CHAPTER XLI
A MISSISSIPPI TOWN
It was dark when, after a journey of one hundred and twenty miles at the rate of twenty miles an hour, we reached Columbus, a city which was never intended to be a metropolis and which will never be one.
Columbus is situated upon a bluff on the east bank of the Tombigbee River, to the west of which is a very fertile lowland region, filled with plantations, the owners of which, a century ago, founded the town in order that their families might have churches, schools, and the advantages of social life. As the town grew, a curious but entirely natural community spirit developed; when a gas plant, water works, or hotel was needed, prosperous citizens got together and financed the enterprise, not so much for profit as for mutual comfort.
In these ante bellum times the planters used to make annual journeys to Mobile and New Orleans, going by boat on the Tombigbee and taking their crops and their families with them. After selling their cotton and enjoying themselves in the city, they would load supplies for the ensuing year upon river boats and return to Columbus, where the supplies were transferred to their vast attic storerooms.
Though their only water transportation was to the southward, they did not journey invariably in that direction, but sometimes made excursions to such fashionable watering places as the Virginia Springs, or Saratoga, to which they drove in their own carriages.
When, in the early days of railroad building, the Mobile & Ohio Railroad was being planned, the company proposed to include Columbus as one of its main-line points and asked for a right of way through the town and a cash bonus in consideration of the benefits Columbus would derive from railroad service. Both requests were refused. The railroad company then waived the bonus and attempted to obtain a right of way by purchase. But to no purpose. The citizens would not sell. They did not want a railroad. They were prosperous and healthy, and they contended that a railroad would bring poor people and disease among them, besides killing farm animals and causing runaways. The company was consequently forced to make a new survey, and when the line was built it passed at a distance of a dozen miles or more from the city.
Gradually dawned the era of speed and impatience. People who had hitherto been satisfied to make long journeys in horse-drawn vehicles, and had refused the railroad a right of way, now began to complain of the twelve-mile drive to the nearest station, and to suggest that the company build a branch line into the town. But this time it was the railroad's turn to say no, and Columbus was informed that if it wished a branch line it could go ahead and build it at its own expense. This was finally done at a cost of fifty thousand dollars.
With the construction of the branch line, carriages fell into disuse and dilapidation, and many an old barouche, landau, and brett passed into the hands of the negro hackmen who were former slaves of the old families. Among these ex-slaves the traditions of the first families of Columbus were upheld long after the war, and it thus happened that when, a few years since, a young New Yorker, arriving for a visit in the town, alighted from his train, he was greeted by an ancient negro who, indicating an equally ancient carriage, cried: "Hack, suh! Hack, suh! Ain't nevah been rid in by none but the Billupses."
Not every young man from the North would have understood this reference, but by a coincidence it was at the residence of Mrs. Billups that this one had come to visit.
Neither as to hack nor habitation were my companion and I so fortunate as the earlier visitor. Our conveyance was a Ford, and the driver warned us, as we progressed through shadowy tree-bordered streets, that the Gilmer Hotel was crowded with delegates who had come to attend the State convention of the Order of the Eastern Star. Nor was his warning without foundation. The wide old-fashioned lobby of the Gilmer was hung with the colors of the Order and packed with Ladies of the Eastern Star and their ecstatic families; we managed to make our way through the press only to be told by the single worn-out clerk on duty that not a room was to be had.
Unlike the haughty clerk who had dismissed us from the Tutwiler Hotel in Birmingham, the clerk at the Gilmer was not without the quality of mercy. Overworked though he was, he began at once to telephone about the town in an effort to secure us rooms. But if this led us to conclude that our problem was thereby in effect solved, we discovered, after listening to his brief telephonic conversations with a series of unseen ladies, that the conclusion was premature. Though there were vacant rooms in several private houses, strange stray males were not desired as lodgers.
Concerned as we were over our plight, my companion and I could not help being aware that a young lady who had been standing at the desk when we came in, and had since remained there, was taking kindly interest in the situation. Nor, for the matter of that, could we help being aware, also, that she was very pretty in her soft black dress and corsage of narcissus. She did not speak to us; indeed, she hardly honored us with a glance; but, despite her sweet circumspection, we sensed in some subtle way that she was sorry for us, and were cheered thereby.
After a time, when the clerk seemed to have reached the end of his resources, the young lady hesitantly ventured some suggestions as to other houses where rooms might possibly be had. These suggestions she addressed entirely to the clerk--who, upon receiving them, did more telephoning.
"Have you tried Mrs. Eichelberger?" the young lady asked him, after several more failures.
He had not, but promptly did so. His conversation with Mrs. Eichelberger started promisingly, but presently we heard him make the damning admission he had been compelled repeatedly to make before:
"No, ma'am. It's two men."
Then, just as the last hope seemed to be fading, our angel of mercy spoke again.
"Wait!" she put in impulsively. "Tell her--tell her I recommend them."
Thus informed, Mrs. Eichelberger became compliant; but when the details were arranged, and we turned to thank our benefactor, she had fled.
Mrs. Eichelberger's house was but a few blocks distant from the Gilmer. She installed us in two large, comfortable rooms, remarking, as we entered, that we had better hurry, as we were already late.
"Late for what?" one of us asked.
"Didn't you come for the senior dramatics?"
"Senior dramatics where?"
"At the I.I. and C."
"What is the I.I. and C?"
At this question a look of doubt, if not suspicion, crossed the lady's face.
"Where are you-all from?" she demanded.
The statement that we came from New York seemed to explain satisfactorily our ignorance of the I.I. and C. Evidently Mrs. Eichelberger expected little of New Yorkers. The I.I. and C., she explained, was the Mississippi Industrial Institute and College, formerly known as the Female College, a State institution for young women; and the senior dramatics were even then in progress in the college chapel, just up the street.
To the chapel, therefore, my companion and I repaired as rapidly as might be, guided thither by frequent sounds of applause.
From among the seniors standing guard in cap and gown at the chapel door, the quick artistic eye of my companion selected a brown-eyed auburn-haired young goddess as the one from whom tickets might most appropriately be bought. Nor did he display thrift in the transaction. Instead of buying modest quarter seats he magnificently purchased the fifty-cent kind.
The dazzling ticket seller, transformed to usher, now led us into the crowded auditorium and down an aisle. A few rows from the stage she stopped, and, fastening a frigid gaze upon two hapless young women who were seated some distance in from the passageway, bade them emerge and yield their place to us.
Of course we instantly protested, albeit in whispers, as the play was going on. But the beautiful Olympian lightly brushed aside our objections.
"They don't belong here," she declared loftily. "They're freshmen--and they only bought quarter seats."
Then, as the guilty pair seemed to hesitate, she summoned them with a compelling gesture and the command: "Come out!"
At this they arose meekly enough, whereupon we redoubled our protests. But to no purpose. The Titian-tinted creature was relentless. Our pleas figured no more in her scheme of things than if they had been babblings in an unknown tongue. To add to our discomfiture, a large part of the audience seemed to have perceived the nature of our dilemma, and was giving us amused attention.
It was a crisis; and in a crisis--especially one in which a member of the so-called gentle sex is involved--I have learned to look to my companion. He understands women. He has often told me so. And now, by his action, he proved it. What he did was to turn and flee, and I fled with him; nor did we pause until we were safely hidden away in humble twenty-five cent seats at the rear of the chapel, in the shadow of the overhanging gallery.
It is not my intention to write an extended criticism of the performance. For one thing, I witnessed only a fragment of it, and for another, though I once acted for a brief period as dramatic critic on a New York newspaper, I was advised by my managing editor to give up dramatic criticism, and I have followed his advice.
The scene evidently represented a room, its walls made of red screens behind which rose the lofty pipes of the chapel organ. On a pedestal at one side stood a bust of the Venus de Milo, while on the other hung an engraving of a familiar picture which I believe is called "The Fates," and which has the appearance of having been painted by some-one-or-other like Leighton or Bouguereau or Harold Bell Wright.
After we had given some attention to the play my companion remarked that, from the dialect, he judged it to be "Uncle Tom's Cabin." I had been told, however, that for certain reasons "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is never played in the South; I therefore asked the young man in front of me what play it was. He replied that it was Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson's comedy, "The Man From Home," and as he made the statement openly, I feel that I am violating no confidence in repeating what he said--especially since his declaration was supported by the program which he showed me.
He was a pleasant young man. Perceiving that I was a stranger, he volunteered the additional information that the masculine rôles, as well as the feminine ones, were being played by girls; and I trust that I will not seem to be boasting of perspicacity when I declare that there had already entered my mind a suspicion that such was indeed the case.
Behold them! Gaze upon the character called Daniel Voorhees Pike! See what long strides he takes, and with what pretty tiny feet! Observe the manliness with which he thrusts his pink little hands deep in the pockets of his--or somebody's--pantaloons!
Look at the Grand Duke Vasili of Russia, his sweet oval face and rosy mouth partly obscured by mustache and goatee of a most strange wooliness.
Observe the ineradicable daintiness of the Honorable Almeric St. Aubyn, but more particularly attend to that villain of helpless loveliness, the Earl of Hawcastle. The frightful life which, it is indicated, the Earl has led, leaves no tell-tale marks upon his blooming countenance. His only facial disfigurement consists in a mustache which, by reason of its grand-ducal lanateness, seems to hint at a mysterious relationship between the British and Russian noblemen.
Take note, moreover, of the outlines of the players. If ever earl was belted it was this one. If ever duke in evening dress revealed delectable convexities of figure, it was this duke. If ever worthy male from Indiana spoke in a soprano voice and was lithe, alluring, and recurvous, she was Daniel Voorhees Pike.
A young woman seated near us described to her escort the personal characteristics of the various young ladies on the stage, and when we heard her call one girl who played in a betrousered part, "a perfect darling," we echoed inwardly the sentiment. All were darlings. And this especial "perfect darling" appeared as well to be a "perfect thirty-six."
The Earl was my undoing. At a critical point in the unfolding of the plot there was talk of his having been connected with a scandal in St. Petersburg. This he attempted to deny, and though I am unable to quote the exact words of his denial, the sound of it lingers sweetly in my memory. Nor would the exact words, could I give them, convey, in print, the quality of what was said, for the Earl, and all the rest, spoke in the soft, melodious tones of Mississippi.
"What you-all fussin' raound heah for, this mownin'?" That, perhaps, conveys some sense of a line he spoke on entering.
And when, in reply, one of the others mentioned the scandal at St. Petersburg, the flavor of the Earl's retort, as its cooing tones remain with me, was this:
"Wha', honey! What you-all mean hintin' raound 'baout St. Petuhsbuhg? I reckon you don' know what you talkin' 'baout! Ah nevuh was in that taown in all ma bo'n days!"
What followed I am unable to relate, for the Earl's speech caused me to become emotional, and my companion, after informing me severely that I was making myself conspicuous, removed me from the chapel.
The auburn goddess was still on duty at the door as we went out. Advancing, she placed in each of our hands a quarter. I regret to say that, in my shaken state, I misinterpreted this action.
"Oh, no! _Please!_" I protested, fearing that she thought we had not enjoyed the performance, and was therefore returning our money. "It really wasn't bad at all. We're only going because we have an engagement."
"Be quiet!" interrupted my companion in a savage undertone, jerking me along by the arm. "It's only a rebate on the seats!" And without allowing me a chance to set myself right he dragged me out.
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