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Updated: June 13, 2025
Then the vast welter of humanity dissolved and streamed hither and thither, gaping and laughing until night, when thousands poured into the red barn of the census shack and entered the artificial fairyland within. The President walked through, smiling; the senators protected their friends in the crush; and Harry Cresswell led his wife to a little oasis of Southern ladies and gentlemen.
'After the turn she got by what she seen in the orchard, when she came to know the truth of what it was, Jinny Cresswell, you may be sure, did not stay there an hour longer than she could help: and she began to take notice of things she did not mind before such as when she went into the big bed-room over the hall, that the lord used to sleep in, whenever she went in at one door the other door used to be pulled to very quick, as if some one avoiding her was getting out in haste; but the thing that frightened her most was just this that sometimes she used to find a long straight mark from the head to the foot of her bed, as if 'twas made by something heavy lying there, and the place where it was used to feel warm as if whoever it was they only left it as she came into the room.
Cresswell forgot two pitfalls: the cleft between the old Southern aristocracy and the pushing new Southerners; and above all, her own Northern birth and presumably pro-Negro sympathies. What Mrs. Cresswell forgot Mrs. Vanderpool sensed unerringly. She had heard with uneasiness of Cresswell's renewed candidacy for the Paris ambassadorship, and she set herself to block it. She had worked hard.
A boy sat at one table, engaged in laborious exercise on a typewriter with one finger of one hand. He jumped up as she came through the door. "Miss Cresswell?" he asked. "Mr. Beale will see you." He opened the wicket-gate and led the way to a door marked "Private." It was Beale who opened the door in response to the knock.
Slipping her arm through Carrie's, and bidding the others good-night, she quitted the room. Miss Cresswell and Nancy followed, with cheery words to encourage Mary and Elizabeth for to-morrow's work. Nora O'Day remained. She was quite a striking figure as she stood leaning with her elbow against the mantel, looking down into the grate. As always, she was richly dressed.
Swift negotiations ensued, and a meeting of the executive committee of the Farmers' League was held in Montgomery. A system of warehouses and warehouse certificates was proposed. "But that will cost money," responded each of the dozen big landlords who composed the committee; whereupon Harry Cresswell introduced John Taylor, who represented thirty millions of Southern bank stock.
He was a large, stout and important-looking man, bald and bearded. He enjoyed an episcopal manner, and had a trick of pulling back his head when he asked questions, as though he desired to evade the full force of the answer. He stood in the doorway and beckoned her out, and she went without any premonition of what was in store for her. "Ah, Miss Cresswell," he said.
Anger struggled back of surprise, but before it burst forth silently the Colonel turned, and muttering some unintelligible word, went slowly into the house and slammed the door. So for Harry Cresswell the day burst, flamed, and waned, and then suddenly went out, leaving him dull and gray; for Mary and her brother had gone North, Helen had gone to bed, and the Colonel was in town.
She did look like a man, with her hat and coat and short hair. The woman peered at her doubtingly. She was, as Mrs. Cresswell noticed, a young woman, once pretty, perhaps, and a little over-dressed. "Are you walking?" she asked. "What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Cresswell, and then in a moment it flashed upon her. She took the woman's arm and walked with her. Suddenly she stopped. "Where's Nell's?"
She told me that she thought the girls acted impulsively, and that she had done what she could to have them wait and consider; but she was only one among many. She was acting-president at that meeting." "Where was Anna Cresswell?" "She was here, but would not attend. Someone told me that she refused to be present." "Did Landis ever come again to see you?" "Very often this semester.
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