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.”
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 petticoat and 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. Outside stood 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.”
“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, 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.”
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.
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, Betty pinched 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 byroad, 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 the 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.