultivated plants, and human workers coexist in an idyllically harmonious ecosystem. Yet the story, like the novel, is laced with violence, not only Allen’s murder but his fears, as he dies in his lover’s arms, that he might have lived to abuse her "like the mountain folks round here does" 22(24).

Cather made another attempt to use Virginia sources in "A Night at Greenway Court," probably written in Red Cloud after her 1895 graduation from the University of Nebraska (Woodress 105) and published in the Nebraska Literary Magazine in June 1896. This swashbuckling story drew on tales of Lord Fairfax, her Virginia ancestors’ eighteenth-century patron. Lord Fairfax was a figure of Frederick County legend and history; Cather may have visited the remains of his manor house, Greenway Court, when she was a child (Woodress 29–30). This story evokes his character and ménage. In fact, the narrator—a resident of Winchester— frames his tale as a contribution to a volume of Frederick County history. "A Night at Greenway Court" almost seems a rehearsal for A Lost Lady, with a star-struck colonial Virginia youth defending the honor of a lady and a lord by an act of discretion—the refusal to relate the memory of a duel— that costs him the English king’s favor. The narrator has no regrets. He concludes, "I had kept my friend’s secret and shielded a fair lady’s honor, which are the two first duties of a Virginian" (492).

More complex questions about the "first duties of a Virginian" are at the heart of Sapphira. And two of the best stories from Cather’s ten years in Pittsburgh, working as an editor, journalist, and teacher (1896–1906), also touch on her Virginia concerns. Although she eventually thrived in Pittsburgh, this period was young Willa Cather’s first extended separation from her family, and at first she considered herself an exile in the East. She wrote to a Lincoln friend that it was impossible for her to be happy so far from her Nebraska home (Cather to Mariel Gere, 19 September 1897). One of the best stories from the Pittsburgh years, "The Sentimentality of William Tavener" (1900), combines Cather’s Virginia heritage with more recent Nebraska memories. It is a probing study of how memories and relics of Virginia affect the domestic equilibrium of a Nebraska farm family and reinforce the bonds of the wife and husband, both immigrants from Frederick County. William and Hester Tavener, whose marriage has become so businesslike that they are emotionally estranged, accidentally find that they share childhood memories of a circus back in Virginia and discover a world of affectionate mutual recollections, rekindling their love for one another. However, this happy discovery alters the dynamics of the household; no longer can the Tavener sons count on their mother to side with them against their father. And Hester’s alliances to her Virginia past are subtly changed, too. When prairie flies buzz around sleeping William, she expresses her renewed tenderness for him by removing a piece of mosquito netting from a treasured ornament—a basket of wax fruit—and using the net to protect his face. This small adjustment signals a reordering of priorities, privileging living, interactive, shared narrative memories of Virginia over the commemorative admiration of a fixed object, the basket of fruit—a memorial to a dead Virginia sister. In "The Sentimentality of William Tavener," Cather is clearly thinking about how Virginia memories might be a living resource for people who have moved to a very different place. And in this story, too, she draws on specific Frederick County names and places that will reappear in Sapphira.23

One of Cather’s last Pittsburgh stories, "The Namesake" (published in 1907), signals that, as her fiction matured, her Virginia heritage was still on her mind. In this story, an American sculptor discovers the impulse for his best work in a connection to an uncle for whom he was named, a Union soldier who was killed in the Civil War. Cather herself sometimes claimed to have been named for her Confederate uncle who was also a youthful Civil War casualty. In this story she seems to be considering (as she did in a poem of the same title) what an artist of the early twentieth century might do with a compelling family heritage that included the upheavals of the Civil War. In "The Namesake" the sculptor says that, through his dead soldier uncle, "For the first time I felt the pull of race and blood and kindred, and felt beating within me things that had not begun with me" (146). Such ancestral "things" became the heart of Sapphira.

The idea of being a "namesake" seems to have had special power for Cather, who played throughout her life with the elements of her Virginia inheritance as she named and renamed herself. According to her father, she was named "Willela" for a sister of his, who died of diphtheria as a little girl. However, she was called "Willie" by her family, and as a child she blotted out "Willela" in the family Bible, replacing it with "Willa." She also assumed the middle name "Love," as a tribute to a much-admired Virginia doctor, William S. Love, who delivered her and was probably a partial model for the cultivated and sympathetic Dr. Clavenger in Sapphira (see illustration 28 and explanatory note to p. 250). Then, as a Red Cloud teenager, she began to sign herself "William Cather Jr.";24 both her grandfathers were named William. Another namesake may have been her Confederate soldier-uncle. In Cather’s 1903 poem titled "The Namesake," the youthful speaker stands at the grave of a Virginia soldier-uncle and vows to "be winner at the game / Enough for two who bore the name." The poem is dedicated "To W.S.B. of the Thirty-Third Virginia" (April Twilights 25–26, 55–56). Cather’s uncle was indeed a member of that regiment. However, he was not William Seibert Boak, as Cather’s biographers have reported, but, according to census and Confederate records and his gravestone, James William Boak. (Another uncle, Jacob Seibert Boak, was also a soldier in the Confederate army.) This error may reflect some confusion in Cather’s memory of the family mythology,25 and it may also indicate that she wanted a war hero with the name Seibert as her namesake, for she had begun to use Sibert (as some of the family spelled it) as her own middle name. She was "Willa Sibert Cather" professionally until mid-career, and she used the initials WSC on her personal writing paper for the rest of her life.

Even after the publication of Sapphira, Cather was still thinking about whose namesake she would like to be; she wrote to her friend Bishop George Allen Beecher that, had she known at the beginning of her career that she would be widely published, she would have used her mother’s name (25 February 1941)—a change that certainly would have spotlighted the maternal Virginia inheritance central to Sapphira. Cather’s lifelong framing and reframing of herself as namesake indicates that she was continually rethinking her Virginia inheritance.26

These four early stories show how freighted and how intimate Cather’s Virginia heritage was. And as Cather began to produce mature work, she remained engaged, on some level, with the problem of how to remember and to render the South. Her best-known fiction offers many examples of this concern. My Ántonia (1918), for example, includes brief but vivid glimpses of a remembered Virginia through the autobiographical character of Jim Burden, a child also transported to Nebraska at the age of ten. The novel’s troubling story of the African American musician Blind d’Arnault is Cather’s first attempt to portray a former slave’s life in the postbellum United States—a subject to which she would not return until the epilogue of Sapphira. A Lost Lady (1923) portrays another southern-born boy with southern-inflected ideas about "ladies" and gentlemen’s duties toward them; Niel Herbert lives in a dilapidated southern household that has—like the Cathers’—been transplanted to Nebraska. An African American household servant, "Black Tom," is lent to his employer’s friends as if he were a piece of property. A few years later, Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) also touches lightly but tellingly on southern concerns that Cather would mine in her final novel. Doña Isabella Olivares is a staple character of southern fiction, an aging belle caught between the requirements of her vanity and monetary realities; in some ways she foreshadows Sapphira Colbert, who struggles to maintain a fashionably feminine appearance in the face of age and illness and enjoys the flirtatious repartee of her young nephew. Two white southern men in New Mexico— the heroic Kit Carson and the murderer Buck Scales—seem to be opposites, but they share a disturbing capacity for interracial violence; Scales brutally abuses his Mexican wife, and Carson is an Indian fighter, leading the charge to drive Navajos from their homeland. Slavery is also a significant issue in this novel. Archbishop Latour agonizes over how and if to intervene for Sada, a Mexican woman who is held in slavery by a local southern family named Smith (one of Cather’s own Virginia family names). Latour’s uncertainties about slavery foreshadow those of Henry Colbert in Sapphira.

After leaving Nebraska in 1896, Cather made regular visits to her family in Red Cloud. In 1928 her father died there. Devastated by this loss, Cather mourned him, saying that he remained sweet, boyish, and southern to the end of his life (Cather to Dorothy Canfield Fisher, 3 April 1928). Her next novel, Shadows on the Rock (1931), is an exploration of safety and shelter. Its center is a tiny household consisting of a father and his twelve-year-old daughter, in a setting farther in the past than Cather had previously ventured in a novel: Quebec City at the end of the seventeenth century. The same associations of past, safety, and intimate family relations would also help to generate Sapphira. While Shadows on the Rock was, in part, an act of homage to Cather’s father, Sapphira was powerfully touched by the influence of her mother. Mary Virginia Boak Cather (known to her family as Jennie) appears as a character in the novel at two different moments of her life. First, she is the prototype for the pretty and self-possessed child Mary Blake, Rachel’s older daughter. Mary is her grandmother’s favorite; when the girl survives diphtheria, Sapphira says that "Mary will get so much more out of life" than her gentler sister Betty, who died (261). Later, Jennie Cather also appears as an energetic and solicitous young mother in the novel’s epilogue. And, as several readers have noted, the character of the mature Jennie Boak Cather appears to have been a significant influence on Willa Cather’s conception of her most complex character, Sapphira Colbert.

According to Edith Lewis, Jennie Cather was "a handsome, imperious woman, with a strong will and a strong nature. . . . always the dominating figure in the family." To her children, "her will was law," and "to show her disrespect was an unthinkable offense" (6). Willa Cather was devoted to her mother. However, her correspondence suggests that relations between mother and adult daughter had sometimes been strained. In 1903 Cather thanked her friend Dorothy Canfield Fisher for helping her to reach more "peaceable" relations with her mother, after two difficult years (18 May 1903). Much later, in a letter probably written in 1925, Cather asks her mother what she could have done to anger her so (the letter suggests that Jennie Cather had accused her daughter of coming home to Red Cloud to make trouble, particularly between her parents) and asserts that the two of them have grown closer in recent years and must not spoil that closeness. As she has grown older, she says, she has come to understand her parents better and to realize how much she is like her mother (Cather to Mary Virginia Cather, 2 March [1925?]). Willa Cather herself, of course, was also an imperious woman, with both strong will and strong nature, and according to Lewis, she "always said she was more like her mother than like any other member of the family" (7).

In December 1928, less than a year after her husband’s death, Jennie Cather suffered a stroke while visiting her son Douglass in California; it left her paralyzed on one side and almost entirely unable to speak. However, her mind was unimpaired. For the next two and a half years she remained in a California sanatorium, attended by a nurse and by frequent visits from all her children, including Willa (see illustration 40).

Observing her mother’s illness was agony for Willa Cather. She could not understand how her brother Douglass could enjoy Jennie Cather’s company when she was in such an impaired physical condition (Cather to Josephine Frisbie, 27 September 1940). She wrote to Carrie Miner Sherwood that paralysis seemed to her the cruelest affliction a human being could suffer and that she was so "knocked out" by visits to her mother that it took her months to recover (21 April 1930). Cather made three annual visits of several weeks to the California sanatorium during Jennie Cather’s illness, and she seems to have felt that she should have been spending more time with her mother, for at least once she exaggerated the length of her visit to friends, saying she had stayed for four months when she had in fact only spent six weeks (Woodress 420).27 Edith Lewis described the profound and enduring effect that Mrs. Cather’s long illness had on her daughter Willa: "She had come to understand her mother better and better through the years. . . . She realized with complete imagination what it meant for a proud woman like her mother to lie month after month quite helpless, unable to speak articulately, although her mind was perfectly clear. It was one of those experiences that make a lasting change in the climate of one’s mind" (156–57).

Jennie Cather died in late August 1931. Willa Cather was at her summer house on Grand Manan Island, where departures by ferryboat were possible only twice a week. She did not attend the funeral in California or the burial in Red Cloud. During that August and very early September she completed the long story that Kari Ronning has called "her final tribute to her mother," "Old Mrs. Harris" (207). 28 This great story portrays a southern family that, like the Cathers, has been transplanted to Nebraska; it explores the relationships among a grandmother, her daughter, and her granddaughter (based on "Family Portraits" [Lewis 6] of Rachel Boak, Jennie Cather, and Willa Cather) during the weeks before the grandmother’s death. Clearly, Willa Cather is contemplating her own changed and expanded understanding of her mother’s and grandmother’s lives, and of what it must mean for women to grow old and die. The story’s last lines express this process of understanding: "When they [Victoria and Vickie, the surviving daughter and granddaughter] are old, they will come closer and closer to Grandma Harris. They will think a great deal about her, and remember things they never noticed, and their lot will be more or less like hers. They will regret that they heeded her so little; but they, too, will look into the eager, unseeing eyes of young people and feel themselves alone. They will say to themselves: ‘I was heartless, because I was young and strong and wanted things so much. But now I know’" (156–57).

Such hard-won knowledge of women’s lives became a cornerstone of Sapphira, and particularly of Cather’s portrayal of her title character and her daughter. "Masterful" Sapphira Dodderidge Colbert rules her household as decidedly as Jennie Cather appears to have done. As she gradually loses her power and her mobility to a disfiguring, crippling, and finally fatal case of heart disease, Sapphira must submit to an invalid’s cruelly circumscribed life, as Mrs. Cather was forced to do after her stroke. Sapphira’s illness makes her increasingly dependent on the assistance of her widowed daughter, Rachel Blake, with whom she has had a troubled and sometimes distant relationship. Eventually, Rachel undermines her autocratic mother by helping Sapphira’s abused slave girl, Nancy, to escape, following her own conscience and strong antislavery convictions. But she continues to agonize over that difficult decision: "‘It’s hard for a body to know what to do, sometimes,’ she murmured to herself. ‘I hate to mortify her. . . . Maybe I ought to have thought and waited’" (242– 43). Such a passage raises questions about what an adult daughter owes to a dying mother whose will and wishes may be very different from her own. These questions must have been very pressing for Cather during the last years of her mother’s life and as she turned to the writing of Sapphira, a novel partly based on her own maternal lineage. The family legend of her grandmother Boak, who had defied her own masterful mother by assisting in the slave Nancy’s escape, provided a means to dramatize these issues. Yet, although these family models were influential and important, the character of Sapphira, one of Cather’s great creations, goes far beyond them. It is a relentless, complex scrutiny of an aging, dying woman that glosses over nothing: not Sapphira’s cruelty, her physical vulnerability, her elegance, her sexual anger, her dependence on and ruthlessness toward her slaves, her measured generosity, her arrogance, her appetite for power, her humiliating powerlessness, or her courage. It is a portrait grounded in a lifetime of deepening observation of aging women.

By the 1930s, Willa Cather was probably realizing that one of those old women was, or soon would be, herself. She wrote to Dorothy Canfield Fisher, soon after her mother’s death, that she was experiencing the strange new sensation of belonging to the senior generation (September 1931). A series of ailments undermined Cather’s confidence in her physical vitality and limited her activities. Sapphira Colbert is not a particularly old woman when she dies of heart disease; she appears to be in her early sixties—no older, in fact, than Cather was when she wrote the novel. Cather herself was probably one of the women from whom the portrait of Sapphira was built. The novel describes paintings of the Colberts in the early years of their marriage; Sapphira is depicted as "a vigorous young woman with chestnut hair and a high color in her cheeks," dressed in "a garnet velvet gown" (44). That could well be a description of Willa Cather, who loved to dress in intense colors and rich fabrics. In fact, the novel’s portrait of Sapphira resembles a 1931 portrait of Cather painted by Leon Gordon for "Good Housekeeping’s Gallery of Great Women" (see illustration 39). In this painting, Cather appears ruddy and vigorous in a low-cut dress of garnet velvet, resembling "the ‘Virginia lady’ [Cather scholar] Bernice Slote always said she wanted to be" (Bohlke 119–20).

Writing Sapphira

Cather’s final Nebraska novel, Lucy Gayheart, was published in 1935. In November 1936 her collection of six literary essays, Not Under Forty, appeared. The essays offer clues about Cather’s state of mind when, in the coming months, she would turn to the composition of Sapphira. In a famously antagonistic prefatory note (later removed, in the Autograph Edition), the author warned: "the book will have little interest for people under forty years of age. The world broke in two in 1922 or thereabouts, and the persons and prejudices recalled in these sketches slid back into yesterday’s seven thousand years. . . . It is for the backward, and by one of their number, that these sketches were written" (v). This is an author who presents herself as allied with the past. Two essays—"The Novel Démeublé" and "Katherine Mansfield," the latter with its unsparing anatomy of the tensions of family life—were first published in the 1920s; two others (on Sarah Orne Jewett and Annie Fields) were augmented versions of essays originally published in 1925 and 1922. "A Chance Meeting," which begins the collection, is Cather’s reminiscence of her brief acquaintance with Flaubert’s niece and literary executor in the last year of her life. This essay, like the revised portrait of Fields, is an extended scrutiny of a distinguished old woman whose dignity and endurance at the end of her life won Cather’s respect and engaged her full attention. They join the expanding gallery of such portraits of aging and old women that Cather created in the 1930s: old Mrs. Harris, of course, and the striking cameos of Mrs. Ramsay in Lucy Gayheart and Madame Pommier in Shadows on the Rock, as well as "The Old Beauty," a long story (and a much less admiring portrait) that Cather wrote in 1936.29

"Joseph and His Brothers," the most recent essay in Not Under Forty, is the most suggestive indicator of Cather’s concerns as she turned to Sapphira. It is a reflective response to two of Thomas Mann’s biblical novels, The Tales of Jacob (1934) and The Young Joseph (1935). Several of Cather’s comments suggest what was on her mind as she began her last novel. The Old Testament world evoked in Mann’s novels was familiar to Cather from her earliest childhood memories, especially those of her grandparents, particularly Grandmother Boak, with whom she read Pilgrim’s Progress as well as the Old and New Testaments. She wrote: "The Bible countries along the Mediterranean shore were very familiar to most of us in our childhood. Whether we were born in New Hampshire or Virginia or California, Palestine lay behind us. We took it in unconsciously and unthinkingly perhaps, but we could not escape it. It was all about us, in the pictures on the walls, in the songs we sang in Sunday school, in the ‘opening exercises’ at day school, in the talk of the old people, wherever we lived" (101–2). Cather is tellingly in touch with the cultural climate of her early childhood here, and with a time when her five-year-old self, as portrayed in the epilogue of Sapphira, might see a present-day event—the reunion of Nancy and Till—in biblical terms, as "something Scriptural . . . like the pictures in our old Bible" (276).

The essay crystallizes the changing attitudes toward age that emerged in Cather’s fiction in the 1920s and 1930s. Mann’s Joseph, a youth with "good looks and brilliancy and general superiority" (115), resembles the young protagonists that dominated many of Cather’s early fictions. But he is far less interesting to Cather than is his elderly father, Jacob, who "is the compass, the north star, the seeking mind behind events; he divines their hidden causes" (118). This description predicts Cather’s portrayal in Sapphira of Henry Colbert, who pores over his Bible and his worn copy of Bunyan’s Holy War, also seeking (although not successfully) to unravel the "hidden causes" of his own unwilling entanglement in the institution of slavery. Such striving, by characters who are in their middle or later years, is what interested Cather in 1936 as she turned toward Sapphira.

What Cather most admired in Mann’s biblical novels was the author’s skill in "making a new story out of an old one which is a very part of the readers’ consciousness." As she prepared to write a novel set in her birthplace in the 1850s, she was doing something very similar. When she described herself as "one of the backward," Cather was at last taking on the task of writing the earliest stories she could remember from her Virginia childhood, bringing to them all the narrative resources of her long and varied career. In "Joseph and His Brothers" she concluded, "What we most love is not bizarre invention, but to have the old story brought home to us closer than ever before, enriched by all that the right man could draw from it and, by sympathetic insight, put into it" (119). For her, on many levels, Virginia was "the old story." It returned her to early memories and to the archetypal intensity of family relations.

Even in 1908, at the beginning of Cather’s career as a novelist, her friend and mentor Sarah Orne Jewett had divined from Cather’s talk and letters that "a child’s Virginia," as well as "your Nebraska life," was one of the writer’s major resources (248). By the mid-1930s, Cather had apparently been discussing the possibility of a Virginia novel with one of her publishers, Blanche Knopf, for several years. Cather wrote Knopf in 1931, alerting her to look for her poem "Poor Marty" in the May Atlantic Monthly, as something drawn from Virginia (28 April 1931). The poem, a response to the death of Marjorie Anderson, is set in a Virginia rural household that resembles the Willow Shade portrayed in Sapphira’s epilogue; it mourns the death of a servant woman. Knopf replied eagerly that she hoped Cather was now "seriously thinking about doing the Virginia book" (Woodress 481). Knopf’s enthusiasm is understandable. The 1930s were a boom period for southern American writing. For example, in 1936, the year Cather may have begun writing her Virginia novel, both Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind and William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! were published. The enormous success of Mitchell’s novel and the film made from it in 1939 may have helped to make Cather’s Virginia novel a best-seller.30 Also, as Merrill Maguire Skaggs has established, Cather had long been aware of the work of her exact contemporary and fellow Virginian Ellen Glasgow, who for decades had been publishing a multivolume social history of Virginia in fiction. One of the best volumes in Glasgow’s series, Vein of Iron, appeared in 1935.

In July 1936, Cather wrote to Ferris Greenslet, her former editor at Houghton Mifflin, that another book was partly finished, although it would not be completed for a while, since she had been entirely taken up with the care of her ill friend, Isabelle McClung Hambourg (24 July 1936). Presumably this book in progress was Sapphira. The following spring, Cather wrote Zoë Akins from New York that a new book was under way (16 March 1937), and in the fall she sent the same news to Carrie Miner Sherwood in Red Cloud (20 October 1937) and to her sister Elsie Cather, asking her to send a book that their father had treasured, Samuel Kercheval’s 1833 history of Frederick County; the request confirms that her research into Virginia history had begun (20 October 1937). In November she told Akins that, despite annoying interruptions, she was working hard on the new novel and that it was giving her much pleasure (8 November 1937).

As Lewis suggests, the death of Cather’s parents "and the long train of associations and memories their death set in motion . . . led her to write Sapphira." Previously, Lewis thought, Cather was kept from writing about Virginia by a "reluctance . . . to break through to those old memories that seemed to belong to another life" (181–82). Cather’s description of her writing of the novel in a letter to Ferris Greenslet, written at the time of the book’s publication, is ambivalent. She explains how swift and engrossing the "rush" of returning memories was, compelling her to write much more material than she could use. This process comforted her, she said, at a time when she was suffering from loss and sorrow. But she also describes the weight of these Virginia memories, implying that she may have found in them something heavy, perhaps even oppressive (13 December 1940).

Although Cather may have begun Sapphira in 1936, it is unlikely she did much work on it in that year, which was largely taken up with revisions for the Autograph Edition of her work that Houghton Mifflin began to publish in 1937 and with preparing Not Under Forty for publication. But by the spring of 1937 the new novel was well launched; she worked on it in New York and then at Grand Manan during the summer, and again on her return home. According to Lewis, Cather was happy to be fully engaged with a novel, for the first time in three years. She had "greatly missed the companionship of a long piece of work, the feeling of unity and purpose and inner richness it gave to life. . . . When she finally did begin the writing of Sapphira, it was with her whole power and concentration" (181–82).

In the spring of 1938, Cather and Lewis took a two-week "motor trip" to Frederick County, the setting of Sapphira. This was Cather’s third recorded return visit to her birthplace since her family had moved to Nebraska in 1883. On her first return, in 1896, she had stayed with relatives and revisited many of the scenes of her early childhood; there are photographs of her on Timber Ridge and Hollow Road, at the Seibert graveyard, and elsewhere (see illustrations 26 and 27). Mary Ann Anderson was still living, and she brought her young visitor up to date on the stories of many of the friends, neighbors, and relatives that Cather remembered well. On that visit she found much of the Back Creek world she had known still intact or accessible; she even discovered the rabbit traps she had set as a child.

On the next visit, in September 1913, soon after the publication of O Pioneers!, Cather’s responses to Frederick County were very different. Traveling with the elegant Isabelle McClung, she apparently stayed at a Winchester hotel. In letters to Elizabeth Sergeant, she at first complained about the food and the dullness of Winchester. She no longer cared for the people there, she said; the trip had been a mistake. But a few days later, writing from Gore, where the two women stayed with an elderly relative, Giles Smith, she told Sergeant that it had been worth coming after all, for she had found her rainy walks on Timber Ridge deeply satisfying. In the letters to Sergeant (12 September and 22 September 1913), it is the natural world of Virginia that retains compelling power for Cather on this second return.

However, letters to her father, Charles F. Cather, tell a very different story. They are full of lively, detailed accounts of mostly elderly acquaintances and relatives who remember Willa and send affectionate remembrances to her parents. She recounts a beautiful walk up to Anderson’s Cove, where she and McClung enjoyed the fine view (encountering only one copperhead snake) and visited a Miss Ellen Anderson, admiring her immaculate cottage and lovely garden. They found Miss Anderson lonely and eager for company—so much so that she rode down to Gore that very afternoon to see her visitors again. The two long letters to Charles Cather are filled with similar vignettes, the vivid stuff of local color (25 September [1913]). The contrast between Cather’s letter to the father who shares her Virginia roots and the relatively austere letters to Sergeant, a New York literary contemporary, shows that, on her second return to her birthplace, Cather was trying out different tones to render "her" Virginia.

On her third and last visit, in 1938, Cather traveled anonymously and said that she visited no family members or friends. Later, she wrote to her oldest brother, Roscoe, that she had made this trip South, when her novel was half finished, to verify the authenticity of the Virginia African American speech that she remembered (26 August 1940). According to Lewis, this 1938 return to Frederick County was "as memorable an experience, as intense and thrilling in its way, as those journeys in New Mexico, when she was writing the Archbishop," had been. Cather’s work on Sapphira and her immersion in early Virginia memories illuminated even the smallest details for her; Lewis said, "Every bud and leaf and flower seemed to speak to her with a peculiar poignancy, every slope of the land, every fence and stream." She delighted in the spring vegetation, such as the dogwood and mountain laurel that are so vividly and specifically evoked in Sapphira.31 "The countryside was very much changed" (Lewis 182–83), but Cather saw many places she remembered and featured in Sapphira. The Mill House, home of the actual Smiths and Seiberts and of the fictional Colberts, looked almost exactly as it had in her childhood, although the mill was in ruins. Willow Shade, the first home that Cather remembered, was intact but sadly dilapidated (see illustration 20); its beautiful trees, boxwood hedges, and lawn were gone (Cather to Dr. Wood, 19 February 1942). Lewis recalled that Cather chose not to enter the house; she "only stood and looked down at it from a distance. All these transformations, instead of disheartening her, seemed to light a fierce inner flame that illuminated all her pictures of the past" (183). For the first time in her life, perhaps, Cather was turning the full force of her formidable powers on the problem that had faced her since 1883: how to remember and to write about her native Virginia.

Memory, of course, was a major resource of Sapphira. When the novel was finished, Cather wrote her old friend and colleague Viola Roseboro’ that little of it was fiction; so much of the book was made from her memories of neighborhood and family stories that she was unsure of exactly what her own "contribution" was (9 November 1940). All the novel’s major white characters have historical prototypes whom Cather would have known from personal acquaintance or from stories she heard as a child. Even the most minor characters often have prototypes as well; for example, Cather’s great-grandfather James Cather makes a brief appearance as Mr. Cartmell (135–37). See the Explanatory Notes for fuller discussions of prototypes.

Although the dearth of slave records makes this harder to trace, Cather also had prototypes for her African American characters; she told Langston Hughes that the black characters in Sapphira were based on people she had known in Virginia or elsewhere (15 April 1941). She wrote of knowing Till and Nancy as a child and told her brother Roscoe (14 October 1940) and Dorothy Canfield Fisher (26 August 1940) that the "true Virginia" voices and speech patterns of African Americans were in her mind as she wrote the novel, resounding like a phonograph record. After Cather left Virginia, she seems to have had fewer contacts and no close relationships with African Americans in Nebraska. One African American family, John and Sarah Foster and their children, was living in Red Cloud by 1885; the adult Fosters had been slaves in Virginia, and he worked as a handyman and janitor in Nebraska. The Fosters attended the Red Cloud Baptist Church, as did the Cathers, and the Foster children attended the local high school with Willa Cather’s younger siblings. In Red Cloud and later in Lincoln, Cather saw performances by several African American musicians, including Blind Boone, a prototype for Blind d’Arnault in My Ántonia (Cather to Miss Vondler, n.d.). As a child, eagerly attentive to coming attractions at the local opera house, she would have seen posters advertising performances by African American performers, such as Boone and others, which employed the stereotypical images of African Americans that were common features of late-nineteenth-century American popular culture. During the years when Cather attended the university there, Lincoln had a black population, and one of Cather’s classmates, George Flippin (a university football player who later became a physician), was an African American.

Later, in New York, Cather employed "colored" maids for several years (Cather to Mrs. George P. Cather, 13 February 1913; Cather to Sister, n.d.). However, Woodress notes that there is only one recorded instance of Cather’s meeting an African American socially: sometime around 1930 she was introduced to the actor and singer Paul Robeson at the home of their mutual friends, the Menuhins, in New York (488). In 1944 Cather recalled this meeting to her niece, saying that she had been afraid that her Virginia heritage might make the occasion difficult, but once she actually met Robeson she could think of nothing but his greatness (Cather to Helen Cather Southwick, 12 February 1944). What Cather and Robeson discussed that evening—and whether there were subsequent conversations—is unknown, but if they talked about Robeson’s family history, Cather might have discovered that his father was a runaway slave, like Nancy, and that his mother burned to death in a household fire when Paul was six, in a scene much like the death of Till’s mother in Sapphira (Shafer-Riha 33). Such stories, if Cather heard them, could have become an additional resource for her novel.32 However, it seems obvious that her primary source for portrayals of African American characters and culture in Sapphira was her Virginia memories.

In addition, almost all the places Cather mentions in the novel have identifiable prototypes, from the Mill House and its family burying ground to Willow Shade, the Blake house, and the Baptist church in Back Creek, all of which still exist in present-day Gore, Virginia, to surviving Winchester sites such as Christ Church, the Taylor Hotel, the Town Spring, and the Turner Ashby monument in the Stonewall Confederate cemetery. Many features of local topography, such as Great North Mountain, Timber Ridge, the Double S, the Northwest Turnpike, and the spot where Rachel and Nancy take the ferry across the Potomac, are identifiable as well. 33

However, memory was not Cather’s sole resource for the writing of Sapphira. The novel, like Death Comes for the Archbishop and Shadows on the Rock, demanded considerable research. In addition to extensive knowledge of the history of Frederick and Loudoun counties, Virginia, Sapphira required grounding in abolitionist politics of the 1850s, in Underground Railroad routes, and in the African slave trade and the Middle Passage that brought Jezebel, the oldest of Sapphira’s slaves, to America. It also required some knowledge of Washington, D.C., during the years Rachel and Michael Blake lived there while he was a member of Congress, about 1837 to 1850. Cather must have drawn on a number of resources to establish the historical grounding for her book; for example, she wrote to H. L. Mencken to ask whether the Baltimore Sun was in publication in 1850 (a key fact, since Henry Colbert reads of Michael Blake’s death in the Sun in that year) (21 February 1940). She seems to have done much of her research, however, in the private New York Society Library (see illustrations 41 and 42).

This library, New York’s oldest, was located near Cather’s Bank Street apartment; according to Sergeant, she used the library when she lived in Greenwich Village (Willa Cather 89). Later the library moved uptown, to East Seventy-ninth Street. According to Marion King, the library’s historian and longtime employee, Cather took out a membership around 1928, during the period when Cather and Lewis, having lost their Bank Street apartment, were living at the Hotel Grosvenor. Cather was "missing her own books." While "writing Shadows on the Rock, she came often to consult old herbals, old maps and histories of Paris" (209). By the time Sapphira was under way, Cather and Lewis had moved to their Park Avenue apartment, not far from the library.

In a letter to Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Cather mentioned her Society Library research on Sapphira; she reported that she had found an old map there, dated 1821, that illustrated the route by which her grandmother Boak took Nancy across the Potomac (14 October 1940). The library’s records for 1937–40 show that Cather also checked out a number of books that were probably related to her novel in progress. In May 1938, soon after her return from Frederick County, she chose several pertinent texts. One was John Fiske’s two volume history, Old Virginia and Her Neighbours (Houghton Mifflin, 1897–1900), which ends with a discussion of the settlement of the Shenandoah Valley, up through the French and Indian War. Fiske emphasizes the importance of Scotch- Irish and German settlers in that area as well as the power of Lord Fairfax as the area’s greatest landholder; this reinforced what Cather knew of her family history and of Lord Fairfax as a family patron. This is Fiske’s version of the political dynamic of the Shenandoah Valley in the early days of European settlement there:

This settlement of the Valley soon began to work profound modifications in the life of Old Virginia. Hitherto it had been purely English and predominantly Episcopal, Cavalier, and aristocratic. There was now a rapid invasion of Scotch Presbyterians, with small farms, few slaves, and democratic ideas, made more democratic by life in the backwoods. It was impossible that two societies so different in habits and ideas should coexist side by side, sending representatives to the same House of Burgesses, without a stubborn conflict. (395–96)

In Cather’s novel, when Sapphira Colbert brings her English traditions, aristocratic demeanor, and slaveholding plantation lifestyle to Back Creek, she elicits just the "stubborn conflict" that Fiske describes.

Cather also checked out George Washington’s Letters and Recollections in the spring of 1938; since Washington began his career in Frederick County, as Lord Fairfax’s surveyor and then as an officer in the French and Indian War and Frederick County’s representative to the House of Burgesses, his life was relevant to her research on the county’s early history.34 Later, in the summer of 1939, she took home Thackeray’s The Virginians (1859), the sequel to his Henry Esmond, which in 1897 Cather had called "the greatest of all English novels" and had continued to admire. In 1897 she had thought The Virginians "almost as delightful reading as Henry Esmond." The Virginians is a transatlantic novel, set in England and in rural Virginia during the years from the French and Indian War through the Revolution. The major characters are of English ancestry, and although the novel’s Virginia scenes are set in Westmoreland County, not Frederick County, the characters include personages important to Frederick County history: Lord Fairfax, General James Wolfe of the French and Indian War, and—in a major supporting role—the young George Washington. Beatrix Esmond, the merciless beauty of Henry Esmond, reappears in the sequel. In 1897 Cather found her the best feature of The Virginians, a fascinating woman: "old and wrinkled, with her cards, her merciless wit and her hateful memories. . . . still blazing with jewels, still seeking for the heart that all her life she has never found" (World and Parish 359–60). We may see traces of this voracious old woman in Sapphira Colbert.

In May 1937, Cather borrowed what was then still the major history of the Underground Railroad, Wilbur Henry Siebert’s The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom (1898). Siebert’s maps and his detailed discussion of the railroad’s operations, its routes, and its effectiveness in border states such as Virginia, of the Fugitive Slave Law, and of former slaves’ experiences in Canada must have been helpful as Cather developed the story of Nancy’s flight and her subsequent life in Canada. A little later she checked out F. B. Sanborn’s Life and Letters of John Brown (1891).

Cather’s most apparent use of her Society Library research was in the story of Jezebel’s capture in Africa in the late eighteenth century and her transportation, via the Middle Passage, to the Baltimore slave market. Descriptions of the Middle Passage are now commonplace in fiction that deals with slavery; in 1940, however, they were not. Cather’s account of Jezebel’s early life in book 3, "Old Jezebel," was obviously carefully researched. In May 1937 Cather had checked out John R. Spears’s The American Slave Trade: An Account of Its Origin, Growth and Suppression (1900). Spears’s account of the Middle Passage, which explains the construction of slave ships, the stowing of slave cargo, and shipboard routine, is clearly a major source. Most eighteenth-century slave ships had two decks, he says. He describes the "’tween decks" space reserved for slaves on a typical ship as "a room as long and as wide as the ship, but only three feet ten inches high." The slave "men were ironed together, two and two by the ankles, but women and children were left unironed" (68–69). Cather’s description is strikingly similar:

The Albert Horn, built for the slave trade, had two decks. The negroes were stowed between the upper and lower decks, on a platform as long and as wide as the vessel; but there was only three feet ten inches between the shelf on which they lay and the upper deck which roofed them over. . . . Every morning the "’tween decks" were cleaned off. . . . The males, ironed two and two, were allowed out on the lower deck. . . . the women were turned out on the lower deck without chains. (93–94)

Here and elsewhere, Cather makes close and careful use of information gleaned from Spears. However, her slave ship is not one of the American ships Spears discusses but rather an English vessel from Liverpool, the Albert Horn. No record of a ship by that name has been found, but the name of Captain Albert Horn appears in an appendix of Spears’s book. In 1861 Horn was arrested and bailed in the state of New York for illegally engaging in the slave trade, which had been outlawed in 1808 (232). (See explanatory note to p. 93.) Cather’s Society Library research also included two firsthand accounts of the slave trade. One was the original 1854 edition of Captain Canot, or Twenty Years of an African Slaver. ("Canot" was the pseudonym of Captain Theophilus Conneau, who was engaged in the African slave trade from the 1820s through the 1840s.) According to Mabel M. Smythe, the Canot text is the most useful of the surviving narratives of the slave trade, "remarkable for its fullness of detail and sense of completeness in covering the entire process of capture, slave factory, Middle Passage, and sale" (xi). Cather’s account of the destruction of Jezebel’s native inland village by another tribe that "had become slave-hunters for the slavers" is similar to Canot’s account of how he acquired his human cargo from African slave dealers. One of the most striking illustrations in the edition Cather got from the Society Library is "Slave Hunters Attacking a Negro Town," a horrific image of the burning and destruction of an African village by African aggressors, featuring muscular young women (see illustration 43). The image resembles Cather’s succinct description of the "night of fire and slaughter" when young Jezebel (also strikingly muscular) saw her village burned and her family killed and was taken into slavery. Also, Canot— who prided himself on running a "well-conducted vessel"— detailed practices for shipboard hygiene and for shackling, stowing, and feeding slaves. Some of this information is incorporated into Cather’s description of shipboard practices on the Albert Horn, "a model slaver" (94).

Cather also checked out Nicholas Owen’s Journal of a Slave-Dealer, an Irish seaman’s account of his life in the slave trade between Africa and America, 1746–57, published in 1930. Owen discusses the economy of the mid-eighteenth-century slave trade in Guinea, the region from which Jezebel came. Cather describes Jezebel’s tribe as "a fierce cannibal people" (93); Owen, like Canot, describes instances of cannibalism among the Africans he encountered: "They have an inhuman custum in this river of eateing yong children upon the first crop of thier new rice" (32). Readers of Sapphira will recall that the aged Jezebel claims an appetite for "a li’l pickaninny’s hand" (90).

Like her letters, Cather’s withdrawals from the Society Library indicate she was deeply engaged in the writing of her new novel in the late spring of 1938. But in early June her work was interrupted by a personal disaster when the second of her four younger brothers, Douglass, died suddenly, at the age of sixty, of a heart attack. This first loss of a sibling devastated Cather. She wrote to friends that the unmarried Douglass was the closest of her siblings—an accessible, joyful man who loved life (Cather to Miss McKinder, n.d.; Cather to Dorothy Canfield Fisher, 5 March 1939 and "Monday"). For months after this loss, Cather was unwell and unable to work. In late summer she made her usual trip to Grand Manan, but those few weeks were only a blur in her memory (Cather to Miss McKinder, n.d.).

Back in New York in October, Cather wrote the Shattuck Inn in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, a favorite writing place, reserving a room for three or four weeks and making plans to return to work on Sapphira there (Cather to George Austerman, 9 October [1938]). But before she could get to New Hampshire, she received a second piece of shattering news. Isabelle McClung Hambourg, her close friend and the great romance of Cather’s life, had died in Italy of kidney disease. Now, Cather wrote to Ferris Greenslet, the two persons she had loved most were gone (12 October [1938]). It was for Isabelle, she said, that her books had all been written (Woodress 479). Without Douglass and Isabelle, she could not imagine how to go on with her life (Cather to Irene Miner Weisz, 14 October [1938]). By early November she was in Jaffrey at the Shattuck Inn, intending to work on her interrupted novel (Cather to Ferris Greenslet, 27 October [1938]), but she arrived in a "comatose" state (Cather to Zoë Akins, 13 November [1938]). On November 6 she wrote to her brother Roscoe that she had previously done much of her best writing there at the inn, to which Isabelle had introduced her. Isabelle had cared more about her writing than anyone else, and had watched her for thirty-eight years as she struggled to express and repress feeling and to develop a style. It was caring, love for her subject, that had "made" her as a writer, she reflected. But now, as she tried to complete Sapphira, she worried that her resources were depleted. She was working for ninety minutes every day, to escape from herself and to find the peace that writing had always afforded her, and also to fulfill her commitment to her publisher. But the sentences seemed to lack the clarity of her earlier work, and she feared that there would always be a perceptible break between the portions of Sapphira she wrote before the deaths of her brother and her friend and those that came after. Perhaps this sense of diminishment was the result of her extreme fatigue. That was her hope (6 November 1938). This letter is Cather’s most direct known acknowledgment of her fears that the stresses of grief, anxiety, ill health, and aging were affecting the quality of her novel.

Six months later she remained depressed and unwell, unable to recover from her two losses (Cather to Zoë Akins, 20 May [1939]). In addition, Cather was deeply concerned about the approach of World War II in Europe. The past year had been the most difficult of her life, she wrote to Dorothy Canfield Fisher (5 March [1939]).

In the summer of 1939, after a year of inactivity, Cather finally returned to sustained work on her novel, spending a month at Jaffrey and then making the usual summer trip to Grand Manan. According to Lewis, the book was written "against circumstance," and Cather "worked at Sapphira with a resoluteness, a sort of fixed determination which I think was different from her ordinary working mood; as if she were bringing all her powers into play to save this, whatever else was lost. She often worked far beyond her strength" (184). Sapphira was finished, at last, at Grand Manan in late summer of 1940, and by mid-September Cather was receiving proofs (Cather to Zoë Akins, n.d.). Her publishers, Alfred and Blanche Knopf, were more pleased with the new book than with anything else Cather had written since Shadows on the Rock (Cather to Ferris Greenslet, 21 September 1940).

Cather’s return to Sapphira seems to have provided a partial antidote to the griefs that had descended on her—beginning, perhaps, with the deaths of her parents. Writing a book set in 1856, with an epilogue in 1881, she could return to a world that had not yet been darkened by personal loss. In those years, all the persons she loved best were safely alive— or not yet born. Willa Cather’s Virginia had not yet been shattered by death, removal, or loss, although echoes and foreshadowings of such disasters do haunt the novel. Returning to Sapphira was also a way of forgetting the daily horrors of the war news after World War II had begun, Cather told Dorothy Canfield Fisher (14 October 1940). And it assuaged her bitter personal grief, as nothing else had. In fact, she wrote far more chapters of Virginia customs than she could use, for the solace that remembering provided. Then Cather made rigorous cuts in her manuscript, keeping in mind the design she had established in her first chapter, with Henry and Sapphira’s breakfast-table discussion about the possibility of selling the "slave girl," Nancy. Once the cuts were made, she put the deleted chapters and paragraphs on her bathroom scales and was pleased to discover that they weighed all of six pounds (Cather to Ferris Greenslet, 13 December 1940).

Cather customarily read proofs with Edith Lewis. This process was "very interesting," Lewis wrote. "After a thing was written, she [Cather] had an extremely impersonal attitude toward it. If there was ‘too much’ of anything . . . she was eager to cut it. . . . Sometimes she would have a sudden illumination and would make some radical change—always, I think, for the better. She had to pay nearly $150 for extra proof corrections on My Ántonia. Afterwards she was more provident, and made most of her changes in the typewritten copies of her manuscripts" (106).

Cather followed this latter procedure on Sapphira; surviving fragments of typescripts show both small and extensive changes. For example, a whole scene in which Mary and Betty Blake visit the mill wheel with their grandfather Colbert is deleted (see appendix C). Surviving pages of holograph manuscript also show some of the cuts Cather made; an early version of the scene in which Nancy and Rachel go laurel-picking together includes far more lush description of the local vegetation—rather in the opulent style of some of the descriptions in Shadows on the Rock—than remains in the relatively austere published text (see illustration 51). On the proofs themselves the alterations are relatively small and few; there are no major deletions or additions.

Preparing the manuscript of Sapphira for publication was obviously a collaborative process for Cather and Lewis. 35 Corrections on the typescript are made in two hands. Many of the longer revisions are penned in Lewis’s small, neat script, while other, usually shorter, changes are made in Cather’s larger, rounded, and sometimes almost illegible handwriting (see illustrations 48 and 49). For this book, their working process was complicated by the fact that Cather had only limited use of her writing hand. Since 1934, when she was finishing work on Lucy Gayheart, she had suffered from an inflammation of the sheath of the tendon on her right

(working) hand. "From this time on she was never free from the threat of this disability." Later, she often had to wear, for months, a brace that held her thumb immobile but left her fingers free. While wearing the brace, she could only write a few words. Since Cather never dictated creative work, "this meant that for long periods she was unable to do any writing— she could not even typewrite." In her letters, Cather often complains about this disability; it was "the greatest working calamity of her career," Lewis wrote (174–75). This "calamity" must have been another of the conditions that made the situation of Sapphira, a once-active woman now curtailed by disability, compelling for Cather.

As publication approached, Cather became involved in preparing publicity for her novel. Sapphira’s cover features a design of twining roses by Rudolph Ruzicka, in soft shades of rose, green, and cream that may have been intended to evoke southern romance. Three paragraphs on the front cover flap describe the novel. With her long experience in the publishing business, Cather understood the importance of jacket copy; according to Alfred A. Knopf, "Miss Cather said, wisely, that a wrapper should tell the public what they want to know[:] ‘something about how and why a book was written’ " (211). David Porter has established that the jacket’s description of Sapphira—the long central paragraph of the blurb—was authored by Cather, as a substitution for a paragraph proposed by her publisher. Her rewritten version is much more forthright about the book’s conflicts: "strong feelings and bitter wrongs are hidden under the warm atmosphere of good manners and domestic comfort." She identifies the novel’s "chief theme" as "the subtle persecution of a beautiful mulatto girl by her jealous mistress" and emphasizes that the opening breakfast-table scene "strikes the keynote." As Porter says, this description "probes what the book is about in ways that only she could know." At least a third of Cather’s rewritten jacket text is devoted to "Sapphira’s African slaves, who are, and doubtless were meant to be, the most interesting figures in the book. . . . They are attractive to the writer as individuals, and are presented by a sympathetic artist who is neither reformer nor sentimentalist" (Sapphira dust jacket, first edition; Porter 57–58). This language underlines Cather’s special concern about readers’ responses to the African American characters of her novel and her own ambivalent stance as a white southerner writing about slavery, attempting to be "neither reformer nor sentimentalist."

Apparently, one of the last changes Cather made in the text of Sapphira was the addition of an italicized note on the last page, after "THE END." This addition does not appear in the galley proofs, the last page of which is dated 13 September. Cather presumably decided to add her note sometime after that (late) date. In it she explains that she used several "Frederick County surnames" for characters in the book but that none of them is the name of anyone she "ever knew or saw"; instead, they are names of her parents’ acquaintances that she heard from them and found fascinating. The note is in the author’s present, first-person voice, and it is signed: "WILLA CATHER" (288). Cather explained to Ferris Greenslet that she placed her note of disclaimer at the book’s end, instead of in the more usual spot at the beginning, because she was afraid Frederick County persons whose surnames she had used might be "hurt" (13 December 1940). 36

Such authorial disavowals are usually couched in formal, legal language; this one has an engagingly conversational, even disarming tone. Like other features of Sapphira, such as the occasional brief comments on present-day conditions that momentarily interrupt the nineteenth-century ambiance and the surprising appearance of the five-year-old Willa Cather in the epilogue, the final note blurs "the boundaries between fact and fiction precisely because Cather does not maintain the fictive illusion, or verisimilitude, usually sought after in historical fiction," as Janis Stout says ("Pay No Attention" 33). The note is another reminder of the peculiarly intimate relation Cather seemed to have to this particular novel, and especially to its Virginia readers. It establishes her as both insider and outsider, someone who has known the "delightful" Frederick County name "Pertleball" since early childhood but still does not know how to spell it.

The note is a final reminder of the fluidity with which this novel moves about in time—from the author’s early childhood to her present authorial negotiations, from Jezebel’s capture in Africa in the 1780s to her death in 1856, from Rachel’s early married life in 1830s Washington to her postbellum life as a grandmother at Willow Shade, from the earliest eighteenth-century European settlement of Frederick County to the world a 1940 motorist might find there. A few months after the book was published, Cather wrote to her closest Red Cloud friend, Carrie Miner Sherwood, that time now seemed strangely foreshortened to her, so she could experience every stage of her life simultaneously. What was most real to her was not day-to-day discomforts and inconveniences but moments she chose to remember (22 March 1941).37 This simultaneous experience of multiple moments of time, edited and arranged by a controlling individual memory, is Cather’s description of the effects of aging on her own sensibility, and perhaps also a description of the state of mind that produced the subtle complexity of Sapphira.

Sapphira was published on Cather’s sixty-seventh birthday, 7 December 1940. As that date approached, Cather (who habitually did not discuss work in progress) began an intense conversation in letters with her first readers, one in which she revealed many of her intentions for her book. First, she wrote a frank letter to her brother Roscoe, telling him that he was the only member of her family who cared anything about her writing, and the first person to whom she had written any explanatory comments about this book. Sapphira had been the most difficult of her novels to write, she said, and it turned on a formal experiment: the autobiographical epilogue, which gives authenticity and lived authority to the earlier narrative. Without that epilogue and its grounding in her early childhood experience, she argued, the book would simply be a lifeless construction of the staple figures of southern/slavery fiction, like a hundred other such texts, featuring familiar costumes, customs, settings, and the African American dialect she associates with Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus stories (26 August 1940). Her comments reveal a scrupulous awareness of southern literary conventions and stereotypes and her intense desire to avoid them in her own southern novel. In a follow-up letter to Roscoe, Cather returned to continuing concerns about her epilogue, which she feared would surprise and disconcert readers. "Nancy’s Return" was entirely true, she insisted—even to the windy weather. She had wanted to write of that crucial early experience for many years, for its excitement had transformed her from a "baby" to a thoughtful individual (5 October 1940).

In November, when Cather received two advance copies of Sapphira, she sent one of them to her old friend Viola Roseboro’, who had been fiction editor at McClure’s Magazine from 1896 to 1906 and whom Cather considered one of her most honest and discerning critics, as well as a fellow "exile" from the South.38 To Roseboro’ she emphasized the book’s grounding in Virginia memories and stories and again asserted that the epilogue’s story of Nancy’s return from Canada was an entirely factual account of the greatest event of her early childhood. But the hardest part of writing Sapphira, Cather told Roseboro’, was capturing something else she had on her mind, something that kept slipping away from her. This "Terrible" something was an integral part of everyday domestic life (28 November 1940, 9 November 1940). This element of domestic horror, as it is glimpsed in the institution of slavery and in the losses and betrayals that are implied in even the most intimate of human relations (such as those between parent and child), has made Sapphira Cather’s most "troubling" book for many readers and keeps it from being simply an evocation of fond memories. 39 To Ferris Greenslet, her Houghton Mifflin editor and another long-valued reader, Cather emphasized that she had wanted to give a balanced view of the "strange" domestic institution of slavery, to render both its pleasant surfaces and what lay beneath them—although her own Virginia household did not give much thought to what was underneath. "Aunt Till," as she remembered her, was not simply a pitiful victim of slavery but a dignified individual with a distinctive personality (13 December 1940).

Another important early letter about Sapphira went to Cather’s old friend and fellow fiction writer Dorothy Canfield Fisher. Cather chided Fisher for misquoting her title as "Sapphira and the Slave Maid" and thus missing the doubled S’s and R’s in the actual title, which Cather herself particularly liked. She emphasized the importance of family and local history and prototypes to the novel and said that her idea of antebellum life in Frederick County came from listening to her grandmother Boak and "Aunt Till" talk. She also further explained her writing process. After the deaths of her brother and Isabelle Hambourg, she lost enthusiasm for the novel. But before those two disasters, she had already written the autobiographical epilogue, "Nancy’s Return." Since the whole book aimed toward that last chapter, she took it up again, after months of inactivity. Finally, she enjoyed writing the book and the dormant memories it aroused, especially the idioms of Virginia African American speech that she recalled from her youth. She feared that reviewers would fault the inconsistencies in the black characters’ speech—but, as she remembered, house servants spoke differently to their white employers and to each other. She had been reluctant to change from third to first person in the epilogue, but she decided to make the shift because Nancy’s return was such an important event in her own early childhood (14 October 1940).

These comments to Fisher, Roseboro’, and Roscoe Cather are telling. They show Cather’s concern with her African American characters and anticipated critical response to them. They underline the special importance of the epilogue, "Nancy’s Return." In it, the plot that Cather launched on her first page, as the Colberts discussed the disposition of Nancy over breakfast, is joined explicitly to the author’s personal story, as young Willa witnesses the reunion of the escaped "slave girl" and her mother. Establishing that connection was so important to Cather that she made an unprecedented and unconventional foray into autobiography, necessitating an experimental shift to first person about which, in these and other letters, she sounds uncharacteristically diffident and uncertain. The Drew typescript, a relatively late version of the novel (see pp. 555–56 in the Textual Essay), also confirms her uncertainty about the epilogue; it begins with a (deleted) note explaining her use of the first person and of her child-self as a character (see illustration 52). On many levels, the epilogue of Sapphira is a reunion: of parent and child, friend and friend, white and black, owner and owned. In it, Cather engages her most strongly felt early memories, of her family and of place. Obviously, this personal reunion meant so much to her that she was willing to make a drastic experiment—and to risk fictional infelicity—to achieve it, in Sapphira.

Sapphira and Its Readers

When the reviews of Sapphira began to appear, Cather considered them the most positive that any of her books had received (Cather to Viola Roseboro’, 20 February 1941). The earliest, and predictably favorable, response came from Cather’s old friend and fellow novelist Dorothy Canfield Fisher in the December 1940 Book-of-the-Month Club News. Fisher praised the novel’s precision and understatement. Even for a character like Sapphira, an "appalling old woman of exuberant Elizabethan wickedness," Cather did not choose the "livid" hues that Faulkner would have used but presented her "without heroics." She predicted that American readers of 1940, as "helpless spectators of the horrifying spread of human slavery" in wartime Europe, would find in Cather’s novel "a lovely story of escape from human slavery" that "bids us have faith."40 Like several other reviewers, Fisher repudiated earlier charges that Cather was escapist by establishing Sapphira’s pertinence to current events. She also vindicated Cather’s use of her own early memories and celebrated the effective art of the novel’s epilogue, about which the author herself had doubts.

Few reviewers concurred with Fisher’s unmitigated praise, although all noted Cather’s artful style. In fact, the reviews of Sapphira, although more favorable than those of the books Cather published in the 1930s, were mixed. Because five years had elapsed since the publication of Lucy Gayheart, several critics took the publication of Cather’s twelfth and final novel as an occasion for reassessing her career. For the 7 December 1940 Nation, which had "panned" Cather’s recent work (Woodress 88), Morton Dauwen Zabel reread Cather’s entire oeuvre. He noted flaws in Sapphira, such as the "retreat to the past" and the "idealizing pathos of distance and lost beauty" that had marred some of her previous books, but concluded that the new novel recovered "the gravity and lyric ease" of Cather’s best work. He found it her finest work since Death Comes for the Archbishop and one of her "five best" books. The novel conveyed the complexity of moral struggle, Zabel concluded, and Cather is "one of the two or three masters who remain to us in this kind of art" (576).

Many reviewers ranked Sapphira lower than Zabel did. Cather had not struck "a major chord" since Death Comes for the Archbishop, J. Donald Adams decreed in the New York Times Book Review (14). Sapphira was "not a great book," Alain Tairn wrote in Southern Literary Messenger (146). In the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Beverly L. Britton concurred; it was "no monumental work for the ages" (12). Such comments suggest how high the bar of literary expectations had been raised for Cather by this final decade of her career. Even the brief, flippant anonymous review in Time acknowledged Cather’s towering reputation: "Willa Cather could not possibly write a bad novel." But it went on to say that Sapphira was proof "that she can write a dull one." Dull in a culturally sanctioned way, of course—with "the well-made, healthful, sober clarity of a Dutch interior." And "not too dull to be pleasant reading" (88).

Major New York reviews were more positive. In the New York Herald Tribune Books, Mary Ross found Cather’s best qualities—"the grace, the clear, luminous perspective, the measured emotion and the perfection of carefully chosen detail"—in Sapphira and celebrated Cather’s evocation of memory: "Her books are . . . the essence of things remembered, washed clear of the unessential and polished to beauty by slow time" (1). In the New Yorker, Clifton Fadiman noted this same quality but with less approval: "For her, narrative is recollection." In Sapphira, "the emotion . . . has been recollected in too much tranquility," he said. But he found that the book offered "fresh insight" into the relationships of master and slave. Cather’s perspective was admirably "cool and level," in contrast with the "hot partisanship" of Margaret Mitchell in Gone with the Wind or the "melodramatic Uncle Tom’s Cabin view of slavery" (103–4). The New York Times reviewer, Charles Poore, also praised Cather’s handling of "the question of slavery," without the "portentous fanfare" and editorializing of other contemporary fiction. He pronounced Sapphira "a fine novel" (15).

The conservative Catholic journal Commonweal, which had published Cather’s important letter on Death Comes for the Archbishop and her 1936 defense of escapism, considered Cather’s new novel so significant that it published two reviews. First, Harry Lorin Binsse celebrated Cather’s rare commitment to the refinement of her craft. The mid-nineteenth- century South was currently a popular fictional subject, but Cather’s new novel—which Binsse ranked with Death Comes for the Archbishop, A Lost Lady, and My Ántonia as her four best—was a uniquely penetrating study of "the psychological effect of slavery on both slave and master." Predictably, Binsse found the novel "steeped in Christianity" (306–7). Just a month later, Michael Williams revisited Sapphira in Commonweal, celebrating Cather’s steady and continuing artistic growth. Cather belonged to an elite "aristocracy of artists," Williams claimed, and such an aristocracy is essential to a democracy, for "only true aristocrats can love, understand and appreciate the heights and depths of poor and humble souls." The underlying political implications of such a reading became clear as Williams bemoaned the degradation of present politicians, "moneychangers," and press. He celebrated Cather’s resistance to such degradation: she never surrendered "to the idolatry of mass production, of vulgarization; of Democracy à rebours" (399–400). Clearly, Williams was still defending Cather against the Marxist critics who had berated the "escapism" of her fiction in the 1930s. However, those critics had nothing to say about Sapphira.

Although she usually complained about negative reviews of her books, Cather had no complaints about the response to Sapphira. She recommended her friend Henry Seidel Canby’s review in the Saturday Review of Literature (Cather to Viola Roseboro’, 20 February 1941). Canby praised her "delicate yet powerful art of brief and significant narrative," implicitly celebrating the priorities that Cather had established in "The Novel Démeublé" and had recently reaffirmed by reprinting that essay in Not Under Forty. He also put Cather in the exalted company of Voltaire and Turgenev and distanced her work from highly colored popular historical melodramas of the times, stressing instead its psychological acuity. This book, Canby concluded, was a unique contribution to American culture: "In the gradual evoking of the American past, where this American generation of writers has been so successful, Sapphira and the Slave Girl adds something unattempted yet by any one with Miss Cather’s mature authority of art" (5).

One of Cather’s complaints about reviews was that they were always bemoaning that her present book was inferior to the one before (Cather to Viola Roseboro’, 20 February 1941). Thus Cather must have been gratified by Frederic R. Gunsky’s comments in the San Francisco Chronicle (she mentioned a San Francisco review to Roseboro’, among the many "cordial" responses to Sapphira). Gunsky had feared that Cather was in decline; to him, Lucy Gayheart had seemed "the faltering last work of an artist who had nothing more to say." But Sapphira showed that Cather had "not lost hope, that she retains her faith in the fundamental worth of common American people, and that despite the passage of years and youth she is still a fine craftsman in words who feels that there are things left to be said." After the charges of escapism and sentimentality in the 1930s, Gunsky affirmed that, in 1940, Cather’s new work was "neither faltering nor remote" (14). Like several other reviewers, he put Cather’s new historical novel at the very center of the most pressing issues of the present.

Cather had been concerned that critics might fault her treatment of African American characters and their language, but they did not; in fact, several reviews specifically praised her rendering of African Americans. Cather had a special "ability to do Negroes," Clifton Fadiman wrote. "She is not trying to prove anything through them. . . . [They] are therefore allowed to be persons rather than shaped up to be object lessons" (103–4). Both a northerner and a southerner —an anonymous reviewer for the Springfield (Mass.) Republican ("Willa Cather’s Study of Virginia Women") and Beverly Britton for the Richmond Times-Dispatch—agreed that the novel’s black characters were more interesting than any of the whites. In New York, Ross found Sapphira’s "delineation of . . . black men and women" new "to Cather’s work and distinctive in American fiction," and she speculated that "it would not be surprising if this proves to be a book with which readers in both the North and the South can sympathize in the portrayal of individuals who happen to be Negro" (1).

Cather’s other major concern about the response to her book had been the autobiographical, first-person epilogue. This was a concern that several critics shared. Ross found the epilogue disorienting and confusing, "a flaw in Miss Cather’s ordinarily flawless technique." Zabel agreed that the epilogue was Sapphira’s "one flaw"; he would have preferred a conventional conclusion. Time’s reviewer made the opposite complaint: the epilogue was "old-fashioned." Although Canby had nothing negative to say about the epilogue in his review, Cather’s letter to him (4 February 1941) indicates that he must have expressed some doubts about it to her, for she tells Canby that she shares those doubts, but included the epilogue because it had special importance to her. So the epilogue, which some recent critics have seen as one of the most significant innovations of Cather’s late career, became a controversial and long undervalued feature of Sapphira, even for Cather herself.

By 1940, Cather had lived in New York City for thirtyfour years; she had not returned to Nebraska for nine years. The facts of her Virginia birth and early childhood had been unknown to many of her readers before the publication of Sapphira. Therefore, another recurring topic in the reviews was the question of which—if any—of these places was the source of Cather’s best fiction. In Book-of-the-Month Club News, Elizabeth Sergeant argued that Cather was not an urban writer. "Metropolitan life has never satisfied her. . . . surely natal longing for Nebraska and Virginia created her books" ("Willa Cather" 4–5). Charles Poore, in the New York Times, saw Sapphira as the work of a Virginia writer: "the whole story is steeped in the scenes and the names and the prejudices and the customs of Virginia from a Virginian’s point of view" (15). In Nebraska, reviewers reasserted their claims on Cather. In the Omaha World-Herald, George Grimes reminded readers that she was "Nebraska’s most distinguished (although now expatriate) writer" and generously acknowledged Cather’s Virginia book as "a novel close to Miss Cather’s best" (4c). The Lincoln Journal-Star also affirmed Cather’s Nebraska ties, suggesting that her early Virginia memories might not be "so strong as the recollections from the formative years she spent in Nebraska." Nevertheless— and only a little grudgingly—the review praised Sapphira: "it must be said that in this book she has manifested herself as the great writer she is" (4c).

Cather told Viola Roseboro’ that she had been "astonished" at the enthusiastic responses from southern cities (20 February 1941). In the Columbia, South Carolina, State, Jacob H. Lowrey found Cather’s "flawless taste" and art on every page of Sapphira and saw her treatment of Nancy as sympathetic and central to the book: "Never once does she let the reader’s sympathy veer from the plight of the Mulatto girl."41 Lowrey recommended that, "living in the torn-up world of 1940[,] any serious reader who has neglected the works of Willa Cather should turn back to them, read every one" (clipping enclosed in Lowrey to Cather, 27 March 1941).

In Virginia, however, reviewers offered an equivocal welcome, at best, to their native daughter. Sapphira added "nothing in particular to its author’s literary stature," said the Richmond Times-Dispatch, although it did her reputation no harm (Britton 12). The Winchester Evening Star, in Cather’s Frederick County birthplace, reprinted the Richmond review, with a heading that, while it called Sapphira "thrilling" and "dignified," suggested a local snub: "Heroine of Thrilling Novel Shunned Winchester as a Worldly Place" ("Willa Cather Dignified" 3). In the Southern Literary Messenger, Alain Tairn began, "It has always been a question whether or not to call Willa Cather a Southerner," thus perpetuating a critical debate that still continues. Previously, Cather had conspicuously ignored the South, Tairn claimed, and in Sapphira "she has made a book out of an old slave-and-the-underground-railway story." His highest praise for the novel was that Ellen Glasgow (a Virginia novelist who never left her native state) might have written it—but Glasgow would have done a much better job, he claimed. Tairn also admired Henry and Rachel’s "attitudes toward slaveholding," in which "one sees George Washington’s and Robert Lee’s views and actions on the subject." By associating Cather with these traditional Virginia heroes, Tairn linked her to plantation culture and to Lee’s defense of the Confederacy. Nevertheless, Tairn concluded that Cather was not Virginian enough: "Even in her attitude toward the country, which is sufficiently beautiful to merit some reaction, the enthusiasm is missing" (146).

For Cather herself, private individuals’ responses to Sapphira seem to have been more important than published reviews. She told Carrie Miner Sherwood that letters had "poured in" and that she had been deeply moved by them (16 May 1941). In one way or another, these personal letters all validated Cather’s own Virginia memories—as well as her credentials as a Virginia writer—by confirming that those memories were shared. Many of the letters that have survived, almost all of which were personally answered, are from correspondents with Frederick County roots, like Cather’s own. From Illinois she heard from a descendant of the original Back Creek miller (Englis to Cather, 9 September 1941). A young engineer in Washington, D.C., updated her on the fate of the "Double S" on Hollow Road (Thrush to Cather, 1 January 1941). With Dr. T. Kenneth Wood of Pennsylvania she exchanged local photographs and anecdotes, such as the story of James Cather’s visits from Henry Clay. From closer to her Virginia home, Cather received tales about fishing on the Capon River near Back Creek and a former slave who drove the stage on the old Northwest Turnpike that ran past Willow Shade (Brand to Cather, c. 1941). The owner of nearby Capon Springs, where her parents had often visited, wrote to invite her for a visit (Austin to Cather, 21 January 1941). From Winchester, Powell W. Gibson, principal of the local Douglas High School for African American students, sent a letter that Cather must have found particularly gratifying, given her concerns about responses to her African American characters. He wrote: "I feel that the Colored people should join heartily in the grand chorus of praise that is accorded your recent work, Sapphira and the Slave Girl. Your treatment of the characters is fair and humane. I feel that the story is one of the finest gems of literature in our favor since the advent of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. There are many ‘Nancys’ as well as ‘Marian Andersons’ who will make good when guided by helpful hands toward a new freedom" (19 March 1941).

Probably the most moving of these post-Sapphira letters, for Cather, came from Rose Ackroyd, in New Jersey. Ackroyd, who at sixty-eight was almost exactly Cather’s age, wrote of her delight in Sapphira: "Perhaps one reason why is because when I was a child from probably 3 to 8 yrs old I played and ran about those pathways that you portray in your story. . . . After reading your book and being so thrilled, I wrote a cousin and told her of your book and when I wrote the name of Willa Cather I all at once remembered. Grandmother Anderson had worked for Charlie Cathers—and that my Uncle Enoch and Aunt Marjorie went west with the Cather family" (21 April 1940). Ackroyd went on to inquire about what had happened to her "dear aunt" Marjorie. Cather responded with one of the most affectionate of all her surviving letters, in which her love for Marjorie Anderson and her fondness and admiration for Mary Ann Anderson, Mrs. Ackroyd’s grandmother and the great mountain storyteller of Cather’s childhood, are palpable. In her first reply to Mrs. Ackroyd, Cather enclosed a recent photograph of Willow Shade, with a circle drawn around the window where, as a little girl, she had waited for her "dear" Mrs. Anderson to come walking down the mountain road (see illustration 20). 42 Then Mrs. Ackroyd responded with a photograph of her grandmother that, Cather said, brought her to tears. Although Mrs. Anderson was much older in the picture than when Cather last saw her (presumably on her 1896 visit), her eyes still showed the "old fire" that she remembered. Cather promised Mrs. Ackroyd that she would treasure this picture for the rest of her life.

Edith Lewis reported that when Cather was struggling with private grief and anxiety over the European war as she finished writing Sapphira, she wrote in her diary, "There seems to be no future at all for people of my generation" (184). In these Virginia letters, which obviously had great emotional weight for her, Cather was able to continue the work of memory that she had begun with Sapphira. At a moment when personal and political events made it difficult for her to imagine a bearable future, she strengthened her ties to the complex sense of history and the enduring bonds of family and community that were rooted in her earliest Virginia years. As much as she enjoyed her Virginia correspondence, however, Cather seems to have entertained no thoughts of a return trip to Frederick County. She never went back there—just as she never returned to Red Cloud again. When a reader wrote in 1943 with tales of a delightful drive through Virginia that was inspired by Sapphira (Masterton to Cather, 24 February 1943), Cather replied that, once she wrote about a place, it was lost to her (Cather to Miss Masterton, 15 March 1943). It seems more likely, however, that with her final published novel, Cather had at last found a way to acknowledge the complexity of her Virginia heritage, which was both beautiful and "Terrible," both haunting and deeply sustaining.

Sapphira was initially Cather’s best-selling book (Crane 187–91).43 However, the novel’s readership declined in the second half of the twentieth century. For many readers, especially those who tended to view Cather’s career through the lens of western American literature, Sapphira seemed an anomaly and her least classifiable book. As scholarship in African American cultures burgeoned after 1960, Cather’s portrayal of slavery began to appear more conflicted and more problematic than it had to the book’s initial reviewers. This, plus Cather’s fusion of fiction, history, and personal memory and her choice of an obdurate slave mistress as a title character, made the novel seem troubling and unsatisfying to some readers.

In recent years, however, as Cather scholarship has grown more various and more sophisticated, readers have become more receptive to the conjunction of memory, history, and invention in this last novel. New research by Cather biographers and critics is confirming more fully the depth and endurance of her Virginia connections. And readers are historicizing Sapphira more complexly, putting Cather’s study of nineteenth-century relations between whites and blacks in the context of other such work in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Slowly, we are learning to see Sapphira and the Slave Girl not as a curious late aberration but as one of Cather’s most ambitious efforts—a triumphant moment in a great American career.

In 1942, Willa Cather wrote to Alexander Woollcott about the special importance of Sapphira’s epilogue to her (5 December 1942). Seeing Nancy return to revisit her Virginia family and past was one of the most memorable events of Cather’s life, she said, one that she inevitably remembered with a "thrill"—perhaps because such a return represented one of the largest challenges of American history and of her own life. Explaining this to Woollcott, her language echoed T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets: "In my end is my beginning" ("East Coker" 129). Literally, Cather must have meant that the final chapter of Sapphira returned to her own beginnings, her earliest Virginia memories. But she also seems to be implying the circular conjunction of "time present and time past" that Eliot evokes, something that may—at least momentarily— be glimpsed through the work of memory, and something that we often desire most intensely in the last years of our lives. Cather’s letter to Woollcott invokes Eliot’s language again when she speaks of her epilogue as the place she started from. She may have been thinking of these lines from the end of Four Quartets:

We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. ("Little Gidding" 145)

Sapphira and the Slave Girl is perhaps the bravest in Willa Cather’s lifetime of explorations. It returns to a birthplace where love, abuse, family, stories, slavery, home, and the seeds of freedom are conjoined. And it makes a valiant and artful effort to know that place fully, for the first time.

Notes

Works Cited

Illustration 11. Teenage Willa Cather in a Confederate cap, c. 1888–90, Red Cloud, Nebraska. Illustration 22. Back Creek Valley, Virginia, the principal setting for Sapphira, 1991. This view shows the rear of the Mill House (far right), surrounding outbuildings, and Great North Mountain. Back Creek, where the mill once was, runs between the house and the mountain. Illustration 33. Portrait of Thomas, Sixth Lord Fairfax, Sir Joshua Reynolds, c. 1793. Lord Fairfax was proprietor of five million acres in northern Virginia, including Frederick County, and made land grants to several of Willa Cather’s ancestors in the mid-eighteenth century. Illustration 44. Fairfax Survey Document, 1749–50. This is the earliest known map of the site of Sapphira. Willa Cather’s great-grandfather Jeremiah Smith ordered this survey of his four hundred acres in Back Creek Valley from John Mauzy. The map shows North Mountain, Back Creek, and Smith’s house, which became the Mill House. Illustration 55. The mill on Back Creek, owned and run by Willa Cather’s great-grandfather Jacob F. Seibert between 1836 and 1858. The mill was demolished in the 1970s. Mill House is in the background (left). Illustration 66. Front view of the Mill House, 2001. Illustration 77. Map, from Eugene Scheel’s 1885 Map of Frederick County, City of Winchester. This portion of the Back Creek Valley Magisterial District shows the village of Back Creek Valley and surrounding sites, many of which appear in Sapphira. (1) the Northwestern Pike (east toward Winchester, west toward Romney, West Virginia); (2) the village of Hayfield (Willa Cather’s great-grandparents James and Ann Cather lived nearby at Flint Ridge, the original Cather property in Frederick County); (3) Great North Mountain; (4) Willow Shade (purchased by D. A. Fries in 1883, when the Charles Cather family moved to Nebraska); (5) the tollhouse near Back Creek; (6) Back Creek; (7) Mill House and mill on Back Creek, home of Sapphira and Henry Colbert in the novel; (8) the village of Back Creek Valley; (9) Rachel Boak’s house, Willa Cather’s birthplace and Rachel Blake’s house in the novel; (10) Sidney Gore’s house, Mrs. Bywaters’s house in the novel; (11) Hebron Baptist Church, attended by Willa Cather’s family, and Mr. Fairhead’s Baptist church in the novel; (12) Hollow Road; (13) Sunrise, home of Willa Cather’s great-aunt Ruhamah Seibert Muse; (14) Bethel Church and graveyard; and (15) Timber Ridge. Illustration 88. Ruhamah Lemmon Seibert, prototype for Sapphira Dodderidge Colbert. Portrait by an itinerant artist, Virginia, c. 1850. Illustration 99. Jacob Funk Seibert, prototype for Henry Colbert. Portrait by an itinerant artist, Virginia, c. 1850. Illustration 1010. Rachel Elizabeth Seibert Boak (1816–93), prototype for Rachel Colbert Blake. Illustration 1111. William Lee Boak (d. 1854), prototype for Michael Blake. Illustration 1212. Rachel Seibert Boak’s house in Back Creek Valley, prototype for Rachel Blake’s house. Mrs. Boak moved to this house after her husband’s death in Washington, D.C., in 1854; her parents lived in the Mill House, nearby. Her father, Jacob Seibert, owned the house and left it to her in his will. Willa Cather was born in this house on 7 December 1873. Illustration 1313. Hebron Baptist Church, Back Creek Valley (now Gore), Virginia, 2001. This church, built in 1859, is the prototype for Mr. Fairhead’s Baptist church and is the church that Willa Cather attended with her family during her Virginia childhood. Illustration 1414. Flint Ridge in 1922, the original Cather home in Frederick County, Virginia. Jasper Cather was well established here by about 1790. His son James was living at Flint Ridge with his wife, Ann, when their great-grandchild Willa Cather was born nearby in 1873. Illustration 1515. James Cather, Willa Cather’s great-grandfather and the prototype for Mr. Cartmell, c. 1840. Illustration 1616. Willa Cather’s great-aunts Sidney Sophia Cather Gore, left, prototype for Mrs. Bywaters, and her sister Adeline Cather Purcell as young women in Frederick County, 1848. Illustration 1717. James Howard Gore (1856–1939), youngest son of Sidney Sophia Cather Gore and the prototype for Mrs. Bywaters’s youngest son. Gore, a professor at what is now The George Washington University, was Willa Cather’s cousin and an early mentor; she visited him in Washington, D.C. Illustration 1818. Sidney Gore’s house, Valley Home, in Back Creek Valley. This house, with its “rambling garrets,” is mentioned in the epilogue. Illustration 1919. Willow Shade, Back Creek Valley, c. 1870. Willa Cather’s grandfather William Cather built this substantial brick residence just east of Back Creek in 1851. Here, William and his wife, Caroline Smith Cather, stand on the steps; the two young women in light dresses on either side of the steps are probably their twin daughters, Alverna and Alfaretta. A third young woman, at the right corner of the house, may be their youngest daughter, Virginia Ann (Jennie). The young man by the tree, left of the steps, is probably their younger son, Charles Fectigue, Willa’s father. The African American man near the house is probably a Cather employee. This photograph shows Willow Shade, Willa Cather’s childhood home, as it probably looked during her early childhood and as it is portrayed in Sapphira. Illustration 2020. Willa Cather’s childhood home, Willow Shade, c. 1938, the year of her last visit there. Cather sent this photograph to Rose Ackroyd in 1941 and drew a circle around the window where, as a child, she watched for Mary Ann Anderson, Mrs. Ackroyd’s grandmother. Illustration 2121. Willa Cather c. 1878, age five (her age in the epilogue). Illustration 2222. Mary Virginia Boak Cather, Willa Cather’s mother, as a young woman. Illustration 2323. Charles Fectigue Cather, Willa Cather’s father, as a young man. Illustration 2424. Marjorie Anderson (left), Cather family servant and daughter of Mary Ann Anderson, with Elsie Cather, Willa Cather’s younger sister, Red Cloud, Nebraska, c. 1893. Illustration 2525. Mary Ann Anderson’s grave, Bethel churchyard, Trone, Virginia, 2001. Anderson was the prototype for Mrs. Ringer, and Bethel Church is mentioned in the novel. The epitaph reads, “Gone but not forgotten.” Photograph courtesy of Ann Romines. Illustration 2626. “Creek on the ‘Hollow Road.’” Hollow Road runs along Timber Ridge from Back Creek Valley to Bethel Church and is a much-traveled route in Sapphira. Illustrations 26 and 27 were taken on Cather’s first return visit to her Virginia birthplace, in 1896. This photograph depicts Cather or her traveling companion, Isabelle McClung. The captions are in Cather’s handwriting. Illustration 2727. “In the Old Sibert Graveyard.” Willa Cather in the Seibert graveyard behind the Mill House. This was a nineteenth-century burial spot for the Seibert family and slaves. In the novel, Jezebel’s funeral is held at this graveyard. Illustration 2828. Dr. William S. Love, Winchester physician who delivered Willa Cather, and probable prototype for Dr. Clavenger. Illustration 2929. Loudoun Street, in the center of downtown Winchester, c. 1845 (originally printed in an 1845 travel book). The Taylor Hotel appears at the right. In Sapphira, when Henry Colbert frees his wife’s slaves Lizzie and Bluebell, he finds them jobs at this prominent local hotel. Illustration 3030. Christ Church, Winchester. This Episcopal church was constructed in 1828, and the tower was added in the 1850s. In Sapphira, Sapphira Colbert attends this church on her visits to Winchester; she and her husband were married there. Early-twentieth-century postcard, courtesy of the Handley Library Collection, Stewart Bell, Jr. Archives Room, Handley Regional Library, Winchester, Virginia. Illustration 3131. In Sapphira, Till describes the Winchester houses built of the local bluegray limestone. One such house is the Godfrey Miller house, 28 South Loudoun Street in Old Town Winchester. UDC Turner Ashby Camp Chapter Collection, Winchester–Frederick County Historical Society, Winchester, Virginia. Illustration 3232. The Turner Ashby Monument in Stonewall Confederate Cemetery, Winchester, 2001. This monument is mentioned in the epilogue. Ashby was killed in battle on 6 June 1862, and this monument to him and his brother, also a Confederate casualty, was erected by “The Ladies of Winchester” in 1881. Illustration 3333. Grave of Willa Cather’s uncle James William Boak near the Turner Ashby monument in Stonewall Confederate Cemetery, Winchester, 1997. Boak died at age nineteen on 3 September 1862 of wounds probably received at Second Manassas. Illustration 3434. Confederate general Turner Ashby, a favorite hero in his native Shenandoah Valley. John Walter Wayland Papers, Stewart Bell, Jr. Illustration 3535. Northern Liberty Market, Washington, D.C. This large, flourishing market near the Capitol was established in the 1840s and demolished in 1872. In Sapphira, Michael Blake selects groceries at the market for his wife, Rachel. This image shows the market in 1857, when a political riot occurred there. Illustration 3636. U.S. Capitol, Washington, D.C., 1846. This daguerreotype by John Plumbe Jr. is the earliest known photograph of the Capitol, then still unfinished. In Sapphira, Michael and Rachel Blake live in Washington, near the Capitol, in 1846, as did Willa Cather’s grandparents William Lee and Rachel Boak. Illustration 3737. Capon Springs, Virginia, a resort visited by members of Willa Cather’s family and mentioned in Sapphira. Nineteenth- century advertisement. Illustration 3838. Chestnut Hill in Loudoun County is the largest stone house in northern Virginia; it was built in three phases between 1790 and 1812. The original owner was Samuel Clapham. In Sapphira, the Dodderidge plantation, Sapphira’s family home, is Chestnut Hill in Loudoun County. Illustration 3939. Portrait of Willa Cather by Leon Gordon in Good Housekeeping (September 1931). According to Bernice Slote, this painting portrays Cather as a “Virginia lady.” Illustration 4040. Mary Virginia Boak Cather, Willa Cather’s mother, in 1930, on her eightieth birthday (at a Pasadena sanatorium after suffering a debilitating stroke). Illustration 4141. The New York Society Library, c. 1940. Willa Cather did much of her research for Sapphira at this private library, New York City’s oldest, on East Seventy-ninth Street. Courtesy of the New York City Municipal Archives. Illustration 4242. Members’ Reading Room in the New York Society Library, c. 1952. Illustration 4343. “Slave Hunters Attacking a Negro Town.” This wood engraving, from a book Cather consulted at the New York Society Library while writing Sapphira, suggests the African scene of Jezebel’s capture into slavery. Illustration 4444. “Section Showing Method of Stowing Slaves in 1786, on the Ship ‘Brookes’ of Liverpool.” This ship, the Brooks, carried between 609 and 740 slaves on each voyage from Africa. In Sapphira, Jezebel makes the Middle Passage on a Liverpool slave ship in the 1780s. Illustration 4545. Example of a handwritten draft from MS1. Illustration 46 Illustration 4746 and 47. Examples of Cather’s early typing and editing from TS1 and TS2. Illustration 4848. Example of typeovers, interlinears, and handwritten editing marks from TS7. Illustration 4949. Page from the professionally typed ts6, showing an early cancellation of this page before the entire section was discarded. Illustration 5050. Sample page from TS7 illustrating Edith Lewis’s hand. Susan J. and James R. Rosowski Cather Collection, Archives and Special Collections, University of Nebraska–Lincoln Libraries. Illustration 5151. Sarah Bloom’s typing of Lewis’s interlinear alternatives found in illustration 50. Illustration 5252. Typescript, one page of a version of the epilogue of Sapphira. Pages from this typescript illustrate Cather’s revision process and indicate her special concerns about the innovative autobiographical epilogue. Illustration 5353. This Virginia treasury note, dated 1862, is one of many Confederate bills brought by Willa Cather’s family from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883. The bills were used as packing material on the journey and later as play money for Willa and her siblings.

Explanatory Notes

More than any other Willa Cather novel, Sapphira and the Slave Girl relies on the author’s early memories and the family and local histories and stories she heard as a child and adolescent. A variety of sources that provide information about and insight into the settings of the novel in 1850s Virginia and 1840s Washington, D.C., and the postbellum Virginia of 1873–83 of Sapphira’s epilogue helped to access those once-oral resources. Census records were extremely useful, including the slave censuses taken in Virginia and the District of Columbia in 1850 and 1860, as well as various legal records that made it possible to trace the Virginia properties of Cather’s ancestors (including their slaves). Local histories were an essential resource, beginning with Samuel Kercheval’s 1833 history of Frederick County, Virginia, which was a treasured volume in Cather’s father’s library, and including reference works such as Dee Ann Buck’s "Index to Death Registry: Frederick County" and the ongoing work of such current local historians as Warren R. Hofstra, Wilmer L. Kerns, and architectural historian Maral S. Kalbian. Various environmental studies, such as the guides to Virginia and Shenandoah Valley plants by Oscar W. Gupton and Fred C. Swope, made it possible to document the Virginia settings that Cather evokes so specifically. The growing body of scholarship on slave and slaveholding histories and cultures was also invaluable.

Many archives contributed to this research. The holdings of the Handley Regional Library in Winchester, Virginia, including their large collection of local photographs, were particularly important. The New York Society Library’s records of Willa Cather’s reading during the time she was writing Sapphira made it possible to trace some of her research, especially for the account of the Middle Passage in book 3, "Old Jezebel." Cather’s correspondence, in various archives, discusses her early Virginia memories and how she employed them in Sapphira.

The following explanatory notes aim to give a sense of the natural and built environment of the novel’s setting and of local customs and language, to identify allusions and prototypes of persons and places, and to trace the novel’s historical background and how it does and does not match Cather’s depiction. They are intended to complement Cather’s text and to suggest the depth and variety of resources that lie behind this spare, evocative, and important novel.

Works Cited and Consulted

Textual Apparatus

Textual Essay

This volume of the Cather Scholarly Edition presents a critical text of Willa Cather’s final novel, Sapphira and the Slave Girl, published by Alfred A. Knopf on Cather’s sixty-seventh birthday, 7 December 1940. Sapphira and the Slave Girl has the richest background of pre-publication texts available of any of Cather’s novels. Fourteen such texts survive, all of them fragmentary or incomplete. Three brief manuscript fragments are at the University of Virginia. Eight texts come from a private collection: these include parts of an early holograph and parts of seven typescripts, five typed by Cather and two professionally prepared.¹ A late and nearly complete typescript (d), most of it typed professionally, is at Drew University.² A set of corrected galleys for the first Knopf printing lacks only the note on Frederick County surnames. A bookseller’s demonstration copy (dummy) prepared by Knopf contains only the opening pages of text. No other manuscripts, typescripts, page proofs, or periodical versions are known to exist.

The complete versions of Sapphira and the Slave Girl that appeared in Cather’s lifetime include the limited issue; the first four printings of the first Knopf trade edition and the Book-of-the-Month Club printing (1940, 1941); the Houghton Mifflin Autograph Edition, volume 13 (1941); various translations from 1941 to 1943; and the British edition published by Cassell in August 1941. Copy-text for this edition of Sapphira and the Slave Girl is a copy of the first trade printing of the first edition (K1), emended.³

Our editorial practices follow the guidelines of the Committee for Scholarly Editions of the Modern Language Association. Beginning with a bibliographic survey of the history of this work, we made a calendar of extant texts and then collected and examined copies of the printings and editions of Sapphira and the Slave Girl published in Cather’s lifetime.⁴ After identifying authorial versions (those that involved or probably involved Cather’s participation or intervention), we compared each version to the standard of collation, a copy of K1.⁵ These collations supplied material for a conflation of substantive and accidental variants among the authorial texts. This conflation provided the evidence for choosing the copy-text and emending the copy-text, and the material for the list of substantive variants in the authorial texts (including pre-copy-text variants). The list of variants includes substantives and semi-substantives (changes in accidentals that affect meaning, such as changes from periods to question marks or exclamation marks, or vice versa). Publishing all the accidentals would be expensive and result in a long and repetitive list: most of the accidental changes in the Autograph Edition, for example, were the result of styling set for that edition as a whole. A complete conflation, with accidentals from all texts, is on file in the Cather Edition editorial office in the Department of English at the University of Nebraska– Lincoln. In a separate procedure, we made lists of end hyphenated compounds with their proper resolution.⁶

This essay sets forth, in G. Thomas Tanselle’s words, "the textual situation which accounts for the particular choice of copy-text" (44). It describes Cather’s process of composition, placing the pre-publication texts for Sapphira and the Slave Girl within that process; discusses changes in these documents that mark the evolution of the text; presents the publisher’s preparations and printing history of the text; and gives rationales for the choice of copy-text and our emendation of it.

Composition

Cather discussed her process of composition in interviews and letters.⁷ She always wrote the first draft by hand, correcting as she wrote. She then typed and revised the text once or twice before giving her latest typescript, with its handwritten revisions, to her secretary, Sarah Bloom, who produced a fresh, professionally typed document using a new ribbon and different spacing. Cather was an indefatigable reviser at every step of the process: even in the galley and proof stages she deleted and added material,⁸ attending to details at the level of a word, a phrase, a sentence, and even a paragraph.

The accumulated pre-publication evidence for Sapphira suggests a more complex set of practices than Cather publicly described, owing in part to the time it took her to write the novel and to the original manuscript’s length. She began the novel in late 1936 or early 1937 and finished in 1940. Edith Lewis, Cather’s friend and biographer, said: "In writing the story, it was the flooding force of a great wealth of impressions that she had to control. She could have written two or three Sapphiras out of her material; and in fact she did write, in her first draft, twice as much as she used. She always said it was what she left out that counted" (183).⁹ In this case, the revised and discarded material amounted to six pounds on the bathroom scale (Cather to Ferris Greenslet, 13 December 1940). The only known surviving example of a draft scene (presumably from this material) with no parallel in the published text is the typescript fragment ts6 (see appendix C).

The following discussion demonstrates Cather’s composition of Sapphira through the surviving pre-publication documents; the footnotes provide physical descriptions. Although most of the documents are fragments, the physical evidence and the collations enabled us to determine their places in the process of composition. Six of the documents—the two related holograph fragments (MS1), a group of three holograph fragments (MS2), and the discarded typescript fragment (TS6)—could not be collated: the holographs because they were formed in such a provisional way, with details and passages scattered and out of the eventual order, and the ts6 fragment because its content does not appear in the standard of collation. Transcriptions of these six documents appear as appendixes to the Textual Essay.

The twelve documents that precede the dummy and galleys are grouped in the following table by their place in the narrative order according to page number (reading across) and in the order of composition (reading down).

MS1	247, 251, 253–56, 257–60 [overlaps with TS1, TS4, TS5, TS7, D]
MS2.1	68
MS2.2	113
MS2.3	170-71
TS1	253–56 [overlaps with MS1]
TS2	117-29
TS3	239-45
TS4	248–54 [overlaps with MS1 and TS1]
TS5	246–48 [overlaps with MS1 and TS4]
TS6	deleted in K1
TS7	246–64 [overlaps with MS1, TS1, TS4, TS5]
D	7–50, 52–113, 132–264, 272–87 [overlaps with MS1, MS2.1, MS2.2, MS2.3, TS3, TS4, TS5, TS7]

Transcriptions from the holographs and the typescripts use the following symbols:

〈angle brackets〉 for canceled but decipherable material

[square brackets] to enclose typed interlinear additions

underlining for material added by hand

{braces} for editorial comment

We do not transcribe false starts or typographical errors that Cather had immediately canceled by hand or by typing over the letters with x’s, y’s, or z’s.

STEP 1: HOLOGRAPH DRAFTS

MS1

These fourteen handwritten pages come early in the order of composition,¹⁰ not just because they are in Cather’s hand (she sometimes wrote passages out by hand as she revised subsequent drafts) but because of the tentative nature of the material (see illustration 45). For example, within the episode of the girls’ illness and the doctor’s visit, Cather wrote two versions of the scene in which Mary drinks the broth.

The holograph pages numbered 1 through 10 are probably from a slightly later version, and pages 13 through 16 are from an earlier draft of the same episode. The ten-page fragment contains an additional scene between the doctor and Lizzie, absent from all other extant texts, but it has more verbal parallels to K1 than the shorter fragment (see the section "The Evolution of the Text" below). The shorter passage describes the broth scene in the third person; in the longer version David tells the doctor about it afterwards.

MS2

These three fragments from the collection of the University of Virginia include two sets of numbered manuscript draft pages and one partial page.¹¹ The partial page, unnumbered, is marked "Insert" and belongs to the passage on page 68 where Colbert thinks about how Nancy keeps his room.

The three pages of the second fragment relate to page 113 in book 3, "Old Jezebel," where Colbert ponders God’s design. The third fragment consists of two numbered pages drafting the scene where Mrs. Blake and Nancy visit the Double S ravine at page 170–71 in book 5, "Martin Colbert."

STEP 2: EARLY TYPED DRAFTS

The second step in Cather’s process of composition, her typing and revision of the manuscript, may be seen in the typed fragments TS1, TS2, and TS3, all of which contain the characteristics of her early work at the typewriter (see illustrations 46 [from TS1] and 47 [from TS2]).¹² These show Cather revising in the midst of the typing process by typing alternative readings between the lines (referred to here as interlinears) and by canceling words and phrases by typing over them with x’s, y’s, or z’s (typeovers).

TS1

The content of TS1,¹³ which overlaps with that of TS4 and TS7, as well as its many typed revisions, shows this is an early draft. TS1 is still provisional in its use of names and places: the manuscript’s "Dr. X" becomes "Doctor Worthington," "Doctor Wortham," and "Dr. W" in TS1, and only becomes "Doctor Clavenger" in later versions; the town of "Millvale" in TS1 becomes "Berryville." The lengthy passage on the doctor’s ancestors in TS1 is especially rough, with many typeovers and interlinears (see illustration 46). Collations of TS1 and the other typescripts against K1 show that Cather condensed the more expansive passages of TS1 in subsequent drafts (see the section "The Evolution of the Text" below). The principle of condensation, or of what Cather called démeublé, is visible from the earliest to the latest of the documents (Not Under Forty 43–51).

TS2

This heavily revised typescript,¹⁴ which deals with Mrs. Blake’s visit to Timber Ridge in book 4, chapter 1, is preceded by a sheet with canceled half titles, an uncanceled date, and an uncanceled label:

〈Mrs Blake & Miller 〉
〈and〉
II〈Nancy's Flight〉
〈(rough draft)〉
April 29
Recent Carbons

Another sheet contains the holograph notation "Write Insert on 1 and Edit for Miss Bloom"—Cather’s reminders to herself to add material and then revise what she has produced for a professional typing by Bloom. In addition, a typed note pinned to page 9 contains material intended to replace a paragraph near the bottom of that page. These give glimpses of Cather’s working methods—organizing her materials and adding longer revisions in ways that avoided retyping entire pages.

At the top of the typescript’s first page Cather has written "Carbon of Timber Ridge Chapter." The pages are numbered 1 through 10 in Cather’s hand. The first page ends with the word "path" in the middle of the line: the printed text continues, "May apples grew in the damp spots; their blossoms, like tiny pond lilies, gave out a heavy, almost sickening sweetness" (118.8). The final page of the typescript ends at mid-sentence in Big Buck’s rationale for beating up Casper (129.24).

Cather made many single word and phrase changes, made some cuts, and rewrote one paragraph. For example, she cut the second and third sentences of five describing the locust tree in spring (118): "They are rather feminine in dress, seldom straight or rugged to the eye. They droop at the shoulders." Elsewhere she abbreviated Lawndis’s comment on his mother’s social habits by cutting the phrase "an’ I’ll be bound she has a plenty to talk about" from his speech.

The rewritten paragraph, on page 9, has one version on the page itself with the revision on a separate sheet pinned to the bottom of the page:

TS2	TS2 revised
Their talk swung naturally to the example of the murder [of the pedler] at the Red Brick House on the Ridge road and its [exposure] confession after twenty years. That was the striking reminder that the wages of sin are paid, though late. They had just begun to tell what they remembered of the women who killed the pedler for hi {sic} pack, when Lawndis appeared at the door, sweaty and panting.	Their talk turned naturally to the classic example of belated justice: [old story of belated justice;] The murder of the pedler at the red brick house on the Ridge road, and its exposure after twenty years. While Mrs. Ringer was telling all she remembered of the two [wretched] women who had killed the pedler 〈for his〉 for his pack, Lawndid {sic} appeared at the door, sweaty and panting.

TS3

This typescript,¹⁵ like TS2, was typed by Cather and then corrected very lightly in her hand. Collations of TS3 with the first-edition text show many changes; its early place in the sequence of revisions is also shown by names. TS3 uses the name "Perry" for Mrs. Bywaters’s son, whom Cather would later, as shown in the Drew typescript, rename "Jonathan." (Cather’s cousin Perry Gore was a son of the prototype for Mrs. Bywaters.) TS3’s "Doctor Bushwell" may be an early version of Doctor Brush; "Doctor Ramsey" would become Doctor Clavenger. "Matchem," who had trained Till in TS3, vanished from this passage in the first edition.

There are more extensive differences: in the scene just before Lizzie catches Mrs. Blake at the church door to inquire about Nancy, TS3 contains the following passage:

Once Rachel ventured to ask him how her Mother was feeling these days. "Not so well, I’m afraid. Doctor Bushwell has been out from town twice lately. She keeps up her spirits, [courage] though. She seems to miss that scoundrel, Martin. The only good I ever knew of him was that he seemed to put himself out to be company for her. I mistrust if he ever put himself out for anybody else, anywhere".

This does not appear in later drafts.

STEP 3: LATER TYPED DRAFTS

TS4

This typescript,¹⁶ which overlaps part of the content of TS1, is clearly a later draft. TS4 shows the change in the town doctor’s name from TS1’s "Worthington" and "Wortham" and TS3’s "Ramsey" to "Clavenger." A line such as TS1’s "to watch the blue evening die into dusk and the silvery stars come out" becomes "The blue evening was dying into dusk and the silvery stars were coming out faintly over the pines on the hill" in TS4 (254.9–11). The changes made to the passage in TS1 about the doctor’s family background have been incorporated into TS4 and then further revised in TS7. (See illustration 48 and the section "The Evolution of the Text" below.)

TS5

This two-page typescript¹⁷ is relatively clean copy, with no holographic corrections; nonetheless, collations show that Cather would revise it further in later drafts, making her language more concise or more vivid. For instance, the colorless description of the autumn trees in TS5, "held their foliage," would become "were like blazing torches" in K1 (246.9). The text of TS5 has a passage in common with the later, professionally typed TS7, corresponding to 248.12–15 where Cather describes Fairhead’s and Whitford’s movements when the Blake girls become ill.

STEP 4: THE PROFESSIONAL TYPINGS

Cather’s typist, Bloom, used a different ribbon and different spacings. She typed page numbers in a standard format: "-79-". These typescripts were then subject to holographic revision (see illustration 48).

TS6

This section was removed from a late draft,¹⁸ the only extant survivor of the large body of material that Cather cut from her original manuscripts. This text itself had a long passage marked for deletion before Cather decided to remove the entire episode, which focused on Rachel’s children as they made "plans for the long stretch of freedom ahead" (ts6, p. 89.2–3) after school has let out, and visit their grandfather at the mill. (See appendix C for the complete text.)

TS7

At fourteen pages, this is the longest of the typescript fragments.¹⁹ It describes the illness and death of Mrs. Blake’s children, and so overlaps in content with TS1, TS4, and TS5, as well as MS1. It is clearly the product of the revisions made in these earlier versions; in most cases, the revisions made to TS7 became the readings of the first edition.

Three people were involved in TS7 in different ways: Bloom typed the physical document from Cather’s earlier drafts, Cather made eight handwritten revisions, and some sixty changes, including cancellations, interlinears, and marginal notations are in Lewis’s hand (see illustration 50 for the differences between Cather’s and Lewis’s handwriting).

The large number of revisions in Lewis’s hand raises the issue of the authority of these readings. Lewis may have simply acted as Cather’s amanuensis when Cather’s hand was in a brace. It is also possible that Lewis suggested changes for Cather to review and take action upon: the two marginal notations mentioned above show that she presented Cather with two alternative readings for canceled material in the text (see illustration 50). However, Cather would have reviewed any changes offered by Lewis and accepted or rejected the readings; she also had further opportunities to revise these readings in later typescripts, galleys, and page proofs. Therefore, we consider that the revisions in Lewis’s hand have Cather’s authority.

D

The Drew typescript²⁰ of Sapphira and the Slave Girl is an almost complete version of the novel. There are some gaps: three pages are missing as well as two complete chapters, the first one in book 4 and in book 9. The document as it now exists is a hybrid: the first six sections were professionally typed, but the final section is an earlier draft typed by Cather herself. The provenance of the document is unclear; it is possible that the final section was joined to the rest by a collector well before it was acquired by Drew University in 2005.

Even the professionally typed portion is somewhat of a hybrid. There are several pagination methods.²¹ Internal chapter numberings suggest a regular and ongoing process of accumulating the professionally typed parts of the story: Cather apparently gave chapters or slightly larger units to Bloom to type, rather than a complete draft, as suggested in Cather’s own accounts of the process. These portions of the story were numbered by hand, saved, and set aside. Then the separately numbered sections were gathered together and new typed page numbers assigned in a consecutive scheme.

Section seven, later book 9, "Nancy’s Return," shows the characteristics of early Cather-typed and hand-revised drafts. Moreover, the paper used for this section, unlike that used for the previous six, has yellowed significantly. It followed a similar process of consolidation: four of its fifteen pages are carbons, suggesting that Cather drew upon previous drafts in putting this together. The content also shows the early nature of this part; an introductory paragraph led directly to what would later be chapter 2, showing that the present chapter 1 must have been added in a later draft.

The introductory paragraph explained Cather’s decision to use the first-person voice in narrating the last book: "This concluding chapter I must relate in the first person, for at this point I, myself, came into the story, and saw something of the new order of life on Back Creek. The old order was still about us, in feeling if not in fact, and stories of the 〈war〉 War and ‘the old slave times’ were the nursary {sic} tales of our childhood." Cather told Fisher that she had been reluctant to make this shift in narrative voice (14 October 1940), and she told Henry Seidel Canby that she shared his doubts about the epilogue (4 February 1941). But the memory of Nancy’s return was so vivid and important to her that she felt compelled to do it. However, she canceled this paragraph (see illustration 52) and later incorporated its themes of the old and new order in a new first chapter of this final book.

The Evolution of the Text

The overlapping content of some of the pre-copy-text materials permits the reader to observe Cather’s revisions in words, single sentences, and longer passages as she worked her way toward the published text. The history of one sentence demonstrates Cather’s process of shaping and polishing text. In K1, after Fairhead feels something solemn in Mary’s drinking the broth, he wonders at himself: "He remembered how sometimes in dreams a trivial thing took on a mysterious significance one could not explain" (255.22–25). The five versions of this sentence appearing in the prepublication documents (the sentence is not in the manuscript) show the movement from draft toward a final version. TS1 reads:

He remembered that in dreams some very trivial thing, such as climbing a tree or swimming in the creek [mill dam], had often given him a shiver of foreboding or glow of happiness out of all keeping with the dream itself.

In the lost versions upon which the unrevised version of TS7 was based, this becomes more ominous:

He remembered that in dreams a very trivial thing, climbing a tree or swimming in the mill-dam, could give one a shudder of fright and foreboding out of all keeping with the dream itself.

The "glow of happiness" has become "a shudder of fright." Possibly because they seemed out of keeping with the suggestion of the communion service that occasioned Fairhead’s thoughts, the examples of the trivial actions and the fearful feelings were deleted as TS7 was revised. Lewis presented two handwritten alternative versions of the latter part of the sentence, presumably for Cather to decide on:

He remembered that sometimes in dreams a trivial thing became momentous in a way one could not explain / took on a mysterious significance one could not explain

The closeness of the revised TS7 and the Drew typescript is strikingly shown as Lewis’s marginal additions in TS7 are actually transcribed by Bloom with interlinear typing in d (see illustrations 50 and 51):

He remembered that sometimes in dreams a trivial thing took on a mysterious significance one could not explain. [became momentous in a way one could not explain]

This suggests that D is based on the complete typescript of which TS7 is a surviving part, and that Cather had not yet made a decision when Bloom did the typing—or as she revised D. This suggests that Bloom probably prepared at least one other typescript in which Cather made her choice of the two, which served as setting copy for the galleys. That decision first appears in the galleys, where one last change was made, resulting in the K1 reading:

He remembered 〈that〉 how sometimes in dreams a trivial thing took on a mysterious significance one could not explain.

A longer example of Cather’s revision process comes in the passage describing Clavenger (254) in several early versions. TS1 is the earliest, and changes made for ts4 appear in TS7, which was in turn revised. TS1 (see illustration 46) reads:

A foolish thing to do, but Worthington was like that,—so were his ancestots {sic}. His grandfather, while making the "Grand tour" as young bloods did in those days, married in Rome an Italian widow. The couple had lived happily and long on his estate near Alexandria. The sons and grandsons of that marriage [had been a little "peculiar",—that is] had seemed to know what they nost {sic} wanted 〈to get out of life. They〉 {illegible strikeover words} 〈They always married〉 into the best families.

Cather, in her next typing of this passage in TS4, changes the name and tightens her wording:

A foolish thing to do, but Clavenger was like that. So were his ancestors. His grandfather, making the "grand tour" as young bloods did in those days, married in Rome,—a young Italian widow.

The extant typescript ends here, but the sons’ and grandsons’ "peculiar" behavior in the rest of the passage may be approximately reconstructed, as it or a successor must have served as the basis for Bloom’s typing of TS7 (see illustration 48):

A foolish thing to do, but Clavenger was like that. 〈So were his ancestors. His grandfather, making the "grand tour", as young bloods did in those days, married in Rome,—a young Italian widow. The couple lived long and happily on his estate in Alexandria, but the sons and grandsons of that marriage were considered a little ‘peculiar’; they had very individual interests and followed them with an assiduity which their 〈a〉 country neighbour thought not quite gentleman-like.〉

Bloom left two lines of open space after the word "with" for Cather to use to finish the sentence by hand, showing that Bloom was working with a text that was not quite complete. Cather’s cancellation of both the Bloom-typed portion and her own handwritten phrases recalls her uncertainty in TS1 about the sons’ and grandsons’ "peculiar" behavior—she had canceled with typeovers a first casting of what that "behaviour" might have been (see illustration 46). The evolution of this passage ends with d, which has the revised TS7 reading (followed by the galleys and K1 also): "A foolish thing to do, but Clavenger was like that."

A longer illustration of the evolution of the text comes from the scene in which Mary drinks the broth (255). Seven texts contain this passage: two in the holograph; TS1; TS7 unrevised; TS7 revised; D; and the galleys for the first edition. The sequence shows that Cather had the main outlines of the scene clearly in mind from the beginning but that she experimented with point of view and added and removed details as her revisions continued. The shorter passage in the holograph ends on the last page of the fragment:

While she was in Betty’s room with the doctor, Fairhead, splitting kindling outside the kitchen window, saw a white figure steal down the back stairs into the kitchen. It was Mary. She went directly to the kitchen table, lifted the bowl of broth in her two hands, and began to drink it. Her 〈hands trembled〉 arms wavered with the bowl at her lips, so she sat down 〈on〉 in the nearest chair, and resting her elbows on the table, slowly drank 〈the〉 at the bowl until it was empty. Fairhead knew he ought to go in and {end page 16}

The longer passage in the holograph has more details that parallel later versions:

I was coming out of the woodshed with a bucket of kindling for her morning fire when I saw a strange thing. I saw Mary, the older girl 〈who burst〉 come down the back stairs in her nightgown. The 〈kitchen〉 stair door had been left open. She went straight to the table, sank down into the chair, and lifted that bowl up in her two hands and began to drink the soup. You see the smell of the broth had gone up the back stairs, and she had been starved for three days. I knew I ought to 〈drop my bucket get〉 go in there and take the bowl from her. But somehow I couldn’t bring myself to do it. The stove hearth let out enough light so I could watch her. She drank slowly, resting her elbows on the table. Put the bowl down, took a long breath, and then drank again. It 〈looked〉 seemed almost like a communion service. (1–2)

A significant difference between the two holograph versions is the shift in point of view from third person as David himself tells the doctor what he has seen. Cather adds details such as the nightgown, the leaving open of the stair door, the smell of the broth, and Mary’s starvation. Most importantly, this passage shows that the comparison of a communion service and the drinking of the broth was in Cather’s earliest drafts of the novel.

The next appearance of the passage occurs in TS1 (see illustration 46 for the first part of the description):

He circled the house, picked up some sticks from the woodpile and was about to go into the 〈house〉 kitchen when he saw through the window something which startled him. A white figure emerged from the stairway and drifted through the duskiness of the room. [the indoor duskiness.] It was Mary, barefoot, in her nightgown, as if she were walking in her sleep, or in delirium. She reached the table, sank down in a wooden chair, and lifted the bowl of broth in her two hands, resting her elbows on the table. She drank slowly, put the bowl down 〈and〉 for a moment and sat with her shoulders drooping forward. Streaks of firelight 〈flick〉 from the stove flickered over her and over the whitewashed walls. She took up the bowl again. Fairhead knew he ought to go in and snatch it from her. But he seemed unable to stir or make a sound. There was something solemn 〈if ?〉 in what he saw there in the kitchen, like a Communion service.

This version, again in the third-person point of view, enhances the dreamlike quality of the scene: the drifting, ghostlike white figure (not immediately identified as Mary), the duskiness, the suggestion of sleepwalking or delirium, the flickering firelight, and Fairhead’s immobility.

This version is very close to the one used as copy for the professional typing in TS7 (unrevised; see illustration 50):

He circled the house, picked up some sticks from the woodpile, and was about to go into the kitchen when he saw through the window something which statled {sic} him. A white figure emerged from the stairway and drifted through the indoor duskiness of the room. It was Mary, barefoot, in her nightgown, as if she were walking in her sleep, or in delirium. She reached the table, sank down in a wooden chair and lifted the bowl of broth in her two hands. She drank slowly, resting her elbows on the table. She put the bowl down for a moment, and sat with her shoulders drooping forward. Streaks of firelight flickered over her and over the whitewashed walls and ceiling. When she took up the bowl again Fairhead knew it was time for him to go in and snatch it from her. But he was unable to move or make a sound. There was something solemn in what he saw through the window, like a communion service.

The changes from TS1 are mainly in the order of words or phrases. However, the stove has disappeared in TS7, leaving only the firelight; the sight of Mary in the prosaic "kitchen" becomes "through the window"; and Fairhead’s feeling that he "ought to go in" becomes just that it was "time" to do so in TS7. More significantly, Fairhead’s inability to move becomes certain: he only "seemed" so in TS1.

Cather revised TS7 to what would be the K1 reading:

He circled the house, picked up some sticks from the woodpile, and was about to go into the kitchen when he saw through the window something which startled him. A white figure emerged from the stairway and drifted across the indoor duskiness of the room. It was Mary, barefoot, in her nightgown, as if she were walking in her sleep. She reached the table, sank down on a wooden chair, and lifted the bowl of broth in her two hands. (She must have smelled the hot soup up in her bedroom; the stair door had been left open.) {written vertically in the right margin} She drank slowly, resting her elbows on the table. Streaks of firelight from the stove flickered over her and over the whitewashed walls and ceiling. Fairhead knew he ought to go in and take the soup from her. But he was unable to move or to make a sound. There was something solemn in what he saw through the window, like a Communion service.

Cather makes a few wording changes—"drifted across" for "drifted through," "take" for the earlier "snatch"—and cuts Mary’s second drink and her sitting with "drooping shoulders." In an uncharacteristic step, she restores elements of TS1: the stove returns, as does the explanation about the soup smell drifting up the stair and Fairhead’s feeling that he "ought" to go in. The revised TS7 version appears in the Drew typescript, except that in D Mary still sinks down "in" a chair, instead of the TS7R, galleys, and K1 version, "on" a chair.

Publisher's Preparations

GALLEYS

Cather received and read proofs for Sapphira and the Slave Girl by mid-September 1940 (Cather to Zoë Akins, [mid- September 1940]),²² and she was completing final work for the publication of the new book (Cather to Carrie Miner Sherwood, [September 1940]). Most, though not all, of the revisions in d appeared in the galleys, but the lack of copy editor’s marks suggest that another professional typing probably intervened. She was not very happy with the proofs: she told Fisher that they needed a lot of correction (14 October 1940). She made more than three hundred changes in the galleys, consistent with her practices in revising her typescripts. Nearly half (124) of these changes involve both additions and deletions, in both substantives and accidentals. Some twenty changes correct compositorial error. She made new paragraphs, added or subtracted punctuation and capitalization, and corrected spelling.

Few of the changes are lengthy, and deletions tend to be longer than additions. Cather made twenty-one cuts in substantives. For example, when Till approaches Winchester, feeling "she was back in the world again" (76.3–4), Cather cut "out from under the torpor and resignation of the backwoods country" in the galleys. In the description of the church at 78.13–16 she cut two sentences: "Either the Baptists had chosen the only barren spot, or they had denuded it. Just behind lay a range of low hills covered with gold-green Jersey pines."

Three of Cather’s cuts in the galleys make descriptions of the conditions of the female slaves less explicit. In chapter 3 of book 3, "Old Jezebel," the galley described the moment when "the fetters were taken off the female captives. Flogging would take the place of irons if any disorder occurred. They were not likely to make trouble" (93.13–15). In the galleys Cather drops the second sentence. Soon after this the galleys describe how "the women were turned out on the lower after deck without chains. The women seldom made any trouble except as they increased the stench" (94.12). Cather canceled the second sentence. Finally, in her description of Jezebel (95.24–25), Cather cut this sentence in the galleys: "She had none of the usual bodily characteristics of the African female; the hanging belly, heavy thighs, and overdeveloped breasts."

Almost all of Cather’s corrections were incorporated in the first edition, but more than half a dozen were not. When Nancy goes to Winchester with Sapphira, she learns "she should ride" the coach; Cather revises it to "she ride," but revised it yet again to K1’s "she was to ride" (59.15). In the passage where Mrs. Blake passes the kitchen (a separate structure) on her way to the house, entering it by the back door, the corrected galley proof cancels the first two letters of "back" in the text and adds an illegible marginal mark; the uncorrected galley proof, the dummy, and the first edition all have "back door" (16.3–4). The incomplete correction may indicate a false start. At 49.15–16 a paragraph begins: "Here the miller had arranged everything to his own liking." The uncorrected galley reads: "This room he had arranged to his own liking." Cather changed this in the galley to "Here the miller had arranged to his own liking" and repositioned the sentence to begin a new paragraph. Although a compositor or a proofreading editor at Knopf may have supplied the word "everything," Cather’s correction was most likely added in page proof.

Revisions at the page-proof stage presumably account for unrevised readings in the galleys that were changed in K1. Most are slight: "forty" instead of K1’s "thirty" (16.3), or "often" instead of K1’s "usually" (27.5). Later, Cather introduces the description of Jezebel in the galleys with the phrase "As an anatomical study" (not canceled, though Cather makes another change in the same line), while the first edition reads simply "Anatomically" (95.23). In the description of Rachel’s visits to Mrs. Bywaters, Cather canceled the sentence "Mrs. Bywaters was always busy, but she found time for a friendly word with Rachel" but left the following one: "[The] girl used to linger on the shady front porch, enjoying the quiet, severe order of the place." Neither sentence appears in K1 (135–36). Martin’s laugh, as the galleys read, has "something loose and caught-in-the-act about it," but K1 has "rather loose, caught-in-the-act as it were" (163.14). The jury that convicts Tap is "a jury of Yankee new-comers" in the galleys but simply "a Yankee jury" in K1 (283.10).

The corrected and revised galleys, however, do not contain the personal note on Frederick County surnames, which appears on the same page as the final words of the story in the first edition (K1’s 297). Cather must have added this either after the galley-proof stage or during the page-proof stage. Adding this note so late in the process may account for its position on the final page of the novel, a position that Greenslet found jarring; but as the colophon was on the verso of the last page, there was no other place for this note to go.

THE BOOKSELLER’S DUMMY

A demonstration copy of Sapphira, a publisher’s marketing tool aimed at booksellers, was available before September 1940. It consists of the title page, the two contents pages, the text of chapter 1, and half of chapter 2. Collations with the galley proofs and the first edition show that the dummy text, with two anomalies, coincides with the uncorrected galley proofs. This suggests that Cather did not have a hand in its production.

The two anomalies occur at 13.22–23, where Washington pushes Mrs. Colbert’s wheelchair "out of the dining-room, down the long hall." Neither the dummy nor the galley includes the comma; Cather must have made this change later, to the page proofs. However, the text of the galleys originally read "dniing-room" (corrected by Cather with "tr." in the margin), while the dummy has the correct spelling, suggesting either that it was set up from the printer’s copy or that this obvious correction to the galleys was made by the compositor.

Several differences between the galleys and the dummy also lead to the conclusion that the dummy was made up independently; the second contents page in the dummy does not include book 8, "The Dark Autumn," and book 9, "Nancy’s Return," nor does it include page numbers. Possibly Knopf had not yet received the complete printer’s copy from Cather, or she had not finally decided on the titles for these sections. Also like the galleys, the dummy text runs the beginning of chapter 2 on the same page as the end of chapter 1; in the first edition, each chapter begins on a new page.

Printing History

In early November 1940 Cather told friends she had received an advance copy (Cather to Viola Roseboro’, 9 November 1940) and had just finished signing five hundred copies of the deluxe ("limited") edition of the new book (Cather to Laura Hills, 9 November 1940). Some copies of the first printing, each identified on the "front open end-paper as a ‘Complimentary Advance Copy’" (Crane 188), were presumably distributed about this time also.

Knopf published both the limited issue and the trade issue of Sapphira and the Slave Girl on 7 December 1940. The limited issue consisted of 520 copies printed, from the same plates as the trade issue, on white laid stock with French watermarks (Crane 188–90); 498 were for sale at $10.00 each. The first trade printing consisted of 50,000 copies at $2.50 each; Knopf advertised that the original projected first printing of 25,000 copies had had to be doubled because of the advance orders (Crane 187). Two more trade printings were made in December; the fourth printing is dated February 1941.

Sapphira was one of the Book-of-the-Month Club’s selections for January 1941. It was printed from the same plates as the Knopf trade issue but with no reference to "First Edition" or to a printing number on the copyright page. As the colophons make clear, the Book-of-the-Month Club copies were printed by a different printer (H. Wolff rather than Plimpton) on paper from a different manufacturer. The demand was large: Knopf says 219,806 copies were distributed through the club ("Memoirs"). Crane, relying on the Knopf advertisements in Publisher’s Weekly, reports that by March 1941, "in addition to Book-of-the-Month Club copies, 65,194 copies had been sold to the trade" (187).

The first British edition was published in August 1941 by Cassell, Cather’s British publishers since 1931. Although the format appears identical to that of the Knopf edition, Cassell made twelve changes: eight in substantives (including two deletions) and four in accidentals (spelling and punctuation). Although for years Knopf and Cather had used some British spellings in her books ("parlour" instead of "parlor," e.g.), Cassell went further in anglicizing the text for its audience (see West 308), adding British spellings such as "axe-hewn" for "ax-hewn" (49.5) and "draughts" for "drafts" (63.14). One of the eight substantive changes illustrates this market adjustment: "English wall-paper" (71.25) became simply "wall-paper." However, two other changes signal cultural misunderstandings. Cassell substituted "scrapings" in the footnote on page 101 for the American "scrapple," a food "made by boiling together bits or scraps of meat, usually pork, with chopped herbs and flour or Indian meal" (Webster’s). When Cassell replaced "carpet sack" (229.1) with "carpet-bag," it produced a political connotation not intended by Cather: Nancy was not a "carpet-bagger" coming South after the Civil War to "seek private gain under the often corrupt reconstruction governments" (Webster’s). It is highly unlikely that such changes were made with Cather’s involvement or approval.²³

The book was quickly translated into Danish (1941) and Swedish (1941); a pirated Japanese version appeared in 1941, and a Portuguese edition in 1943. There is no evidence that Cather had a hand in the foreign issues and editions, and their variants are therefore not included in the Table of Rejected Substantives. Hamish Hamilton reissued the novel, offset from the American plates, in 1963.

Sapphira was published by Houghton Mifflin as volume thirteen of the Autograph Edition (A) in 1941; 970 copies of the other twelve volumes had been published in 1937 and 1938, in a set costing $120. Scribner’s had proposed such a subscription set in 1932, which Knopf rejected; moreover, Houghton Mifflin refused to release its rights to the early novels for such a plan (Lewis 180; Greenslet to Cather, 1 July 1933; Knopf, "Memoirs"). Cather renewed her interest in such a set in 1936 and then negotiated with Houghton Mifflin, which published deluxe sets by subscription, through her former editor, Greenslet (Cather to Greenslet, 18 December and 21 December 1936). Cather suggested W. A. Dwiggins as designer for the set, but Greenslet chose Bruce Rogers.

The Autograph Edition was created for the marketplace with a view "to its reissue as a definite new edition," as Greenslet had said of the "new edition" of My Ántonia (Greenslet to Cather, 26 January 1926). Houghton Mifflin claimed in its prospectus that the new edition would be "corrected and revised by the author"; Cather agreed to review the books and make corrections, which she did in 1936 and 1937 (Greenslet to Cather, 15 September 1936). Lewis notes that Cather "gave a great deal of time and conscientious effort to it, though it was not the kind of work she really liked; she would rather have been writing a new story" (181). Cather told Greenslet she would make corrections in the margins of pages and would paste a list of all her corrections on the front free endpapers of each volume (8 September [1936]).²⁴

Sapphira appeared three years after the rest of the Auto graph Edition, and the style for the edition had already been set. It is probable that Cather had agreed to this style, even if she did not specifically authorize each change. The Autograph Edition featured more British spellings, changes in punctuation and hyphenated compounds, and single rather than double quotation marks for speech. Thus many of the changes in accidentals made for the Autograph Edition were essentially automatic.

In the case of Sapphira, Knopf sent Houghton Mifflin an advance copy in November 1940, so plans were under way for the Autograph revisions before the first edition was even published, as Greenslet’s letter to Cather discussing the placement of the note on local surnames reveals (20 November 1940). The changes in accidentals for the Autograph Edition text were chiefly to punctuation, spelling, and capitalization (eighty examples), and to the hyphenation of compounds, joining one word or two words into a hyphenated compound, or the reversing of hyphenated compounds into one or two words (fifty-nine examples).

Nearly two dozen of the spelling changes intensify the dialect, such as dropping letters in words such as "of," which becomes "o’" (90.20 and elsewhere), or "nothing," which becomes "nothin’" (131.1), or "Chestnut," which becomes "Ches’nut" (279.4). Some changes affect the sound of the word, as in "heard" to "heered" (214.16 and 214.24), and some do not: "hepped" to "he’ped" (89.1 and two other instances). In two cases the dialect is reversed, from K1’s "athought" (242.23) to "have thought" and K1’s "childern" (282.4) to "children." Because these changes are relatively few and in selected places, they may be Cather’s own revisions: her letters show that she took pains to reflect dialectal variations.

There are few substantive changes: from "walked down along" (192.7) to "walked along," from "get to sleep" (193.12) to "sleep," and from "hay-time" (201.13) to "haying time." Although these changes affect the rhythm of the sentences, they do not correct errors or make significant differences in the meaning.

The most important textual change in the Autograph Edition is the repositioning of the note in italics that had been placed after "The End" in K1:

In this story I have called several of the characters by Frederick County surnames, but in no case have I used the name of a person whom I ever knew or saw. My father and mother, when they came home from Winchester or Capon Springs, often talked about acquaintances whom they had met. The names of these unknown persons sometimes had a lively fascination for me, merely as names: Mr. Haymaker, Mr. Bywaters, Mr. Householder, Mr. Tidball, Miss Snap. For some reason I found the name of Mr. Pertleball especially delightful, though I never saw the man who bore it, and to this day I don’t know how to spell it. WILLA CATHER

On first reading Sapphira and the Slave Girl, Greenslet wrote Cather that the cadence of her prose "was never more beguiling" but that her "engaging personal note printed in italics following and on the same page with ‘the end’ . . . was in that position a little off the key, following the moving death of Miss Sapphy." He advised Cather that "the normal place for such a statement is just preceding the text," but he also saw why this placement might not be desirable—it would reveal up front "the autobiographic, nostalgic basis of the book." He suggested printing it in italics on a separate page following "the end"—where Knopf placed his colophon (20 November 1940). Cather agreed, saying that if Knopf reprinted the book, the note might be moved there as well; she acknowledged that they (presumably Cather, Greenslet, and Rogers) might make another decision for the Autograph Edition (Cather to Greenslet, 24 November 1940). Later, Cather told Greenslet that she would leave the matter to Rogers’s discretion (13 December 1940). Rogers placed it before the beginning of the story.

The Choice of Copy-Text

The policy of the Cather Edition is to prefer as copy-text that form of a work which represents the text at the time of Cather’s most creative engagement with it and closest editorial attention to it—usually the trade issue of the first printing of the first edition. This decision comes only after analysis of the conflation of the variants in the authorial texts; it is always possible that such an analysis might require a different decision.

Collation of copies of all the potentially relevant documents demonstrates that fifteen texts show evidence of Cather’s hand and are therefore authorial: thirteen pre-publication texts (not including the dummy), of which only the Drew typescript and the galleys approach completeness, and two published authorial texts: the first edition and the Autograph Edition. Other versions that appeared during Cather’s remaining years were reprints or separate issues of K1, such as the Book-of-the-Month Club issue, or, like the translations and the Cassell edition of 1941, derive from K1 without authorial intervention.

The short sections of the holograph manuscript and the unrevised and revised typescripts described above are unquestionably authorial. These documents illuminate the process of composition, but because of their provisional and fragmentary nature they do not qualify as copy-text. No complete holograph draft of Sapphira or complete final corrected typescript for the printer—what Cather called "last copy"—is known to exist: the Drew typescript, late as it is, has no evidence of copy editing. Because it is incomplete, the Drew typescript could not have been used as copy-text (three pages and the entire first chapters of book 4 and book 9 are absent); and it is provisional in its treatment of section and chapter headings.

Because Cather paid such close attention to detail in the substantive and accidental changes, the corrected galleys were also considered in determining copy-text. Although most of these changes were incorporated into the text of K1, the eighteen changes Cather made in the galleys that were not adopted for the first edition (see pp. 564–66) were probably superseded by revisions in page proof. The additional changes made in page proofs to text that had been unaltered in the galleys—not the sort an editor or proofreader would usually make—show that Cather was by no means satisfied with the text as even the revised galleys presented it. The most notable of these changes, of course, is the addition of the personal note on Frederick County surnames at the end of the story. Thus the corrected galleys neither represent all Cather’s revisions nor present a complete text compared to the standard of collation.

The Autograph Edition represents a different intention for this work as a whole.²⁵ The few substantive changes made for the Autograph Edition appear to have been made to enable the publishers to advertise a new and revised edition; they do not alter the meaning significantly. The changes in accidentals reflect Houghton Mifflin’s house style and Rogers’s design for the edition; except for the alteration in the presentation of dialect, they make the text consistent with the other volumes of the set: they are not revisions to Sapphira per se. Cather’s intervention in the Autograph Edition text, coming as it does only months after the first edition, was minimal.

To sum up: only two pre-publication documents approach having a complete text: the Drew typescript and the galleys. The Drew typescript is incomplete and provisional; later documents would continue the revision process apparent in it. The galleys, although essentially complete, lack the final note on Frederick County surnames; they have authorial corrections, but not all are validated in K1, and further revisions were made in page proof. Of the published texts, the minimal changes to the Autograph Edition show a relative lack of interest in revising, and other editions, such as the Cassell, do not show Cather’s intervention at all. Of the available texts, that of the first edition represents Cather’s most active involvement with the text and her intentions for it. Copy-text for this edition of Sapphira and the Slave Girl is therefore a copy of the first printing of the first edition, trade issue, published on 7 December 1940 by Alfred A. Knopf.

Emendations

The Cather Edition does not emend Cather’s works to "improve" her wording or grammar; to modernize (regularize) her diction, usage, or use of accidentals; or to impose consistency where there is no presumption that consistency was desired. In the case of Sapphira and the Slave Girl—unlike that of One of Ours or The Song of the Lark—there was no need to correct typographical or factual errors or to enter the kinds of revisions she explicitly requested in other novels.

However, four emendations have been made. A typographical anomaly at K1 73.28, where a broken tail of a comma made it appear to be a period, has been corrected. An anomaly in the spelling of "gray" has been corrected to Cather’s preferred "grey" at 76.8. The other emendations have been made to reflect changes Cather specifically authorized. In the hymn at 81.5, the word "Moses" appeared as "MÓses". In a letter to Rogers about the Autograph Edition, Cather agreed to omit the capitalization of the "Ó" which she said she had put there in the first edition to emphasize the way Negroes sang the word (25 January 1941). We emend by lowering the case, but we retain the accent to show the emphasis: "Móses."

The position of the note on Frederick County surnames is a subject that Cather and Greenslet had considered in their correspondence in November and December 1940 (see pp. 573–74). It is clear that Cather, and Greenslet too, preferred to place this note on a page following the last page of the text, separating it physically from the main body of the story; Cather even wanted this done in any reprinting of the Knopf edition. Thus it is likely that Cather’s decision to defer to Rogers, who placed this note at the beginning before the text, concerns the Autograph Edition and not the Knopf edition.

In some cases the editors decided not to emend, and to accept the K1 readings. These include the substantive revisions to the galley proofs that were not included in K1 (see pp. 565–66) and the substantive revisions that were made for the Autograph Edition (see pp. 572–73). Although these revisions are likely to be Cather’s, they seem to be made more for the sake of change or sentence rhythm than for meaning.

The evidence of Cather’s direct engagement in the design, production, and marketing of her works has led the editors to take special care in the presentation of these works. We are particularly concerned with compositor error. By agreement with the University of Nebraska Press, we undertake proofreading in stages to meet the standards of accuracy in the Committee for Scholarly Editions guidelines, which call for at least five proofreadings.²⁶ Insofar as is feasible within the series format of a scholarly edition, the editors have cooperated with the designer to create a volume that reflects Cather’s known wishes for the presentation of her works.

Notes

Works Cited

Works Consulted

Appendixes to the Textual Essay

Appendixes A and B are transcriptions of handwritten fragments. Appendix A contains two fragments (MS1), both versions of the episode of the girls’ illness, from a collector who prefers to remain anonymous. Appendix B contains three short fragments (MS2) from the University of Virginia. Appendix C contains an episode Cather cut from a professionally typed draft of the novel (TS6), also from a collector who prefers to remain anonymous.

In these transcriptions we use brackets to mark [page numbers], angle brackets to indicate 〈canceled material〉, question marks within angle brackets to indicate canceled or undecipherable material, underlining to present words or phrases typed or handwritten as interlinear alternatives, and {braces} to enclose editorial comment.

Appendix A

MS1
Parallel pages in K1: 251, 255, 257–60, 262–64

Fragment I

[I] 〈Doctor from Baltimore〉

They walked along the mill road by the creek, leading the doctor’s horse.

"I wanted to see you alone, Dr—because I have a confession to make."

"Let’s hear it, Fairhead. Young men often have, but I expect yours won’t be that kind."

Fairhead blushed. "It’s something that happened last night. It was my turn to watch. Mrs. Blake 〈insists〉 will have it that I 〈have〉 need a lunch 〈before〉 before morning when I sit up all night. She had made a chicken broth for me after supper and had left it 〈in a big bowl on〉 to cool 〈on?〉 in a big bowl on the kitchen table. I was coming out of the woodshed with a bucket of kindling for her morning fire when I saw a strange thing. I saw Mary, the older girl 〈who burst?〉 came down the [2] back stairs in her nightgown. The 〈kitchen〉 stair door had been left open. She went straight to the table, sank down into the chair, and lifted that bowl up in her two hands and began to drink the soup. You see the smell of the broth had gone up the back stairs, and she had been starved for three days. I knew I ought to 〈drop my bucket get〉 go in there and take the bowl from her. But somehow I couldn’t bring myself to do it. The stove hearth let out enough light so I could watch her. She drank slowly, resting her elbows on the table. Put the bowl down, took a long breath, and then drank again. It 〈looked〉 seemed almost like a communion service. I can hardly explain, but it looked to me as if she were drinking in life itself. While I stood wondering [3] wondering what I ought to do, she 〈got up〉 put the bowl down, crossed the room and went up the back stairs. She was barefoot of course, and there wasn’t any sound. It might have been all in my imagination, except that when I went in I found the bowl empty. I can tell you, doctor, I had a bad night of it. I felt almost like a murderer. After Mrs. Blake had looked after the girls for the last time and gone to bed I went into Mary’s room and found her asleep. At first that frightened me, for she hadn’t been sleeping well for two nights, tossed and groaned and begged for water. I leaned over her to listen; she was breathing naturally. I looked in on her every hour, but she was always quiet. I believe she slept the night through until her mother came in to tend to her [4] at four o’clock in the morning. Today she has seemed to be better. But there may be bad after effects that I don’t know about."

Dr. X looked at him with a twinkling smile. "Well, my boy, if I had been directing you I might have prescribed your remedy in 〈small do〉 smaller doses. A bowl full 〈in〉 is a good deal. But since you and the girl have both come through, I think I’ll continue your treatment. She has certainly a much better chance than the poor little one."

"But what about Mrs. Blake, Doctor? She is firmly convinced that you must starve a feaver {sic}. It’s the way they always do here."

"Ah yes, but there are several opinions in these matters. You leave it to me. I’ll continue to carry out your plan. I’ll give Mrs. [5] Blake a new remedy mixture to swab their throats—that will keep her busy. And we’ll arrange the 〈?〉 in a professional way. But I’m afraid you’ll have to deprive yourself of your 〈bo〉 broth and hoard it up for the patients. Your girl has good vitality and a strong life reaches out for life. I expect 〈that〉 you had a revelation of that when you couldn’t make yourself go into the kitchen and take the bowl away from her. In medicine I call that sympathetic imagination. It’s often a doctor’s best guide—if only—"

〈As〉 The miller saw the two men coming and went out to meet them. 〈"Doctor"〉 (He asked anxiously) He thanked X for coming out so early 〈and〉 looking 〈at him〉 anxiously into his face as he shook his hand. [6]

"They are doing well, Mr. Colbert. Before I go up to see Mrs. Colbert I want to 〈take〉 arrange with you for a more humane treatment. You have some last year’s ice in your ice house? Good. Mr. Fairhead will take some over when he goes and 〈give it to〉 break small pieces for the children to hold in their mouths. They are suffering from thirst as much as from the disease. Now could you give me a quart bottle or two-preferably brown in color."

The miller 〈opened〉 unlocked his secretary 〈and〉 took out a bottle of his medira {sic} and held it up to the light. There was a little wine left—probably half a pint. I can wash this out in a minute."

The doctor held up his hand. "Leave it just as it is, please. The wine will make my remedy all the more effective. And now, could you send up to the [7] house for your excellent cook. I hope to be invited to stay for dinner, but I would like to give her an order now."

〈Lizzie〉 Tap was dispatched immediately, 〈and he retu〉 A few minutes later 〈?〉 was back stood grinning in the doorway of the miller’s room. "She’s a comin’ Mister Henry, but she say she cain’t come till she got de cu’l papers outen her wool."

The three men laughed. While Lizzie was making her toilet, Dr. X was telling the miller 〈something about〉 what he meant to wanted to do for his grand-daughters. "I never practice the torture methods myself, Mr. Colbert, and I don’t believe in them."

When Lizzie arrived breathless and [8] barefoot, he addressed her in his most jocular manner. "Well Lizzie, I’ve been invited to dine, and I hope you’ll give me as good a dinner as you did last time."

Lizzie curtseyed as 〈well as one〉 low as one of her stature could well manage. "I sholy will do my bes’ sah."

"And while you are getting that good dinner, could you manage to have a fowl killed and make me a good chicken broth? 〈And〉 Cook me a pint cup of rice, and put it in this 〈pail."〉 glass fruit jar."

"In a what, sah?" she gasped.

"Ah I forgot! In a tin bucket, I mean. 〈I’ll take〉 Send the broth & the rice down here for me before I leave. 〈Now〉 Now go and tell your mistress I’ll be with her in half an hour. Have you got any gum arabic [9] {"DISCARD" written at the top of the page} down there, Colbert? Then please send up to the house for it. I know Mrs. Colbert has it her writing desk."

When Zach brought the melted gum, Dr. X sat at the miller’s secretary and wrote out two 〈?〉 labels: {"Ital." written in the margin} Tea-cup ful of liquid, with tablespoon full of rice three times a day and one on retiring.

"Now, Mr. Colbert, I want to keep this treatment going 〈?〉 for two days, and on then Ill {sic} be out again. Mr. Fairhead will be my assistant. He will see that 〈the broth Lizzie〉 Lizzie makes fresh broth every 〈day〉 morning. We will need another brown bottle like this one. I hope you will honor me with contents of one at dinner, and will be careful to leave a little to season tomorrow’s soup." [over] [10]

You see, Mr. Fairhead is in sympathy with my 〈method of〉 treatment, and I am afraid Mrs. Blake is not. She was long ago convinced that the more you suffered the 〈better you got.〉 sooner you recovered." The

Fragment 2

[13] he said, would increase the fever. He would not allow them a drink of water, no matter how hard they begged for it.

Both of Mrs. Blake’s daughters came down with the epidemic. The miller and 〈Sapphira〉 his wife were greatly alarmed. Sapphira sent Tap to Winchester to bring out her own doctor. {The following three sentences are marked "tr."} Mr. Fairhead came every day to see them and took turns with their mother in sitting up 〈?〉 with them at night. He was not afraid of 〈?〉 catching diptheria, and as for Mrs. Blake she did not believe contagion—she believed in fate.

Mr. Fairhead was with Mrs. Blake when the town doctor 〈came to〉 made his visit. 〈he He〉 When the doctor had examined the two girls and left the house to mount his horse, Mr. Fairhead followed him to [14] 〈his〉 hitching post and 〈asked〉 questioned him. The doctor was reserved. "They are both very sick," he said. They have the malignant form. Whether they pull through will depend on their vitality."

"But how can they have much strength when they are starved so?" Fairhead asked.

The doctor frowned and stroaked his beard. "Well, that’s one form of treatment. I think maybe Dr. Blank over-does it a little. I hate to hear that little one beg for a drink. I said a word to Blank, but he wouldn’t hear to it. He doesn’t like my being called in on the case. Still if I was in your place, I’d slip her a little water three times a day. The miller has an ice house, maybe there’s some of the old 〈?〉 ice left over. If you could let them hold a little ice (piece) in their mouths it would comfort them, [15] and I don’t believe it would do any harm. Give them some at night, when Blank’s not around. I’d run the risk if they were my girls." He mounted and rode away.

Fairhead found the town doctor’s hint of leniency hard to follow, because Mrs. Blake still believed, like doctor Blank, that the more you suffered the more likely you were to recover (get well). She had never doubted the 〈?〉 country treatment for burns; if you burned your finger, you must hold it near the candle flame and "draw the fire out." 〈But〉 But when Fairhead took his turn as night nurse he managed to give 〈the〉 Betty and Mary a little cold water, after he had "swabbed" their throats.

One day he took a risk which made him feel guilty of murder, but he took it. Mrs. [16] had made a strong chicken broth for him (he looked none too well and had little appetite.) She 〈left〉 was called away from the kitchen by 〈the〉 Dr. Blank’s visit, leaving the broth in a large china bowl. While she was in Betty’s room with the doctor, Fairhead, splitting kindling outside the kitchen window, saw a white figure steal down the back stairs into the kitchen. It was Mary. She went directly to the kitchen table, lifted the bowl of broth in her two hands, and began to drink it. Her 〈hands trembled〉 arms wavered with the bowl at her lips, so she sat down 〈on〉 in the nearest chair, and resting her elbows on the table, slowly drank 〈the〉 at the bowl until it was empty. Fairhead knew he ought to go in and {end of page}

Appenix B

MS2
MS2 is a group of three handwritten fragments from the University of Virginia, all of which parallel material found in the first edition. The group consists of two brief passages (each consecutively paginated) and one scrap of a sheet Cather may have attached to an already existing handwritten or typed draft of her story. Fragment 1, with words written on both sides (recto and verso) of a scrap of paper, has content parallel to material on page 68 of this edition. Fragment 2 was numbered 15–17 by Cather: the content parallels material on page 113 in this edition. Fragment 3, numbered 9 and 10, parallels material on pages 170–71 in this edition.

Fragment 1

/recto/ Insert

And something more than orderliness—〈it is only the〉 when our things are put just as we like them it is done by hand of affection 〈and can be done〉 by someone who has watched our every whim and preference When the miller returned to his room he felt that shy, eager solicitude in

/verso/

the air of the place, though this girl had gone. He 〈appreciated it little beyond〉 〈?〉 thought little beyond "things are right." It never occurred to him how much love and sensitiveness went into making his bare room right. But the two mornings when Bluebell took Nancy’s place he saw, with a shock, how

Fragment 2

[15]

room he could hear the steady drip, drip of water leaking over the motionless 〈wheel〉 mill wheel.

He treasures up his bright design

Here in the backwoods of this far part of the world it was not for a man to question these. But he could stand looking 〈up〉 up off at the dipper over Rachel’s home and wonder about them, submit himself to them—himself and all men. There was some connection (link) between the stars and those bright designs. Men had always felt that. In the old times people had foretold future events by reading the 〈stars〉 heavens. God had announced his greatest purpose by a star; this meaning of it had [16] been plain to 〈all men〉 kings and poor shepards {sic} alike.

The miller stood by the window a long while after his candles had wavered and gone out, listening to the 〈sound〉 [flowing] of the creek—its steady comfort which bore one’s doubts away. He had always lived near running water, [but his] missing it when he went away. His ear was never dull to any sound, in nature or in human voices. Without at all realizing it, he gave credit 〈and〉 or refused it guided by some quality in a man’s voice. More than once he had loaned money on a voice, with no other security. 〈?〉 The sound of his mill was one reason why he liked his trade. When the water was rushing over the big wheel, and the mill stones were [17] turning, he lived at the heart of a 〈good sound〉 soothing, tranquilizing activity which admitted no doubts. The voice of the mill was good, the sound of good-doing. 〈And〉 Even a bad man’s corn was good: whatever sifted down into the hopper was bland and blameless, whether it was flour for families or bran bran for beasts.

Fragment 3

[9]

〈the delicate colors of〉

A canopy of color sense-subduing, but never dazzling, never strident—no hard 〈reds〉 paper whites, no hard reds full of blue as if they had just come from a dyer’s hand: all soft, dawnlike, every blossom varied, striated, spotted, and the foliage behind them dark and rich enough and luminous (clean) enough to stand guard 〈up〉 over this tender 〈drift〉 dawn drift 〈along〉 scattered along 〈their〉 the top of their branches.

Although Mrs. Blake and Nancy 〈dwelt〉 dwelt in a thinly settled neighbourhood, both enjoyed the sense of escape, the freedom and 〈space〉 peace and beauty of the wild wood road. After they passed the brick home (of dark renown) [murder?] just west of the post office, 〈they heard〉 there was not a [10] a human dwelling, a pasture or rail fence, until the road [finally] wound out on the crest of Timber Ridge four 〈god〉 good miles away. They walked in silence; even the older woman forgot her troubled misgivings in this world of sunlight and deep shadow. Just before they got to the first curve of the ‘Double S’ she paused,

"Look over yonder, Nancy. I don’t think we can do better." Across the ravine a great plantation of laurel smiled at them under the first trees. They descended the steep 〈?〉 bank down to the creek, crossed it on a fallen tree and the few emerging rocks, and climbed up the opposite side to the laurel bushes, which never grew on the edge of the 〈str〉 water. There they set to work, breaking off a branch here and there never robbing one bush too much. They had not filled their baskets when they heard the sharp

Appenix C

TS2 Unpublished
This professionally typed document, lightly corrected in Cather’s hand, is part of the six pounds of background material that Cather cut from her story (Cather to Ferris Greenslet, 13 December 1940, Houghton Library, Harvard University). This transcription uses brackets to mark the typed or handwritten [insertions] in the typescript and observes Bloom’s practice of five-em spacing between sentences.

[89] and Betty sat all morning under the old gnarled chestnut tree on the stony hillside behind the house, making plans for the long stretch of freedom ahead. Mrs. Blake had told them they could have the whole day-long to play, and they scarcely knew what to do with themselves.

After dinner they asked if they might "dress up",—a favorite amusement. In the garret was a chest of precious things, never used now-a-days; dresses and shawls their mother used to wear when she lived in Washington and their father was still alive. The children loved these dresses. {in the margin Cather has marked the following parenthetical sentence for deletion} (Mrs. Blake wore calico now, summer and winter, with a black alpaca for best.) They carefully took out ruffled skirts, meant to be worn over wire hoops, and tight fitting waists, (which were then called "bodies",) {"were then" has been underlined} little feathered hats, and silk shawls with long fringes. The skirts were much too long, but Mary could pin them up short enough to walk in. Before she put on her costume, she went down into the garden and broke off two great rhubarb leaves. Each leaf, turned upside down and put on your the head, made a flappy green hat, drooping over the hair. She wove spikes of pink larkspur into them for trimming.

"Now we are ladies, going visiting," said Betty. But where were they to go? Their nearest schoolmates lived two good country miles away. Mrs. Bywaters was too busy and too serious to appreciate such callers. Betty thought they might visit Grandfather, at the mill. They went downstairs to ask their mother.

Mrs. Blake was in the kitchen, putting wicks into her candle moulds. As it was a cool day she meant to melt tallow and make candles. She looked up from her work and laughed when the girls

{page 90 missing} [91] lingered before the country doctor’s fine white house, and again before Mr. Householder’s shoemaker shop with a big wooden boot hanging over the door, but no one came out. When they reached the tollgate they turned off to the right and took the winding road that ran beside the creek to the mill. That was not so good for shoeless travellers. It was low, and many washouts had left slabs of slate rock bare to the sun. Here one must walk like a cat: it was easy to get a stone-bruise. But the road was pretty.

The far side of the creek was all wild forest; tall chestnut and oak and hickory trees. Near the water’s edge stood a group of dark hemlocks, rare in that neighbourhood.

At the mill young Tap was the first to greet them.

He at once caught the spirit of the occasion, made a bow and showed all his white teeth. "Howdy, howdy, young ladies! I boun you’s goin’ to a party, all dress up that-a-way!"

Mary kept her dignified manner. "Good evening, Tap. Is Grandfather here?"

"I spec he is, Miss. You come along, an’ we’ll go fin’ him."

He led them to one of the many doorways of the mill, and there, close beside the low sill, sat their grandfather wearing a leather mask and goggles, gloves on his hands, pounding away at one of the big grinding stones with a hammer and a sharp steel instrument. He did not look up until Tap went up and called to him.

"Dey’s a couple of fine young ladies come askin fo’ you, Mister Henry."

The miller turned his head. Then he rose, took off his [92] mask and stretched his shoulders.

"Well, my girls, are you on your way to a party?"

"No, Grandfather. We came to visit you. We hoped the mill would be running."

"No, we’re not grinding today because I’m sharpening the millstones. What pretty hats you’ve got on! I never see any as pretty in Winchester."

Betty went up to the thick round stone and touched the rough surface softly with her fingers.

"Did your stones really come all the way from France, Grandpa?"

"Oh yes! Seems there’s no rock hard enough in this country."

"But how did they ever get to Back Creek?"

"Well, they came across the ocean in one of the big boats that dock at Baltimore, and then they were put on another boat that brought them as far as Alexandria. From there on they came by wagon. It took the wagons more than a week, one stone to a wagon, along with light stuff. {The previous sentence is marked in the margin for deletion.} You see my four stones cost a great deal of money by the time I got them here."

Mary hoped he didn’t have to buy new ones very often.

The miller smiled. "I’ve had these ever since before your mother was born. I take great care of them. I only sharpen them when they need it, and I do it myself. A careless man can ruin a stone in a few years."

{In the margin Cather writes "Cut out 93", marking the last three lines of page 92 to include them in the material to be deleted.}

The girls asked if they might go down and look at the big wheel.

"You take them down, Tap, while I put my tools away, and [93] {a large "X" cancels the whole page} I’ll follow ye."

Holding up their skirts they went with Tap down into the basement, where the great water wheel hung dripping in its cool recess that was like an open cave. A shallow pool lay under it, and all the rocks and timbers were coated with wet green moss. Red and yellow jewel weed grew everywhere, the leaves rather pale because the sunlight came in for only a few hours in the morning. The girls were standing silent in this solemn green twilight when the miller came down the steps.

"We can let the water on for them, anyway, Tap. Go up and disconnect, and then raise the water-gate. {quotation not closed}

When the first rush of water came racing through the sluice and tumbled down over the wheel, Betty caught the leg of her grandfather’s trousers. The water made such a thunder that one would have to shout to be heard.

As the buckets filled, the wheel creaked and groaned, and then began to turn, deliberately but powerfully, and the water running over it became white and foamy. The little pool underneath the wheel was soon full, the water ran off in a stream through a jagged rocky ditch and fell into Back Creek.

The miller took Betty’s hand. It pleased him to see that she was in awe of his wheel.

He himself had a grave respect for it. He never let anyone else climb down to the hub to oil it, or scrape the buckets clean when sediment and slime had begun to choke them.

Suddenly the stream from the race grew thin, the wheel made a half turn and stopped. The miller had pulled a rope which told Tap to shut down the water-gate.

Now, he said, they must come up [94] {an "R" is in the margin by the first line} to his room and rest awhile.

Visitors were seldom admitted there, the children knew.

"See how nice Nancy keeps my room for me," he said as he opened the door, "nothing is ever out of place.

Tap," he called through the open door, "you run up to the house and fetch down some {a vertical line is in the margin by these lines} milk and sugar cakes, or whatever Lizzie’s got handy. Tell her I’ve got young ladies visitin’ me."

The late afternoon sunlight was shining on the whitewashed walls and the warm brown chestnut furniture.

"How pretty it makes your brass things," Betty murmured.

"They ain’t brass, they’re copper. Ain’t they, Grandpa?"

"That’s right, Mary. They belonged to my grandfather. He brought them over from across the water."

Tap came in with a platefull of ginger cakes and a pitcher of milk. The visitors ate as if they were very hungry, and their grandfather took a cookie or two to keep them company. He was thinking that he was very fond of these girls, and that they looked very pretty, though their rhubarb hats were now sadly wilted and hung limp over their ears. His other grandchildren lived away out in Wisconsin, and when his own daughters were little he had never played with them much. {A vertical line and a question mark are in the margin beside the preceding sentence.}

When they had finished the cakes and wiped their fingers on the miller’s big handkerchief, the girls exchanged glances and Mary spoke out.

"And now, Grandpa, won’t you sing for us?"

"Oh, Grandpa can’t sing!" he smiled and frowned at the same time, shaking his head. [95]

"Yes you can! Please sing The Hebrew Children, and don’t leave out the verse about the 〈M〉martyr Stephen, like you did the last time."

Colbert laughed, showing all his polished yellow teeth. (The children knew he brushed rubbed them daily with red willow twigs.) He got up, squared his broad shoulders, and paced slowly up and down the room, singing in time to his tread.

Where, Oh where are the Hebrew children Who were cast in a fiery furnace? Where, Oh where are the Hebrew children? Way over in the Promised Land.

He went on through the string of verses which called up vivid pictures to him and to his listeners. When he finished, the girls broke out coaxingly;

"And now, Grandpa, please sing us about the Miller’s Sons. We love that one!"

He shook his finger at them. "Oh, you like naughty songs!" He resumed his tread, singing even slower than before.

A miller had three son s: The miller he stole corn, The weaver he stole yarn. And the little tailor boy stole broadcloth enough to keep these three rogues warm.

When he came to the little tailor boy, their grandfather stood still (before them) and sang very fast, wiggling his finger at them.

Emendations

The following list records the changes introduced into the copy-text, the Slote copy 1 of the first printing of the first Knopf edition. The reading of the present edition appears to the left of the bracket; to the right are recorded the source(s) of that reading, followed by variants in other texts. Different readings are separated by semicolons. If a text is not listed, its reading is the same as that of the copy-text. An asterisk indicates that an entry is discussed in the Notes on Emendations.

These abbreviations refer to the following texts:

TS7	typescript of pp. 250–69
TS7R	revised text of TS7
D	Drew typescript
G	galleys for the first Knopf edition
GR	revised text of the galleys
K1	Knopf, first edition, first printing
A	Autograph Edition
CE	the present edition

*75.23	certainly,] CE, G, GR, A; certainly. K1
*76.8	grey] CE, G, A; gray K1, GR
*76.8	grey] CE, A; gray G, K1
*81.5	Móses] CE, G, GR, A; MÓses K1
158.1	Zach] CE, A; Zack G, K1
209.13	War,] CE; War, G, K1; War A
258.23	Doctor] CE; those at home TS7, D; Dr. TS7R, G, K1, a
*288	In this story . . . to spell it. WILLA CATHER] CE; not present in G or GR; present in K1 at 295.7–20

Notes on Emendations

Table of Rejected Substantives

This list records all substantive variants between the copy-text and the readings of those other authorial texts of Sapphira and the Slave Girl that were rejected in establishing the text of the present edition. The holograph fragments and the unpublished TS6 are presented as appendixes to the Textual Essay. The page and line number and the reading of the present edition text appear to the left of the bracket; to the right are the variant readings in chronological order, separated by semicolons, and the sigla (TS1, D, A, etc.). If a text is not cited, its reading agrees with k1; if no revised pre-publication text is cited (TS2R, TS7R, DR, or GR) there was no revision: a revision that agrees with K1 is recorded as, for example, DR = K1. Within each variant, an original reading is followed by a right pointing arrow and the superseding revision: for example, "sat at → sat before". Single words, sentences, or passages revised within a reading appear in 〈angle brackets〉. Typed interlinear alternatives are part of an unrevised text; handwritten revisions are part of the revised text. Ellipses indicate an omission made for brevity in reporting the copy-text, with one exception, noted in the relevant entry, where the ellipsis occurs within the copy-text. {Braces} enclose editorial comment. False starts or typographical errors that Cather had immediately canceled by hand or by typing over the letters with x’s, y’s, or z’s and resuming with the correct word are not recorded.

These abbreviations refer to the following texts:

TS1	typescript of pp. 257–60
TS2	typescript of pp. 115–28
TS2R	revised text of TS2
TS3	typescript of pp. 243–49
TS4	typescript of pp. 252–58
TS5	typescript of pp. 250–52
TS7	typescript of pp. 250–69
TS7R	revised text of TS7
D	Drew typescript, lacking pp. 35 in the first section, 110 in the third, and 15 in the final section; two complete chapters, the first of book 4 and book 9, were not part of the typescript
DR	revised text of D
G	galley proofs for the first edition (K1)
GR	revised text of D
K1	first Knopf edition, first printing
A	Autograph Edition

5	Sapphira and Her Household] THE MILL AND THE MILLHOUSE {typed and crossed out} D
7.6	to] up to D, G; GR = K1
10.10	indulgent] indulgent little D; DR = K1
10.12	and he] and D, G; GR = K1
10.18	again] and D; DR = K1
12.6	will] shall D, G; GR = K1
12.11	hereabouts] hereabout D, G; GR = K1
12.24	idea] possibility D, G; GR = K1
13.12	out of ] out D, G; GR = K1
13.18	Then] When he came back D, G; GR = K1
13.19	away] back D; DR = K1
13.25	visitors] guests D, G; GR = K1
15	II] AFTER BREAKFAST D; 2 G
15.7	older] much older D; DR = K1
15.14	After] When D; DR = K1
15.14	crossing] crossed D; DR = K1
16.2	separated] set back D; DR = K1
16.3	thirty] forty D, G
16.3	so] more D, G
16.9	sneering] spiteful sneering D; DR = K1
16.21	now. And] now, and D, G; GR = K1
17.3	This she threw] She threw this D; DR = K1
17.9	smiled] gave a little chuckle D; DR = K1
17.24	carved] a carved D; DR = K1
17.25	one of the dining-room chairs, made] a dniing-room chair which had been made D, G; GR = K1
18.1	by Mr. Whitford, the] by the D; DR = K1
18.2	it, and set] it set D; DR = K1
18.2	it] if D; DR = K1
18.3	iron] small iron D; DR = K1
18.3	underneath.] underneath. As ball-bearings were unknown, the chair on little iron wheels was somewhat difficult to manage. D; DR = K1
18.9	long] many days D; long now DR
18.10	her daughter’s] the other’s D; DR = K1
18.11	good while] good many D; DR = K1
18.17-18	Rachel, I] I D; DR = K1
18.19	took out] drew a packet and D; DR = K1
18.22	must have heard] must heard D; DR = K1
19.1	ways] forms D; DR = K1
19.6	nearly] for nearly D, G; GR = K1
19.12	shade] expression D; DR = K1
19.12	self-esteem] self-satisfaction D; DR = K1
19.19	sometimes] often D; DR = K1
19.20	Yet] Yes D; DR = K1
19.24	reading, Mrs.] reading her sister’s letter and folded it up, Mrs. D; DR = K1
20.9	forgather] foregather → mix {typed above and crossed out} D
21.4	delighted] delightful D; DR = K1
21.7	brightened] sparkled D, G; GR = K1
21.9	red from crying] red D; DR = K1
21.12	which] that D; DR = K1
21.21	sat] sat in front of the ironing board D, G; GR = K1
21.24	child’s] child’s hands D, G; GR = K1
22.4	grieved over] was hurt by D; DR = K1
22.10	Nancy] But Nancy D; DR = K1
22.10	trained] schooled D, G; GR = K1
23	III] THE HOUSE AND ITS MISTRESS K; 3 G
23.5	frame] wooden D, G; GR = K1
23.9	old locust] locust D; DR = K1
23.11	and a] a D; DR = K1
23.12-13	lay another world; a helter-] lay helter- D; DR = K1
23.14	ten] twenty D; fifteen DR, G; GR = K1
23.14	door] entrance D; DR = K1
23.16	time. The] time. A great assortment of covered metal dishes kept the food hot when the darkies dashed → hurried across the open porch to the back hall and the dining room. The D; DR = K1
23.16-17	much farther away] set back from the house, each with its flower bed {bed typed above} and herb patch D; set back from the house, each with its flower-bed and herb patch G; much further → farther away GR
23.19	bud] buds D, G; GR = K1
23.20	morning-glories] bittersweet D; DR = K1
24.8	frost, then] frost and D; DR = K1
24.8	put to dry] put → set → put in the sun D, G; GR = K1
24.12-13	was not questioned] did not awaken suspicion D; DR = K1
24.15	would be] were D; DR = K1
24.20	underneath] under them D; DR = K1
24.21	hoes, and the] hoes, the D, G; GR = K1
25.7	family had ever] family D, G; GR = K1
25.15	needed] wanted D; DR = K1
26.2	Henry’s own] Henry’s D, G; GR = K1
26.7-8	even (with . . . occasionally)] even with . . . occasionally D, G; GR = K1
26.11-12	man who stayed at home and helped his father. With his father he regularly] man, who stayed at home and regularly → man, who stayed at home and helped his father D; man. He stayed at home and helped his father DR → DR = K1
26.18	bound down] bound D, G; GR = K1
27.3	steward] overseer D; DR = K1
27.5	usually] often D, G
27.14	sold] told G; GR = K1
27.19	engagement] engagement to Henry Colbert D, G; GR = K1
27.21	gardener] Scotch gardener D, G; GR = K1
27.22	quizzed] questioned D; DR = K1
28.2	together.] together, whether in Frederick or Clarke → Loudoun County. d; together, whether in Frederick or Loudon County. G; GR = K1
28.12	position] position as Mrs. Colbert D, G; GR = K1
28.23	¶ This] This D, G; GR = K1
30.6	post office . . . was kept] post office well before noon. The postmistress kept a spare room D; DR = K1
30.6	travellers.] travellers in her upper half-storey D; DR = K1
30.10	she] that she D, G; GR = K1
30.23	station,] station to become a queen among beggars D; DR = K1
31.5-6	Easter. There she attended] Easter, and attended D; DR = K1
32	IV] THE MISTRESS DRIVES OUR D; 4 G
32.1-2	sat before] sat at D, G; GR = K1
32.9-10	composing a letter . . . invitation] composing a letter of invitation to a nephew D; DR = K1; composing to a nephew—a letter of invitation G; GR = K1
32.13	copper] brass D; DR = K1
33.1	Mrs. Colbert] the mistress D, G; GR = K1
33.12	well-trained] well-trained → competent → welltrained D
33.18	Devon] Kent D
33.24	Till] She D
34.11	an’] and D; DR = K1
34.22	of her] on her D; DR = K1
35.1	washed; it looked] washed, looking D, G; GR = K1
35.7-8	Leaning between Jeff and Washington, Mrs. Colbert crossed] Mrs. Colbert rose from her chair and, leaning between Jeff and Washington, crossed D, G; GR = K1
36.3	in the] in de D, G; GR = K1
36.8-9	on to] onto D, G; GR = K1
36.16-17	To the household . . . drove out.] {sentence deleted} DR
36.17	out. In] out. She seldom went out more than once a week—preferred to take the air sitting in her chair on the porch. In D; DR = K1
36.18	Mrs. Colbert] she D; DR = K1
36.19	roads] roads—or for rough mountain scenery, indeed D; DR = K1
37.4	road] lane DR
37.12-13	standing . . . trees, in] standing in D; DR = K1
38.2	Molly’s] Your D; DR = K1
38.2	anyhow.] anyhow, Molly D; DR = K1
38.4-5	carriage, delighted at their good luck] carriage, such good luck had befallen them D
38.8	they driven out with her] she taken them out D, G; GR = K1
38.20	performed] transacted D; DR = K1
38.23	marked] formal D; DR = K1
39.1	she] which she G; GR = K1
39.2	up to] to D; DR = K1
39.3	you myself, Mrs.] you Mrs. D; DR = K1
40.6	the turnpike] the big road D; DR = K1
40.7	Cowper’s] Cooper’s D; DR = K1
40.9-10	it was fortunate] how fortunate it was D; DR = K1
40.10	her daughter] Rachel D; DR = K1
40.23	all] all the D; DR = K1
40.23	discarded] the discarded D; DR = K1
40.24	old sheets] sheets D; DR = K1
41.1	darkies] servants D; DR = K1
41.1	work in winter] work D; DR = K1
41.4	or] and D, G; GR = K1
42	V] Till and Nancy D; 5 G
42.1	left the house] started on her drive D, G; GR = K1
42.2	fell] set D; DR = K1
42.3	pushed] pushing D; DR = K1
42.4	and washed] washed D; DR = K1
42.18	in the middle] at one end D; DR = K1
42.21	filled one] stood in one D; DR = K1
43.9	into one of ] into the D; DR = K1
43.9	those windows] the window sills D, G; GR = K1
43.11	supper] dinner D, G; GR = K1
43.13	along] on D; DR = K1
43.15-16	and the hedges] the hedges D; DR = K1
43.16-17	windows . . . hearth, was] windows was D; DR = K1
43.19	parlour] floor D, G; GR = K1
44.24	a little girl] still a child D, G; GR = K1
45.3	child] little girl D, G; GR = K1
45.4	on the Capon] on Capon D; DR = K1
45.19	The girl] Nancy D, G; GR = K1
45.21	with] and G; GR = K1
46.4	off blame or punishment] blame or punishment off D, G; GR = K1
46.8	Nancy] The girl D, G; GR = K1
46.22	slender hands] hands D; DR = K1
47.3	The daughter] Nancy G; The daughter → Nancy GR
48	VI] THE WATER MILL D; 6 G
48.1	Creek: the] Creek. The D, G; GR = K1
48.8	springs, and a] springs. A D
48.10	In the] The D, G; GR = K1
48.10-11	flour and unground grain were stored] was used for storing flour and unground grain D, G; GR = K1
48.15	no grinding was] there was no grinding G; GR = K1
48.16-17	room, using it both as] room which was both D, G; GR = K1
48.18	spent] used to spend D, G; GR = K1
49.1	The mill] This GR
49.4	slate-paved] old slate-paved D; DR = K1
49.4	weather. The] weather. Here he had arranged things to his own liking. The D; weather. This room he had arranged things to his own liking. The DR; weather. This room he had arranged to his own liking. The G; weather. This room the miller had arranged to his own liking GR
49.11	by the] from the D; DR = K1
49.14-16	away. ¶ Here the miller . . . . The] away. ¶ The D, G; away. ¶ This room {uncanceled} → Here the miller had arranged to his own liking. The GR {sentence moved from 47.7}
49.17	if he] if the miller D, G; GR = K1
49.20	carpenter and cabinet-maker] carpenter D; DR = K1
49.24	secretary"] secretary," made by Mr. Whitford D, G; GR = K1
50.17-51.20	strings . . . fire.] {page missing in D}
51.8	jist] just D, G; GR = K1
52.8	good] goods G; GR = K1
52.21	His wife] Mrs. Colbert D; DR = K1
52.21	smile, and] smile D; DR = K1
52.22	shook] shaking D; DR = K1
52.24	realize] know D; DR = K1
53.13	Easter, you know,] Easter, D, G; GR = K1
53.14	I would meet] I’ll meet D; DR = K1
53.22	after my] after me and keep my D; DR = K1
53.22	place down] place clean down D; DR = K1
54.2	thrash] whip D; DR = K1
54.17-18	always being sent] always sent D; DR = K1
54.21	of an attention] of attention D, G; GR = K1
54.25	have Tap make a fire] have a fire made D; DR = K1
55.5	to have a fire every day this] to light your fire this D; DR = K1
55.9	had put] had faded it and put D; DR = K1
55.13-14	shawls . . . shawl-pin] shawls for protection against cold D; shawls fastened with a large shawl-pin, for protection against cold DR, G; GR = K1
55.16	which] that D; DR = K1
56.4	place had kept] place kept D; DR = K1
56.5	gardening] spring gardening D; DR = K1
59.1	On Thursday] Next D; DR = K1
59.7	go] ride D, G; GR = K1
59.10	her off ] her set off D; DR = K1
59.15	told her she was to ride inside] insisted she should ride inside, with her D, G; GR = K1
59.19	learned she was] was told D, G; GR = K1
60.1	closed] made up D; {illegible, erased} DR
60.13-14	had wanted] had long wanted D; DR = K1
60.24	Nancy had been . . . she had] Nancy was twelve years old when the Mistress first commissioned her to keep the mill room in order Nancy had D; DR = K1
61.1-2	the Mistress had] she D; DR = K1
61.2	yet] and yet D; DR = K1
61.8	Till] she D; DR = K1
61.14	she had] she G; GR = K1
62.4	the Mistress’s] her D; the mistress’ DR
62.11	think] thinks D
62.17	Yaller] Yeller D
62.26	Yaller] Yeller D
63.5	Nancy] The girl D; DR = K1
63.8	That very] That D, G; GR = K1
63.9	and sleep] and to sleep D; DR = K1
63.12	lying] sleeping D, G; GR = K1
63.13	was not] was not been D; door not a DR
63.15	up at] at D; DR = K1
63.15	house, and even] house. Even D; DR = K1
63.17	kept] often kept D; DR = K1
64.1	kitchen floor] floor of the kitchen D; DR = K1
64.2	flicker] flash D, G; GR = K1
64.3	down] down and fell apart D; DR = K1
64.4	And toward] Toward D; DR = K1
64.10	A few] Some few D; DR = K1
64.13	soberly] courteously D; DR = K1
64.18	As soon as] When D, G; GR = K1
65.4	put her out] thrash her D; DR = K1
65.9	can’t] don’t D; DR = K1
65.9	here] for the chamber work D; DR = K1
65.15	you, Sapphira,] you D; DR = K1
65.16	mean] want D; DR = K1
65.18-19	I must] As long as I am the head of this house, I must D, G; GR = K1
65.21	Oh] Why D; DR = K1
66.14-15	After] Besides D; DR = K1
66.15-16	no one . . . she loved] No one whom the girl loved D; DR = K1
66.18	kindly] morning D; DR = K1
66.22	had gathered] gathered D; DR = K1
66.23	on] that stood on D; DR = K1
67.3	ought to] should D, G; GR = K1
67.7	as] when D, G; GR = K1
68.4	people] folks D, G; GR = K1
68.5	Jacob] old Jacob D, G
68.21	along the garden path] down the path D; DR = K1
69.2	had felt] felt D, G; GR {illegible}
69.5	read in] read D, G; GR = K1
70	II] NANCY'S MOTHER D; Till in Exile {deleted} DR = K1; 2 G
70.2	felt lonely] was tired D; DR = K1
70.4	hills] ridge D; DR = K1
70.10	slighted] lonely D; DR = K1
70.18	Easter] Eastre G
70.19	mill farm] Mill Farm G; GR = K1
71.9	almost every] every D, G; GR = K1
71.18	"damp"] damp D; DR = K1
72.10	New Year’s] New Year D; DR = K1
72.23	her in] her G; GR = K1
73.8	went out to Back Creek] went away D; DR = K1
73.9	All Mrs.] Mrs. D; DR = K1
73.20	horses; he] horses; mend harnesses and broken farm tools D; DR = K1
73.22	boy . . . smith] steady colored boy D, G; GR = K1
73.23	her] the D; DR = K1
74.4	scenes.] scenes. Miss Sapphy promised to bring her back to Matchem and the old place every summer. D, G; GR = K1
74.4	eager] happy D, G; GR = K1
74.12	darkies] negroes D; DR = K1
74.20	Till] her D, G; GR = K1
74.21	she] Till D, G; GR = K1
76.3	out] outside → out D, G; GR = K1
76.3	she was back] she was D, G; GR = K1
76.4	again.] again, and out from under the torpor and resignation of the backwoods country D; again, out from under the torpor and resignation of the backwoods country G; GR = K1
76.12	knockers] knockers on the front doors D; DR = K1
76.19	flowering] fine D; DR = K1
78	VI] The Young Preacher D; 3 G
78.5	the] that D
78.6	season] season of the year D; DR = K1
78.8-9	preacher (who was also their schoolmaster)] preacher D, G; GR = K1
78.20	kept] Either the Baptists had chosen the only naked hill, or they had denuded it. Just behind lay a range of low hills covered with gold-green Jersey pines D; {same except naked hill → barren spot} DR, G; GR = K1
79.1	miller and] miller with D; DR = K1
79.1	daughter went] daughter and granddaughters D; DR = K1
79.4	aisle] the room D; DR = K1
79.6	kind, there were no] kind, no D; DR = K1
79.10	farmers] few farmers D; DR = K1
79.13	to] to → and D
79.21	poured] poured → blazed {typed above and crossed out} D
79.23	yellow] bushy yellow D; DR = K1
79.25	During] In D
80.4-5	service. ¶ After] service. ¶ His opening prayer was long, as was the custom, but it was free from bookspelling language and frequent apostrophe. He stumbled and repeated now and then, but he was simple and sincere D; DR = K1
80.5	read] and read D; DR = K1
80.6	since] as D, G
80.8	Andrew] Adam D, G; GR = K1
80.16	services; the] services which he would have dreaded without the hymns. The D, G; GR = K1
80.18	fervent] fervent wholehearted D; DR = K1
80.20	sang] sang → went {typed and crossed out} D
80.21	ease] ease—(a rich contralto) D; DR = K1
80.22	Andy] Adam D, G; GR = K1
80.24-25	"hear the words"] hear the words D; DR = K1
81.2	was] came D
81.9	When Lizzie] Lizzie D; DR = K1
81.11	appreciation. He often] appreciation. He played the flute himself. He often D; DR = K1
81.13	Andy] Adam D, G; GR = K1
81.18	conversation. Mrs.] conversation, and Mrs. D, G; GR = K1
81.23	Presently] ¶ Presently DR
82.5	Casper Flight] Bud Flesher D; DR = K1
82.7	Flight] Flesher D; DR = K1
82.12	bag in his hand] sack on his shoulder D; DR = K1
82.14	could see] knew D; DR = K1
82.16	Casper] Bud D; DR = K1
82.20	Casper] Bud D; DR = K1
82.25	Flights] Fleshers D; DR = K1
83.2	times] time D; DR = K1
83.7	with David Fairhead] with Fairhead D; DR = K1
84.1	an ignoramus] a blatant ignoramus D; DR = K1
84.8	wit to] wit or the breeding to D; DR = K1
84.9	her.] her. His kind could only be submissive or impertinent D; DR = K1
84.11	was not] was D; DR = K1
84.12	again] no more D; DR = K1
85	BOOK THREE Old Jezebel] Book II JEZEBEL D
87	I] I Jezebel DR; 1 G
87.7-8	Mistress] Mistress about D; DR = K1
87.19	which] that D; DR = K1
88.21	syringa down] syringa D; DR = K1
89.5	while] time D, G; GR = K1
89.14	think how] think about how D; DR = K1
90.21	a li’l pickaninny’s] a pickaninny’s D; DR = K1
91.4	I am] you are D; DR = K1
91.4	back] her face back D; DR = K1
92	II] The Slave Ship Out of Africa DR
93.2	stockade] barracoons D, G; GR = K1
93.4	Albert Horn] William Pitt D
93.11	stockade] barracoons D, G; GR = K1
93.12	Albert Horn] William Pitt D
93.14-15	They were not likely to make trouble] Flogging would take the place of irons if any disorder occurred D, G; GR = K1
93.18	long] entire → long D
94.1	naked] absolutely naked D, G; GR = K1
94.3	drainage] drainage → plumbing {crossed out} D
94.12	chains.] chains. They seldom made any trouble except as they increased the stench. D; They → The women DR, G; GR = K1
94.13-14	under way] under sail D, G; GR = K1
94.20	ran down] ran out G; GR = K1
94.21-22	from a heap of rolling, howling] from the rolling swarm of naked howling D; DR = K1
95.8	third] half D, G; GR = K1
95.16	back] body D, G; GR = K1
95.19	seamen] seaman D; DR = K1
95.23	men. Anatomically] men. She had none of the usual bodily characteristics of the African female; the hanging belly, heavy thighs and squat legs, the overdeveloped breasts. As an anatomical study D; {same as D except delete and squat legs} DR, G; GR = K1
95.24	for an African negress] for a negress D, G; GR = K1
96.6	with a light chain] with light chains D, G; GR = K1
96.14	and was sometimes] and sometimes D; DR = K1
96.16	the scupper] her scupper D, G
96.21	Albert Horn] William Pitt D
97.7	looked] went D, G; GR = K1
97.9	examination, talking] examination. They talked D, G; GR = K1
97.10	and asking] asking D, G; GR = K1
97.24	crunched] craunched D, G; GR = K1
98.8	She learned] she soon learned D; she (soon) learned DR
98.11	The dairy farmer died] The farmer died suddenly D; DR = K1
98.13	some English] English D, G; GR = K1
98.16	had been] had served D; DR = K1
98.17	old] of age D; DR = K1
98.19	still] had D, G; GR = K1
98.21	In wintertime] In the wintertime D; DR = K1
99.2	said] replied D; DR = K1
100.1	One morning in April] One bright May morning D; One April morning DR → DR = K1
100.12	soon] time D; DR = K1
100.21	batter-cake] griddle cake D, G; GR = K1
101.12	thought] mind D; DR = K1
101.16	ponhos] ponhos (scrapple) D
102.14	oath. Sending] oath: sending D, G; GR = K1
102.24	field, and] field, at a good distance behind the negro cabins D; DR = K1
103.7	and so on] etc. D
103.10	green shoots] green D, G; GR = K1
103.19	lent] loaned D; DR = K1
103.24	out from] up from D; DR = K1
104.10-11	servants, stayed . . . to] servants, and the great-grandsons remained to D; DR = K1
104.12-13	for the Colbert . . . visitors] for all the visitors and the Colbert negroes D; DR = K1
104.13-14	first and second sitting at table] first sitting and a second sitting D; DR = K1
104.22	sat long at] sat at table much longer than usual D; DR = K1
105.9	while] as D; DR = K1
105.15	conversation] conversation → converse {crossed out} D
105.16	dejection] deep dejection D; DR = K1
106.3	felt] felt → knew {crossed out} D
107.3	cheerful; kept] cheerful. Kept D, G; GR = K1
107.5	knew there] knew that there G; GR = K1
107.8-9	had not known] did not know D; DR = K1
107.23	this] that D; DR = K1
108.1	along beside] along gently D; DR = K1
108.1	got to] reached D; DR = K1
108.5	tick] tick down D; DR = K1
109.6	into] in D; DR = K1
109.25	wondered?] wondered. G; GR = K1
110.12	predestination. For] predestination. She had been snatched from a hideous existence among a cannibal people and had lived a useful life, trusted and respected. For D; DR = K1
111.7	Sampson’s] his D; DR = K1
111.12	proposed] explained D; DR = K1
11.13	he] but D; DR = K1
112.17	And] Yet D, G; GR = K1
113.4	window. There . . . but] window, and the sound of D; DR = K1
113.6	a favourite hymn] a hymn he liked D; a favorite hymn he liked DR
113.19	Whenever] When D; DR = K1
113.20	called upon] always called upon D; upon {called deleted in error} DR
115	Sapphira’s Daughter] CONCERNING MRS. BLAKE D
117.1-131.25	One . . . tremblin’."] {not in D}
117.2	the "Double S,"] thedoubleS {canceled} → the "Double S" TS2
117.4	took] and took TS2; TS2R = K1
117.7	rushed] ran → rushed {typed above} TS2
117.7	throwing up] throwing TS2; TS2R = K1
117.8	On the] Across the → On the {typed above} the TS2
117.8	hillside] hillside of forest trees TS2; TS2R = K1
117.10-11	From out the naked grey wood] Among the brown trunks and gray branches TS2; From out out the naked wood TS2R
117.11	the dogwood thrust] the the wayward dogwood thrust out TS2; the the dogwood thrust TS2R
117.12	blossoms—] blossoms.—The dogwood prefers to grow crooked and naked from out a naked wood and the TS2; TS2R = K1
117.12	flowers] flowers are TS2; TS2R = K1
117.13	the rampant zigzag] the zigzag TS2
117.13	branches] knotty branches TS2
117.17	spring,] spring, the perfumes heavy or delicate, TS2; TS2R = K1
118.1	honeysuckle] honeysuckle → (Pinxter flower) {typed above} TS2
118.1	honeysuckle all about her] honeysuckle growing → all about her {typed above} TS2
118.1-2	the gravelly] the → thin {typed above} rocky gravelly TS2; the → thin {typed above} gravelly TS2R
118.3-4	made each blossom look like a brilliant insect] give the flower the look of a {sic} brilliant insects TS2; make the flowers look like brilliant insects TS2R; make each blossom look like a brilliant insect G; GRA = K1
118.5	upward, she] upward a way Mrs Blake TS2; TS2R = K1
118.5-6	followed a by-road] took a byroad which ran TS2; followed a by-road 〈running〉 TS2R
118.7	better;] better and TS2; TS2R = K1
118.8-10	path. May apples . . . sickening sweetness. Here] path {end of page} {new page} Here TS2
118.10	stood] she passed TS2; TS2R = K1
118.11	with] with a TS2; TS2R = K1
118.12	Along] In the yards and along TS2; TS2R = K1
118.13	bloom. The breeze caught their perfume and] bloom. Their perfume was even more pervasive than the Mayapple’s, because the breeze caught it and TS2; bloom. the {sic} breeze caught their perfume and it and TS2R
118.14	down] along TS2
118.14-15	locusts] locust TS2; TS2R = Kk1
118.16-17	heavy drooping] drooping TS2
118.17	cream-white] white TS2
118.17	blossoms.] blossoms. They are rather feminine in dress, seldom straight or rugged to the eye. They droop at the shoulders. TS2; TS2R = K1
118.18	very old] old TS2
118.18	the locusts look] the look TS2; TS2R = K1
118.21	Yet] {illegible} TS2; TS2R = K1
118.22	find] get TS2
118.23-24	resistance to moisture] especial hardness TS2
119.1	could look] could looked → looked TS2
119.6	came] come TS2
119.8	This afternoon] This morning → afternoon TS2
119.8-9	on the Ridge] going → on the Ridge TS2
119.9	but it was] but TS2
119.10	meant] intended TS2
119.15	creature,] creature → thing {typed above} TS2
119.16	something at once] something → at once {typed above} TS2
119.16	innocent] innocence → innocent TS2
119.19	if they] if she → they TS2
119.23	full] half full TS2
119.24	"light"] white → "light" TS2
119.24	folks] folk TS2; TS2R = K1
120.1	not to be entirely] not entirely TS2
120.1-2	Indeed, Mrs. Blake suspected] Mrs. Blake meant to → suspected TS2; TS2R = K1
120.2	was maybe] was a maybe TS2
120.4	for a long time] for a long time → a right smart while {typed above and canceled} TS2
120.5-6	¶ Mrs.] Indeed Mrs. TS2; TS2R = K1
120.7	people] folks TS2
120.12	If] When TS2
120.15	When at last they] When they at last they TS2; TS2R = K1
120.20	as a] a TS2; TS2R = K1
120.21	probably] probably → likely {typed above and canceled} TS2
120.22	woke] awoke TS2; TS2R = K1
120.24	a bucket] her bucket TS2
120.25	the] her TS2, G; GR = K1
121.25	households] families → households TS2
122.1	family] house → family TS2
122.6-7	expansive, warm-hearted] excitable, expansive TS2
122.7	people.] people. She told herself she seemed to crave them. TS2; TS2R = K1
122.9	known many] known TS2; TS2R = K1
122.10	As she turned in at a] By this time she had reached a TS2; When she turned in a TS2R
122.10-11	house with a big outside rock chimney,] house, and TS2; house, with rock chimney TS2R
122.24	foot] foot at once TS2; TS2R = K1
123.5	kindle] start TS2
123.6	for us] to cheer us up TS2; TS2R = K1
123.7	"If ] "Now TS2; TS2R = K1
123.9	to talk] to have your party TS2; TS2R = K1
123.10	lately.] lately, and I’ll be bound she has a plenty to talk about TS2; TS2R = K1
123.13	spread] put TS2; TS2R = K1
123.16	seem to remember] happened to think maybe TS2; TS2R = Kk1
123.17	don’t] didn’t TS2; TS2R = K1
124.7	up at] up to TS2
124.7	trouble, maybe] trouble TS2
124.12	Lawndis] pore Lawndis → Lawndis TS2
125.2	little] young TS2; TS2R = K1
125.2-3	a preacher a-holdin’] a holdin’ TS2; a preacher holdin’ TS2R
125.6	nor] or → nor TS2
125.9	on] of TS2
125.13	TS2; TS2R = K1
125.14	and] and came and TS2
125.16	on the stony] on stony TS2
126.3	The grandmother] Mrs. Ringer TS2
126.4	here now] here TS2; TS2R = K1
126.5	thinks] seems to think TS2
126.9	"You ain’t] If "you aint → "you aint TS2
126.13	talk] think TS2; TS2R = K1
126.16	pitchers,] pitcher TS2; pitcher, TS2R
126.17	relations] relatives TS2, G; GR = K1
126.22-23	know? Would he break a winder, when he had a key?"] know?" TS2; know? Would he break a winder TS2R
126.24	Mrs.] Now Mrs. TS2; TS2R = K1
127.4	one? Unless"—] one, unless" TS2; TS2R = K1
127.5	paused] paused for breath TS2; TS2R = K1
127.8	Casper] Jasper TS2, G; GR = K1
127.11	know] know that TS2; TS2R = K1
127.19	day he’ll tromp] day tromp TS2
127.22	set] service {x’d out} → set TS2
128.3	fortin] fortune TS2
128.7-12	talk turned naturally . . . pack, Lawndis] talk swung naturally to the example of the murder of the pedler at the Red Brick House on the Ridge road and its confession → exposure {typed above} after twenty years. That was the striking reminder that the wages of sin are paid, though late. They had just begun to tell what they remembered of the two women who killed the pedler for hi {sic} pack, when Lawndis TS2 {typed replacement passage pinned on over this; those variants follow}
128.7-8	classic example of belated justice: the murder] classic example of belated justice: → old story of belated justice; {typed above; neither reading canceled} The murder TS2
128.10-11	years. While Mrs. Ringer . . . wretched women] years. While Mrs. Ringer was telling all she remembered of the two → wretched {typed above} women TS2
128.15	over] over → back {typed above and canceled} TS2
128.22	picked] took TS2; TS2R = K1
129.2	Keysers] Keyser boys TS2; TS2R = K1
129.2	captive] cousin TS2; TS2R = K1
129.4	a chestnut] a straight chestnit TS2; TS2R = K1
129.7	thick fleece] think {sic} mat → think TS2
129.8	was] kept TS2; TS2R = K1
129.9	tied] lashed TS2; TS2R = K1
129.19	things. He pulled] things {illegible} pulled TS2; TS2R = K1
129.23	fur] up to TS2 {end of TS2}
130.23	come] comes G; GR = K1
131.8	told] sent G; GR = K1
131.8-9	and drink] to drink G; GR = K1
131.13	good] fun G; GR = K1
131.23	just] only G; GR = K1
132.1-2	about her house and garden] in her garden or milking her cow D
132.10-11	was warmly welcomed] was welcomed D
132.11	Henry Colbert] Colbert D; DR = K1
133.6-7	all. Two older daughters she had married very well. But she] all. She D, G; GR = K1
133.7	this] the D, G; GR = K1
133.16	Mrs. Colbert] she D; DR = K1
133.17	tastes. Blake was Irish, and] tastes, and the Irish D; tastes, and G; GR = K1
133.22	had found] found D; DR = K1
134.2	it all] it had all D; DR = K1
134.2-3	had watched] watched D; DR = K1
134.4	or] and D; DR = K1
134.11	different] changed D; DR = K1
134.12	have her own] have own D; DR = K1
134.22-23	please! Not] please, not D; DR = K1
135.12	kiss soon became] kiss proved to be all it had promised. It was D, G; GR = K1
135.20	used often] used D, G; GR = K1
135.21-22	mail, although she knew this annoyed her mother. Rachel] mail, under the pretext that she felt better for the exercise. This annoyed her mother; in a properly conducted household one of the coloured boys should go on such errands. But D, G; GR = K1
135.24	boys. One] boys. Mrs Bywaters was always busy, but she found time for a friendly word with Rachel. The girl used to linger on that front porch, enjoying the quiet, severe order of the place. One D; boys. Mrs Bywaters was always busy, but she found time for a friendly word with Rachel. The girl used to linger on the shady front porch, enjoying the quiet, severe order of the place. One DR, G; boys. The {deleted} girl used to linger on the shady front porch, enjoying the quiet, severe order of the place. One GR
136.1-2	she was sitting on Mrs. Bywaters’s shady front porch] when she was sitting there D, G; GR = K1
136.2-3	vines, when she] vines, she D, G; GR = K1
136.8	liked] lingered D; DR = K1
136.9	Cartmell] Cathcart D, G; GR = K1
136.12	began. "Your mother and I think you] began. "You D; DR = K1
136.13	up here] here D; DR = K1
136.17	But he] He D, G; GR = K1
136.22	help you,] help, D, G; GR = K1
137.12	be of little] be little D; DR = K1
137.15	kindly] a kindly D, G; GR = K1
137.16	spoken] said D, G; GR = K1
137.21	Cartmell] Cathcart D, G; GR = K1
138.24	clouds] skies D; DR = K1
139.2	wondered] wondered, now, D; DR = K1
139.4	injustices. Her] injustices. Important laws affecting slavery were being enacted at that time. She avoided hearing any discussion of them. Her D, G; GR = K1
139.6	to] up to D, G; GR = K1
139.17	made her living by] worked for wages, D, G; GR = K1
139.21	fish and game:] game and fish and fruits D, G; GR = K1
139.22	turkeys . . . the] wild turkeys; the D, G; GR = K1
139.25	lobsters, and terrapin] and lobsters from the North D, G; GR = K1
140.7	They usually] Often they D; DR = K1
141.5	Slipping] After slipping D; DR = K1
141.25	Jug" and "Auld] Jug"—"Auld D, G; GR = K1
142.2	were] could be D, G; GR = K1
142.6	happy] thirteen happy D, G; GR = K1
142.17	later] in her later life D, G; GR = K1
142.23	her.] her, fed a hunger in her heart which had been starved before she knew him. D, G; GR = K1
143.3	his Southern friends to] his friends in the South and D, G; GR = K1
143.9	blew] sounded GR
143.21	start] leave D, G; GR = K1
144.21	grew] had grown D; DR = K1
145.7	even though] though D; DR = K1
145.16	Mrs.] Though Mrs. D, G; GR = K1
145.16	but she] she D, G; GR = K1
145.18	of that time] of her active habits D, G; GR = K1
145.19	well in] in D; DR = K1
145.20	that] which D, G; GR = K1
145.23	paths] lanes D; DR = K1
145.24	restrain] restrain her G
146.9	Tribune. Since] Tribune, which came wrapped in heavy paper and addressed to her in ink. Since D; DR = K1
146.11	Cartmell] Cathcart D, G; GR = K1
146.11-13	unwise. The papers came . . . locked] unwise. She kept the papers locked D; DR = K1
146.14	numbers] numbers of the Tribune D; DR = K1
147	BOOK FIVE Martin Colbert] Chapter D
149.4	rickety gate] gate D, G; GR = K1
150.9	by-road] road D, G; GR = K1
150.9	leaned over] leaned down D; DR = K1
150.15-16	turned and went] walked D; turned and went walked {uncanceled} DR
150.16-17	road after the stranger, peering] road, peering D; DR = K1
150.17	he] the stranger D; DR = K1
150.20-21	exercise] motion D; DR = K1
151.1	any] some D; DR = K1
151.10	diverted; no] diverted or D; DR = K1
151.16	buttoned] buttoned up D; DR = K1
152.4	hurried across] quickly crossed D; crossed DR,G; GR = K1
152.17	chair and sat down opposite] chair opposite D; DR = K1
152.17	aunt] aunt and sat down D; DR = K1
153.5	needed the money] needed money D; DR = K1
153.20	refreshing. She almost believed she had] refreshing, and she had D; DR = K1
154.8	They just] They do just D; DR = K1
153.22	saw an open door] saw one door open D; DR = K1
155.15	hall goes] hall that goes D; DR = K1
156.3	clothes-press] closet D; DR = K1 {no hyphen}
156.6	an’] and D; DR = K1
156.8	He] Martin D; DR = K1
156.11	moving back and forth] moving D, G; GR = K1
156.16	gen’leman] gentlemen D; DR = K1
156.20	an’] and D; DR = K1
165.21	direc’ly, an’] directly and D; DR = K1
156.21	’em] them D; DR = K1
156.25-26	embarrassed] disconcerted D, G; GR = K1
156.26	the guest] Martin D, G; GR = K1
157.4-5	tone. But] tone, but D; DR = K1
157.5	did] could D; DR = K1
157.5	face, and] face, bent low over the trunk. He D; face, and he DR
157.12-13	¶ Nancy] Nancy D; DR = K1
158	II] Chapter D
158.10	black suit] black suit → Sunday coat {typed and crossed out} D
159.11	liberally] generously D, G; GR = K1
160.3	It’s funny] Funny D; DR = K1
160.8-9	took more interest in horses than in] cared more about horses than D; DR = K1
160.11	(Loudoun County people] (Dwellers in the Blue Ridge country D; DR = K1
160.12	thought] said D, G; GR = K1
160.13	had wanted] wanted D, G; GR = K1
161.13	well] badly D; DR = K1
161.20	on Hal’s account] for Gogerty’s benefit D; DR = K1
161.23	had laughed at the story] laughed D; DR = K1
162.6	the Blue] Blue D; DR = K1
162.17-18	(White . . . country.)] White . . . country. D; DR = K1
162.20	to] and D; DR = K1
162.24	that spirited] spirited D; DR = K1
163.13	just] often D, G; GR = K1
163.14	rather loose,] something loose and D, G
163.14	as it were] about it D, G
164.1	six] five D; DR = K1
164.4-5	Mistress—beating] Mistress by beating D; DR = K1
164.10	admitted] coyly admitted D; DR = K1
164.15	him] himself D; DR = K1
164.21	jest] jest → {illegible} G
164.24	Is] Are D; DR = K1
165.1	door, with] door, D; DR = K1
165.1	the long] the D, G; GR = K1
165.6-14	"Oh . . . forget."] {not in D}
166	III] GATHERING LAUREL D; DR = K1; 3 G
168.1	crying. I’ll] crying and get to looking like yourself D; DR = K1
168.13	house, and she] house. She D, G; GR = K1
168.25	and brighten up. We’ll] and we’ll D, G; GR = K1
169.23	not yet] not DR
170.2	those now-naked] those D, G; GR = K1
170.4	bottom flowed] bottom D; DR = K1
170.16	rising] rising there D; DR = K1
170.17	was] is D; DR = K1
170.20	bloom; the] bloom. This was not the cultivated rhododenron {sic}, but the D; DR = K1
170.23	And] Even D; DR = K1
171.9	scraping sound] sound D, G; GR = K1
171.9-10	gravel and pebbles falling] falling gravel and pebbles D; DR = K1
172.3-4	you?" he asked.] you?" D; DR = K1
172.23	looked up his friends] inquired about him D; DR = K1
172.24	have any] have D; DR = K1
173.24	girl’s] outraged D; DR = K1
174.8	frightened; and when] frightened. When D; DR = K1
175	IV] CHERRIES ARE RIPED D; 4 G
175.9	seemed almost] almost seemed D; DR = K1
175.16	excused himself ] left her D; DR = K1
175.20	truant: that morning, when] truant. When D; DR = K1
175.21	room, she] room that morning she D; DR = K1
176.1	the old] a group of tall D; DR = K1
176.3	Pappy Jeff ’s] an old D; DR = K1
176.3	Jeff ] Pappy Jeff D; DR = K1
176.4	there himself ] there D; DR = K1
176.8	rafters of the roof ] rafters high in the second storey D; DR = K1
176.17	squat on the flo’, like me] set on the steps D; DR = K1
176.18	scrambled nimbly] nimbly scrambled D; DR = K1
177.3	the tree with her] a tree D; DR = K1
177.17	Presently] Suddenly D; DR = K1
177.17	come] go D, G; GR = K1
177.21	¶ Martin] Martin D; DR = K1
177.22-23	him Nancy] him she D; him that Nancy DR, G; GR = K1
178.1	was thinking] told himself D, G; GR = K1
178.15	jolly] kind D; DR = K1
178.16	her anyhow] her D; DR = K1
178.16	she just] she D; DR = K1
179.2	there."] there. Green’s becoming to you." D; DR = K1
179.18	come along] see us D; DR = K1
179.20	nothin’ but] just good D, G; GR = K1
180.12	chile] child G; GR = K1
180.18-19	took it in that] noticed D; DR = K1
180.19	were already] were D; DR = K1
181.4	mill-hand] mill-man D; DR = K1
181.10	blunder] blunder this morning D; DR = K1
181.11-12	felt . . . the shiver that went over her warm flesh] felt the shiver that went over her warm flesh against his cheeks D; DR = K1
181.13	an instant] a moment D; DR = K1
181.13	a while] awhile D; DR = K1
181.17	forgotten] forgot D; DR = K1
181.22	toward her] to the garden D; DR = K1
182.3	feet wide apart] feet D, G; GR = K1
182.16	an’] and D; DR = K1
182.25	Marster] Master D; DR = K1
183.12	ah] I D; Ah DR
184.12	listens] listen D; DR = K1
184.19-20	that Sampson] Sampson D; DR = K1
184.25	bridle,] horse D; DR = K1
187	Sampson Speaks to the Master] Book VI DR; Sampson Speaks to the Miller DR
189	I] Chapter D; V DR; 1 G
189.3	mill; indeed] mill; he D; DR = K1
189.5-6	this foolish, lively] a spirited D; DR = K1
189.6-7	Certainly, Martin] Martin D; DR = K1
189.10	was sitting at] was at D; DR = K1
189.16	don’t rightly] don’t D; DR = K1
190.2	girl, even if she’s coloured.] girl. D, G; GR = K1
190.14	took] took out D; DR = K1
190.22-23	nothin’ free nor unbecomin’] nothing free or unbecoming D; DR = K1
192.9	disinclined] that he did not wish D; DR = K1
193	II] CHAPTER {typed and crossed out} D; DR = K1; 2 G
194.2	she would wait] nor did she move D; DR = K1
194.25	his upstairs] his D; DR = K1
195.10	Fleecy pink] The light D; DR = K1
195.10	sky, and] sky were all pink, and D; DR = K1
195.12-13	The dew from the shrubbery] From the shrubbery the dew D; DR = K1
195.13	upon] on D; DR = K1
195.15	glistening waterdrops] dewdrops that glistened like pearls D; DR = K1
196.6	words had] words D, G; GR = K1
197.1	horse] mare D; DR = K1
198.1	it. Certainly] it. It’s nice to have young people about, and D; DR = K1
198.13	laughed] chuckled D; DR = K1
199	III] chapter D; DR = K1; 3 G
199.2	He left] Leaving D; DR = K1
199.2	Sampson and] Sampson, he D; DR = K1
199.14	way] tone D; DR = K1
200.4	an] the D; DR = K1
200.5	wall and his] wall, his D; DR = K1
200.12	long meadow] home field D; DR = K1
200.24	was always] was D; DR = K1
200.25	where] and D; DR = K1
201.1	bushes] bushes that D; DR = K1
201.3	Look] You look D; DR = K1
201.7	centre] middle D; center DR
201.11	plough.] plow. The field was a long one; ran down from the creek to the post-office corners. D; DR = K1 {except spelling of plow}
202.2	rested] rested for D; DR = K1
202.8	They kept in line, but they] The line kept straight, but it D, G; GR = K1
202.9	"Halloo"] "Halloo" in a young man’s voice D; DR = K1
202.10-11	straightened up] stood straight D, G; GR = K1
202.12-13	carrying in each hand a] carrying two D, G; GR = K1
202.13	jug] jugs D, G; GR = K1
202.22	they] the women D; DR = K1
202.23	the women] they D; DR = K1
203.4	some lost object] something D; DR = K1
203.22	him] to him D; DR = K1
203.24	lay] lay down D; DR = K1
203.24	and slept] to sleep D; DR = K1
204.1	The miller] Colbert D; DR = K1
204.3	along] along by D; DR = K1
204.8	in all] in D; DR = K1
204.13	had come] came D; DR = K1
205.10	she told] told D; DR = K1
205.11	and] and maybe D; DR = K1
205.20	¶ Sapphira] Sapphira D; DR = K1
206.4	slave-owning] owning slaves D; DR = K1
206.9	house. And after] house. After D; house, and after DR
206.24-25	home for the table; the Mistress] home to the Mistress, who D; DR = K1
207.2	When he traded] He would trade D; When he had traded DR
207.2	slunk] slink D; DR = K1
207.3	his back, she would make] back. She made D; back. She would made {sic} DR
207.5	Soon] Very soon D; DR = K1
207.5	disappear again] disappear D; DR = K1
207.6	till winter. Taylor] until after the winter set in. He came home shivering in whatever rags he had traded his new clothes for. Taylor D; DR = K1
207.8-10	Sapphira saw that he was clothed and fed through the winter] Sapphira would order that he be clothed again, and fed. D; DR = K1
207.13	him.] him. He carried them off and ate them in the warmest spot he could find. ¶ The noon rest over, Colbert put Tansy Dave out of his mind and roused his men to whet their scythes. ¶ "We’ll easy finish this evening, before sundown," he told them. "Tomorrow the girls will turn the grass, and we’ll begin over on the Kukas field. That will take two days, anyway." D; DR = K1
207.14-15	The men finished cutting the long meadow before sundown. That night the miller] That night Colbert D; DR = K1 {except quotes around long meadow}
207.21	bed] bed in his work clothes D; DR = K1
208.4	troubled] bitter D; DR = K1
208.6	with what Sampson had told him. Now and then] with the danger that threatened Nancy. Worse still, D; DR = K1
208.7	designs] intentions D; DR = K1
208.8	mind.] mind now and then. D; DR = K1
208.14	not now] no longer D; DR = K1
208.17	lift of spirit] pleasant thoughts D; tranquil refreshment DR
208.19	eyes.] eyes: to see pictures that were hateful to him. D; DR = K1
208.23	fellow?] fellow and all the torment he had brought? D; DR = K1
209.7-8	was now] was D; DR = K1
209.11	book] book which D; DR = K1
210.15	consolation] companionship D; DR = K1
211	BOOK SEVEN Nancy's Flight] CHAPTER D; DR = K1
213.8	one look] glancing up D; DR = K1
213.8	Nancy’s face] Nancy D; DR = K1
213.16	gets] get D, G; GR = K
214.6	sometimes. But] sometimes, but D; DR = K1
215.8-9	stood with her] stood as if she were on the point of flight, her D; DR = K1
215.20-21	I’ve seen how things were going, and] For a good while back D; DR = K1
215.25	nothing] anything D; DR = K1
216.9	I’d sooner] I’d D, G; GR = K1
216.9	She] Yes, she D, G; GR = K1
217.1	Ever since] After D, G; DR = K1 {but erased}; GR = K1
217.1-2	had become] became D, G; GR = K1
217.2	was] had been DR {but erased}
217.5	made trouble] might come D; DR = K1
217.7-8	household. ¶ Nancy] household. No one else could receive visitors, and give them attention proper to their rank and station. Till had authority to oversee the pickling, preserving, gardening, drying of fruit, even the butchering. She supervised the rendering of the lard, the sausage grinding, the smoking of ham and bacon. Her responsibilities were pleasant to her, not only because they gave her ‘station’, but because of the innate liking for order and exactness (exceptional in her race) which Matchem had observed in her as a child. ¶ Nancy D; DR = K1
217.8	into] to D; DR = K1
217.16	she herself ] she D; DR = K1
217.19	purely] utterly D; DR = K1
for] of D; DR = K1
218.7	for Till and] for D, G; GR = K1
218.10	sat in] sat in her chair in D, G; GR = K1
219	II] {no new chapter} D; New Chapter £ Chapter II DR; 2 G
219.2	David] Mr. D; DR = K1
219.2	asking] urging D; DR = K1
219.2	possible. He] he could. On the following evening he D; DR = K1
219.4	gate next evening] gate D; DR = K1
219.5	carpenter,] carpenter and coffin-maker, D; DR = K1
219.14	them] them that D; DR = K1
219.18	for fugitives] for the fugitives D, G; GR = K1
219.21-22	Pennsylvania or Ohio] Pennsylvania D, G; GR = K1
220.1	¶ Fairhead] Fairhead D; DR = K1
220.1	explained to] drew a map to show D, G; GR = K1
220.14	for] to D; DR = K1
220.15	reassured. But] reassured, but D, G; GR = K1
221.24	clenched] started up from his chair and clenched D, G; GR = K1
221.26	now] this D, G; GR = K1
222.4	to] of D; DR = K1
222.15	Fairhead’s] Fairhead D; DR = K1
223.25-224.1	You and me] We D; DR = K1
224.6	into] to D; DR = K1
224.16	every word] everything D, G; GR = K1
224.16	said] had said D, G; GR = K1
225.7-8	took a flat package of ] took out a thick packet of D, G; took a leather wallet. In it were the DR; GR = K1
225.9	He] In his heart he was glad he D, G; GR = K1
226	III] chapter D; DR = K1; 3 G
226.2	Starting at] At D; DR = K1
226.4	well before] before D; DR = K1
226.7	the Quaker’s] his D; DR = K1
226.7	would] were to D; DR = K1
226.13	Blake’s] Blake D; DR = K1
226.14	all] the house was D; DR = K1
226.14	still at the Mill House] still she D; DR = K1 {except mill house}
227.9	figure] dark figure D; DR = K1
227.11	blinds] blind D; DR = K1
227.11	to the] the D; DR = K1
228.10	that Nancy] Nancy D; DR = K1
228.17	returned] came back D, G; GR = K1
228.17	set about] set to D, G; GR = K1
229.6	dulled] dazed D; DR = K1
229.8	and] that D; DR = K1
229.12	windows were] windows Mr. Whitford saw D; DR = K1
230.2	him] im G; GR = K1
230.6	rowdies] drunks D; DR = K1
231	IV] chapter D; DR = K1; 4 G
231.11	Back] back D; DR = K1
232.21	safe in her stockings] safe D; DR = K1
232.23	home!] home. D, G; GR = K1
233.18	breathed. But] breathed, but D; DR = K1
234.14	wid] with D, G; GR = K1
235.2	tomorrer] tomorrow D, G; GR = K1
235.16	Good-bye, Nancy! We shall meet again] We shall meet again, Nancy {typed above K1 reading and crossed out} D → K1
237	BOOK EIGHT The Dark Autumn] chapter D; DR = K1
239.1	Mrs. Bywaters’s youngest son] Mrs. Bywaters’ youngest boy TS3, D → A boy like that, now, {typed partially over first wording, neither canceled}
239.3	in her parlour by an open window] by the window of her parlour TS3, D; sitting by an open → in her parlour by an open window DR
239.6	Mrs. Blake] Mam TS3, D
239.7	letter-box] postbox TS3, TS; DR = K1 {except no hyphen}
239.9	mail] letters TS3, D
239.11	Jonathan] Perry TS3, D; DR = K1
239.13	Jonathan] Perry TS3, D; DR = K1
239.14	envelope he had brought. It was addressed] envelope, addressed TS3, D
239.15-16	nothing] no word TS3, D
239.16-17	from Winchester by stage] by stage from Winchester TS3, D
239.18	spineless darky] languid → spineless darkie TS3
239.18	girl (doubtless sent by Lizzie) had] girl → doubtless sent by Lizzie, {typed above} had TS3
240.12	axed] axt D; DR = K1
240.20	resolutely] had resolutely TS3
240.20	bonnet and pointed] bonnet while Bluebell was talking, pointed TS3, D
240.21	door. When Bluebell went out, she shut] door and shut TS3, D
240.22	her and drew] her, pulling TS3, D
240.22	word] communication TS3, D
240.24	The letter Jonathan had brought was] This morning, after Perry went away she sat for a long while, looking at the letter he had brought. It was TS3, D
241.5	place.] place. If it was to go to Timber Ridge or Hayfield, a passer-by was hailed and asked to deliver it on his way. TS3, D {except go on}
241.6-7	extravagance. At last Mrs. Blake opened the letter and] extravagance. 〈This was the first〉 The postmark, Back Creek Valley, gave mrs Blake a pretty clear Idea as to 〈what this〉 the purport of this letter. At last she opened it and TS3; The postmark, Back Creek Valley, gave Mrs. Blake a pretty clear idea as to the purport of this letter. At last she opened it and D
241.16	never have] not have → never have TS3
241.16	this] of course {x’d out} this TS3
241.17	understood] knew TS3, D
242.1	inquiring] enquiring TS3, D
242.4	was sorry] hated {crossed out} → was sorry TS3
242.4-5	brought another] brought TS3, D
242.5	to one] upon one TS3, D
242.6	and] and her TS3
242.12	have had] had TS3
242.15	fetch] sell for TS3; sell → bring D
242.16	more. But Mrs. Blake] more, Mrs. Blake reflected. But she TS3
242.18	cut] had cut TS3
242.18	unfolded] opened TS3, D
242.19	tears] a blur of tears TS3
242.24-243.1	the dark cabin] the cabin → that dark cabin {typed above, neither canceled} TS3
243.1-2	to have thought] to thought TS3
243.3	All through] During TS3
243.6	home with her] home TS3, D
243.7	them.] them. Once Rachel ventured to ask him how her Mother was feeling these days. ¶ "Not so well, I’m afraid. Doctor Bushwell has been out from town twice lately. She keeps up her spirits → courage, though. She seems to miss that scoundrel, Martin. The only good I ever knew of him was that he seemed to put himself out to be company for her. I mistrust if he ever put himself out for anybody else, anywhere." TS3
243.12	Nancy’d] Nancy would {x’d out} → Nancy’d TS3
243.17	’bout] about TS3
243.21	Here] There TS3
243.23	coming up the path] close at hand → coming up the path TS3 {neither canceled}, D
244.2	of her] of D
244.3	After the first October frosts] After the first frosts → Early in October TS3
244.6-7	House. Till was among them. She] House. She TS3
244.8	betrayed and] betrayed, for once forgot the reserve which Matchem had trained into her, and TS3
244.8	her by] he by TS3
244.9	nice] good TS3, D
244.12	right] right smart TS3
244.13	Clavenger] Ramsey TS3, D
244.16	dresses] dress TS3
244.16	takes] take TS3
244.18	was suddenly] was TS3
244.20	was] began TS3, D
244.21	little darkies] children little darkies TS3
245.1	asked] said TS3, D, G; GR = K1
245.6	Thank you, mam, Miss] Thank you, Mi → {new line} Thank you Mam, Miss TS3
245.7-8	up there with the] with the → with TS3
246	II] chapter D; 2 G
246.1	one on Back Creek] one TS5, D
246.2	frosts before sunrise] frosts in the early morning TS5
246.2	summer] sunshine and summer TS5
246.3	All morning the] The TS5
246.4-5	haze, and in the afternoon broad fans of heavy golden sunlight warmed its back and flanks. The] haze. The TS5
246.7	streams] creeks TS5, D
246.8	October, and the trees held their leaves.] October, but the frosts and dews were heavy. TS5; October, but the dews were heavy and the trees held their leaves. D
246.9	were like blazing torches] held their foliage TS5
246.9	scarlet] the scarlet TS5, D
246.10	leaves] leaves that TS5, D
246.10	to the] on the TS5
246.10	leaving] left TS5, D
246.11	covered.] covered. In the afternoons the long fans of sunlight seemed thick like dark honey. TS5
246.12	changed] changed suddenly TS5, D
246.14	boggy, and all] boggy. All TS5, D
246.16	into] over TS5
246.17	in] into TS5
246.18	damp.] damp. Colds and coughs were prevelent {sic}, among young and old. TS5
246.19	closed; nearly] closed. Nearly TS5, D
246.19	half his] half the D
246.19	pupils were in bed] pupils TS5
246.20	throats] throats or TS5
247.1-2	was not an out-break of diphtheria] were no diphtheria cases TS5
247.3	began] set in TS5
247.4	rode with his saddle-bags all day long] rode all day long with his saddl {sic} → rode with his saddle bags all day long TS5
247.6	scour] scour → swab TS5
247.8	water.] water, even when their throats had not closed and they could still swallow. TS5; water even when they were still able to swallow. D
247.12-13	had been closed] in the church basement was closed TS5
247.14-15	road, carrying two coffins up to Timber Ridge] road with two coffins he was carrying up to Timber Ridge TS5
247.14-15	This] That TS5
247.17-18	a signal] always a signal TS5
247.18-19	help of some sort was needed within] a message was to be sent somewhere TS5
247.19	Blake herself ] Blake TS5, D
247.22	are sick] have been taken bad TS5
247.23	ailing] feeling bad TS5
247.24	bad] sick TS5
248.6	horses] team TS5
248.7-8	there was a brief consultation between Mrs. Bywaters and David Fairhead] he stopped and shouted → called. Mrs. Bywaters and Mr. Whitford both ran out. The consultation was brief. TS5
248.11-12	go where there was a contagious disease] go to a house where a contageous {sic} disease had broken out TS5
248.12	said he would go:] insisted that he wimself {sic} was the one to go. TS5
248.12-17	go: . . . When] go: he had more than once accompanied Mrs. Blake when she went to carry food and linen to sick folk, and when requested had read a Psalm and said a prayer for → at the bedside. TS4
248.13	carry him back] let out his team and get him TS5; let out his team and carry him back TS7; TS7R = K1
248.13	Blake’s, then drive] Blake’s in fifteen minutes, then he would turn and go on TS5, TS7; Blake’s, drive on up TS7R
248.16	When Fairhead reached Mrs. Blake’s house,] When Mr. Whitford let → dropped him out at Mrs. Blake’s gate TS4; When the wagon reached Mrs. Blake’s gate TS7; TS7R = K1
248.16-17	he found her in an upstairs bedroom, holding] Fairhead went into the hall and called up the stairs: "It’s Daivid {sic}, Mrs. Blake, may I come up?" ¶ She called back to him, and he ran quickly upstairs. Mrs. Blake was on her knees, holding TS4; Fairhead jumped to the ground and ran to the front door, calling up the stairway: "It’s David, Mrs. Blake. May I come up?" ¶ He found Mrs. Blake on her knees, holding TS7; TS7R = K1
248.18	After she laid] After the spasm of retching was over, and TS4, TS7; TS7R = K1
248.19	her] the TS7; TS7R = K1
248.19	she rose] her mother rose TS4, TS7; TS7R = K1
248.21	was very fond of ] loved TS4, TS7; TS7R = K1
248.22	Mrs. Blake had] The two sick girls were lying [in their] Mrs. Blake had gone steadily about her work; she had got TS4; Mrs. Blake had gone steadily about her work; she had TS7; TS7R = K1
448.23	girls] two girls TS4
248.24	two cots in] the two single beds of TS4, TS7, D; TS7R = K1
248.25	told her] told → whispered to their mother that TS4; told → whispered to her that → her TS7; TS7R = K1
248.26	room.] room, until they were better. TS4; room, at least until they were better. TS7; room; not until they were better → room. TS7R
249.1	across] right across TS4
249.4-5	brought word that Doctor Brush] stopped on his way home and called out for Fairhead. He had trailed Doctor Brush all over the Ridge. Brush TS4; stopped on his way home and called out for Fairhead. Doctor Brush TS7; TS7R = K1
249.7	would] sent word that he would TS4, TS7; TS7R = K1
249.7	The doctor] He TS4, TS7; TS7R = K1
249.8	seated himself in] sat → came down to TS4; sat down in TS7; TS7R = K1
249.11	¶ The miller was] He found the miller TS4
249.12-18	shaving, when Fairhead called to him through the open window. ¶ "Mr. Colbert, I’ve come . . . before he leaves." ¶ The miller] shaving. Colbert TS4; shaving, when Fairhead called to him through the open window. Colbert TS7; shaving, when Fairhead called to him through the open window. {holograph insert on separate page:} "Mr. Colbert, I’ve come from Mrs. Blake’s home. 〈Her〉 Both her little girls are sick with bad throats. Doctor Brush is over there now. 〈He says its〉 〈I think you ought to talk to him] I thought you 〈would〉 might like to talk to him before he leaves." The miller TS7R
249.14	house] home TS7R {holograph insert on separate page} D
249.18	put down] laid down → put down TS7R {holograph insert on separate page}
249.18-19	razor, caught up . . . across the meadow] razor, thrust his arms into his coat sleeves saying, {quotation mark missing} you can tell me about it on the way over." They set off together by the path through the meadow TS4, TS7 {except and thrust}; razor 〈and〉 caught up his coat joined David TS7R {holograph insert on separate page}; razor and caught up his coat 〈and joined David〉 〈He and David〉 and set off with David across the meadow TS7R
249.19	When he] ¶ When the miller TS4, TS7, D
249.20	an hour later] late in the morning TS4, TS7; TS7R = K1
249.21	her.] her bed. She no longer got up for breakfast TS4; her bed. She no longer got up until the late afternoon. TS7; her. She kept her bed now until the late afternoon. TS7R, D
249.23	it."] it. I’m afraid they are very bad." TS4
249.24	She] Sapphira TS4
249.24	rose] rose a little TS4
250.5	only just] just TS4
250.5	Rachel’s] there TS4
250.7	realize it.] realize. you’d {sic} hardly know them, Sapphy." TS4; realize. TS7; TS7R = K1
250.8	But] Then TS4
250.9	reached under her pillow] reached → reached under her pillow TS4
250.12	This] We want him this TS4
250.14	got over there] got TS4
250.15	her] her over there TS4
250.17	down] down there TS4
250.17	stay with them] stay TS4
250.18	He’s a better nurse] He’s better TS4
250.18	around here] about here, because he has some sense TS4; about here, because he has more sense TS7, D; TS7R = K1
250.19	scarcely heard] interrupted TS4; interrupted → scarcely heard TS7; TS7R = K1
250.19	There] Here TS4
250.20	and you] while you TS4, TS7; TS7R = K1
250.23	had left ajar] had left half open (a jar) TS4; left ajar TS7; TS7R = K1
250.23	softly] gently TS4
251.3	hat] hat or cap TS4
251.3	heads] head TS4, TS7, D
251.4-5	Tap stood rigid; he opened his eyes, prepared for a scolding] He opened his eyes wider and became rigid (cocked his head) TS4
251.6	to get] for TS4
251.8	her, his shoulders went] her, his back and shoulders went TS4, TS7; TS7R = K1
251.11	go and get] get TS4, TS7; TS7R = K1
251.11	quick] soon TS4, TS7, D, G; GR = K1
251.12	Mr. Henry or Sampson] Mr. Henry TS4
251.13	Clavenger] Clavenger because TS4, TS7; TS7R = K1
251.14	bad] bad today TS4, TS7, D; TS7R = K1
251.16	don’t] does not TS4
251.17	out to us] here TS4
251.21-22	naturally lively] lively TS4
251.22	shadowy] earnest TS4
251.23	slipped out of] left TS4
251.23	room, and only a few] room softly as a mouse. Afew {sic} TS4; room. A few TS7, D; TS7R = K1
252.1	going to town] going TS4
252.2	house, and Till came unbidden to] house. 〈She〉 and Till came to TS4
252.6	Till, you can] Till TS4
252.8	don’t notice] don’t TS4
252.8	And you] Anyway, you TS4
252.11	she’s] she is TS4, TS7, D; TS7R = K1
252.16	wait in, if you] wait in you if you TS4
252.17	dry, sad little] dry TS4
253	III] CHAPTER D; 3 G
253.1	Winchester] Winchester late in the afternoon TS1
253.2	Clavenger] Wortham TS1
253.2-3	Berryville] Millvale TS1
253.3	do a critical operation] perform a critical operation → amputation TS1; perforem {sic} a critical operation TS4; perform → do a critical operation TS7
253.3	doctor] physcian {sic} TS1
253.4-5	Mrs. Clavenger, his wife, sent a letter to Mrs. Colbert, promising] Mrs. Worthington promised ts1; Mrs. Clavenger sent a letter to Mrs. Colbert, promising TS4
253.7	indeed she felt] she felt TS1, TS4, TS7; TS7R = K1
253.8	be there] get there TS1, TS4; be → get TS4; get TS7; TS7R = TS1
253.8-10	tomorrow. To the miller and Fairhead, who were awaiting . . . a long way off.] tomorrow. TS1; tomorrow. To the miller and Fairhead, who were waiting, tomorrow seemed a long way off. TS4
253.11	It] This was Fairhead’s night to sit up with the children. He dreaded the night. It TS1
253.11	was heart-breaking to see the children suffer, and] was terrible → heart-breaking to 〈hear〉 see them suffer so and TS1
253.12	beg] beg piteously TS1, TS4
253.13-15	He went home, and digging down into the sawdust of the icehouse under his mill, he found some lumps of last year’s ice.] He had dug into the sawdust in his ice house and found some lumps of last winter’s ice. TS1; He dug down into the sawdust of the icehouse under his mill and found some lumps of last year’s ice. TS4; He went home and dug down into the sawdust of the icehouse under his mill. He found some lumps of last year’s ice. TS7; TS7R = K1
253.16	girls hold bits] children hold {illegible word canceled with overstrike z’s} → bits TS1; bits → chips {canceled} TS7
253.18	his family] the family TS1; his house TS4; house {canceled} → family TS7
253.19	helped them through the long afternoon] had helped through the long misery of the day. TS1; helped through TS4
253.20-21	Fairhead insisted on sitting up with the patients that night.] But the long night was before them, and it was Fairhead’s turn to sit up with the patients. TS1; It was Fairhead’s turn to watch → sit up with the patients tonight. TS4; It was Fairhead’s turn to sit up with the patients tonight. TS7; Fairhead insisted on sitting up with the patients tonight. TS7R {except tonight → that night}, D
253.21	would relieve] was to relieve TS1
254.1	morning. The] morning, so the TS1
254.1	supper together] supper TS1, TS4, TS7, D; TS7R = K1
254.2	As Mrs. Blake] ¶ As she TS1
254.2	stairs, she] stairs to get Mary and Betty ready for the night, Mrs. Blake TS1
254.3	down] back TS1, TS4
254.3-4	I’ve made a chicken broth for you, David, and] I made a chicken broth for your night lunch, David. I TS1, TS4
254.4-5	Put some hickory sticks] If you put a hickory stick or two TS1
254.5	fire, and you] fire you TS1
254.6	any time in the night] any time TS1, TS4, TS7; TS7R = K1
254.7-9	to get the cool air into his lungs. Sick-rooms were kept tightly closed in those days.] and walked up and down under the great maples. TS1; to get the air into his lungs. The sick rooms were kept tightly close at night. TS4; to get the cool air into his lungs. The sick rooms were kept tightly closed at night. TS7; to get the cool air into his lungs. The sick rooms were kept tightly closed. TS7R, D, G; GR = K1
254.9-10	The blue evening was dying into dusk, and silvery stars were coming out] to watch the blue evening die into dusk and the silvery stars come out TS1; The blue evening was dying into dusk and the silvery stars were coming out faintly TS4, TS7, D; TS7R = K1
254.11	Fairhead was deeply discouraged] ¶ He felt hopeless TS1; He was deeply discouraged TS4, TS7, D; TS7R = K1
254.11-13	He believed Doctor Clavenger would know just what to do; but tomorrow might be too late.] He knew that Doctor W could do something. TS1; He knew Doctor Clavenger would know just what to do, but when would he he get here? Tomorrow might be too late. TS4
254.14	¶ Clavenger was] He was TS1
254.14	poor old Brush] Brush TS1, TS4
254.17-18	While he was on the staff of a hospital in Baltimore] While he was training in a Baltimore hospital TS1; He was on the staff of a hospital in Baltimore when TS4; When he was on the staff of a hospital in Baltimore TS7; TS7R = K1
254.18	fell in love with] he met TS1; met → fell in love with TS4
254.19	visiting in] visiting her aunt in TS1, TS4, TS7, D; TS7R = K1
254.20	consent to live] live TS1
254.22-23	but Clavenger was like that.] Worthington was like that,-so were his ancestots {sic}. TS1; Clavenger was like that. So were his ancestors. TS4, TS7; TS7R = K1
254.23	that.] that. His grandfather, while making the "Grand tour" as young bloods did in those days, married in Rome an Italian widow. The couple had lived happily and long on his estate near Alexandria. The sons and grandsons of that marriage → had been a little peculiar",—that is had seemed to know what they nost {sic} wanted {one and a quarter lines x’d out} 〈They always married〉 into the best families. TS1; that. His grandfather, making the "grand tour" as young bloods did in those days, married in Rome, —a young Italian widow. {end of page and typescript} TS4; His grandfather, making the "grand tour" as young bloods did in those days, married in Rome,— a young Italian widow. The couple lived long and happily on his estate near Alexandria, but the sons and grandsons of that marriage were considered a little ‘peculiar’; they had very individual interests and followed them with TS7; {TS7 plus holograph addition} an assiduity which their country neighbors thought not quite gentleman-like → TS7R = K1
254.24-255.1	While Fairhead was walking up and down the yard, he kept an eye on the windows of Mrs. Blake’s upstairs bedroom] As Fairhead took the air under the maples (in the yard) he kept his eyes an eye on an upstairs window, the window of Mrs. Blake’s own chamber TS1; While Fairhead was walking up and down the yard, thinking about Doctor Clavenger, he kept an eye on the windows of Mrs. Blake’s upstairs bedroom TS7; TS7R = K1
255.1	As soon as the candlelight shone there,] When the candlelight shown {sic} behind that window TS1; When the candlelight shone there, TS7; TS7R = K1
255.2	would be] was TS1, TS7; TS7R = K1
255.2	to his] up to his TS1; be with his TS7; TS7R = K1
255.4	kitchen] house {x’d out} kitchen TS1
255.7	across the indoor duskiness of the room] through the duskiness → the indoor duskiness TS1; through the indoor duskiness TS7; TS7R = K1
255.9	sleep] sleep, or in delirium TS1; sleep, or in a delirium TS7; TS7R = K1
255.9	on a] in a TS1, TS7, D; TS7R = K1
255.11-13	hands. (She must have smelled the hot soup up in her bedroom; the stair door had been left open.) She drank slowly, resting her elbows on the table.] hands, resting her elbows on the table. She drank slowly, put the bowl down for a moment and sat with her shoulders drooping forward. TS1; hands. She drank slowly, resting her elbows on the table. She put the bowl down for a moment, and sat with her shoulders drooping forward. TS7; hands. She drank slowly, resting her elbows on the table. TS7R
255.13-14	firelight from the stove] firelight TS7; TS7R = K1
255.15	walls and ceiling] walls TS1
255.15-16	Fairhead knew he ought to go in and take the soup from her.] She took up the bowl again. Fairhead knew he ought to go in and snatch it from her. TS1; When she took up the bowl again Fairhead knew it was time for him to go in and snatch it from her. TS7; TS7R = K1
255.16	was unable] seemed unable TS1
255.17	move or to make] stir or make TS1; move or make TS7; TS7R = K1
255.18	through the window] there in the kitchen TS1
255.19	Communion] communion TS7; TS7R = K1
255.20	up the] into the closed TS1, TS7; TS7R = K1
255.21	into the empty room] in through the window TS1
255.21-22	wondering at himself.] wondering why he had 〈he had not intruded〉 {x’d out} → could not intrude on that short, silent scene but had stood here breathless → holding his breath TS1
255.22-24	He remembered how sometimes in dreams a trivial thing took on a mysterious significance one could not explain.] He remembered that in dreams some very trivial thing, such as climbing a tree or swimming in the creek → mill dam, had often given him a shiver of foreboding or glow of happiness out of all keeping with the dream itself. TS1; He remembered that in dreams a very trivial thing, climbing a tree or swimming in the mill-dam, could give one a shudder of fright and foreboding out of all keeping with the dream itself. TS7; He remembered that sometimes in dreams a trivial thing took on a mysterious significance one could not explain → became momentous in a way one could not explain TS7R {alternatives written in margin}, D {typed above the line}
256.1	Fairhead] He TS1, TS7; TS7R = K1
256.1	went] went first TS1
256.2	After he had washed out her throat] He went through the painful operation of washing TS1
256.3	thing] contrivance TS1
256.3	swab, he] swab. When that was over, he TS1
256.4	sill) and put] sill, wrapped it in a handkerchief, and put TS1; sill, and put TS7
256.5	and tried to smile] and closed her eyes → tried to smile TS1
256.6	would soon come back to her] would be back in a little while TS1
256.7	the candle] her candle TS1, TS7; TS7R = K1
256.7	crossed the hall] went slowly across the passage TS1
256.10	hand, he went in softly and approached] hand he opened the door and went softly toward TS1
256.11	Mary] She TS1, TS7, D; TS7R = K1
256.11	asleep. Last night she] asleep. For two TS1; asleep. A clean swab and the sulphur mixture were ready on the washstand, but he could not bring himself to waken her. For two nights she TS7; TS7R = K1
256.13	who had sat up with her] who sat up 〈with〉 {x’d out} last night TS1; who sat up with her last night TS7; who sat up with her TS7R, D
256.13	said she was] said that Mary had been TS1
256.14	bed] her bed TS1
256.14-15	Fairhead leaned over her] Fairhead put the candle behind the empty {typed above line} water water {sic} pitcher and stood {canceled} → leaned over her TS1
256.15	her; yes, the evil smell was on her breath] her. Yes, there was the smell 〈he had〉 {x’d out} on her breathing TS1
256.17-18	Betty, who liked to have him turn her pillow and sit near her] Betty, who did not sleep but liked to have him hold her hand TS1; Betty who could not sleep, and liked to have him turn her pillow and sit near her TS7; TS7R = K1
256.19	night. When Mrs. Blake] night, until her mother TS1
256.19-20	at four] at five oclocl {sic} TS1
256.20-21	morning and held her candle before the girl’s face, she knew that] morning. The moment Mrs. Blake held the candle before the child’s face she knew TS1; morning and held a candle before the girl’s face, she knew that TS7R
256.21-22	better. ¶ Doctor Clavenger] better. ¶ About TS1 {end of TS1}; better. ¶ Dr. Clavenger D
257.1	more than thirty hours] thirty some hours TS7; TS7R = K1
257.7-8	had pleurisy] was ill TS7, D; TS7R = K1
257.12	carry] take TS7, D; TS7R = K1
257.15-16	stopped, turned round, and stood] stopped, and stood TS7, D
257.19	yard!] yard. TS7, D
257.20	After taking] He took TS7; TS7R = K1
257.20	breath,] breath before TS7; TS7R = K1
258.7	swallowed it] drank TS7, D; TS7R = K1
258.9	When she] She TS7; TS7R = K1
258.11	he] but he TS7; TS7R = K1
258.11	down; enough] down. Quite enough TS7; TS7R = K1
258.12	both stood by] were both present (stood by) TS7; TS7R = K1
258.14	deliberate and at ease] very deliberate TS7, D, G; GR = K1
258.16	almost] even TS7, D; TS7R = K1
258.19	talked] talked soothingly → talked TS7R
258.20	talked soothingly] spoke playfully TS7; TS7R = K1
258.23	Doctor Brush’s,] those at home, TS7, D; G = K1 {no comma}
258.25	as] when TS7, D, G; GR = K1
259.1-2	When he went downstairs, he gave Mrs. Blake and Fairhead] He called Mrs. Blake and Fairhead downstairs and gave them very clear TS7; 〈He took〉 When he went downstairs he gave Mrs. Blake and Fairhead and gave them {last three words uncanceled} TS7R; He took Mrs. Blake and Fairhead downstairs with him and gave them clear D
259.5	day at last,—] day, TS7, D
259.5	into a position of ease,] into a position of ease G; {marked to delete} GR
259.19	listened] watched him TS7, D; TS7R = K1
259.25-260.1	Creek. The child was hungry. Your warm broth] Creek. Her bad nights were partly due to hunger. The warm fluid → Your warm broth TS7
260.2	That’s] It’s TS7; TS7R = TS1
260.5	her."] her. You see, though I would not dare say it aloud, there is such a thing as sympathetic imagination in medicine. The great healers had it." TS7; TS7R = K1
260.7	saddle.] saddle. But he held the horse in for a moment. ¶ "David, it is just possible that you were meant to serve the Lord in medicine rather than in theology. I’ll take you for a pupil, any time. I’m not joking. I mean it." TS7; TS7R = K1
260.9	parlour fire] fire in the parlour TS7; TS7R = K1
260.11-12	life. Now she did] life and now did TS7R
260.12	tea-time. She] teatime. (Till knew why, and Doctor Clavenger had explained the wisdom of this change to the miller.) She TS7, D; TS7R = K1
260.16	of ] as to TS7; TS7R = K1
260.20-21	no good news] bad news TS7; TS7R = K1
261.14	Henry] dear TS7, D; TS7R = K1
261.17	and] hard and TS7; TS7R = K1
261.23	dear] Henry TS7, D; TS7R = K1
261.24	close] here close TS7; TS7R = K1
262.8	it.] it. The Master took what was given him. TS7; TS7R = K1
262.14	drooping] drooping → bent TS7; TS7R = K1
262.18-19	as able as] able, as TS7; TS7R = K1
262.20-21	we ought to have someone here,] we are really in need of some one, TS7; TS7R = K1
263.3	would keep things up as they ought to be.] would keep things up as they ought to be. (would keep the house up as it ought to be kept.) TS7; TS7R = K1
263.6	Though now] Though TS7; TS7R = K1
263.7-8	struck terror to his heart] affected him like a blow in the chest TS7, D, G; GR = K1
263.9	to and taken for granted: her] to; her TS7, D
263.11	faced] had faced TS7, D
263.21	flag; not even now] flag; even now TS7, D; TS7R = K1
263.22-23	seen strong men quail and whimper] known strong men who quailed and whimpered TS7, D; TS7R = K1
263.23-24	dreaded it] was afraid of it TS7, D
264.19-23	"Perhaps . . . else."] {not in D}
264.19	do better] be wiser → do better TS7
264.22	happy years] years TS7; TS7R = K1
264.23	would be] would TS7; TS7R = K1
265	(Epilogue—Twenty-five years later)] Epilogue written in the first → Epilogue in the First Person D
267	I] This concluding chapter I must relate in the first person, for at this point I, myself, came into the story, and saw something of the new order of life on Back Creek. The old order was still about us, in feeling if not in fact, and stories of the War and ‘old slave times’ were the nursery tales of our childhood. D
267-71	Twenty-five . . . flashed by.] {chapter 1 not in D}
269.3	slowly, sometimes] slowly G; GR = K1
269.14-15	{quotation in italic}] {quotation in roman} G; GR = K1
272.5	bed on that] bed that D; DR = K1
272.5	memorable day] day D; DR = K1
272.6	bedroom, in] bedroom on D; DR = K1
272.7	white] pretentious white D; DR = K1
272.9	see] watch D; DR = K1
272.10	rapid] flying D
272.10	hillsides] surrounding hills D; DR = K1
272.14	indoors] inside D; DR = K1
272.15	then] now D; DR = K1
272.18	foot] end D; DR = K1
272.21	the iron-tired wheels] the wheels D; DR = K1
273.1	four] iron D
273.1-2	they came round] it got to D
273.8	company] from being restless D
273.8-10	Mrs. Blake sat . . . in church.] Mrs. Blake kept her hands clasped in her lap and looked as if she were at some unusually solemn church service. D; Mrs. Blake {sic} hands were clasped in her lap. She looked {rest as in D} DR
273.11-12	holding] carrying D
273.12	straight] very straight D; DR = K1
273.12	conversed] the two sopke {sic} D; DR = K1
273.16	young, and] young (tall and handsome) and D; DR = K1
273.21	to cut timber] logging D
273.22-23	Colberts’ old Taylor] Taylor D
273.24	tool-room under the portico steps] tool room, D
273.25-274.2	he was making . . . many, racing] he the front paws of his favorite shepherd dog—she wore out → was making yellow 〈shoes〉 {canceled} leather shoes for his favorite shep—the front paws of his favorite shepherd dog—she wore out so many racing D
274.5	clouds] the cloud D; DR = K1
274.5	trees] the trees D; DR = K1
274.5-6	for today] for for {sic} today D; DR = K1
274.7	ride out] come out D; DR = K1
274.8	twenty-five] twenty-four D; twenty-six DR
274.10	sing me to sleep with] put me to sleep with the stories of Nancy’s escape and D; DR = K1
274.15	said, if] said that if D; DR = K1
274.16	water] water up D; DR = K1
274.17	ice.] ice. That was my first shivery feeling for a which I was to like so well many years afterward. D; DR = K1
274.17	sometimes wrote] wrote several times a year D; DR = K1
274.18	her fifty dollars at] her a draft for fifty dollars, which my father cashed for Till in Winchester at D; DR = K1
274.19	hurried] came → hurried D
274.20	a word] saying anything D; DR = K1
274.20	blanket, carried] blanket and carried D; DR = K1
274.22	head-rest, where I could look out] head rest, looking out D
275.6	creek] stream → brook D; DR = K1
275.8	A woman] A tall, portly woman D; DR = K1
275.8	black] a black D
275.9	alighted] stepped to the ground D; DR = K1
275.9	hand-satchel; her] hand bag, which my father took from her. Her D; DR = K1 {except no hyphen}
275.9-10	trunk was to go] trunk on top of the stage was to go on D; DR = K1
275.13	actual] exact → actual D
275.14	for my benefit] on my account {uncanceled} D; DR = K1
275.16	and] to D; DR = K1
275.16-17	had said] said D; DR = K1
275.22	cordial] nervous D
276.1	Till had already risen; when] At the sound of voices Till rose. When D
276.2	room, she] room Till D; room, Till DR
276.3	forward. She fell] forward and fell D; DR = K1
276.3	a] the D
276.8	Bible.] Bible—might have happened centuries ago → the visitation of Mary to Elizabeth {typed above and crossed out} D; Bible—it might have happened centuries ago. DR
276.9	tender] breathless D, G; GR = K1
276.11-12	shining] dropping D
276.13	nose] fleshy red nose D; DR = K1
276.15-16	took me across the river that night] gave me my first chance D; gave me my chance DR
276.17-18	When Nancy . . . grey fur] At my mother’s insistence Nancy took off her long black coat and I saw with astonishment that besides its fur collar it was lined with gray fur D; Nancy took off her long black coat, and I saw with astonishment, that, besides its fur collar, it was lined with gray fur DR
276.21	hair.] hair. Without her great coat she was not portly at all. D; DR = K1
276.24	pocket.] pocket. When I was introduced her I {canceled} D
277.3	listened] listened hard D; DR = K1
277.6-7	mill, Dar lived a yaller gal] Mill-that D; DR = K1
277.9	old.] old. That made a difference. D; DR = K1
277.11-12	And there was . . . on Back Creek.] Her voice had a charm about it, but her speech was different from ours and our neighbors. D; Her voice had a charm about it, but her speech was different from ours on Back Creek. DR; And there was a charm about her voice, but her speech was different from ours on Back Creek. G; GR = K1
277.14	Whereas] When → Whereas D
277.14	used to ask] asked D
277.19	many] a great many D; DR = K1
277.21	talk.] talk. It rather hurt my feelings. D; DR = K1
278.3	to show] and showed → and show D; DR = K1
278.6	for] now for D; DR = K1
278.8	six] five D; DR = K1
278.12	be] stay D; DR = K1
278.12	dinner. Then] dinner, then D; DR = K1
278.19	patch, and even] patch and D; and patch, and DR
279.1-2	into her face] at her → into her face D
279.2	idolatrous] almost idolatrous D; worshipful DR
279.6	dinner as the family, served] dinner served d; dinner as the family had, served DR
279.7	Sally] yellow Sally D; DR = K1
279.8-9	I was tired] I went to sleep, tired D; DR = K1
279.9	excitement and went to sleep.] excitement. D; DR = K1
279.10-280.12	During . . . stood] During her stay on Back Creek Nancy came often to → with her mother to our house. They came and went by the back door, and Nancy always took a clean apron from her hand bag and insisted upon taking part in whatever housework was underway. She asked to be allowed to roast the coffee. "The smell of it is sweeter than roses, Mrs. Blake," she said laughing. "Up there the coffee is always poor, so I’ve learned to drink tea. As soon as it’s browned I’ll grind a little, and make myself a cup, by your leave." ¶ The kitchen was almost as large as a modern music room, and to me it was the most attractive room in the house. There (and to me it was "richly furnished") There was a great fire place as well as a six hole range. There was a table for kneading bread, another used for making cakes and pastry, and one with a metal top for dismembering fowl and stuffing turkeys and rabbits. There were cupboards for storing sugarz {sic} and spice and groceries. A very special corner cupboard was {canceled in pencil} D
279.10	¶ During] During D; DR = K1
279.11	She used to bring] Nancy brought D; She brought DR
279.11-12	house. . . . apron, and] house. They came and went by the back door, and Nancy always took a clean apron from her hand bag and D
279.12-13	and insisted] and always insisted DR
279.13	upon helping Mrs. Blake and Moses’ Sally in] upon taking part in D
279.14	begged] asked D
279.16	roses to me, Mrs.] roses, Mrs. D
279.18-19	make us all a] make myself a D
279.20	¶ Our] The D; DR = K1
279.21	the pleasantest] the most attractive D
279.22-280.6	house,—the most . . . tables: one] house. There (and to me it was "richly furnished") There {sic} was a table D
280.7	another] another used D
280.7	and a third] and one D
280.8	zinc] metal → zinc D
280.8-9	fowls and rabbits and stuffing turkeys] fowl and stuffing turkey and rabbits D
280.9	The tall cupboards stored sugar and spices] There were cupboards for storing sugarz {sic} and spice D
280.10-12	groceries; our farm . . . corner cupboard stood] groceries. A very special corner cupboard was D; groceries. The DR
280.10	groceries; our] groceries. The D; groceries: the DR
280.14	Canned vegetables] All the canned → vegetables D; The canned vegetables DR, G; GR = K1
280.14	and the] and G; GR = K1
280.16	cellar: a] cellar. A D, G; GR = K1
280.17	usually] always D; DR = K1
280.17-18	after the dishes were washed] after they had helped Moses’ Sally wash the dishes and make the kitchen neat D; DR = K1
280.19	wooden] big wooden D; DR = K1
280.20-21	pound cake or the marble cake] marble cake or the pound cake D
280.22	times. I] times. It was then I began to love Nancy. I saw her softer side, and her talk was softer too. Her Montreal speech, with its cold exactness, fell away from her, and she talked as we talked, dropped out those bristling consonants which somehow hurt one’s feelings a little. Her soft voice dropped back into the old soft speech. ¶ I D; times. It was then I began to love Nancy. I saw her softer side, and her talk was softer too. Her Montreal speech, with its cold exactness, fell away from her, and she spoke as we did. ¶ I DR
280.22-23	sit with them and sew patchwork] sit and listen if I kept quiet and did my patchwork D; {same except did → sewed} DR
280.25-281.1	learned that . . . seemed] learned not to interrupt with questions; that seemed D
281.1	spell. Nancy] spell. Besides, mysterious hints were sometimes more absorbing than definite → clearcut information. The little changes in Nancy’s voice sometimes told a story. She D; spell. Besides, mysterious hints were more absorbing than definite → clearcut information, and the little changes in Nancy’s voice sometimes told a story. She DR
281.3	everybody,—and so] everybody. So D
281.3	I.] I. I had only to be still and listen. D
281.5	she] Nancy D
281.5	what ever did become] whatever became D; DR = K1
281.7	speak up] come in → speak up D
281.8	how Mr.] Mr. D
281.11	two!] two. D, G; GR = K1
281.14	kitchen. In] kitchen, even after he tole ’em fur the las’ time they wasn’t needed round {canceled} at the mill place no more. In D; DR = K1
281.23	fur you] for you D, G
281.25	about, Till] about (the loaves at the back of the oven baked faster than those forward) Till D; DR = K1
281.26	sit down] sit down and resume her chair D; DR = K1
281.26-282.1	continue: ¶ "Well] continue. "Well D
282.1	a wonderful good] a good D; DR = K1
282.2	place up in] place in D; DR = K1
282.3	well, has Sampson, an] well, an D; DR = K1
282.4	childern] children A
282.5	here, just to] here to D
282.7	in old Master’s] in Master’s D; DR = K1
282.7	room—he] room that he D; DR = K1
282.7-8	use it only] use only D; DR = K1
282.8	office, to see folks] office an’ settin’ room D; DR = K1
282.10	me no] me any D, G; GR = K1
282.13	me how in the] me in the D; DR = K1
282.15	machines] machine D; DR = K1
282.15	runs so fast] runs fast D; DR = K1
282.15	gits so hot] gets hot D; DR = K1
282.19-20	knew it well. Many . . . mill] knew all about Tap, the merry mill D; DR = K1
282.23-25	freedom. He went . . . and picked] freedom. He picked D; DR = K1
282.23-24	town ("town" always meaning Winchester)] town (always Winchester) D; town (town always being Winchester) DR
282.24-25	where every day was] where there was {illegible} → everything was → every day was D
283.2	time] days D
283.2	German] Dutchman D; DR = K1
283.3	pool] billiard D; DR = K1
283.3	a dive] a low dive D; DR = K1
283.4-5	play, and gambling went on] play D; DR = K1
283.8	Tap as a boy went] Tap’s grin and his gay "howdy, sah!" went D; DR = K1
283.9	character. But] character, but D; DR = K1
283.10	a Yankee jury] a jury of Yankee newcomers DR, G
283.11-12	known there was no real bad in Tap] known negro nature better than that D; DR = K1
283.14-15	Colbert. I had never heard of him. Mrs.] Colbert. Mrs. D; DR = K1
283.16	that] which D; DR = K1
283.17	war," she said briefly. "He’d] war. He’d D
283.23	could almost have] could have D; DR = K1
283.24	about them so] about those two old people so D; DR = K1
284.2-5	in the haying . . . slaves] in the haying season of 1862, when he was working in the fields with the few negroes who had preferred to stay on at the mill farm after the miller had freed all his wife’s slaves D; {duplicate passage deleted} DR
284.2	1863] 1962 D; DR = K1
284.3	the fields] the Field D; DR = K1
284.3	begged] had preferred D; had begged DR
284.4-5	Farm after . . . slaves] farm D; DR = K1
284.8	a limestone ledge] a ledge of rock D; DR = K1
284.12	took me as far as Till’s] dropped me at Till’s D; took me along as far as Till’s G; GR = K1
284.13	there I] there that I D; DR = K1
284.14	Till’s] the old woman’s D; DR = K1
284.14	overcoat, some of Miss] over coat. Miss D; DR = K1
284.18	caps and fichus, and odd] caps, neckerchiefs, odd D
284.18	such as velvet] finery and velvet D; DR = K1
284.21	hair, at] hair, cut at D
284.22-23	marriage. The miller . . . she said] marriage. D; DR = K1
285.1	In summer Till] In fine weather → Till D; DR = K1
285.1	used to take me] often took me D; DR = K1
285.1	across the meadow to] across to D; DR = K1
285.2	on the] on their D; DR = K1
285.3	she talked] she told D; DR = K1
285.3-4	the people buried there] them D; DR = K1
285.4	she was sure to remember something] she remembered some detail D
285.5	to tell me before] to remember before D
285.5-6	before. Her stories . . . were] before, so that the story was D; DR = K1
285.6	mere repetitions] a mere repetition D; DR = K1
285.7	picture of ] picture and realization of D; DR = K1
285.8	She loved . . . last days] Till loved to talk of the last days of that rather puzzling → strange old lady, her mistress D; She loved to talk of the last days of that strange old lady, her mistress DR
285.9-10	Blake that winter after] Blake; of the winter and spring after D
285.11	stayed at] stayed for four months at D; stayed four months at DR
285.12-13	frequent; Doctor Clavenger came] frequent, and the Doctor came D; DR = K1
285.14	twice a week] every week D
285.15-16	with that kind of dropsy . . . because] Mrs. Colbert’s kind of dropsy to live on as she did: it was because Mrs. Colbert’s → it was because D; with that kind of dropsey to live on as Mrs. Colbert. He said it was because DR
285.20	would go over it] would tell me D; DR = K1
285.21	I’d come] I come D; DR = K1
285.22	she’d always say: ‘Good] she’s always ‘Good D; DR = K1
285.23	mornin’] Morning D; Mornin’ D → DR = K1
285.24	she’d] she’s D; DR = K1
285.24	she liked] she always liked D; DR = K1
285.24	Miss Mary] little Miss Mary D; DR = K1
285.26	evenin’ I] evenin’ (afternoon) D; DR = K1
286.1-3	her, and took her breath dreadful, but she wouldn’t . . . out of temper] her, but she never got out of temper D; her, and took her breath dreadful but she never got out of temper DR
286.3	When I’d got her dressed] About four D; DR = K1
286.4	used to come] would come D; always came DR
286.7	Mary] Miss Mary A
286.9	out-a] out’n D; out o’ A
286.10	home folks] relations D
286.10	Loudoun] Clarke D; DR = K1
286.11	Miss Mary] Mary D; DR = K1
286.11	was real fond of her] had just the right way with her D
286.11-14	grandma. If . . . heap, havin’] grandma. It was a mercy, havin’ D
286.19	Colbert] Blake → Colbert D; DR = K1
286.19	a reserve] reserve D; DR = K1
286.19-287.18	After tea . . . with them.] {not present in D}
287.5	was the] was a G; GR = K1
287.17	"fine folks"] fine folks G; GR = K1
287.19	oughtn’t] ought → ought’nt D
287.20	Mrs. Matchem] Miz Matchem D; DR = K1
287.24	anybody much] anybody D, G; GR = K1
288.1-12	In this story . . . to spell it. Willa Cather] {not present} D, G; {placed at beginning of text after contents page} A

Word Division

List A records compounds or possible compounds hyphenated at the ends of lines in the first edition and resolved as hyphenated or as one word (see note 6 in the Textual Essay for the criteria used for resolving these forms). List B contains the end-line hyphenations that are to be retained in quotations from the present edition.

	List A
7.16	white-haired
9.5	grandfather
11.25	great-grandmother
13.17	high-backed
21.7	ironing-board
26.1-2	grandfather
33.12	well-trained
34.7	kid-leather
35.2	four-wheeler
37.15	Gran’ma
38.10	schoolmates
38.20	postmistress
39.13-14	honeysuckle
40.6	turnpike
40.21	by-road
44.11	necklace
46.20	haing-dawg
49.8	cross-beams
49.9	whitewashed
50.17	purse-strings
54.21	wheel-chair
61.14	trouble-maker
65.8	housekeeping
66.4	mill-hands
74.8	well-planted
74.16	well-placed
75.7	mill-pond
75.22-23	farm-houses
79.24	backwoods
82.14	buckwheat
82.17	buckwheat
97.11	dairyman
103.4-5	headstones
103.5	graveyard
103.10	star-like
106.7	nightgown
106.16	four-post
107.25	armchair
108.12	overcome
111.1	mill-hand
111.25	everything
118.11	farm-house
123.19	springhouse
134.3	candlelight
135.24	postmistress
143.2	long-pressed
145.14	overlook
156.2	rocking-chair
158.2-3	supper-time
158.12	handshake
158.15	sideboard
158.21	twelve-year-old
160.1	runaway
160.6-7	coach-and-four
163.25-164.1	sawdust-filled
164.4	snow-cream
164.8	after-supper
168.1	upstairs
170.17	underbrush
175.12	dining-room
176.23	sunlight
194.18	stairway
197.23	gentlemanly
201.15	Huh-huh
219.7	postmistress’s
219.14	underground
225.6	chairback
229.14	fist-fighters
229.22	moonshiners
229.24	moonshine
246.15	over-flowed
247.1	out-break
249.9	dining-room
253.12	grandfather
255.1	candlelight
255.8	barefoot
257.11	overnight
267.17	postmistress
269.2	stage-driver
269.14	old-time
271.5	carefree
271.10	camp-meetings
271.17	dressmaker
273.2	milestone
280.9	cupboards
280.21	carpetbag
287.1	tea-table

	List B
17.2-3	combing-cloth
17.14-15	grey-and-chestnut
23.17	two-storey
24.18-19	clothes-lines
56.6-7	jelly-making
61.5-6	wash-basin
74.4-5	journey-proud
75.22-23	farm-houses
79.15-16	splint-bottom
87.10-11	mill-hands
88.22-23	mock-oranges
89.4-5	house-bound
100.3-4	dining-room
101.15-16	batter-cakes
118.15-16	cloud-shaped
120.15-16	mourning-bordered
121.12-13	medicine-vendor
128.15-16	haw-haw
133.8-9	well-enough
136.3-4	hitch-post
136.9-10	old-fashioned
149.3-4	good-natured
152.13-14	field-hands
156.1-2	guest-chamber
158.2-3	supper-time
160.6-7	coach-and-four
163.25-164.1	sawdust-filled
167.1-2	wood-box
184.22-23	hitch-post
189.10-11	reading-table
202.18-19	wide-spreading
215.9-10	blue-black
217.2-3	all-important
249.11-12	looking-glass
259.14-15	hitch-block
273.2-3	deep-cut
279.20-21	music-room