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Title: The victory
Author: Molly Elliot Seawell
Illustrator: John Wolcott Adams
Release date: February 11, 2024 [eBook #72927]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1906
Credits: D A Alexander, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VICTORY ***
THE VICTORY
[Illustration: “Took her little hand in his and raised it to his lips.”
[Page 43]]
_The_
VICTORY
BY
MOLLY ELLIOTT SEAWELL
_Author of_
“The Sprightly Romance of Marsac,”
“The Chateau of Montplasir,” etc.
[Illustration]
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK
1906
COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
_Published October, 1906_
To the Dear Memory of
Henrietta
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--HARROWBY 1
II.--ANGELA 21
III.--THE POINT OF HONOR 39
IV.--LOVE IS A MIST 57
V.--THE HOUR OF FATE 74
VI.--THE QUAKING OF THE EARTH 88
VII.--THE PARTING 102
VIII.--THE MEETING 117
IX.--SPARTANS ALL! 132
X.--THE ARRIVAL OF THE STRANGERS 155
XI.--HOW THE DAYS WENT ON AT HARROWBY 173
XII.--THE IRON HAND OF WAR AND CIRCUMSTANCE 188
XIII.--WARP AND WOOF 210
XIV.--SNOWBOUND 232
XV.--THE HEGIRA 248
XVI.--THE TONGUE OF CALUMNY 264
XVII.--LIKE THE LITTLE TRIANON 282
XVIII.--THE VISITATIONS OF WAR 295
XIX.--“I CAN’T GET OUT!” SAID THE STARLING 309
XX.--A SOLDIER’S ERRAND 327
XXI.--DUST AND ASHES 349
XXII.--LOVE AND LIFE 367
XXIII.--THE AFTERMATH 398
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
PAGE
“Took her little hand in his and raised it to his lips”
_Frontispiece_
“And so Angela Vaughn became Neville Tremaine’s wife” 114
“He lay watching Angela with her quick-changing expression” 236
“‘Missis, I done brought Marse Richard back to you’” 350
THE VICTORY
CHAPTER I
HARROWBY
Bright was the Christmas of 1860 at the old manor house of Harrowby
in lowland Virginia. It lay upon the broad, bright river which ran
laughing into the arms of the great bay, and from there bay and river
rushed together to the windy floors of the wide Atlantic. Nearly two
hundred years before, the first Tremaine, a discontented gentleman, who
found life very uncomfortable in England after Monmouth’s rebellion,
had made the beginning of the Harrowby mansion. It was built quite flat
to the ground, with the low ceilings and steep, narrow stairs of the
seventeenth-century country house.
This first Harrowby house, with a room clapped on here and there,
as each successive inheritor fancied, answered well enough for the
Tremaines until the end of the eighteenth century. Then Mr. Jefferson
having brought back with him from France some noble architectural
conceptions, these became embodied in many Virginia country houses,
including Harrowby. There, a new and commodious house was built,
with a vast entrance hall, lofty ceilings, spacious rooms, and wide
staircases. It was connected by a narrow corridor with the original
house, and although frankly swearing at the first incumbent of the
ground, yet conformed to it enough to make the whole both picturesque
and comfortable. The modern part of the house was reserved for the
master and mistress, for guests, and for those Virginia dinner parties
which lasted from noon until midnight, the Virginia balls where the
dancers’ feet beat the floor from the first rising of the stars until
the rosy dawn, and the Virginia weddings which took three weeks’
frolicking to carry through in style. There were always sons in the
Tremaine family, and these sons required tutors and dogs, so that the
old part of the house, with its shabby Colonial furniture, was always
in possession of men and boys and dogs. The newer part, with its
furniture all curves, its Empire mirrors, its elaborate cornices, and
decorative fireplaces, was reserved for more ceremonious uses.
The house sat upon a great, smooth lawn, which sloped down to the
river, now a dull, steel blue in the red and waning Christmas eve. A
short, rude wharf lay a little way in the river, which softly lapped
the wooden piles. A little distance from the house, to the left, lay a
spacious, old, brick-walled garden, now all russet brown and gold and
purple in ragged splendor like a beggar princess. Great bare clumps
of crape-myrtle and syringas and ancient rose trees bordered the wide
walk which led from the rusty iron garden gate down to the end of the
garden. Here a long line of gnarled and twisted lilac bushes clung to
the brick wall; lilacs and crumbling wall had held each other in a
strong embrace for more than a hundred years. Outside the garden, the
wide lawn was encircled by what had once been a shapely yew hedge,
which had grown into a ragged rampart of ancient trees, black and squat
and melancholy as yew trees always grow. A great gap in this hedge
opened upon a long, straight lane leading to the highroad and beyond
that lay the primeval woods. On each side of the lane were cedar trees
which had once stood young and straight like soldiers, but were now, as
the yew trees, old and bent like a line of veterans tottering in broken
ranks.
Under the somber branches of the yew hedge was a walk of cracked
flagstones, known, since Harrowby was first built, as the “Ladies’
Walk.” For when the paths and lanes about the place were too wet for
the dainty feet of ladies, this flagged path was their exercise ground.
The negroes, of course, peopled it with the dead and gone ladies of
Harrowby, who generally took, upon those broken stones, their last
walk upon earth, and who found it haunted, not by the ghosts of their
predecessors but by the joys, the griefs, the hopes, the fears, the
perplexities, the loves, and the hates which had walked with them
there, in cool summer eves, in red autumn afternoons, in bitter winter
twilights, and in the soft and dewy mornings of the springtime.
Far off in the open field beyond the garden lay the family burying
ground, where, according to the Virginia custom, the dead were laid
near the homestead instead of the church. The brick wall around the
burying ground was decaying, and the tombstones, never properly set
up, were beaten all manner of ways by storm and wind, and trained into
strange positions by the soft insistence of the roots of huge weeping
willows, those melancholy trees which give a touch of poetic beauty to
the most commonplace landscape. Yet the aspect of Harrowby was usually
far from melancholy. On the other side of the house from the garden,
still farther off, were the negro quarters, slovenly but comfortable,
and the stables, which were partly hidden by the straggling yew hedge
that extended all around the lawn. In these quarters were housed the
two hundred negroes on the plantation, and as twenty-five of them were
occupied about the house and garden and stables there was always life
and movement around the place.
Especially was this true at Christmas time, and on the Christmas eve of
1860, never was there more merriment, gayety, color, and loud laughter
known at Harrowby. Lyddon, the English tutor there for ten years was
struck by this, when returning from his afternoon’s tramp through the
wintry woods, he passed across the lawn to the house. The air was
sharp, like a saber, and the stars were already shining gloriously in
the deep blue field of heaven. He watched a half dozen negro men who,
with guttural laughter and shouts and merry gibes, carried into the
house the great back log for the Christmas fire. From the time that
this back log was placed upon the iron fire dogs of the yawning hall
fireplace until it was entirely consumed, the negroes had holiday.
According to the privileged practical joke of long custom, the log was
of black gum, a wood hard to burn at any time. It had lain soaking
for weeks in the inky mud of the salt marsh on the inward bend of
the river, where the cows stood knee-deep in water at high tide, and
hoof-deep in black ooze at low tide. The union of marsh mud and black
gum was certain to insure at least a week’s holiday, when no work was
required of the negroes, except the waiting on the house full of guests
which always made the roof of Harrowby ring during the Christmas time.
Great pyramids of wood towered at the woodpile to the left of the
house, where the joyous sound of the ax was heard for a week before
Christmas, that there should be oak and hickory logs to feed the great
fireplaces, and lightwood knots to make the ruddy flames leap high into
the wide-throated chimneys.
Lyddon, a gaunt, brown, keen-eyed man, who had watched this backlog
business with great interest for ten successive Christmases, studied
it anew as a type of the singular and unpractical relations existing
between the master and the slave. All of these relations were singular
and unpractical, and were a perpetual puzzle to Lyddon. One of the
strangest things to him was that the word slave was absolutely tabooed
and all sorts of euphemisms were used, such as “the servants,” “the
black people,” in order to avoid this uncomely word.
Another typical puzzle was taking place on the side porch. There stood
Hector, Colonel Tremaine’s body servant, and general factotum of
Harrowby, engaged in his usual occupation of inciting the other negroes
to work, while carefully abstaining therefrom himself. He was tall, and
had by far the most imposing air and manner of any person at Harrowby.
Having accompanied his master several times to the White Sulphur
Springs, to say nothing of two trips to Richmond and one to Baltimore,
where he saw a panorama of the city of New York; and most wonderful of
all, having attended Colonel Tremaine through a campaign in the Mexican
War, Hector held a position of undisputed superiority among all the
negroes in five counties. He classified himself as a perfect man of the
world, a profound expounder of the Gospels, an accomplished soldier,
and military critic.
As regards Hector’s heroic services during the Mexican War, he
represented that he was always at General Scott’s right hand except
when his presence was imperatively demanded by General Zachary
Taylor. According to Hector’s further account he led the stormers at
Chapultepec, supported Jefferson Davis when he made his celebrated
stand at Buena Vista, and handed the sword of General Santa Anna to
General Scott when the former surrendered. Colonel Tremaine, on the
contrary, declared that Hector never got within five miles of the
firing line during the Mexican War, and that whenever there was the
remotest sign of an attack, Hector always took refuge under the nearest
pile of camp furniture and had to be dragged out by the heels when the
danger was overpast. He modeled his toilet upon Colonel Tremaine’s,
whose cast-off wardrobe he inherited. The colonel claimed to be the
last gentleman in Virginia who wore a ruffled shirt, and Hector shared
this distinction. Great billows of cotton lace poured out of the
breast of his blue coat, decorated with brass buttons, which was too
short in the waist and too long in the tails for Hector, and for whom
the colonel’s trousers were distinctly too small, and were kept from
crawling up to his knees by straps under the heels of his boots.
What Hector’s business in life was, beyond shaving Colonel Tremaine
once a day, Lyddon had never been able to discover. Colonel Tremaine
always said, “my boy Hector,” although, like the colonel himself,
he had passed the line of seventy; but having become the colonel’s
personal attendant when both were in their boyhood, he remained “my
boy, sir,” until Time should hand him over, a graybeard, to Death.
Another anomaly, scarcely stranger to Lyddon than Hector’s eternal
boyhood, was that, having an incurable propensity to look upon the wine
when it is red, he had entire charge of the cellar at Harrowby, and
when upon occasions of ceremony his services might have been of some
slight use, he was tolerably sure to be a little more than half-seas
over. He made up for this by an Argus-eyed vigilance over his two
postulates, Jim Henry and Tasso, gingerbread-colored youths, who did
the work of the dining room under Hector’s iron rule. So careful was he
of their morals that he made a point of himself drinking the wine left
in the glasses at dinner, “jes’ to keep dem wuffless black niggers f’um
turnin’ deyselves into drunkards, like Joshua did arter he got outen de
ark.”
Now, from Hector’s unctuous voice and unsteady gait, it was perfectly
obvious to Lyddon that Hector had not escaped the pitfall into which
he alleged Joshua had fallen. Lyddon passed along and entered the
great hall, where the work of putting up the Christmas decorations was
not yet finished. A noble fire roared upon the broad hearth and the
rose-red light danced upon the darkened, polished leaves of the holly
wreaths, which hung on the walls and the family portraits that seemed
still to live and speak. Before the fireplace stood Colonel and Mrs.
Tremaine, with Archie, the sixteen-year-old son, who, with exception of
Angela Vaughn, a slip of a girl older than Archie, was the best pupil
Lyddon had ever known. Lyddon himself, with the abstracted eyes of a
scholar and an observer of men, walked up to the fireplace and listened
with patient amusement to the perplexities of Mrs. Tremaine.
She was of a type of woman which he had never seen until he came
to Virginia--delicate, soft-voiced, pious, the chief and only hard
worker on the estate, carrying easily the burden of thought and care
for her family, her unbroken stream of guests, and army of servants.
Lyddon, who looked deep into souls, knew the extraordinary courage,
the singular tenacity, the silent, passionate loves and hates of women
like Mrs. Tremaine. One of the ever strange problems to him was that
this type of woman was remarkably pleasant to live with, and was ever
full of the small, sweet courtesies of life. He reckoned these women,
however, dangerous when they were roused. Mrs. Tremaine, nearly sixty,
when sixty was considered old, had a faded rose beauty around which the
fragrance of the summer ever lingered. She gave the impression of a
woman who had lived a life of luxury and seclusion when, as a matter
of fact, she had, ever since her marriage, carried the burden of a
general who organizes and directs an army. She had, however, that which
gives to women perpetual youth, the adoration of her husband, of her
three sons, and of all who lived in daily contact with her.
Colonel Tremaine, tall, thin, and somewhat angular, with a face
clear-cut like a cameo, had been reckoned the handsomest man of his day
and the most superb dandy in the State of Virginia. He adhered rigidly
to the fashions of forty years before, when he had been in the zenith
of his beauty. He wore his hair plastered down in pigeon wings on each
side of his forehead and these pigeon wings were of a beautiful dark
brown in spite of Colonel Tremaine’s seventy-two years. The secret of
the colonel’s lustrous locks was known only to himself and to Hector,
and even Mrs. Tremaine maintained a delicate reserve concerning it.
Colonel Tremaine also held tenaciously to a high collar with a black
silk stock, and his shirt front was a delicate mass of thread cambric
ruffles, hemstitched by Mrs. Tremaine’s own hands. His manners were as
affected as his dress and he was given to genuflections, gyrations, and
courtly wavings of his hands in addressing persons from Mrs. Tremaine
down to the smallest black child on the estate. But under his air of an
elderly Lovelace lay sense, courage, honor, and the tenderest heart in
the world.
Both Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine bore all the marks of race, and Lyddon
had often wondered where Archie, the youngest child by ten years of
the sons of the house, could have inherited his merry, inconsequential
snub nose, his round face like a young English squireling, and his
frankly red hair. He had neither the beauty nor the intellect of his
older brothers, Neville, the young army officer, and Richard, who
after taking high honors at the university was just graduated in law;
but for sweetness, courage, and an odd sort of humor, Lyddon reckoned
Archie not inferior to any boy he had ever taught. He was his parents’
Benjamin, the afterclap which had come to them almost in their old
age, and was in some sort different to them from their older sons. He
was to be classed rather with Angela Vaughn, the baby girl whom, in
her infancy, Mrs. Tremaine had taken because the child was an orphan
and the stepchild of a remote cousin. Angela and Archie had grown up
together, a second crop, as the colonel explained, and they would ever
be but children to both Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine.
At that moment, Archie, with Jim Henry and Tasso to assist, mounted
on a table, to finish the hanging of the Christmas wreaths, that the
old hall might look its best when Neville, his mother’s darling, and
Richard, her pride, should arrive for the Christmas time. Neville had
succeeded in getting a few days’ leave from his regiment, and Richard,
the most intimate of brothers, had himself driven to the river landing
to meet Neville. They might arrive at any moment and would be certain
to be chilled with the ten miles’ drive in the winter afternoon, and
there was not a drop of liquor of any sort to give them, according to
the universal custom of the time. Hector, having helped himself to
a little fine old brandy left in Colonel Tremaine’s private liquor
case, was quite oblivious of what he had done with the keys both of the
cellar and sideboard, and was struggling to explain this to Colonel and
Mrs. Tremaine.
“I ’clare ’fore Gord, Mist’iss--” he protested with solemn emphasis as
Lyddon came up to the fireplace.
“Come, Hector,” answered Mrs. Tremaine, in a voice of quiet authority,
“don’t take the name of the Almighty in that trifling manner. What have
you done with the cellar keys?”
“Mist’iss, I ’clare ’fore Gord----”
“My love,” interrupted Colonel Tremaine anxiously, addressing Mrs.
Tremaine, “perhaps a little persuasion might discover the truth.”
The colonel, although he swore liberally at Hector himself, never
relished any fault-finding with him by anyone else, even Mrs. Tremaine.
Hector, knowing by an experience of more than sixty years that he had
a devoted ally in Colonel Tremaine, announced with easy confidence: “I
recommember now what I done wid dem keys. I give dem cellar keys to old
Marse, an’ I give him dem sidebo’d keys----”
“You did nothing of the sort,” replied Mrs. Tremaine, in her soft, even
voice, but with a ring of displeasure and authority in it which was
disquieting to both Hector and Colonel Tremaine. “And besides, Hector,
you’ve been drinking, it is perfectly plain.”
“Mist’iss, I ’clare I ain’t tech’ one single drap o’ liquor sence I had
de rheumatiz week ’fore lars’.”
Mrs. Tremaine cut him short by appealing to Colonel Tremaine. Usually
she addressed him as “My dear,” and he replied with “My dearest
Sophie”; but when discussions concerning Hector came about Mrs.
Tremaine addressed the colonel as “Colonel” and he responded by calling
her “Sophia.”
“Colonel, have you seen those keys?”
“Really, Sophia, I have not,” replied the colonel, with as much
tartness as he ever used toward Mrs. Tremaine. The discussion grew
warm, and Hector gave various accounts of what he had done with the
keys, but no one thought of the practical solution of looking for them
until Archie, having hung the last wreath, came up, and diving into
Hector’s coat pockets, the first place which should have been searched,
fished out two bunches of keys.
“I tole you, Missis,” began Hector, still very unsteady upon his legs,
“I had done put dese yere keys somewar. I jes’ disrecollected whar it
was.”
“Very well. Go at once and bring the decanter with brandy in it here,
with sugar and glasses, for your young masters.” Hector walked toward
the dining room, the picture of injured innocence, protesting under
his breath--“I ain’t never teched a drap of liquor sence I had de
rheumatiz.”
Lyddon, standing with his arm on the mantelpiece, smiled and wondered.
This sort of thing had been going on, he felt sure, ever since Colonel
Tremaine had been able to grow hair on his face, and would continue
to the end of the chapter, and Hector, having already had more liquor
than was good for him, was in a position to help himself still further.
Lyddon marveled if such a state of things could exist anywhere on
earth outside of Virginia, and tried to fancy a similar case of the
butler in an English family, but his imagination was not equal to such
a flight. When Hector appeared, however, in a minute or two with the
brandy and the glasses and put them on the polished mahogany table near
the fire, both Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine relaxed their air of being
slightly offended with each other. Colonel Tremaine, looking at his
watch, remarked, with a courtly bow:
“I think, my dearest Sophie, that our sons may be expected within half
an hour, that is, if the boat was punctual.”
“A half hour, my dear, is long to wait for those we love,” answered
Mrs. Tremaine, laying her small white hand affectionately on Colonel
Tremaine’s sleeve, at which the colonel took the hand and kissed it
gallantly.
“You will understand, Mr. Lyddon,” said he, turning to the tutor, who
was still leaning on the mantelpiece, “the very great interest and
importance of our army son’s visit to us at this juncture. The time
will shortly be at hand when every son of Virginia must determine
whether he will stand for or against his State, and it is not necessary
for us to say that we feel certain the services of our son, Neville,
are at the disposition of his State the instant they are required.”
Yes, Lyddon knew the whole story. He had heard it talked about ever
since the news had come a week ago that South Carolina having seceded
from the Union, the day must shortly come when Virginia must cast her
lot either for or against the Union. One of the sources of strength
most counted upon was the resignation of every Southern officer from
the army and the navy, and Colonel Tremaine, having some knowledge of
military life, was proud to think that he had in Neville a trained
artillerist to offer to the new cause.
“The position of a Southern officer in the United States army at
present is a very difficult one,” remarked Lyddon; “there is a question
of honor and conscience involved which each man must settle for
himself.”
“By God!” exclaiming Colonel Tremaine, and then fell silent. The mere
notion of discussing such a thing was to him like discussing the
morality of the Ten Commandments.
“The question is already settled,” added Mrs. Tremaine coldly, and
Lyddon knew there was nothing more to be said. He had realised long
before that there was really no liberty of conscience, much less of
speech, concerning the separation of the South from the North, or
the future of slavery. The minds of these people were made up and
compromise was impossible. They scarcely tolerated what Lyddon had to
say, even though he were an Englishman and an outsider, considering
his doctrine of liberty of conscience concerning slavery and States’
rights to be so dangerous and pernicious that it could not be freely
spoken for fear it might corrupt, as it certainly offended; and Lyddon,
recognizing the adamantine prejudices around him, kept his sentiments
chiefly to himself; only with Richard Tremaine, whose mind was too
comprehensive to be wholly dominated by prejudice, could Lyddon speak
freely. He smiled a little at Colonel Tremaine’s exclamation, but,
being the last man on earth to engage in controversy, let the subject
drop. And Tasso beginning vigorous operations with the broom to sweep
up the remnants of the now complete decorations, Lyddon fled to his
city of refuge, the old, shabby, low-ceiled study across the corridor.
In this old part of the house reigned comfort, quiet, and shabbiness,
sometimes an excellent combination. This was the one room forever
sacred to men, boys, dogs, books, and Angela Vaughn. There, with the
door shut, all was silent, still, and serene--the serenity of books and
bachelorhood. Lyddon drew up a great worn leather chair to the fire,
which glowed ruddily and steadily, and, placing his feet on the fender,
reflected upon the stupendous changes which he knew were at hand, and
which the whole community seemed to comprehend as little as did the
Harrowby family. War and revolution and evolution were imminent, the
upsetting of the whole economic and social order, the leap in the dark
which Lyddon felt sure meant the fall into an abyss; yet the people
talked about it lightly and sentimentally, and seemed to think it
would be a mere holiday parade. But if it should be otherwise, Lyddon
knew enough of the character and temper of the people around him to
understand that they were by nature the most furious and indomitable of
fighters; that the women, if softer, were, if anything, fiercer than
the men.
His thoughts then turned to Angela Vaughn. He often, in his own mind,
compared himself to a gardener who has taken a ragged seedling and has
nurtured it until, grown tall and fair, it is ready to burst into all
the glory of its blooming and then be gathered by other hands than
those which trained and watered it and gave it the fresh air and the
blessed sun. He remembered her when he had first come to Harrowby to
prepare Neville Tremaine for West Point, and Richard for the University
of Virginia. Angela was then a nine-year-old, in pinafores, and had
reminded Lyddon of a Skye terrier, being all eyes and hair. She was as
light as a feather, and Lyddon, accustomed to the heavier proportions
of English children, thought that this wisp of a child, with her tangle
of chestnut hair hanging down her back, and her laughing, black-lashed
eyes of no color and all colors, must be indeed a delicate blossom; but
she led the life of the most robust boy, and had never known a day’s
illness in all those ten years. Lyddon recalled her, pattering about
in the snow, her red hood and mantle making her look like a redbird.
He could see her swinging on the branches of the cherry trees in the
orchard in the springtime, her laughing face and her little white
ruffled sunbonnet making her look like a cherry blossom herself. He
had often watched her scrambling, with the agility of a boy rather
than a girl, on and off her pony, or merrily dancing the schottische
with Archie in the big hall, their music being their own childish
singing; or dashing down the garden path to a little nook on a wooden
bench under the lilac trees, at the end, and always full of a strange
activity. But tucked away under her arm or in her pocket was pretty
sure to be found a book from her own special library, which consisted
of four volumes--a book of good old fairy tales, “The Arabian Nights,”
“Robinson Crusoe,” and an odd volume of the “Odyssey,” telling of
Penelope and the suitors, which she frankly confessed to Lyddon she
could not understand, and read because she liked to be puzzled by it.
Lyddon, who had never before in his life taught a girl, and hated the
thought of it, at first turned his back resolutely upon the child, but
she had a way of stealing up to him and putting her little hand in
his, and saying: “Please, Mr. Lyddon, won’t you read me out of this
book?” The book was generally the “Odyssey,” for Angela found out by
some occult means that at the mention of this book, the eyes of the
grave and somewhat curt tutor would be certain to soften, and Lyddon
relenting would ask the child sternly: “How do you pronounce the name
of this book?”
“I don’t know,” Angela would reply, casting down her eyes and toying
with her little white apron. “I can spell it, but I can’t say it, and I
don’t know what it means, either, unless you read it to me.” The way in
which she said those last words, accompanied with a shy, sidelong look,
always captivated Lyddon, and he had begun with reading the sonorous
lines to her, Angela leaning on his knee and listening with her head
turned a little to one side like a watchful bird. After reading awhile,
Lyddon would again ask: “Now, do you understand it?”
“No,” Angela would reply, shaking her mass of chestnut hair, “but I
like it. Please go on, Mr. Lyddon.” In course of time, to Lyddon’s
amazement, he found himself regularly teaching the child her lessons.
There was a pretense that she was taught with Archie, but as a matter
of fact, not only was she nearly four years older than Archie, but her
capacity for books was so much greater that there was no classifying
her with the boy or, indeed, with any pupil whom Lyddon had ever taught.
Not that Angela was universally teachable; she could not, or at least
would not, learn arithmetic or mathematics in any form, and Lyddon,
whose soul abhorred a mathematical woman, was not sorry for this. He
loved Latin, however, as a cat loves cream, and Angela, finding this
out, learned her Latin lessons with amazing facility. Lyddon had some
notion of teaching her Greek, but forebore from conscientious scruples.
He had no mind to make her a woman like Pallas of the green eyes,
“that dreadful and indomitable virgin,” as Pantagruel says, but would
rather that Angela should grow up to resemble the enchanting maid,
the silver-footed Thetis. He imparted French, too, however, which she
picked up readily; history she learned of herself, and the piano was
taught her by Mrs. Tremaine, who played neatly in the old-fashioned
style. Angela’s gift for music was considerable, and she sang and
played with much natural expression and loved to accompany Archie,
who fiddled prettily. There was always more or less talk of getting
a governess for Angela, and Mrs. Tremaine actually proposed sending
her to a finishing school, but Angela managed to evade both of these
nefarious plans. All the education which was required of the women in
her day consisted of graceful and housewifely accomplishments. These
Angela easily mastered and under Lyddon’s instructions carefully
concealed exactly how much Latin she knew, although a little boastful
of knowing French.
From the first, Lyddon had been forced to yield to the soft seduction
of the child’s nature. He early recognized the difference of sex in
mind, the scintillant feminine intelligence, unlike that of any boy he
had ever taught, sharper in some respects, far duller in others, quick
of apprehension but difficult of comprehension in the large sense. All
this was delightfully obvious to Lyddon as he watched the unfolding
of Angela’s mind. The absence of the creative faculty in women had
been borne in upon Lyddon in his general view of human achievement. He
studied the convolutions in the budding mind of his pupil and it gave
him insight concerning the immense interest far greater than its value
which the intellectual performance of a woman arouses. He recalled that
much had been written about Sappho, but the lady’s poems not having
the germ of eternal life had gone to the limbo of forgotten things,
all except about forty lines. He reckoned that a woman’s personality
and reputation was all of her which could really survive; her work
invariably perished, and Madame de Staël, as a writer, was as dead as
Sappho. Nevertheless, he found himself more interested in Angela’s
divination of books and things than in Neville’s keen and analytical
mind, in the fine and comprehensive intellect of Richard Tremaine or
Archie’s sturdy good sense. Lyddon laughed at himself for the interest
with which he watched Angela’s mental growth, in preference to that of
any boy whom he had ever taught, just as one watches the dancing light
of a firefly with greater interest than a candle’s steady glow. Nor was
Angela’s nature less interesting to him than her mind. He had been
used to the simple nature of boys, but here was a creature not only of
another sex, but, it seemed to Lyddon, of another order, who was not
always merry when she laughed nor sad when she wept nor angry when she
scowled. Angela had moreover a spirit of pure adventure stronger than
he had ever known in any boy. She longed to see the outside world and
was strangely conscious from the beginning of the narrowness of the
life lived by her own people. Their horizon was bounded by the State
of Virginia. Not so Angela’s. She was always teasing Lyddon to tell
her stories of across the seas and planned with him triumphal journeys
to the glorious cities of the Old World, marvelous explorations in the
heart of India and to the very extremities of the earth. Lyddon humored
her in these childish imaginings as he did in everything else. Angela
was now nineteen years old. Like all women she was wise and simple,
frank and sly, brave and timid, and consistently contradictory. When
Lyddon thought of her he recalled the words of another maiden of a
far-off country and a bygone time:
“Take care of thyself if thou lovest me.”
And as he sat thinking, the study door opened and Angela quietly
entered.
CHAPTER II
ANGELA
The study by that time was dark, and Angela, who had learned not to
disturb Lyddon in his reveries, came softly and seated herself without
speaking at the table in the middle of the room. Neither did Lyddon
speak, but he recognized in himself the feeling of subtle pleasure
which Angela’s nearness always gave him. It was as if the fragrance
of spring had been wafted toward him, something silent, intangible,
but deliciously sweet. He could catch from the corner in which he sat
the outline of her slender, supple figure in a pearl-gray gown, her
graceful head leaning upon her clasped hands.
The two sat silent in the dusky twilight of the firelit room for ten
minutes. Then Angela with a peculiar, noiseless grace moved to the
fireplace and, thrusting a wisp of paper into the bed of coals, lighted
the two candles in tall, brass candlesticks which sat upon the study
table and opening a book before her began to read. She had naturally
a good omnivorous appetite for books, an appetite which Lyddon had
sedulously cultivated. At that moment she was demurely studying a
page of Adam Smith which happened to be the book before her. The two
candles only half-illumined the low-ceiled, shadow-haunted room and
appeared like two glowing disks amidst the gloom, but their yellow
light fell full upon Angela. Lyddon, who never wearied of examining
her, concluded it was doubtful whether she would ever be classed as a
beauty. She was too thin, too slight, too immature as yet to be called
beautiful or anything approaching it, but one day she might have much
beauty. Her features were charming, though irregular, and her coloring,
generally pale, was sometimes vivid. Her hair, of a rich bronze with
glints of gold in it, was beautiful and abundant; and her dark lashes
and delicately arched eyebrows were extremely pretty. But except those
and her exquisite grace of movement and sweetness of voice, neither
Lyddon nor anyone else could exactly tabulate her beauty. Her eyes were
not large, but were full of expression and continually changing color.
When she was pleased they were bright and light; when she was angry or
thoughtful they became almost black.
The book remained open before her, but she was not turning the leaves,
and Lyddon, knowing quite well of what she was thinking, said,
presently: “I wonder what makes them so late?” Angela, knowing that
he meant Neville and Richard Tremaine, turned her head toward him and
answered quickly in the sweetest voice imaginable:
“They will be here soon; I feel it all over me. I always know in
advance when I am to be happy and also when I am to be wretched.”
Lyddon smiled. What did this girl of nineteen know of the wretchedness
of which she spoke so glibly?
“Uncle Tremaine and Aunt Sophia thought that Neville wouldn’t be able
to come at all,” Angela kept on, “but I knew he would, even if it were
only for a very little time.”
“Perhaps you wrote and urged him to come,” suggested Lyddon. “You know
that is the way some people receive an answer to their prayers--by
working like Trojans for the thing themselves.”
“Oh, I wrote him often enough,” answered Angela laughing. “Christmas
wouldn’t be Christmas without Neville. I recollect four perfectly
dreadful Christmases when he was at West Point and couldn’t come home.
I was so miserable then, I remember.”
“So do I remember,” answered Lyddon. “I remember that you made a great
outcry about your misery, but you laughed and were as merry as any
child I ever saw on Christmas day, and danced in the evening until Mrs.
Tremaine sent you to bed.”
“Oh, yes, of course, I danced! I can’t help that. When the music is
playing it runs through my veins and makes me dance in spite of myself.”
“Now that Neville is a soldier you can’t expect him to be home every
Christmas.”
“Yes, I know there will be dreadful Christmas times without him----”
“And you will do as you did when you were a little girl, cry and lament
and then enjoy yourself very much. That is, until the war begins.”
“Oh, that won’t make any difference,” replied Angela easily and
adopting the tone of her elders; “the war won’t last long and we shall
be victorious, of course, and there will be comings and goings and
great happenings all the time. Anything is better than this life of
deadly dullness. Neville and Richard will both be officers. Neville,
I suppose, will be a general at twenty-six or seven as the young
lieutenants and captains became in the time of the French Revolution.”
“‘O sancta simplicitas!’ as Mephistopheles says. So they may, my
little girl, and there will be a great many things in this war, if it
comes, very like the French Revolution. But you remember there were
lieutenants who went away and never came back any more at all.”
“O Mr. Lyddon, nobody says such dreadful things except yourself.”
“I know it. War is a merry jest to these people in Virginia. The notion
will be spoiled soon enough; meanwhile, dream your dream of victory. It
is a fine dream, as Marshal Saxe said.”
“At least, let us dream while Neville is here. He will only be here at
Harrowby three days, think of that!”
“And in those three days there will scarcely be a quiet minute
after to-night. Let me see. To-morrow being Christmas day, there
will be a hullabaloo from daylight until midnight; next morning the
hunting party, dinner at Greenhill; a dance in the evening; each day
festivities; and Neville leaves at daylight on Saturday morning.”
“But, then, there will be three mornings when I shall see Neville’s
shoes outside of his door. Oh, what a comfort that will be! And I
shall hear him swearing at Peter, and Richard swearing at Neville for
swearing at Peter, because Richard says that as Peter is his boy nobody
except himself shall swear at him. And Neville will waltz with me in
the hall while Aunt Sophia plays the ‘Evening Star Waltz.’ You remember
he taught me to waltz by that tune. And when Richard makes fun of me,
Neville will say, ‘Never mind, Angela, Richard is a scoundrel and I
will punch his head for him.’ And when Archie will come after me to
find his things for him and to take my watch away because his own is
broken, Neville will say, ‘Go away, you brat, hunt for your own things
instead of asking Angela; and let her watch alone.’ Oh, I always have a
friend when Neville is here! There he is now--I hear the wheels on the
gravel.”
Before Lyddon could turn in his chair Angela had sped swiftly out of
the room. Lyddon rose and went to the small uncurtained window which
looked out upon the front of the house toward the highroad. An open
trap was coming rapidly around the gravel drive, the horses snorting in
the keen night air. Already a dozen negroes were running out, and the
heavy doors of the hall leading upon the pillared portico were open and
Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine were standing on the threshold, while Archie
rushed down the steps. As Richard Tremaine pulled up the horses with a
sharp turn, Neville sprang to the ground, the negroes already greeting
him with “Howdy, Marse Neville, howdy, suh.” Neville, straight,
soldierly, and keen-eyed, threw a rapid glance around as if looking
for some one. He ran up the steps and was within reach of his mother
when Angela slipped into his arms. He kissed her frankly and openly as
a brother might, then let her go and the next moment held his mother
close to his heart. Her head barely reached his shoulder. She was small
to be the mother of such stalwart sons. Then Neville grasped both of
his father’s hands while Archie claimed a boy’s privilege and kissed
him on the cheek. The Tremaines were a demonstrative family; they loved
each other well and were not ashamed to show it. Neville next found
himself in the embrace of his mammy, Aunt Tulip, inky black, the size
and shape of a hogshead, wearing a white apron of vast circumference,
and a big plaid handkerchief wound round about her head.
“‘Bres de lam’,” shouted Aunt Tulip. “I done got my chile home agin.
The Lord done heah my pra’r.” Here Mammy Tulip was rudely interrupted
by Hector.
“You heish your mouf,” he remarked. “Gord A’mighty, he didn’ sen’
Marse Neville hom’ cuz you bawls out ‘Amen, bres de Lord,’ ev’y night
at pra’r time. Marse Neville, I hopes I sees you well, suh, an’ in de
enjoyment ob your profession, suh.”
“Thank you, Hector,” answered Neville, shaking hands cordially with
him. “Of course, I haven’t enjoyed such advantages in my profession
as you did, campaigning in Mexico, but I’m doing pretty well just the
same.”
Then all trooped into the hall, where Lyddon was found.
“How do you do, Mr. Lyddon,” cried Neville. “It is pleasant to see you
once more. I hope you will keep on teaching these two brats, Angela and
Archie, for the next ten years.”
Angela, who had drawn a little away from Neville, smiled with the
superiority of nineteen at being classed as a brat. And then Lyddon
watched one of the sights always amusing and unintelligible to him--all
the negroes crowding around Neville asking him innumerable questions
and being questioned in return while his father and mother, his
brothers and Angela withdrew into the background until these children
of another race had made their greetings. By the time the negroes were
through, Richard had come in, and the family group was assembled around
the great hall fire. Lyddon compared the two elder brothers, who were
singularly alike in figure and carriage, both men of medium height
and size, well made, sinewy, and graceful. They were, however, quite
unlike in feature, Richard resembling Colonel Tremaine, while Neville
had the darker coloring and more irregular features of his mother. But
each had what Lyddon called a fighting eye. Their minds were as unlike
as their features, yet in character they resembled each other as in
figure. Richard had a softness of manner and subtlety of speech which
differentiated him strongly from Neville, who was taciturn and spoke
with soldierly plainness.
Home-coming at Christmas time when there are no yawning gaps in the
circle, no vacant places at the board, no empty chairs round the
fire is full of joy, and Lyddon thought he had never in his life
seen more of family peace and love than the roof of Harrowby that
night sheltered. Mrs. Tremaine sat on the old-fashioned sofa close to
the hall fire with Neville’s arm around her. She patted him on the
shoulder, speaking meanwhile to Richard and Archie.
“Dear sons, I love you as much as this one, but you I have all the year
round while he I have for only three days.” When Mrs. Tremaine said
that all her sons were equally dear to her she uttered an unconscious
falsehood. Neville, her firstborn, had ever been her favorite, if a
favorite can be known where all were so much loved. And between Neville
and his father also existed a peculiar bond in Colonel Tremaine’s
fondness for military life and his attachment to old friends and
comrades who were known only to Neville. The father and son talked
animatedly of army life and military matters in which neither Richard
nor Archie could bear any part. To Colonel Tremaine, Neville’s visits
home were a special delight in this respect, and the two exchanged
stories, theories, and reminiscences to which the others listened with
sympathy, but in silence. When supper was announced, all gathered
around the old mahogany table in the large dining room. There was
enough to feed a regiment and all specially provided for Neville. Jim
Henry forced upon him mountains of batter cakes cooked to a turn, while
Tasso handed him oysters done in four different ways. Hector whispered
in Neville’s ear recommendations of everything on the table. Neville
was indeed lord and master of the feast. All talked to him at once
except Angela, who looked at him with wide sparkling eyes of pleasure
and suddenly electrified everybody by asking in a voice pitched high
so as to be heard over the others, “Neville, are you engaged to be
married?”
“Good God, no,” replied Neville with the utmost sincerity, at which
Tasso suddenly burst into a guffaw and retired to the pantry to indulge.
“You don’t think he would tell you if he was,” remarked Archie, with
the cool assumption of sixteen. “Girls do ask such foolish questions.”
“I shall select my successor,” said Mrs. Tremaine, smiling placidly.
“She shall be a Virginia girl of good lineage and she must know how
to make mango pickle. In every other respect, my son, you may please
yourself.”
“Now, I, as a good father,” cried Colonel Tremaine, beaming and pulling
up his high collar, “shall welcome my son’s wife even if she be a
Mexican señorita. Women, my dearest Sophie, are invariably jealous of
each other, even you. That you are the most judicious of your sex, I
have shown by leaving my estate absolutely to you in the event of my
death. Nevertheless, I would be inclined to doubt your judgment when it
comes to selecting wives for our sons.” Colonel Tremaine’s heart, like
his thread cambric ruffles, was perpetually rushing out of his bosom
and no matter how generous Mrs. Tremaine might be, the colonel had to
be more generous still.
Lyddon looked, listened, and quietly relished this all-embracing family
affection. It was something so new to him. In England, the law of
primogeniture set a ban upon it. He knew something of the antagonism
between the incumbent and the heir, of the niggardliness toward
younger sons and daughters, and the inconvenience of a large jointure
upon an estate. But here everything was different. Like the patriarchs
of old all shared alike.
After supper they went back to the hall where, according to the custom
established when Angela was a little girl, Mrs. Tremaine played the
piano in the drawing-room while out in the hall Angela and Archie
danced polkas, waltzes, and schottisches. Colonel Tremaine and his
two elder sons with Lyddon, sitting around the fire, listened to the
quiet music and watched Angela’s willowy figure as she floated around
the hall with Archie, who, short and stocky, yet danced beautifully.
Outside on the back porch could be heard the shuffling of feet. It was
Jim Henry with Lucy Anne, whose business was to keep the flies off of
“ole Missus,” as Mrs. Tremaine was called, in the summer, and to bring
the eggs in from the chicken houses in the winter, and Mirandy, whose
sole occupation was to hunt for “ole Marse’s” specks, and Sally, whose
business no one exactly knew, were disporting themselves in the dance.
Presently Neville turned and asked, “Have you two children learned to
dance the French two-step?”
Angela and Archie had never heard of it before, but immediately Angela
seized Neville and, dragging him from his comfortable corner on the
old sofa, obliged him to teach her the new dance. In two minutes
she had acquired it; her sense of rhythm was perfect, and for ten
minutes she and Neville danced around the hall together. He was a good
dancer, doing his steps with military precision, but nothing like
so exquisitely graceful as the red-haired Archie. Lyddon, who had
been accustomed to seeing Angela skipping about the hall with Archie,
realized that she was now a woman grown and almost as tall as Neville,
but among them all she was yet treated as a child, and when she begged
Neville for a second dance he tweaked her ear and told her to go and
dance with Archie; he himself was too old to dance with children.
At half past nine, according to invariable custom, the whole family,
including the house servants, assembled in the library for family
prayers. This, like all the other rooms in the new part, was spacious
and high-ceiled. It was lined with those books which no gentleman’s
library should be without: solemn sets of library books with undimmed
gilt lettering and which were only taken from their library shelves to
be dusted. All the books which were ever read were in the shabby old
study across the corridor. Everything at Harrowby was done in a certain
fixed and unvarying manner. The candles used at prayers were always
of wax, in tall silver candlesticks, which were placed with the great
open Bible on a round mahogany table in the middle of the room. The
family sat ranged about in chairs, the servants standing, Hector behind
Colonel Tremaine and Mammy Tulip behind Archie, who as a small boy had
required watching at “pra’r time.” Colonel Tremaine read in a deep
sonorous voice the Gospel, and Mrs. Tremaine made a prayer short and
conventional, but with sometimes a phrase or two added that stirred the
heart. To-night she thanked God for all their blessings adding, “and
last of all for having our children Neville, Richard, Archibald, and
Angela about us in health and well-being.”
Angela Vaughn had ever been included as a child of Harrowby since as
a wailing infant she had first been held in Mrs. Tremaine’s arms. She
was no blood relationship to them and had no fortune, but she had never
felt the want of either love or money.
After prayers, it was bedtime for Mrs. Tremaine and Angela. The girl
kissed Colonel Tremaine good night to which he responded, “Good night,
my daughter, and God keep you.” Latterly, in the dignity of her
nineteen years, she had acquired the habit of putting up her cheek to
be kissed by Richard and Archie instead of placing her arms about their
necks as she did with Colonel Tremaine. When she held her smooth, pale
cheek toward Neville, he brushed his dark mustache over it, and Lyddon
saw something which amazed him--a deep red color showed suddenly under
Neville’s tan and sunburn. Richard saw it, too; nothing escaped his
vigilant eye.
Another Harrowby custom was that after the ladies had retired Lyddon
with his pupils would repair to their own habitat, the old study,
where they read and smoked until the small hours. Colonel Tremaine
took that time for writing his diary, a voluminous record of seedtime
and harvest, colts and calves, and all the minutiæ of a landed estate,
together with moral reflections and sage observations on the weather,
and long excerpts from Pope’s “Iliad” and Wordsworth’s “Excursion.”
He therefore bade his sons and Lyddon good night, who began their
symposium in the study. Little had been said about the great impending
struggle in those first hours of Neville’s home-coming. Once or twice
during Colonel Tremaine’s inquiries about his old friends in the army,
he had said of certain Southern officers, “I suppose they will resign
their commissions when their States secede,” to which Neville had
replied calmly, “I suppose so, sir, or it is generally understood that
such will be the case.”
Lyddon, Neville, and Richard, once in the study with a roaring fire
going and with pipes and cigars, began to enjoy those evening hours
which are to men the cream of the day. Archie by virtue of his sixteen
years was good-humoredly allowed in the company of his elders, but
strictly forbidden to touch either pipe or cigar, cigarettes being
unknown in that time and place. Finding the conversation beyond his
years, Archie soon grew tired and marched off to bed. Lyddon had never
acquired the American habit of cocking his feet up over his head, but
stretching his legs out toward the ruddy blaze, he began to speak of
the impending conflict in terms which were perfectly familiar to both
his listeners.
“The doom of slavery is sounded,” he said. “All the forces of
civilization are arrayed against it. Up to 1830 the problem of slavery
was manageable; the South let the golden moment pass and after 1830
the problem became unmanageable. So the South shut its eyes and passed
within the gates of sleep. You know that island in the Euxine Sea whose
inhabitants never dream--well, the South has done nothing but dream for
the last thirty years. Meanwhile the genie of slavery has got out of
the box. Rivers of blood will be shed in settling this question because
everything of value in the life of a nation has its blood price. But
the emancipation of the negroes really means your emancipation, my dear
fellows, and that of your children.”
Richard combated this with all the brilliant sophistries of the school
of Calhoun which lost nothing in the handling. Richard was a born
reasoner, and Lyddon always admired his masterly presentation of the
case of the South. He frankly admitted that the South must return to
the teachings of the fathers and some day abolish slavery, but never
under the pressure of threats and fanaticism from the North and from
Great Britain. As for defeat in battle, Richard could not grasp this
idea at all. This caused Lyddon to smile.
“Your unmixed Anglo-Saxon blood makes it impossible for you to imagine
defeat, and like all men and women of your race you prove to be bad
losers. You will appeal to the arbitrament of the sword, but you will
never abide by it. After the South has been drenched in blood will come
the great problem of reorganization and the birth of a national life
which slavery has stifled. Now you are all Virginians or Georgians or
Louisianians, but the day will come when you will all be Americans.”
Neville sat and smoked in silence except for an occasional word full of
pith and sense interjected in the conversation. It had always been like
this. Neville was the listener, even as a boy, while Lyddon and Richard
delighted in the attrition of minds. Their talk usually ranged far
afield, but to-night they spoke of nothing except the coming conflict,
and matters referring to it.
“By the way,” said Richard, “I had a letter this afternoon from Philip
Isabey in New Orleans. He returned from Paris months earlier than he
expected because he foresees war, and the first news that reached him
was of the secession of South Carolina. I have always looked forward
to having you, Mr. Lyddon, know Isabey. He writes that he is already
taking steps toward raising a battery of artillery, just the branch of
the service which I shall join when the war breaks out. Isabey is a man
born for success at whatever he undertakes as you well know by all I
have told you of him.”
Ever since Richard’s college days Isabey had been a part of Richard’s
life. Many plans had been made for Isabey to visit Harrowby, but so
far accident had prevented any of the family from knowing him except
Neville, who had readily adopted his brother’s friend as his own during
their brief periods of intercourse. After Richard’s graduation from the
University of Virginia, of which Isabey was also an alumnus, they had
spent two years together in Europe and the tie between them had thus
become more closely knit. Lyddon had profound confidence in Richard’s
judgment of men and was willing to believe that Isabey was all he was
represented to be. It was plain that Isabey was as distinctively French
in blood and training as Richard Tremaine was Anglo-Saxon. Isabey was
a young man of fortune and, like Richard, contemplated entering public
life. His letters, which Richard read aloud with pride, were full
of sound sense, acute observation of men and things, and illuminated
with French wit. There was a daguerreotype of him hanging in Richard’s
room, representing him as a dark, slender young man, rather handsome,
and unmistakably thoroughbred. There were, besides, half a dozen pen
and pencil sketches of him illustrating some of the gay scenes through
which he had lived with Richard in the Latin quarter. Each, while in
Paris, had a handsome allowance which permitted him to enter the best
society, to which each had the right of entrance. But it being contrary
to the traditions of the Latin quarter that students should always
have money to pay their bills, Richard and Isabey managed to squander
their respective allowances in plenty of time to know the conventional
delights of impecuniosity before their next checks arrived. The stories
of their student days were infinitely diverting, and so linked were
the two that Isabey’s personality actually seemed to have a place at
Harrowby. Between war and politics, it was one o’clock in the morning
before Neville, rising, said: “The fire is out and so are the cigars. I
have been traveling for two days, so I shall go to bed. Good night.”
He went out of the room and Lyddon watching him was struck, as he often
was, at the resemblance in the air and figure of the two brothers,
while their faces and voices were so dissimilar that they gave no
indication of a blood relationship.
As Neville closed the door behind him, Richard turning to Lyddon said
significantly, “Neville will not resign from the army when the war
breaks out.”
Lyddon remained silent for five minutes and then replied, “That is the
most tragic thing I have heard for a long time.”
“Yes,” said Richard. “It will break my father’s heart and my mother’s,
too.”
“Has Neville told you that he didn’t mean to resign?” asked Lyddon.
“Not in so many words, but on our way here this afternoon he made me
understand it. You know we have always understood each other perfectly
without going into details.”
“Yes, I have never seen two men with a better understanding than you
and your brother. And it seems never to have been interrupted.”
“Well, we don’t need to thresh things out, Neville and I. He was always
rather a silent fellow and a word from him means a good deal. I am
quite certain he feels that this is perhaps his last visit to Harrowby
and also he knows that whoever may turn against him, I shall not, but I
shall be probably the only one who will not.”
“Except Angela,” said Lyddon coolly. “I always thought that Neville’s
fondness for Angela would develop into a strong passion as soon as she
was grown and I saw it to-night with my own eyes, but nobody else did,
unless it be yourself.”
“I saw it. Neville’s face turned red when he kissed Angela on the
cheek and Neville is not given to blushing. However, I am by no means
certain that Angela will stand by him. She is like most of our Southern
women--a creature outwardly all impulse, inwardly of the most fixed
and determined character. It is a chance whether love or patriotism
will win the day.”
“Yes, it depends upon whether she falls in love with Neville or not.
Come, the fire is out, let us go. It is already Christmas day.”
CHAPTER III
THE POINT OF HONOR
While it was yet dark on Christmas morning, the silvery notes of a
bugle, like the horns of elfland, floated out upon the wintry fields,
the black flowing river, and lost itself in the echoing woods and
far-off uplands. It was the signal for the awakening of life upon the
estate. The bugle was played by Hector from his bachelor quarters
over the carriage house. Hector scorned matrimony and, like Benedick,
thought he should not live until he were married. It was Hector’s
duty by this call to rouse the sleeping black people--a duty which he
cheerfully and punctually performed and then went back to his own bed
to snooze comfortably until he felt like getting up to perform his
sole, regular duty in life--the shaving of Colonel Tremaine.
On Christmas morning, however, all were awake before the sounding of
the bugle call; candles and fires were lighted in the old house and
crowds of negro children with shining eyes and gleaming teeth came
trooping in the early dawn toward the old mansion. Shouts of laughter
resounded, the older negroes appearing and joining in the merry hubbub
and laughing excitement. Santa Claus for them was in the hall of
Harrowby, where were piled up gifts for everyone on the estate. Each
negro child was given a coarse woolen stocking filled to the top with
sweets, and in each stocking was a switch which was understood as an
admonishment to good behavior. The dogs about the place waked; long,
lean, red deerhounds and short-legged beagles, all yelping and barking
in unison. Within the house, as each servant entered the sleeping
rooms to make the fires, the occupant was greeted with “Chris’mus
gif’,” “Chris’mus gif’,” the theory being that the first who claimed a
Christmas gift should get it. There was no more sleeping in the house
after daylight. By seven o’clock all were up and dressed and the hall
doors were opened for the negroes to come in and get their Christmas
gifts. These were distributed by Angela and Archie, the children of the
house.
It was a happy, noisy, primitive occasion and had about it the true
Christmas spirit, the making of a holiday for each dependent. After the
younger negroes had departed, half a dozen old negro men, the veterans
of the place, long since retired from work, remained to have a glass
of apple toddy with Colonel Tremaine. The great family punch bowl was
filled with this concoction of apple brandy, sugar, and roasted apples.
And Colonel Tremaine, filling the glass of each of the old men, wished
him health and long life, to which each responded with the politeness
characteristic of his race, “Sarvint, suh, the same to you, suh, an’
ole Missis an’ young Marse an’ de little Missis.” Hector departed from
this form as not being elegant enough for a person who had been to
Richmond, Baltimore, had seen a panorama of the city of New York, and
who had accompanied his master during the Mexican War, and always
answered as follows: “Colonel Tremaine’s felicitations. I beg, suh, you
will accept, suh, the assurances of my distinguished consideration,”
a phrase which he had mastered with great effort and which invariably
revealed how much liquor Hector had imbibed. He was able to say it
without hesitation at taking his first swig of apple toddy in the
morning, but was likely to become a little mixed in his phrasing as the
day wore on.
Breakfast was late, and as there was to be a large dinner at five
o’clock, the fashionable hour of the day, and a dance in the evening,
there was much to be done by the house servants. But the negroes,
like all their race, reckoned it a holiday when they were preparing
for a festival. As the case was under the old _régime_, the burden of
preparation fell upon Mrs. Tremaine and Angela. Colonel Tremaine, his
three sons, and Lyddon went for a long ride in the morning for the
express purpose of being out of the way while the making ready for
the dinner and the dance created turmoil in the house. Mrs. Tremaine,
with a masterly hand and with Angela to assist her, carried through
the infinite details of the work of preparation for a hundred persons,
where everything had to be done with only the forces and implements
of one household. Hector, as usual, in his determination to save
Tasso and Jim Henry from the danger of strong drink, had consumed the
remainder of the apple toddy himself and, in consequence, soon took no
note of time or anything else, mislaid his keys, misplaced everything
he touched, and, although barely able to keep his feet, harangued
eloquently upon the sin of drunkenness. Mrs. Tremaine had struggled
with this complication for thirty-five years and encountered it as
usual with patience and authority. In spite of Hector everything was in
readiness by four o’clock, for, as the guests came from considerable
distances, they were liable to arrive half an hour before the time or
half an hour afterward.
At four o’clock Angela, dressed for the festivity, took the last look
in her mirror with the happy satisfaction of a nineteen-year-old
girl. She wore a gown of pale blue of trailing length; wide sleeves
with frills of filmy lace fell back from her slender arms. Her gown
was cut away squarely back and front like one she had seen in an old
print of a Romney portrait. Her delicate throat and neck were thin but
exquisitely white. She had longed for a headdress of lace and flowers,
such as Mrs. Tremaine wore, but that had been forbidden as being too
old, and she had only been permitted to twine a long strand of gold
beads in and out among the masses of her chestnut hair. She passed out
of her room and as she reached the top of the staircase the hall door
opened and Neville entered in his riding dress. He walked slowly toward
the staircase, keeping his eyes fixed upon Angela as she came down
the stairs. She was smiling and blushing with the self-consciousness
of first youth and fixed her laughing eyes on Neville as the nearest
masculine object in view from whom to exact tribute. The tribute,
however, was readily paid and in a coin upon which Angela had not
counted. As they met upon the broad landing of the stairs there was a
look in Neville’s eyes which Angela had never seen there before; love
had taken the place of kindness, Neville did what he had never done
before in his life to her--took her little hand in his and raised it
to his lips. Like all women, she recognized the master passion at the
first glance and under all disguises. Neville in an instant of time
had changed from the indulgent elder brother, the friend, the grown-up
companion of her childhood, and had become her lover, a being to be
reckoned with and different in many ways. The feeling was not one of
rapture to Angela any more than an electric shock is rapture.
“How pretty you are, Angela!” said Neville, still holding her hand.
Angela, with a scarlet face, tried to hark back to their old relations.
“It is the first time you ever called me pretty in my life,” she said.
“I remember how furious I was once a long time ago when I heard you
telling Aunt Sophia that you didn’t believe I should ever have any good
looks, I was so--skinny.”
“It must, indeed, have been a long time ago,” answered Neville in the
tone of a lover. “The truth is, Angela, you are to-day grown up for the
first time. Until now you have been a child, but after this you will be
a child no longer, for you are loved by a man--by me.” The words had
come involuntarily and the next moment Neville called himself a fool
a thousand times over for taking such a place and such a time to make
such an acknowledgment. Richard Tremaine had suddenly entered the hall
by a small door close to the stairs and coming rapidly up the steps
caught Neville and Angela standing hand in hand with every evidence
of guilt. Neville dropped Angela’s hand and scowled at Richard, who
gave one comprehensive glance at Angela’s crimson, downcast face, and
then, turning to Neville, winked portentously. Angela, turning from
them both, ran lightly down the stairs while Richard followed Neville
back down the stairs into his own room. The brothers had adjoining
rooms, small and low, on the ground floor in the old part of the house
and next the study. There was a door of communication between the two
rooms which always stood open. When the brothers were alone, Neville
condescended to smile a little as Richard said laughing, “By Jove, I
didn’t mean to do such an ungentlemanlike thing as interrupt a love
scene.”
“And I didn’t mean to make it a love scene,” responded Neville grimly.
“Oh, never mind, old fellow, those things will happen, you know! I knew
a man once who made an offer to a girl at twelve o’clock on the Fourth
of July in front of the custom house in New Orleans and they were
married and lived happy ever after. I hope this affair may turn out
likewise.”
“But it is no merry jest, as you know, Richard. This may be the last
Christmas I shall ever be permitted to spend under my father’s roof.
When I see and feel my mother’s tenderness, my father’s kindness, and
know how it may change in the twinkling of an eye, it staggers me.”
“I shall not change,” replied Richard briefly. And the two brothers
clasped hands for a moment. Whatever else might be torn apart, the tie
of brotherly love could never be severed. When Neville spoke next it
was only to tell Richard what he had known before.
“If Virginia goes out of the Union,” he said, “I shall not resign from
the army. Of course, I want to and would if my conscience permitted,
but I can’t. I have gone all over it a thousand times; everything draws
me to the South, even my own interests. My position in the United
States Army will be a frightful one. I shall be hated by my own people
and distrusted by those with whom I must remain. I shan’t have the
approval of anyone except”--he struck himself on the breast--“here.”
“Have you reasoned it out, Neville? Do you think it can be possible
that you alone should be right and nine-tenths of the men in your
position, nay, ninety-nine out of a hundred, should be wrong?”
“I am a soldier, Richard. I haven’t your subtlety. I can only ask
myself this question, ‘Does the oath I took on entering the army still
bind me?’ I feel that it does. Incidentally, this course wrecks me, but
if I do otherwise, my honor is wrecked.”
There was a pause as the two brothers stood facing each other in the
little room with its small windows filled with the dull glow of the
dying December sun. They loved each other well and it seemed as if the
hour of separation and doom were coming fast. Their intimacy was such
that although their first parting had come when Neville was seventeen
and Richard but sixteen, it had made not the smallest change in either.
Each had many friends, but his intimates, except Philip Isabey, were
found only under the roof tree of Harrowby. Both men grew pale as they
stood silent and reflective. Then Richard said: “It is just as well to
keep it from our father----”
“And from our mother.”
“Yes, by all means from our mother.”
“Think how strange it is when I leave Harrowby this time, I don’t know
whether I shall ever be permitted to come here again.”
“At least, while you are here you are the favored son. Yes, Neville,
mother loves you better than anything on earth and father is more in
sympathy with you than with me because he loves military life. I am not
thinking so much of you as I am of them. Great God, what a deathblow
they must receive!” Richard turned and went into the next room.
Neville walked to the window and looked out upon the sweet, familiar
landscape now all red and gold in the declining afternoon. He peopled
it with all the events of his boyhood and youth and through all was
a vision of Angela in her little white frock--the spoiled darling
of the family. Mrs. Tremaine was a good disciplinarian and her own
three sons were brought up under wholesome restraint, but Angela,
being fatherless, motherless, and penniless, had been treated with
an indulgence which would have ruined an ordinary nature. Neville
remembered with a smile that on the few occasions when Mrs. Tremaine
had undertaken to administer some mild punishment to the child, Colonel
Tremaine had always frowned and called Mrs. Tremaine “Sophia” during
the rest of the day. And when Archie and Angela had got into mischief
together, justice was sternly meted out to Archie while Angela was
always let off with a promise to be good in the future. But under this
excess of kindness Angela had developed as a peach ripens on the sunny
side of a wall. Neville glanced through the open door and saw Richard,
still in his riding clothes, sitting before the fire with his feet
stretched out to the blaze. He was reflecting upon the blow which was
to fall at Harrowby. Neville went into his brother’s room and, leaning
against the mantelpiece, said: “When I go away, take care of Angela for
me.”
“I had forgotten all about Angela,” answered Richard frankly. “I was
thinking of our father and mother.”
“You must think also of Angela; she will have her share of pain--that
is, if she stands by me.”
Neither had noticed how the time had passed or that the early twilight
of winter had fallen upon them until Peter, Richard’s boy, suddenly
burst into the room and cried out, “Good Gord A’might’, Marse Richard,
de company is comin’ an’ Unc’ Hector he done knocked ober an’ broke one
o’ ole Marse’ bes’ decanters, an’ Missis say fur de Lord’s sake to come
in ’long to her right ’way.”
The company had come indeed, and by the time Richard and Neville had
scrambled through their dressing, the whole party was assembled in the
drawing-room--a fine large apartment with many mirrors and a grand
piano as large as a small house. The guests were the usual types of
country gentry; the men, full-blooded, hard-riding, and sometimes
hard-drinking, but full of an Old World courtesy and grace; the women,
gentle, soft-voiced, with a certain provincial grace. Mrs. Tremaine,
in a brown brocade with fine old lace and a lace headdress which was
admired and envied by Angela, wore an air of serene triumph as the
mothers of sons always wear. As the young men came in and greeted their
guests, Neville was overwhelmed with kindly welcome. He came from
the great outside world which was strange to most of these people,
whose travels rarely extended beyond Baltimore in one direction and
the White Sulphur Springs in another. Standing close to Mrs. Tremaine
was Mrs. Charteris, her friend and schoolmate, the richest widow in
five counties, with one only son, a boy not yet eighteen years of
age. Neville greeted her with fine courtesy and Richard with charming
impudence, and kissing her on the cheek, inquired when her wedding
would come off with Mr. Brand, the rector of Petworth Church. As this
affair had been going on for at least twenty years and Mr. Brand had
made no perceptible headway, it had become a county joke.
“I declare the impudence of the young men of the present day is
perfectly intolerable,” cried Mrs. Charteris, delighted with Richard’s
presumption. “There’s Mr. Brand now, just coming in. Go and ask him.”
The rector, who was at that time shaking hands with Colonel and Mrs.
Tremaine, was the tallest and by all odds the handsomest man in the
room, with a voice of melodious thunder, and it may be added that Mr.
Brand was commonly considered the most chicken-hearted of his species.
He escaped from Colonel Tremaine’s bowing and scraping and elaborate
welcome to march over to his inamorata, Mrs. Charteris, who, like the
rest of her sex, enjoyed tormenting a lover and promptly hit upon the
subject most painful to the rector’s feelings.
“Well, Mr. Brand,” she cried, “I sympathize with you more than I can
express. We all know your warlike spirit and that you would be in the
forefront of the hottest battle if you could, but Colonel Tremaine has
just been telling us that when the war breaks out only the services of
men under forty-five years will be required. Of course, however, you
can volunteer, and with your splendid physique, you are certain to be
accepted.”
Mr. Brand winced. He was oratorically patriotic and took the ground
that when the conflict came, every able-bodied man should shoulder his
musket and go to the front, that is to say, except himself. Moreover,
his age, which was well beyond the fifty mark, was a tender point
with him, and it was exactly like Mrs. Charteris, who was a notorious
meddler, to be raking up these unpleasant subjects and laughing
irreverently.
“My calling, my dear Mrs. Charteris,” began Mr. Brand lamely. “My
cloth----”
“Oh, chaplains will be needed in our armies; you don’t suppose that the
Southern soldiers will be a set of heathens, do you? And you can have a
chance to march----”
“And sleep in the mud and catch rheumatism and starve----”
“And be a target for Yankee bullets like the rest of us,” added Richard
Tremaine maliciously, who was a secret partisan of Mrs. Charteris.
The conversation then grew general all about the coming war. The news
of South Carolina’s secession was still fresh and vivid, and it was
realized that the parting of the ways had come. The ladies professed
their willingness to wear their old hats and bonnets indefinitely, to
scrape up all the linen sheets for lint and to outdo the women of the
French Revolution in patriotism. The gentlemen encouraged the ladies
by their laughter and applause except Neville Tremaine, but as he was
usually a reticent man, no one was surprised at his silence. Mrs.
Tremaine, as the mother of two gallant sons to give the Cause, assumed
unconsciously the arrogance of proud motherhood and exchanged strange
glances with Mrs. Charteris, who with one seventeen-year-old boy knew
herself to be envious of the other woman.
It was after five o’clock before the last belated carriage load had
arrived and the guests were marshaled into the dining room. A great
table, bright with candles, was laid the full length of the room with
side tables at intervals where the younger and merrier members of the
party sat. It was a feast which would have delighted a Crusader. A huge
turkey was set before Colonel Tremaine, who with elaborate apologies
to the whole table, was forced to rise in order to carve the gigantic
bird. Everything eatable that grew in the earth or walked upon it or
could be found in the depths of the sea or winged its way through the
air was found upon that Virginia dinner table. Hector was still able
to keep his feet in spite of halcyon incursions upon the bowl of apple
toddy in the hall, and was in great form and imitated with more than
usual success all of Colonel Tremaine’s affectations. He spilled the
wine upon the cloth, liberally distributed gravy over some of the
ladies’ dresses, and in a fit of absent-mindedness served the custard
with the ham. But these trifles were borne suavely by all present
except Lyddon, who reckoned Hector to be about as much use in the world
as the fifth wheel to a coach or a second tail to a dog. There was
much laughter, as became a Christmas feast, and Mrs. Tremaine, with a
pride which she called humility, recognized that of all the young men
present, her two sons easily bore away the palm. They had seats at the
main table, but Angela with Archie and half a dozen youngsters were
seated at the side tables.
Angela was glad of this until she found that she was in full view of
Neville across the room, and instantly she became conscious of his
observation. As the dinner progressed the war talk increased, and as
the wine circulated freely and the decanters spun around the table
upon the old-fashioned coasters, the conversation grew louder and
graver. The war spirit in this people was strong. They loved fighting
for fighting’s sake, and were eager to begin the conflict. The last
stupendous course, a huge plum pudding, having been served, according
to the old custom, the cloth was removed and the shining mahogany table
bore only the nuts and wine. Then the drinking of toasts began. Colonel
Tremaine’s usually pale and high-bred face was flushed, as it might
well be after such a Christmas dinner and Christmas wine, and it grew
still more so when he proposed a toast.
“My friends,” said he, “let us drink to the gallant State of South
Carolina. She has shown us the way, and Virginia will soon follow. Let
us drink this toast with all honors.” He rose and there was the noise
of thirty persons pushing back their chairs and coming to their feet.
All glasses were filled and raised except one, and that was Neville
Tremaine’s. Colonel Tremaine looked at him inquiringly, and Neville,
smiling, said pleasantly to his father, “You, sir, as a soldier
understand that as long as Virginia stays in the Union, I, as an
officer of the United States Army, cannot drink the toast you propose.”
“Certainly,” answered Colonel Tremaine quickly. “You are excused, my
son. We understand perfectly how you are situated at present, but the
day will come when you will be able to drink to this sentiment with
us.” The toast was drunk standing and then Mrs. Tremaine in a soft,
clear voice at the head of the table added:
“And let us now drink to secession.” At this there was a burst of
applause, and Mrs. Tremaine, sipping the last of her wine, did what
only a woman bursting with patriotism could do, struck the slender stem
of the wine glass on the edge of the table and smashed it to bits. Mrs.
Charteris raised her hand.
“Spare the wine glasses,” she cried. “They’re cut glass, every one
of them, and the breaking of one is enough to show Sophie Tremaine’s
patriotism.”
The wine glasses were spared, but the fighting spirit was mightily
increased by this simple action on Mrs. Tremaine’s part. By the time
thirty persons had been served the fiddles were heard tuning up in
the hall. There Uncle Josh, the plantation fiddler, with a couple of
hirelings were running the bows across the strings. Other guests were
arriving for the evening party. And to them coming from long distances
in the December evening, another kind of a meal had to be immediately
served; hot biscuits, sandwiches, and coffee were reckoned to be a
mere appetizer for the substantial supper which was due at midnight.
Ladies muffled up in wraps and gentlemen in riding cloaks were pouring
in a steady stream up the broad stairs and in a little while the large
drawing-room was full, while in the library the card tables were set
out for the elderly persons who liked a quiet rubber. The hall into
which the piano had been wheeled was given up to the dancers, and half
a dozen sets of quadrilles were formed. In those days gentlemen of all
ages danced and usually made havoc in the lancers, which were just
then coming into fashion, and of which the figures were only perfectly
done by the young and modish. General round dancing was considered
improper, and when Uncle Josh and his postulants played the few waltzes
and polkas and schottisches in their repertory, girls danced with each
other or with their brothers.
The apple toddy was going steadily the whole evening. In that day
and time it was thought a mark of spirit in a man to become what
was euphemistically called “a little mellow.” Colonel Tremaine was
decidedly mellow and Mr. Brand mellower still. Dr. Yelverton, the
great medical luminary of the county, had already requested Hector’s
assistance up the stairs to the gentlemen’s dressing room, where he
proposed to take a short nap. Hector, who was the mellowest man at
Harrowby, attempted to assist the doctor up the steps, and but for
Lyddon, who sustained them both, the pair would have come to grief on
the first landing. Other elderly gentlemen did the double shuffle and
cut pigeon wings after the manner of 1830, and several, following Dr.
Yelverton’s example, sought refuge at various times in the haven of
the dressing room. About three o’clock in the morning, after seven
hours of continuous dancing, the move was made to break up so that the
driving home along the country roads could be made by the light of a
late moon. Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine pressed each guest who hinted at
departure to remain longer, but at last the order was given to play
the reel with which all Virginia parties break up. This was the great
dance of the evening, and the fiddlers put renewed energy into their
sawing and scraping. Every gentleman asking a lady’s hand for the reel
paid her a special compliment. Neville had danced with every lady in
the room except Angela, but early in the evening he had whispered to
her, “You’ll save the reel for me, won’t you?” And Angela had replied
out loud, “Yes.” No one was excused from this last dance; even Lyddon,
the most awkward man alive, was pressed into service and forced to
walk through it. Colonel Tremaine led with Mrs. Charteris and executed
the most beautiful and difficult steps ever seen, meanwhile blowing
kisses to the ladies. When the march figure was executed, the rhythmic
hand-clapping accentuated the music and put new life into the fiddlers.
As the partners of the dance were in full view every moment, there was
no opportunity for Neville to exchange a word with Angela, but as they
passed fleetly down the middle she felt the warm pressure of his hand.
It was an hour before the reel was over, and then when the last strain
was played and the formation broken up, Angela, running up to Colonel
Tremaine, whispered something in his ear. Then she went to the piano,
and Archie, following a signal, appeared with his violin and bow in
his hand. Colonel Tremaine in a voice as mellow as himself called out:
“My friends, one thing more remains for this Christmas night. The
daughter of our family and my youngest son have made themselves
proficient in the new patriotic air called ‘Dixie,’ which is destined
to become the national air of the South, and they will now have
pleasure in performing it for you.” The voices and bustle of a crowd
of persons stopped instantly, and Angela, playing the opening chord of
‘Dixie,’ Archie struck into the first inspiring strain of the air. The
two played it through with immense fire and spirit and then a storm of
applause burst forth. Gentlemen shook hands, ladies clasped each other
and fell into a rapture of hand-clapping and cries of applause. The air
had to be repeated a half dozen times, and each time the tempest of
enthusiasm rose and swept with magic force the souls and hearts of all
present. Two persons alone were excepted, Neville Tremaine and Lyddon.
They stood together near the fireplace while the music and cheering
echoed around them and exchanged significant glances. “It is the _ça
ira_ of to-day,” said Lyddon in Neville’s ear.
At last, after an hour of excitement, enthusiasm, laughter, cheering,
and glorious anticipation of victory, the last guest had driven off,
and the ghostly light of a pallid moon and the dawn was creeping in at
the windows. The candles had burnt down in their sockets and the hall
fire was low when the Harrowby family said good night, or rather good
morning. Lyddon noticed that Angela, although in appearance so fragile,
seemed as fresh as when the dancing had begun eight hours before, and
in fact she and Archie, after the fiddlers had gone, danced a final
polka without music and had to be sent ignominiously to their rooms by
Mrs. Tremaine’s authority. When Lyddon with Richard and Neville went
into the study for a smoke before a three hours’ morning nap, they
found Hector snoring comfortably on the hearth rug.
“I wonder if any people in the world except you easy-going Virginians
would stand this sort of thing?” said Lyddon, who had never been able
to accustom himself to the spectacle of a butler who had got tipsy on
every possible occasion for forty years.
“Oh, that’s nothing!” replied Richard easily. “You never have
understood our peculiar institution, Mr. Lyddon; it is strictly feudal,
you know!”
“It is a little too infernally feudal for me,” replied Lyddon. “It is
worse than the feudalism in the Highlands of Scotland.”
CHAPTER IV
LOVE IN A MIST
It was broad daylight before the entire household at Harrowby was
asleep, but Angela, in the great four-posted bed with curtains and
valance, had fallen asleep--young, healthy being that she was--the
instant her head touched the pillow. The day came dull and quiet, and
no light penetrated the closed shutters and drawn curtains of the large
room in which Angela slept. It was twelve o’clock before she opened
her eyes and then closed them again. She felt a delicious sense of
languor after her hours of dancing and gay excitement, and the large,
soft bed invited continued repose. She could not, however, go to
sleep again. Wandering thoughts of what had happened the night before
stole upon her, and then all at once Neville’s image, his looks, the
pressure of his hand, so different from anything she had ever known,
flashed upon her. She tried to put the thought away and, closing her
eyes resolutely, lay still as a statue with that determination to go
to sleep which always defeats its object. Presently, she sighed and
turned restlessly; there was no more sweet repose for her, she had come
face to face with that insistent passion which questions and demands an
answer.
For the first time in her life the thought of meeting Neville made
her feel shy. She loved him, oh, yes! Better than Richard, better
than Archie! Neville had always been her champion who stood between
her and disappointment, who warded off justice, who always approved
of her, but Neville as a lover, as a husband--for Angela’s vivid mind
traveled quickly--ah! that was different. If she married Neville it
would be like the continuation of a story of which she already knew
the best part. She yearned for life, movement, knowledge, a view of
the great outside world, which to her in imagination appeared far more
fascinating than any world could be, and yet on the threshold she was
to be handed back to settle in the same groove, to see the same faces,
do the same things as she had done all her life. She loved Harrowby
with all her soul, but longed to try her wings in flight. It seemed
as if the great book of life lay open before her, but she could not
be permitted to read any part which she had not already read. Prince
Charming, that other half of her heart and soul, that unknown being
about whom it was so delicious to wonder, would never come to her.
Suddenly it came to her that Prince Charming was an entity and had a
name--he was Philip Isabey. That straight-featured, black-eyed man of
whom she had heard so much, whose wit, courage, daring, grace, and
accomplishments Richard proudly recounted. In the still, abstracted
life Angela led, with its narrow round of small duties, its larger but
tamer pleasures, Angela’s imagination had felt the need of some object
around which to weave its spell. Philip Isabey had become that object.
Angela’s imagination was already in love with him and Angela and her
imagination were one. She had never seen him, but that only made her
long the more to see him. He had dominated her girlish dreams as far
back as she could remember. She recalled slipping into Richard’s room
and looking with a delicious sense, half rapture, half guilt, at the
daguerreotype of Isabey and the sketches of him which were pinned to
the walls. This apotheosis of Philip Isabey was her only secret, and
being watched and tended, it grew fast and was cherished. When the
recollection of this dream idyl came to Angela, she sat up in bed and
clasped her hands with dismay. It must now come to an end, for Neville
loved her--Neville, the best and truest man on earth, but not Prince
Charming.
Just then the door opened quietly and Mirandy entered with a breakfast
tray. On it lay a note--a few lines from Neville wishing her good
morning. Angela’s first impulse was to smile, then to scowl. She
told Mirandy sharply that it was not yet time for rising and after
making the fire to go out and leave her. Soon the blaze lighted up the
great darkened room, and Angela tried to persuade herself that it was
midnight and not day as she lay in the great white bed watching the
firelight dancing on the ceiling. She thrust the note under her pillow,
but she could not forget that it was there and it disturbed her. It was
four o’clock in the afternoon before she came downstairs. The house
was still, Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine having gone out for a drive,
Lyddon, Richard, and Archie being off on different expeditions and
the servants, more asleep than awake, in a general state of collapse.
Angela went into the study and there sitting by the window was Neville
with a book in his hand. He rose at once as she entered and closed the
door after her.
“I have been waiting to see you, Angela,” he said, taking her hand
and leading her to the old leather-covered sofa; and then briefly
and simply as a man who is a man speaks his love, he asked Angela to
marry him. She had never said “no” to Neville in her life and it was
clearly impossible now. Her shyness, her coldness, neither surprised
nor disconcerted Neville. She was in many respects younger than her
nineteen years, and this was her first acquaintance with love. But
Neville knew or thought he knew that Angela’s intimacy with him was
so great, her dependence on him so absolute, her affection for him of
such long standing that she could not only be happy with him, but that
she could not be happy with another man--for Neville Tremaine thought
first of the woman he loved and secondly of himself. And in this belief
he had a little time of rapture. But his dream was broken when he
mentioned marriage to Angela.
“I shouldn’t have spoken so soon, Angela, but for the time in which we
live. You know I am leaving day after to-morrow, and God knows when, if
ever, I shall return.”
“You will come back when the State secedes,” said Angela positively.
They were sitting on the sofa with Angela’s bright head close to
Neville’s dark one.
“Ah, my dearest,” he said, “I don’t know whether I shall ever come
back. I haven’t yet said whether I would resign from the army or not,
and if I feel as I do now I shan’t.” Angela drew away from him and
looked at him with wide, startled eyes.
“I--I don’t understand,” she said. “Of course you will resign;
everybody expects that you will.”
“I know it. It would be a great deal easier for me if I could. But a
soldier, Angela, has not the same attitude of conscience that any other
man has. You know honor should come first with every man, but military
honor takes possession of a man and disposes of him; so it will dispose
of me.”
Angela gazed at him with dark and troubled eyes. She did not fully
understand all that Neville’s words implied, but they gave her pain and
amazement and Neville seeing this gently explained to her. “What I mean
is if the choice were given me on the one hand of having you, beloved,
of fulfilling my father’s and mother’s wishes, of inheriting Harrowby
as my father and mother have always told me, and on the other hand
of giving up you and all whom I love and my inheritance, I should be
compelled to do it if I felt that my duty as a soldier required me to
remain in the United States Army, and at this moment it so appears to
me.”
Angela fell back and withdrew her hand from Neville’s, and he made no
effort to detain it. “You have promised to marry me, Angela,” he said
quietly, “but if you are frightened at what you have done, I am the
last man in the world to hold you to your word.”
The profoundest art could not have hit upon an idea more likely to
influence Angela than the one which Neville had used without any art
whatever. Angela, like all young creatures of high and untried courage,
spurned the faintest suggestion of fear. “I am not afraid of anything,”
she said. “I never was afraid to keep my word.”
“Child, you were never called upon to keep such a promise as this, and
what I may do may mean that I shall never again be recognized by any
whom I love unless it be yourself; it may mean the same to you.”
“If it does, I hope I should not be less brave than you.” Angela put
her hand again into Neville’s, and he saw that he was victor. They had
one hour together sitting in the dusk of the old study where they spent
so many hours in the past when Angela was a little girl in a white
frock and Neville was already a young man. The one fascination which
Neville had for Angela was in his courage, that quality most adorable,
most compelling to all women. She had not asked herself whether she
were in love with him or not; it seemed so impossible to go against
Neville or to desert him, and yet it was not to her what she had
dreamed first love to be. Neville was not Isabey. When at last in the
twilight they heard the servants moving about in the other part of the
house and the carriage with Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine drive up to the
door, Angela rose hurriedly, confused for the first time in her life at
being found alone with Neville. As they reached the door she caught his
arm and said hurriedly: “Shouldn’t we keep this a secret?”
“Perhaps it would be better for you,” answered Neville after a moment.
“You see the test is yet to come.” They passed into the hall and
Neville went out to assist his mother from the carriage. As the great
hall door opened a gust of icy air came in; the evening had grown
bitterly cold. Mrs. Tremaine came up the steps with Neville’s arm
around her, who, with the other arm, offered to assist the colonel, who
repulsed him indignantly, meanwhile putting his arm around Neville’s
neck.
“A pretty pass, sir, it is when you imply that I am too old to get up
the steps alone. I defy you, sir, or any fellow of your age to dance
the Virginia reel as long as I can. I observed you youngsters last
night. None of you had the life and spirit in you of your elders. Upon
my soul, the youngsters of to-day are the most solemn, old-maidish,
milk-and-watery set I ever knew. You should have been with us in
Mexico. Ah, my dearest Sophie, the dark eyes of those Mexican Señoritas
haunt me still!” And the colonel slapped himself upon the heart, and
ogled Mrs. Tremaine as if she were sixteen and he were twenty.
That night there was to be a party at Greenhill and, as early hours
were the fashion, the Harrowby carriage was to start at seven o’clock
to make the five miles to Greenhill. In a little while Lyddon with
Richard and Archie appeared, and they all sat round the hall fire
discussing the ball of the night before. Colonel Tremaine was charmed
with Angela and Archie’s delightful surprise of playing “Dixie” for the
first time and insisted that Archie should take his violin to Greenhill
that night and repeat the performance.
Angela had a very good excuse for not appearing at supper, saying that
she was obliged to dress. But this was something new on her part,
because usually when Neville was at home she had to be dragged away
from him in order to make her toilet if they were going to a party.
Colonel Tremaine, who was an arrant sentimentalist, had noticed one
or two things between Angela and Neville, and when Mrs. Tremaine was
putting on her lace headdress in her bedroom, the colonel tapped at
the door and asked her to step into his dressing room. Then, closing
the door, he remarked: “My dearest Sophie, have you noticed anything
of a suspicious nature, I mean an agreeably suspicious nature, between
Angela and Neville?”
Mrs. Tremaine, gorgeous in blue satin, and adding a white feather to
her headdress, stopped for a moment as if she had been shot, and put
her hand to her heart. No woman ever hears with composure that she has
been deposed from the throne in the heart of her favorite son. She
remained silent for half a minute trying to collect her wits, for no
such idea as that suggested by Colonel Tremaine had ever occurred to
her before.
“No,” she said presently in a low voice. “I haven’t noticed anything.
What have you observed, my dear?”
“Oh, only trifles, but they mark the beginning of love! Who should know
them better than you and I?” The delicious flattery, the distinction of
being made love to by a husband after more than thirty years of married
life, was not lost on Mrs. Tremaine. When Colonel Tremaine added:
“Should we not wish, my dearest Sophie, that our children should have
the same happy married life that we have had?” Mrs. Tremaine smiled a
faint, tremulous smile, and then Colonel Tremaine added: “Is it not
much better that Neville’s future wife should already be a daughter
to us? We have agreed that Neville shall inherit Harrowby, and how
agreeable is the thought that there will be neither break nor intrusion
between the present _régime_ and those who are to inherit after us.”
There had ever been in Mrs. Tremaine’s mind a little haunting fear of
the future unknown daughter-in-law, and at Colonel Tremaine’s words a
deep feeling of relief and satisfaction came to her. Yes, if she were
to yield her dominion, it was best to yield it to Angela, the child
loved almost as her own, and who would carry out the traditions of
Harrowby and make mango pickle by the same recipe which had been in
Mrs. Tremaine’s family for more than a hundred years.
Although Angela had begun dressing before six o’clock, the whole family
were assembled in the hall ready to start before she came downstairs.
She wore a white gown and had a little pearl necklace around her
milk-white throat. The dress set off her girlish beauty or rather
promise of beauty, and the thought of being under Neville’s eye brought
a wild-rose bloom to her usually pale cheeks.
“Why, Angela,” cried Archie, “you are really getting good-looking,
and not half as ugly as you promised to be.” He was rewarded with a
sisterly slap.
Lyddon, who usually had to be dragged to evening parties, went
willingly enough now. He was immensely interested in the psychologic
developments of the time and lost no opportunity of seeing these people
together and studying how they were to meet the great convulsion ahead
of them, but that it would be a great convulsion, they seemed totally
unaware. Usually when the Harrowby family went to parties the carriage
was reserved for Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine and Angela. Richard and
Neville preferred a trap of their own, and Lyddon always elected to go
with them. For some inscrutable reason whenever the Harrowby carriage
went out at night Hector occupied the box instead of the regular
coachman, Colonel Tremaine protesting that he would rather be driven by
Hector drunk than any other man sober. The result was, however, that
on the return journey, Colonel Tremaine invariably had to sit on the
box beside Hector, who to Lyddon’s mind by no means deserved Colonel
Tremaine’s good opinion of his driving when tipsy, and who had upset
the carriage more than once. But the custom had been by no means upset,
and Lyddon, not caring to risk his neck in such circumstances, always
elected to go with the young men of the family. When Colonel and Mrs.
Tremaine and Angela stood before the old-fashioned coach, new when Mrs.
Tremaine was married, Neville helped his mother and Angela in; then
Colonel Tremaine got in and Neville to everybody’s surprise took the
fourth seat. “The fact is,” he said coolly, “I don’t mean to lose one
minute of being with you, mother and father, and Angela.”
Angela sat back mute in her corner of the carriage while Colonel
Tremaine observed with equal coolness: “It is most gratifying, my son,
that you should be with us; perhaps the society of our charming Angela
may have something to do with it.”
“It has a great deal to do with it,” replied Neville boldly. That was
enough for Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine to understand all. No word was
spoken, but Mrs. Tremaine put her arm around Angela and then Neville
leaned over and kissed his mother. Their hearts were full of love and
peace, except Angela’s. She felt a secret dissatisfaction; the pain
of a coming disappointment and with it a sharp self-reproach, and all
were so affectionate to her, so full of tenderness, it flashed upon
her that she was a penniless orphan and that she was being welcomed in
her new relation as if she had brought with her a royal dowry. This
thought only made her feel like an ingrate. Her silence was attributed
to bashfulness, and Colonel Tremaine, meaning to relieve her, began to
talk with Neville of the coming national struggle. Neville listened
attentively and responded with animation. Only Angela noticed that he
made no promise of resigning from the army when the crisis should come.
The party at Greenhill was a replica of the one at Harrowby. The
Greenhill house was almost as spacious, and held the same people who
had assembled the night before; the supper, the fiddlers, and all were
exactly the same. Angela was a great belle, as she excelled in dancing,
and her little feet twinkled the night through. Neville danced with her
twice, whispering to her, “Don’t you remember the story my father tells
about having danced ten consecutive quadrilles with my mother at a ball
at Greenhill, and being very much surprised when the report got around
that they were engaged?”
Angela smiled. She knew all of these old family jokes quite as well as
Neville did. There could be no revelations between them.
Again was the coming war the absorbing topic of conversation among the
older people, while the young men whispered sentimentally to the girls
concerning the coming separation when all of these gallants expected
to return covered with glory. No one asked any direct question of
Neville, as it was understood that he was in honor bound to remain
in the United States Army until the secession of Virginia, and after
that his resignation was supposed to be as voluntary on his part as it
was inevitable. Again the dance broke up while the pallid moon was
struggling with the ghostly dawn. Colonel Tremaine, as usual, mounted
the box on starting for home, as Hector was in his customary state of
exhilaration after a party, and saw four horses before him where there
were only two. Not, however, until the carriage had been driven into a
ditch did Colonel Tremaine take the reins from Hector, who with folded
arms and profound indignation declared according to his invariable
formula: “’Fo’ Gord, I ain’t teched a drap.”
That day there was a hunting party and a dinner afterwards at Barn
Elms, an estate half across the county. Angela rode with Neville, but
there was little time for lovers’ colloquy in the midst of a screeching
run after the hounds, an uproarious country dinner, and the return
afterwards by the light of the stars. The last evening of Neville’s
stay was spent at Harrowby, and the tenderness of his parents toward
him seemed redoubled. Angela, Richard, and Lyddon all knew that might
be the last night which Neville would ever spend under that roof, but
Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine were blindly unsuspecting. At half past nine,
when the family assembled for prayers in the library as usual and Mrs.
Tremaine asked God’s blessing upon “our son now departing from us,”
her voice broke a little, and Angela, glancing toward Neville, saw
that he was pale, and his eyes, the resolute eyes of a soldier, were
wet with tears. He went upstairs with his father and mother and sat by
his mother’s dressing table while Mammy Tulip, according to immemorial
custom, brushed and plaited Mrs. Tremaine’s hair, still abundant
although streaked with silver. Neville was to leave at daylight and
mother and son would meet again, but this was their last chance for
that soft intercourse which Mrs. Tremaine had ever maintained with her
sons as with her husband. Mrs. Tremaine felt the delicate homage which
Neville paid her in giving her this last hour, and when Mammy Tulip had
left the room, held out her hand to Neville and said sweetly: “My son,
we see how it is between you and Angela, and your father and I will
take care of her for you.”
Neville drew his chair up to his mother’s, and the mother and son
talked together as they had done when Neville was a little bright-eyed
boy and Mrs. Tremaine was almost as slender as Angela. Neville’s heart
was in his mouth. He dreaded every moment that Mrs. Tremaine would ask
him the direct question of what he meant to do when the State seceded
and he knew that no kind of evasion would serve him then. But Mrs.
Tremaine, like Colonel Tremaine, took everything for granted. While
they were still sitting together Colonel Tremaine came in from his
dressing room. In the old days that had been the signal that the boys
should leave, and Neville, remembering this, rose to go.
“Never mind, my son,” said the colonel. “You may remain a while longer.”
“I thought it was contrary to regulations,” answered Neville, placing a
chair for his father.
“Oh, the regulations are suspended on this, your last night at home. I
will say, however, if it hadn’t been for my discipline, you and your
brothers would long since have worn your mother to a thread with your
demonstrative affection.” The colonel’s discipline had always consisted
in letting his sons do exactly as they had pleased, and their
demonstrative affection was directly inherited from him. All this Mrs.
Tremaine knew perfectly well and smiled, but, like a discreet wife,
permitted the colonel to think that it was his iron hand which had kept
everything in order at Harrowby. In the study below, Lyddon and Richard
Tremaine sat smoking while Archie in a corner by the fireplace dreamily
played his fiddle. Angela, whose bedtime was supposed to be when Mrs.
Tremaine went upstairs, flitted in and out of the room. She felt it
due to Neville that she should give him a little time before that
last hurried parting at dawn the next morning. Presently the sound of
Neville’s step in the hall was heard. Archie stopped his fiddling and
cried: “There’s Neville! I want to see him again to-night. I’m going to
ask him to send me a new bird gun like the one he had here last year.”
“Stay where you are, you little whipper-snapper,” said Richard with
authority.
“What for?” asked Archie, wondering. Richard looked at Lyddon and then
answered Archie.
“Because Neville is with Angela, you little idiot.”
“Well, suppose he is,” answered the unsuspecting Archie. “Angela’s
always with Neville for that matter.” And Richard, rising and taking
him by the back of his neck, plumped him down in a chair and told him
to stay there until his brother should come in. In a little while
Neville entered, and Archie began on the subject of the bird gun, which
Neville promised to send to him, and then the boy went off to bed.
The three men, left together with cigars and whisky and a good fire,
settled themselves for a symposium such as they had enjoyed a thousand
times before. As Lyddon looked at the two young men before him, a sense
of impending disaster suddenly overwhelmed him. The thought of a break
in this family, so passionately attached to each other, so much in
sympathy, was poignant to him. Strangely enough he felt and saw that in
this case the tie of brotherhood would stand a greater strain than that
even of fatherhood or motherhood. Richard Tremaine had a largeness of
mind which was totally unknown to Colonel Tremaine, and Mrs. Tremaine
never pretended to think; she only felt. The talk inevitably drifted
toward the state of public affairs. Richard Tremaine was the only man
in the whole county so far as Lyddon knew who had any just appreciation
of the magnitude of the coming conflict. Richard coolly reckoned upon
the war lasting until one side or the other was exhausted--the North in
money, the South in men. Neville naturally looked at it with the eye of
a military man. There all was chaos. Neville was too good a student of
military history to underrate the strength of five million homogeneous
people fighting upon their own ground. He had observed that the North
had the same undervaluation of the fighting strength of the South which
the South unquestionably had of the North. He spoke of this. “Those
dangerous delusions,” he said, “will soon pass away on both sides, then
will come a struggle the like of which has not often been seen. If the
United States had a trained army of two or three hundred thousand men
to start with, the result could be better predicated. As it is, great
multitudes of men on both sides will have to be trained to be soldiers
and the real fighting won’t begin until that is done.” This was
controverted by Richard, who believed that the Southern armies would
need far less training than the Northern, and that the first successes
of the South would be so brilliant as to stagger the North and incline
it for peace. Lyddon listened, occasionally interjecting a word. The
discussion, earnest but not bitter, lasted until near midnight, when
Richard, rising, said to Neville:
“Come along, old boy, you must have some sleep before starting.” The
two went off, their arms around each other’s necks as Lyddon had often
seen them in their boyhood, and passed into their little low-ceiled
rooms next the study. As Lyddon followed them to his own room, he
heard Neville rousing Peter, who lay asleep on the hearth rug before
Richard’s fire. One of the continuing marvels to Lyddon was this
universal practice of the negroes making the fire at night in the
bedrooms and then lying down and going to sleep on the hearth rug. None
of them so far as Lyddon knew had yet been burnt up, but why any of
them had escaped, he never could understand.
Next morning in the ghostly dawning hour, Neville Tremaine left his
father’s roof. His farewell to his mother and her last blessing had
been given him in her bedroom. Angela met him on the landing of the
stair and gave him a shy parting kiss. They went down together into
the hall where Colonel Tremaine, Lyddon, Richard, and Archie and a
crowd of servants waited to tell him good-by. The farewells were
hurried, as there was no time to spare. Neville said little, but
under his self-control he was inwardly agitated. When he was in the
act of stepping into the trap, Richard holding in two impatient
horses, Neville turned back to grasp his father’s hand once more. At
the same moment an old, blind hound came up to Neville and putting a
humble, deprecating paw upon Neville’s knee, licked his hand, whining
mournfully meanwhile. It seemed to Neville a sad portent.
“Good-by, father,” he said. “If you should never shake hands with me
again, remember if I haven’t been as good a son as I should be, no son
ever loved a father and mother better than I loved you and my mother.”
Colonel Tremaine, holding Neville’s hand, grew a little pale; some
premonition of Neville’s meaning flashed upon him. He could only say
brokenly: “You have ever been the best of sons to us.” And the next
moment Neville was gone.
CHAPTER V
THE HOUR OF FATE
The beginning of the fateful year of 1861 was full of events as
dramatic as they were stupendous. State after State left the Union, her
representatives withdrawing from the floors of Congress and her naval
and military officers promptly resigning from the service of the United
States. While these extraordinary and momentous changes were taking
place all eyes were fixed upon the great State of Virginia, standing
sentinel at the gateway between the North and the South. In case of
Civil War all the world knew that she would be the battle ground. Her
fields, rich and peaceful, where the harvesters had gleaned for two
hundred years, would be drenched with blood and be swept by hurricanes
of fire; the primeval woods over which an eternal peace had brooded
would be torn by shot and riven by shell. The quiet towns would be
starved and beleaguered and the placid country harried by fire and
sword. Her people, who in the nineteenth century still lived in the
calm and isolation of the eighteenth century and who had fallen into
a happy lethargy, were to be suddenly transformed into an army of
fighting men, and her women were to work and pray by night and day. Out
of their placidity, which often degenerated into slothfulness, was to
be evolved an almost superhuman energy. Her resources for war and siege
would have been insignificant except that she held in reserve, ready to
sacrifice at a moment’s notice, all the blood, all the powers, and all
the possessions of a race justly described as a strong, resolute, and
ofttimes violent people.
By the opening of the year 1861 there was no longer doubt of what these
people meant to do; but they thought and acted slowly, and they were
long in doing what they had resolved from the beginning to do. Early in
February a call had been issued for a convention to meet at Richmond
to determine the destiny of Virginia. Richard Tremaine announced his
candidacy for the honor of representing his county in this convention.
He was so young, being barely twenty-seven years of age, that if he
should get the suffrages of the people he would certainly be the
youngest man in the whole assembly to which he aspired. His claims,
however, put forward as they were with modesty and dignity, were
received with favor.
Richard Tremaine, himself, with the self-command of a well-balanced
mind, was able to disguise the gratification he felt at the prospect
before him. Not so his womenkind or Colonel Tremaine, who was never
tired of quoting the triumphs of William Pitt and Henry Clay at
Richard’s age and confidently predicted these triumphs would be
paralleled in Richard’s case. Lyddon would not have been surprised at
any great thing which Richard Tremaine might achieve either in public
life or in war. Richard had fully made up his mind, even if he should
be elected to the convention, he would resign as soon as decisive
action was taken and enter the military service of the Confederacy. He
had already begun the study of strategy and tactics and especially of
artillery. Lyddon, helping and admiring, could only compare Richard’s
mind to a beacon light moving upon a pivot which illuminated every
object upon which it was concentrated. Never had Lyddon in all his life
before lived so strenuous an intellectual life as from the Christmas of
1860 until the February day when he rode with Richard Tremaine from one
polling place to another in the county only to feel assured long before
the votes were counted that Richard Tremaine had triumphed over men of
twice his age and twenty times his actual experience. Lyddon, however,
had no distrust of young men and particularly in the great coming
crisis when the theory of the government of the people was to be put
upon trial. He thought it the time for men in the full flush of energy
and with the splendid philosophy of youth to come to the front.
In those weeks since Christmas, life had gone on in outward quiet
at Harrowby. Immediately after the Christmas time all dancing and
frolicking in the county had suddenly come to an end. In one psychic
moment the people realized that they had great business in hand. The
women became more thoughtful and yet more enthusiastic than the men,
and patriotism with them speedily assumed the form of a religion. This
was singularly marked in the ladies of Harrowby. No human beings can
live in the closeness of intimacy of the Harrowby family without a
prescience concerning each other. A dreadful doubt had begun to haunt
Mrs. Tremaine concerning Neville, her best beloved--he might give his
sword not to his State, but to her enemies. Mrs. Tremaine dared not put
this fear in words even to Colonel Tremaine. The same grim suspicion
was likewise haunting him. He avoided Mrs. Tremaine’s eyes when they
spoke together of Neville, each striving to hide from the other this
specter which walked with them and sat at meat with them and was always
within touch of them by day and by night. In the wintry afternoons when
Mrs. Tremaine paced up and down the Ladies’ Walk a certain number of
times, according to her daily habit for more than thirty years, those
who approached her saw a strange expression on her face--an expression
of fear and anxiety. Colonel Tremaine, watching her from his library
window, forebore to go out and join her as he usually did, but instead
strode restlessly like a caged lion up and down the library. Mrs.
Tremaine, observing his figure as he passed the window, knew that the
same fear was gnawing at his heart as at hers--the fear that their
eldest-born should prove a renegade and a traitor, for so both parents
considered the question of Neville’s remaining in the army.
As the weeks wore on the tension of minds grew more acute, and it
soon came to the point that Lyddon could no longer openly express
his political views, which were totally opposed to slavery; the
Southern people allowed no man freedom of conscience in the matter.
Slavery, which for the first thirty years of the century had been
frankly condemned and anxiously sought to be abolished by Washington,
Jefferson, and all thinking men in the State, had in the next thirty
years fastened itself, in all its monstrosity, upon the body politic
and had stifled remonstrance. As John Randolph said: “The South had a
wolf by the ears and was afraid to let go and afraid to hold on”; but
as their fear of letting go was greater than their fear of holding on,
they held on until they were half-devoured by this wolf called Slavery.
Lyddon, watching and observing, could not speak his mind on the past
and future of slavery even to Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine. Until then
Lyddon’s views had been accepted with good-humored tolerance and
looked upon as the cranky notions of a stranger from beyond the ocean
seas. Now, however, the matter had become too acute, too exquisitely
painful, and after one or two fierce contradictions from the usually
mild-mannered Colonel Tremaine, followed by profuse apologies, Lyddon
sat silent whenever the subject of the coming war was under discussion.
But he could still talk with Richard Tremaine and to Lyddon’s sardonic
amusement with Angela. She was, of course, red-hot for the South,
but condescended to exchange views with Lyddon sometimes on the
subject when they sat together on winter evenings in the study. The
Harrowby family had long ago instinctively formed itself into three
groups--Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine, whose habitat was the colonel’s big
library full of unread books, Lyddon with Richard and Neville, when he
was at home, in the study, and Angela and Archie, who were graduated
from the nursery, also in the study as the schoolroom.
The habit still kept up, and while in the big, handsome library Mrs.
Tremaine in the evenings stitched thread cambric ruffles for the
colonel’s shirt fronts and Colonel Tremaine read aloud to her from the
“Lake Poets,” a practice that he had formed during their courtship days
when between compliments and lovemaking, he had read to her the whole
of Wordsworth’s “Excursion.” At the same hour in the evening Angela
and Archie were supposed to be learning their lessons in the study,
which after they went to bed was given over to smoking and the talk
of grown-ups like Lyddon and Richard. Archie had always depended upon
Angela to help him with his lessons and although she no longer studied
regularly herself, she was always there to encourage Archie. While the
boy with his fingers in his ears was struggling with his Latin and
Greek, Angela would listen to Lyddon and flash back at him those quick
intuitive truths which women acquire without knowing how they do it. As
Lyddon often quoted to Angela:
“A man with much labor and difficulty climbs to the top of a high
mountain; when he arrives he finds a woman there already, but she could
not tell to save her life how she got there.”
“But she is there all the same, Mr. Lyddon,” Angela would reply with
demure eyes and a saucy smile.
Neville’s letters, as affectionate as ever, came regularly, for
the mails with the North were not yet interrupted. These letters
were brief. Neville had not Richard’s powers of language; he was
distinctively a man of action, but he expressed himself with simplicity
and vigor which is the embodiment of the best eloquence. Once a week
Angela received from him a letter full of affection. It was a model
love letter, quite beyond the power of the professedly accomplished
letter writer. Angela read it with a blush not of pleasure but of that
secret discomfort of which she was ashamed and actually afraid, and at
this thought the discomfort increased. “Did ever any girl before feel
as she did when receiving her lover’s letters?” she asked herself.
On the assembling of the convention Richard Tremaine left Harrowby
for Richmond. As soon as the body assembled, the result of its
deliberations were easily foreseen and from that day the whole of
Virginia became a great camp of instruction. The initial steps were
taken toward the organization of regiments. The women were not a whit
behind in their eagerness to begin the work of equipping hospitals,
of furnishing the soldiers with stockings and other comforts, and of
raising funds for the presentation of flags to the different companies.
Mrs. Tremaine, the soul of modesty and retirement, was the chief mover
in all these plans and was ably seconded by Mrs. Charteris. The men
were fiercely determined; the women were more fiercely indomitable.
Colonel Tremaine at seventy-two and much troubled with rheumatism was
full of military ardor, and proposed to take the field with Hector as
soon as Virginia seceded. Hector did not receive this proposition with
unalloyed delight, and argued with Colonel Tremaine.
“Ole Marse, you got de rheumatiz an’ I got de ager an’ we cyarn’ do
much fightin’ when you is cussin’ de rheumatiz an’ my teef is rattlin’
wid de ager.”
“With cowardice, you mean, you black scoundrel,” answered Colonel
Tremaine, who spoke his mind freely to Hector, although by no means
allowing anyone else so great a liberty. “When I had you in Mexico, by
gad, you had the ague every time you got within ten miles of a Mexican
and you would run like a rabbit at the sight of a green uniform.”
“Good Gord A’might’, Marse! You done forgot----”
“No, I haven’t, sirrah, but when we go to fight the Yankees, I shall
make it a point to keep you within ten feet of me whenever we are under
fire.” As Colonel Tremaine was utterly insensible to fear, as Hector
knew by sad experience, and bowed and scraped and flourished exactly
the same when bullets were whistling around his head as when asking a
lady to dance the Virginia reel, Hector was appalled at the prospect.
On a March day the lists for volunteers in the event of war were opened
at the courthouse. Colonel Tremaine in high feather, mounted his horse
and rode off to offer, as he magniloquently expressed it, “his sword to
his State.” He was a fine rider and wore a handsome plum-colored riding
dress with top-boots such as had been the fashion in 1830. About the
same hour Archie mysteriously disappeared and when lesson time came
could not be found high or low.
Lyddon was in the study standing with his back to the fire and
wondering what had become of Archie when Angela entered. One look at
her eloquent and speaking face revealed what no woman can conceal--that
she had a secret. “I believe you know where the boy is,” said Lyddon.
“Yes,” replied Angela, coming up to him and laughing. “He is off to
the courthouse to put his name down. Of course, he is not eighteen, but
he means to swear he is.”
“Unluckily for him there are too many people in the county who know
just how old he is.”
“Mrs. Charteris is quite inconsolable because George Charteris is only
seventeen. She says she almost wishes the State would not secede until
next year so that she would be able to contribute her only son to the
Cause.”
“The women haven’t been like this since the Peloponnesian War, when
the ladies of Sparta encouraged their sons to go forth to meet the
Athenians and to return either with their shields or upon them. One
would think that these Virginians were like those old Spartans who
fashioned their doors with the sword and their ceilings with the ax.”
“I suppose,” said Angela, “it is in our blood. You see, we came to
Virginia most of us after fighting in England; then, you see, we had to
fight the Indians, and we had to fight the British twice, you know----”
“Oh, yes, I know, you Americans have regular Berserker outbreaks when
nothing can keep you from fighting! This time, however, you will be
obliged to fight. Nothing but a blood bath can rid you of slavery now.”
“And would you have us turn all these negroes out upon the cold world,”
cried Angela, arguing as she had been taught. “What would become of
Mammy Tulip! Who would give Uncle Hector his bread? Because neither one
of them could earn it.”
“Quite true, my little girl. But you will see Peter and Mirandy and
Lucy Ann and Sally and Jim Henry and Tasso and the rest of them all
developing into Aunt Tulips and Uncle Hectors and eating up the
substance of their masters.”
“Well, we won’t say anything more on that subject.”
“But you should be cautious in expressing your opinion in these
dangerous times if things are as they appear to be between you and
Neville.” It was the first time that Lyddon had ever alluded to the
secret tie between Angela and Neville. Angela’s face grew pale when she
should have blushed. She drew back and scrutinized Lyddon closely under
her narrow lids with their long, dark lashes.
“Of course, Neville will go with his State,” she said after a pause.
But there was no note of conviction in her voice.
“Don’t be sure of that; Neville will do what he thinks right, but his
ideas may not be yours nor even those of his father and mother, and
you must make up your mind in advance what to do when the hour of fate
strikes. It will be asking more courage of you than even a courageous
woman possesses, to take sides with Neville in case he remains in the
United States Army.”
Lyddon, like Neville, had unwittingly touched the responsive cord in
Angela’s heart. The idea that if she refused to stand by Neville she
would be reckoned a coward was the strongest motive in the world to
incline her to go with Neville.
Toward twelve o’clock Colonel Tremaine, accompanied by Archie, was
seen coming down the lane and presently dismounted disconsolately. He
was anxiously awaited by Hector, who had not the slightest desire to
keep within ten feet of Colonel Tremaine in case the colonel’s military
services should be accepted. Mrs. Tremaine and Angela were in the
garden superintending the trimming up of the shrubbery and hastened to
the gate to meet the returning absentees. Lyddon, who was sauntering
about with a book in his pocket, came up to hear the history of the
morning’s adventures. Peter was on hand to take the horses and as he
had aspirations to “go wif Marse Richard to de war,” took the liberty
after the negro fashion of listening to what his superiors had to say.
But Peter’s interest was not a patch on Hector’s, whose black face had
taken on a queer shade of ash color at the prospect of accompanying
Colonel Tremaine upon a campaign.
“Well, my dearest Sophie,” said the colonel petulantly, as soon as
Mrs. Tremaine had got through the garden gate, “I have been most
unhandsomely treated this day, most unhandsomely, and by two men whom
I regarded as lifelong friends and between whose ancestors and mine an
intimacy of generations has subsisted. I allude to Dr. Yelverton and
Colonel Carey.”
“They treated me as mean as dirt,” growled Archie.
“They did, my son?” asked Mrs. Tremaine.
“Yes, they treated this boy very ill. Colonel Carey, you know, aspires
to the colonelcy of the regiment to be raised in the county and has got
himself elected the head of the committee in charge of enlistments.
Carey knows my record in the Mexican War perfectly well when I was
his superior in rank. This morning when I reached the room in the
clerk’s office where Carey was presiding over what he calls a board
of enlistment or something of the sort, there I found this boy. All
they had to do was to look at him to know that he is fully capable of
bearing arms and accustomed to an outdoor life, but because he was not
eighteen they simply refused to listen to him and told him to go back
to his Latin grammar. This was most humiliating to the boy’s feelings.”
“It made me so mad I wanted to knock ’em both down,” cried Archie
angrily.
“And were you going to enlist, my little boy?” said Mrs. Tremaine, the
light of proud motherhood coming into her eyes. She put her arm around
the boy’s neck and kissed him on his forehead.
“Yes, I was, mother, and I can shoot as straight as either Richard or
Neville.”
Here Lyddon, who had come up, spoke. “That is true, my lad, but all
experience proves that although boys like you can fight as well as men,
they can’t march as well and they only fill up the hospitals.”
“But,” continued Colonel Tremaine, his wrath rising, “the language
and conduct of Carey and Yelverton to me was far more exasperating. I
did not attempt to disguise my age, seventy-two next September, but
as hardy as any one of my sons. I took a high tone with Carey and I
think he would have accepted my services. But then Yelverton, whom I
have known as boy and man for nearly sixty-five years, who was born
and brought up within four miles of Harrowby, took it upon himself to
inform Carey that I had rheumatism, sciatica, lumbago, and half a dozen
other diseases that I never heard of before, and absolutely laughed at
the notion of my doing military duty; laughed in my face.”
“My hero,” said Mrs. Tremaine softly, as if she were sixteen and the
colonel were twenty, while Angela, slipping her hand into Colonel
Tremaine’s, kissed him on the cheek and said, “What a brave old warrior
you are! If I were a Yankee I should certainly run when I saw you
coming at me.”
The colonel’s list of injuries was not yet exhausted and he continued
wrathfully: “But then what do you suppose I discovered? Yelverton,
whose age I know as well as mine--he will be sixty-four this very
month--I find had already enlisted as surgeon and proposes to accompany
the troops to the front. I am as robust a man as Yelverton, more so,
in fact, and told him so to his face when I found out his unhandsome
conduct. Anthony Yelverton is young enough to serve in the Southern
Army, but _I_ am not.” The colonel struck himself dramatically in the
breast with his left hand, while his right arm, stiffly extended, held
his riding crop as if it were a sword. Mrs. Tremaine duly condoled with
the colonel upon Dr. Yelverton’s reprehensible conduct.
One of those present, however, heard with unmixed satisfaction of the
result of the colonel’s expedition. This was Hector, who, as soon as he
found there was no chance of the colonel’s going to war, professed the
most reckless valor and assumed the air of a military daredevil. “Never
you min’, ole Marse,” he said, confidentially, “me’be you an’ me kin
run ’way an’ jine de army. Doan’ you ’member de song dey used to sing
in de Mex’can War, ‘Ef you wants to have a good time, jine de cava’ry!’”
“Yes, you black rascal, I do, and I also remember that I had to drag
you by the hair of your head from Harrowby to the City of Mexico, but
nobody made better time than you coming back.”
This was deeply mortifying to Hector repeated in the presence of Peter,
who thrust his tongue in his cheek and winked disrespectfully at
Hector, which caused the latter to say viciously: “You teck dem ho’ses
to de stables right ’way, you black nigger. When Marse Richard gwine to
de war I lay he teck me stid you.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” said Angela, putting her arm through
Archie’s, “if you and Uncle Tremaine didn’t both run away together some
day, but anyhow Harrowby has two men to give the State, Richard and
Neville.”
A short silence followed. Mrs. Tremaine looked down upon the ground,
and Colonel Tremaine’s troubled eyes turned from the frank and
questioning looks of Archie and Angela and Lyddon’s inscrutable gaze.
Nobody knew whether Harrowby had two men to defend Virginia or whether
there was but one, while the other should draw his sword to shed the
blood of his brethren.
CHAPTER VI
THE QUAKING OF THE EARTH
With the opening of the books of enlistment the whole county caught
fire. When the people met at the old Petworth Church on Sundays there
was nothing but talk of the coming war. The sermons of Mr. Brand, the
rector, were one long war cry against the Yankees and exhortations to
go forth and fight to the death in the great cause of States’ Rights.
The clergyman was remorselessly badgered by Mrs. Charteris, who had
extorted from him the secret of his age, which was considerably over
forty-five. Dr. Yelverton, who, in spite of his sixty-five years,
thought Mrs. Charteris, who was not yet forty years old, none too young
for him, immediately grew in favor with the lady. Mrs. Charteris had
played them off one against the other with consummate skill for fifteen
years. But when the trumpet of war resounded and Mr. Brand elected to
stay at home, while Dr. Yelverton, examining himself as a surgeon,
pronounced himself entirely fit for duty in the army, he at once gained
a tremendous lead in the lady’s favor.
George Charteris, the only son of his mother, was at school near
Baltimore, but by command of Mrs. Charteris he was to make straight for
Greenhill as soon as Virginia should secede.
All the boys in the county of Archie Tremaine’s and George Charteris’s
age were burning to enlist and formed companies of their own, studying
and drilling with the utmost ardor. The interest in events was not
confined to the white people. The negroes, knowing that the whole
future of their race depended upon the issue of the coming struggle,
took a feverish, furtive interest in the unfolding of each day’s
happenings and listened slyly to all that was said by the white people.
At night they collected at their quarters and, sitting around in a
ring, listened to what the house servants had to tell them of the
talk that went on at the “gret house.” They were no longer permitted
to visit the different estates freely at night, but were kept as far
as possible from communicating with each other. Lyddon saw this and
trembled for the fate of the women and children to be left defenseless
in the power of the black race, and thought the white people madly
optimistic when they expressed no fear whatever of the negroes in case
of war--a confidence which was nobly sustained when the hour came.
The outward peace was not broken; Lyddon had ever thought lowland
Virginia the most entirely peaceful spot he had ever known in his
life, but the earthquake was at hand. He said this to Angela, who in
Richard’s absence in Richmond attending the convention had come to be
the only person to whom Lyddon could speak his mind freely.
“You have always been restless and yearning for something to happen,”
he said to her one day in the garden as she was snipping dead twigs
off a rose bush. “But you won’t be able to complain of that any more;
stupendous things will happen and that very shortly.”
Angela’s eyes flashed with pleasure. “I don’t mind things happening,”
she said. “I have red blood in me; I don’t like stagnation.” Lyddon,
looking at her, felt pity welling up in his heart; the pity which
maturity, having already suffered, feels for youth--pathetic youth,
which has still to suffer. Whether Angela went with Neville or against
him it would be hard for her. The idea of turning against Neville would
be to her as if the sun rose in the west or water ran uphill. She had
for him a sublimated friendship which was like love and yet was not
love.
The mail came only three times a week and every mail brought long
letters from Richard in Richmond. He told precisely the progress of
events in the convention, the efforts of the Peace Commission, the calm
hearing given to the men who wished Virginia to stay in the Union; but
he never changed his opinion that the State would secede and that the
day of blood was at hand.
Neville’s letters began to be irregular; only two were received from
him in March and one in April. He spoke of others which he had written,
but which had never been received. When Mrs. Tremaine opened these
letters her face always grew pale, and it was paler still when she had
finished reading them and passed them over to Colonel Tremaine. Angela
read hers, too, in silence; she could not be expected to show them to
anyone, but she spoke no word indicating any knowledge of what Neville
meant to do.
Neville’s last letter came the middle of April. Lyddon, who had ridden
to the post office, handed it to Angela in the study. She was sitting
at the window reading, and Lyddon as he came in thought her a charming
picture of youth and happiness. She wore a gown the color of the iris
which was blooming in the box upon the window sill, for Angela claimed
the right to put her flowerpots in the study windows. The April day was
warm and bright, and the sunny air which was wafted in at the window
had in it the intoxication of the spring. Angela’s book evidently
amused her, for she was laughing as she raised her eyes to Lyddon’s
when he held out the letter. Instantly her face clouded. She broke the
seal and read her letter rapidly. But more rapid was the change which
came over her. She sat quite still for a long time looking at the
letter lying in her lap, and then, pale and quiet, rose and passed out
of the room.
Meanwhile the April sky had suddenly clouded, and a few heavy drops
of rain like tears had begun to fall. Lyddon’s heart ached for the
girl. She was different to him from any human being he had ever known.
The simile which so often occurred to him came back with strange
force--that he was a gardener cultivating an exquisite flower for some
one else. He had cultivated already two sturdy trees in Richard and
Neville and a beautiful hardy sapling in Archie, but never before had
he trained a flower in the person of a young girl. Her acquirements,
which would have been nothing in a man, were extraordinary for a woman,
and Lyddon in view of this would have been alarmed for her except that
she understood and practiced housewifery well, was devotedly fond of
music, loved to dance, and like the normal woman made dress a species
of religion. Thus were the sweet femininities maintained.
Lyddon realized one price which Angela had to pay for the training he
had given her--she had no intimate girl friends. She had plenty of girl
companions--Dr. Yelverton’s granddaughters, Colonel Carey’s daughters;
but there was no real community of soul between these young creatures
and Angela. These other girls were satisfied with the quiet country
life in which they dwelt as their mothers and grandmothers had dwelt,
but their ideas of splendor were confined to a larger house and more
servants than they possessed at present and to an annual trip to the
White Sulphur Springs. Not so Angela Vaughn. She longed for palaces
and parks and for the mysterious joys and splendors which she imagined
therein could be found. The Greeks were her soul ancestors, and she had
an adoration for beauty in form, color, and sound. She made Lyddon,
who was quite insensible to music, repeat to her all the details of
the few operas to which he had been dragged and which had bored him to
excess during his European life. Richard’s years in Paris and Neville’s
visits to New York and Saratoga had filled Angela’s girlish heart with
longing, a longing which Mrs. Tremaine thought positively wicked and
the girls of Angela’s acquaintance considered eminently foolish.
Lyddon, in his profession as a trainer of youth, had always reckoned as
a positive detriment any education which segregated a human being from
his fellows. He had reckoned all education which is totally derived
from books as light without warmth. He had good reason for this belief,
his own passion for books having separated him from men in general and
having quenched in him most of the living and vivifying emotions. He
had not been able to quench love, although he had hid it in a sepulcher
and closed the door with a great stone. It was his fate, not having
children of his own, to love the children of others and when he had
grown to love them, they slipped easily from his grasp, except Richard
and Neville Tremaine. But Lyddon believed that he should still hold to
Archie and to that charming child Angela, for he could never reckon
Angela as wholly grown up. There was an eternal simplicity about her,
the frankness of a child in which Lyddon had never perceived any change
from the time she wore pinafores.
Lyddon, thinking these thoughts, stood before the study window watching
the changing April day, alternately fair and stormy. He felt convinced
from Angela’s face on reading her letter that she was struggling with
the great problem of whether she should stand by Neville or abandon
him. Lyddon, whose knowledge of her was acute, and who knew the
generous impulses of her nature, believed she would stand by Neville.
But would she be happy in so doing? Ah, of that he was very far from
certain! No one but Angela and himself knew that she had received a
letter from Neville and the silence maintained about it proved that
the letter contained something painful. At dinner that day Angela sat
silent and constrained until rallied by Archie; she then assumed her
usual air of gayety. In the afternoon she went for a long walk alone
and coming back at twilight paced up and down the garden until Mrs.
Tremaine sent a message out to her that she must come in because the
night was damp and chilly. The long walk at the end of the garden,
where the old wooden bench sat against the wall and the gnarled and
twisted lilacs flourished in green old age, was as much Angela’s beat
as the Ladies’ Walk was Mrs. Tremaine’s. She passed Lyddon on the
stairs as she went up to her room to make ready for supper, and her
face was so wan and woe-begone that Lyddon felt sorry for her. At
supper, however, she appeared in her usual spirits. She had brought
back from her walk in the woods some sprays of the trailing arbutus and
wore them in her shining hair.
The talk as usual was about the coming war. The Richmond newspapers
had been received that day, and Lyddon had got his English newspapers.
Colonel Tremaine inquired about the state of opinion in England
concerning the outbreak of civil war in America, and although Lyddon
was guarded in his replies Colonel Tremaine became irritated by them.
While the brief discussion lasted Lyddon was confirmed in a suspicion
concerning the negroes. They were intently listening and watching all
that went on, and the white family was never left alone. Formerly at
meal times with Hector, Tasso, and Jim Henry to wait it was sometimes
difficult to get any one of them in the room. Tasso and Jim Henry
would be engaged in transporting from the kitchen hot batter cakes,
hot muffins, and all the other varieties of hot bread of which the
formula invariably was, “Take two and butter them while they are hot.”
Meanwhile, Hector would be in the pantry resting himself from the
arduous labors of directing Tasso and Jim Henry. But now one or the
other of the subordinates was always at hand. Lyddon was convinced that
they were the purveyors of news to all the negroes on the plantation.
There was a bell on the back porch, and every one of the twenty-five
servants engaged in the house, the garden, and the stables had a
number. Sometimes Lyddon had known the whole gamut of this bell to be
rung before a single servant appeared on the spot, but now they were
always at hand.
Usually in these discussions of the coming war Angela took a prominent
part. She wished to be like the maidens of Sparta and thought she could
have done the act of Charlotte Corday, and talked enthusiastically of
nursing, like a Sister of Mercy, soldiers in the hospitals. To-night,
however, she seemed not interested in that subject, but willing to talk
on any other. After supper Archie got out his violin and the two played
together as usual. They generally wound up their performances with
“Dixie,” but to-night Angela omitted it. No one noticed this except
Lyddon.
As she took her candle from the hall table she went to the fireplace
and, holding the candle above her head, studied the picture of Penelope
and the Suitors. Seeing Lyddon coming out of the study she turned
quickly and went upstairs. Lyddon, who was a bad sleeper, waked in
the middle of the night and, going to the window to look at the night
sky, saw that candles were still burning in Angela’s room. He lighted
the lamp at his bedside and read an hour and then went again to the
window. Angela’s light was still burning. Lyddon’s heart ached for her.
It was then the middle of April. Two days afterwards when the Richmond
newspapers arrived it was proclaimed that the Federal Government had
called on Virginia for her quota of troops to subdue the seceding
States. This at once forced the issue. The convention then went into
secret session, and the beginning of the crisis was at hand. The
tension of men’s minds grew fiercely acute. Colonel Tremaine no longer
sent to the post office for the letters, but went himself, riding hard
both ways. At any moment now Virginia might be riven from the Union.
Every mail brought a long letter from Richard Tremaine. Any day, any
hour, might bring the great news; but as fate generally wills it the
unexpected happened.
One evening, just as the soft spring night had closed in and the
Harrowby family were assembled in the hall waiting for the announcement
of supper, a sudden wild commotion was heard at the hall door. Archie
ran and opened it. Outside a crowd of negroes were delightedly
welcoming and “howdying” Richard Tremaine. He flung himself off his
horse, ran up the steps, burst into the hall, and waving his hat in the
air cried out in a ringing voice, “Hurrah for States’ Rights! Yesterday
afternoon the deed was done. Virginia is out of the Union forever.” He
clasped his mother with his left arm while he seized his father’s hand,
who said solemnly:
“God save the Commonwealth.”
As soon as the first greetings were over an account was demanded of the
portentous event of the day before, all hanging on Richard’s words.
As he spoke in his clear resonant voice, his countenance full of
animation, Lyddon who stood on the edge of the group fell in love with
his pupil over again. Richard Tremaine had the best sort of masculine
beauty--the beauty of grace, strength and skill. His eyes, a light
penetrating blue, had a lambent fire in them and seemed to illuminate
his speech.
“It was the most solemn scene that could be imagined,” he said. “After
four days of secret session, in which we wrestled together like
gladiators, the striking of the clock told us that the hour had come.
When the presiding officer’s gavel fell and he asked, ‘Shall this
ordinance pass?’ there was not a dry eye in the assemblage. I felt the
tears warm upon my face and was ashamed of my weakness, thinking that
I was acting the boy after all among those graybeards. Then suddenly
I looked up; the presiding officer was in tears and made no secret of
it. The clerk who called the roll, an old man with long white hair,
could not control the trembling of his voice. As each name was spoken I
saw a strange sight, a man unable to give his vote without tears upon
his face. It was the most moving, the most extraordinary sight ever
witnessed in the legislative body. Not a sound was heard except the
calling of the roll and the ‘aye’ or the ‘no’ which answered. There
were fifty-five ‘noes.’ When my name was reached I meant to shout out
the ‘aye’ but I couldn’t; all was too deathlike, too solemn. At last
the final vote was recorded and then it was as if a cable had snapped;
it was like the change from the funeral dirge to the quick step of a
march past. A great shout went up--I found my voice then. I couldn’t
think as wisely as some of those old men, but I could cheer louder
than any of them. I wish I could make you see and feel the solemnity,
the strangeness, the intoxication of that hour. Our vote didn’t take
us into the Confederacy, although it severed us from the Union. We
stood midway between them ready, like Quintus Curtius, to leap into the
abyss. Oh, how great a thing it is to live in this time!”
Lyddon’s eye left for a moment Richard’s eloquent face and traveled
round the hall. At the doors dark faces were peering in. The negroes
were listening breathlessly to that which meant as much to them as to
the race which mastered them.
“As soon as an adjournment was reached,” Richard continued, “I asked
for a week’s leave and got it. I wanted to be the first man in Virginia
to enlist in the army and I believe I can make it. By the way, I hear
from Philip Isabey that he was the first man to enlist in Louisiana and
has been elected captain of the first battery of artillery raised in
the State.”
So far not one word had been spoken of Neville. Richard, looking about
him, suddenly realized this and then in a cool voice asked, “What news
is there from my brother?”
There was a silence for a moment or two and then Colonel Tremaine said
tremulously, “There is no news from your brother.”
At the same moment all became conscious of the peering and listening
negroes. Richard at once said carelessly, “We shall probably see
Neville in a few days. He can easily sail up from Fort Monroe where
he was last week when I had a short note from him brought by private
hand.” Richard took the note out and handed it to his mother. Her hands
trembled a little as she read it. It was brief, merely saying he was
well and had heard good news from home and expecting to be at Harrowby
within the week. Then they trooped into supper. Richard’s story was
not yet half told and he had to answer innumerable questions from
Colonel Tremaine. Mrs. Tremaine sat strangely silent, her brooding eyes
turning toward her right, where at table was Neville’s place. Through
it all Angela, too, remained singularly silent. The reins of discipline
which Mrs. Tremaine had held strictly enough over Neville and Richard
had been relaxed in the case of the Benjamin of her flock and Angela,
the child of her adoption, and they were generally audible as well
as visible. Not so Angela to-night. She sat quiet and Lyddon thought
stunned by what was happening around her.
Archie then brought forth his tale of injuries in not being allowed to
enlist. Richard good-naturedly cuffed him and reminded him that he was
but a baby in years.
After supper was served, Colonel Tremaine called for champagne. A
bottle was fetched by Hector, who took occasion to remark, “Dis heah is
outen de las’ basket. I speck you hav’ to order sum mo’, old Marse.”
“I do not expect to order any more champagne at present,” remarked
Colonel Tremaine grimly.
“And the few bottles which are left,” added Mrs. Tremaine, “must be
saved for the hospitals.”
Colonel Tremaine then rose and all at the table followed his example.
“Let us drink,” he said, “to the cause of the South.” A ringing cheer
which the listening negroes heard burst from Archie as they all drank.
Richard had so much to tell that the family sat up unusually late
listening to him, and it was near midnight before he and Lyddon went
to the old study for their usual smoke and talk. Richard’s enthusiasm
had by no means expended itself. “I know what you are thinking, Mr.
Lyddon,” he said, standing in his familiar argumentative attitude, his
back to the fireplace and his arms folded.
“Yes,” replied Lyddon, lighting his pipe. “Yesterday you performed a
great act. You sounded the death knell of slavery, you have emancipated
yourselves and your children forever from that curse.”
“So we may have done. The fathers of the Republic sought to emancipate
us and when we can act freely and without fear of Northern coercion we
shall perhaps follow the council of the patriarchs, but never under
threats, by God!” The two talked animatedly for a couple of hours.
Lyddon had feared that Richard, beguiled by the glamour of a soldier’s
life, would choose the army as a permanent career while in truth his
greater gifts lay in the domain of statecraft. But Lyddon’s mind was
relieved by Richard’s saying that he felt no inclination to adopt a
military life permanently.
Then as the case always was with Lyddon, their talk fell upon books.
Richard took down a battered volume and was reading aloud to Lyddon
what both knew by heart, the story of that Athenian night when Agatho
returned with the prize of Tragedy from the Olympian games and the
symposium was held at the house of Phædrus, and when the night was far
spent Alcibiades coming in with the tipsy crowd of Greek boys swore
that Socrates should drink two measures of wine to every other man’s
one; and Socrates, accepting this challenge, drank them all under
the table except Aristodemus, the old physician, and when day broke
Socrates after taking a bath went and taught philosophy in the groves
while the dew was still wet upon the grass.
As Lyddon and Richard Tremaine laughed over this old tale time went
backward. They forgot the storm and stress of to-day, the rise and
fall of empires, the fierce combat of body and soul in which the human
race had struggled for almost three thousand years since that Hellenic
night. Again they lived the life of those undying Greeks, and Richard,
who drew cleverly, was making a pen-and-ink sketch of the beautiful
tipsy Alcibiades when he suddenly laid down his pen and said after
listening for a moment, “There’s Neville. I hear a boat grating against
the wharf.”
CHAPTER VII
THE PARTING
Through the still night Lyddon could hear plainly the sound of a
sailboat making the little wharf which ran into the broad river at the
foot of the lawn. Richard, hatless, bolted out of the room, and Lyddon
putting up the window saw his dark figure running swiftly like a shadow
to the wharf. It was then after two o’clock in the morning. The night
was murky and the fitful wind swept the storm clouds wildly back and
forth. Upon the black river lay an outline like the ghost of a small
sailboat moored to the wharf. In a moment more Richard and Neville
were standing together. By that time the whole house was aroused, and
Lyddon could hear footsteps moving overhead. He picked up a candle
and going into the hall lighted the lamps which stood on the corners
of the mantel. In a little while Colonel Tremaine with Mrs. Tremaine
was seen coming downstairs. Colonel Tremaine had hurriedly flung some
clothes on, and Mrs. Tremaine was helping him into his coat. Behind
them came Angela with her long crimson mantle thrown over her hastily
assumed gown, her beautiful hair in disorder and hanging down her back.
Archie, the last to awaken, was heard calling out of the window to his
brothers. The side door to the hall opened, and Neville with Richard
walked in. Mrs. Tremaine with a cry of rapture ran toward him.
“My son, my dearest son,” she cried, unconsciously admitting the truth
that this son was dearer to her than the others. Neville kissed his
mother tenderly, and then, as if he were a little boy once more, threw
his arms around Colonel Tremaine’s neck and kissed him on the cheek.
Colonel Tremaine embraced him in return. He loved these demonstrations
of affection from his children, and was proud that in manhood they were
still observed. Neville kissed Angela on the forehead and then Archie
came tumbling downstairs and the two brothers embraced.
“How did you come at this time of night?” asked Colonel Tremaine.
“In a sailboat from Fort Monroe,” replied Neville smiling. “You see, I
haven’t forgotten how to manage a boat. We heard yesterday morning that
the State had seceded, and I got twenty-four hours leave to come home.
The best way to get here was to sail up York River, and I was certain
of finding a wind until I got near enough to Harrowby to land in case
the wind should fail, but luckily it brought me up to the wharf in less
than five hours. I must not take any chances, however, and can only
remain two hours.”
A chill seemed to fall upon the air as Neville spoke. His words were
capable of but one meaning.
“Two hours, did you say?” asked Colonel Tremaine with a sudden rigidity
of face and figure.
“Yes, sir,” replied Neville quietly. “I must then return to my command.
I came to tell you and my mother that I have thought over it, sir, as
you taught me to think over all great matters with a view to finding
out the honorable course to pursue. I think it my duty under my oath to
remain in the United States Army.”
The thunderbolt had fallen; a dreadful silence prevailed. Mrs.
Tremaine, who was standing with her hand upon Neville’s arm, tightened
her clasp, and Neville turned away from his mother’s tragic eyes.
Colonel Tremaine opened his lips once or twice as if to speak, but no
words came, and Neville continued in a voice a little shaken from its
first firmness:
“I know what this means to you and my mother and to everybody I love. I
hardly think you know what it means to me.”
“Have you reflected,” asked Colonel Tremaine after a moment, “that it
is by tacit consent on both sides the Southern officers resign from the
United States Army? They can be of no use there, but are reckoned an
element of danger.”
“I know it well. I shall be a suspect among the very people for whom I
have sacrificed everything on earth. In this coming war I shall never
be trusted with anything or by anybody, I, a soldier bred. I would have
escaped this fate if I could; I fought against it, but always there
came back to me the conviction that my honor required I should stay in
the United States Army.”
“Did you say,” asked Colonel Tremaine quietly, “that you had but two
hours to remain in this house?”
“Just two hours,” answered Neville as quietly.
“Then,” replied Colonel Tremaine with a pale face set like steel,
“after what you have just told us, two hours is much too long.” He
turned and walked up the stairs slowly. He tottered a little, and
Archie ran forward and taking his father’s arm helped him. When they
reached the landing where stood an old settee, Colonel Tremaine’s
strength failed him. He sank upon the settee, leaning heavily upon
Archie, to whom he said: “Stay with me, boy.”
Mrs. Tremaine burst into a passion of weeping, and Richard took his
mother in his arms to comfort her. He made no plea for Neville, knowing
that neither father nor mother would listen to it, but his eyes with
keen sympathy sought Neville’s and the two brothers understood each
other. Neville would always have a friend in Richard.
Angela had looked on with a fast-beating heart at this family
tragedy. Neville standing a little way off did not approach her, but
involuntarily held out his arms. Love, pity, grief, and a burning sense
of injustice smote Angela’s heart. She ran forward and taking Neville’s
hand boldly, said to him: “I will stand by you, Neville; I don’t know
why you should do this, but I know you feel it is right.”
“That is all I ask of anyone to believe,” answered Neville curtly. And
then leading her through the open door of the corridor into the old
study, he said to her: “If you truly love me, there is but one thing to
do. We must be married immediately.”
If Neville had been the Neville of an hour ago, the darling son of his
mother, the pride of his father, Angela would have shrunk from the idea
of marriage, but now from every generous impulse of her nature, she was
up in arms and doing battle for Neville. She would refuse him nothing.
Then she said quietly:
“I suppose it would be best.”
“I gave myself two hours so that if possible the ceremony might be
performed between us. I couldn’t attempt to take you back with me,
but I want you to be in the position that I can send for you as soon
as I know what will be done with me. I don’t suppose,” he added with
bitterness in his tone, “that my father and mother will turn you out of
doors because you are true to me.”
“I shall be true to you, Neville,” was Angela’s reply. He took his arm
from around her, held her off a little way, and scrutinized her face
now pale, now red, her eyes dark and wide and sparkling with emotion.
“Are you not afraid?” he asked.
“Afraid? Certainly not. I am no more afraid than you are, Neville.”
Hand in hand Neville and Angela returned to the hall. Richard sat on
the sofa by his mother, still holding her hand. Mrs. Tremaine no longer
wept. Anguish and reproach, fierce and deep, had dried her tears.
Lyddon, his heart wrung, could not control his agitation as he paced
stealthily up and down a corner of the hall. Half a dozen black faces
by this time were watching and peering in at the doors and windows.
As Neville and Angela came in the door, Richard rose. He knew
instinctively what Neville was about to say.
“Angela and I think best,” said Neville, “to be married at once, so
that she may be able to join me as soon as I can send for her. You
must assist us. I have still nearly two hours, and we ought to be able
to get a license and Mr. Brand in that time. If my father and mother
grudge me the roof of Harrowby under which to marry Angela, perhaps
they will allow us at least a foot of ground somewhere outside.”
Mrs. Tremaine rose and stood trembling. A great gulf had opened between
her and this eldest son for whom she had given every manifestation of
outward affection, and for whom she secretly cherished an idolatry
of which she was at heart ashamed as being unjust both to Colonel
Tremaine and her other sons. The whole humiliation of it, the horror
of Neville being driven from his father’s roof overwhelmed her. The
shame, the chagrin of not having Neville accept the code of honor which
she had taught him and which his father and brothers had accepted
unqualifiedly, was inexpressibly terrible to her. It was as if Neville
had coolly committed a forgery and refused to believe it wrong. She
saw that it was useless to plead with him and said no word, but her
silence, her tremor, her pallor were painfully eloquent enough. Neville
came close to her, and the mother and son who loved each other so much
looked into each other’s eyes and each saw defiance therein.
Then Richard spoke with authority. “Mother,” he said, “when Neville
goes away, he must leave Angela here. No matter what Neville may do
this house is the place for his wife, especially if that wife be
Angela, who has been a daughter to you and my father.”
Mrs. Tremaine’s eyes turned toward Angela. It came upon her that to
keep Angela would be a hold, a thread of communication with Neville,
and besides she loved the girl and would not have been capable of
casting her out. Richard spoke decisively, however, and no one
disputed what he said. He looked at the clock and it was half past two.
“Mr. Lyddon,” he said, “will you ride to the rectory and wake Mr. Brand
up and bring him here at once? I myself will get the license from Mr.
Wynne, the clerk of the court. It is six miles away, but I can do it in
an hour and a half.” He turned, and called out to Peter, whose solemn,
chocolate-colored face was peering in from the back porch, “Go and
saddle the horses at once and bring them up.”
“Thank you,” said Neville briefly. Everything was done properly when
Richard took charge. Angela and Neville stood looking at each other
uncertain where to go. Neville had been invited to leave his father’s
house, and he was not the man to tarry after having received such an
invitation. He glanced at Angela’s lovely disheveled hair and then
said to her: “You must go and dress to be married, and put a hood on
your head, for we shall be married out of doors. I will wait for you
outside.”
Angela passed swiftly up the stairs, and Neville walked the length of
the hall without once turning. Mrs. Tremaine, usually the calmest and
most self-controlled of women, could have shrieked aloud with pain
at the sight. Neville almost walked into Mammy Tulip’s arms, those
faithful black arms in which he had been cradled. In her place of
privilege, she poured forth her love and indignation.
“Never you min’, chile,” she cried. “Ef yo’ mar ain’t gwine to speak
to you no mo’, yo’ mammy lub you jes’ de same, honey. ’Tain’t gwine to
make a bit o’ diffunce cuz you is in de Yankee army, yo’ mammy will
tek car’ o’ Miss Angela fur you, an’ I gwine to knit you some socks an’
sen’ you. Yo’ ole mammy ain’t gwine furgit you.”
“Thank you, mammy,” Neville answered, putting his arm around her neck.
“Now you can do one thing for me at this moment. Go upstairs and help
Angela to make ready for our wedding.”
Angela had sped up the stairs and was in her own large room with its
great curtained bed. She was to dress for her wedding, but how strange
was everything. She threw off her crimson mantle and sitting down
before her dressing table began to comb out her long, thick hair. There
was occasion for haste; she should spend every moment possible with
Neville, but her mind as well as her body seemed dull and nerveless. As
she sat helpless before her mirror, Mammy Tulip waddled in.
“I come to he’p dress you, honey,” she said. “Marse Neville, he sont
me. What you gwine git married in, chile?”
Angela looked at her with eyes which saw nothing. She had thought only
of Neville. But youth is never for long self-forgetful, and a great
shock of pity for herself came upon her. Her quick imagination pictured
to herself what should have been the scene of that greatest hour in a
woman’s life. She saw herself in her bridal array, with a filmy veil
falling around her and a group of rosebud bridesmaids attending her,
and all things irradiated with joy and peace; the sound of wedding
merriment in the old house, felicitations on every lip, sympathy in
every heart, and now how bleak, how drear, how tragic was this wedding!
She arranged her hair, scarcely knowing what she was doing, and
submitted to have Mammy Tulip put on her a white gown and to throw a
white scarf over her head; then carrying her red mantle over her arm,
followed by Mammy Tulip, in lieu of a train of maids, she went down the
broad stair.
Colonel Tremaine still sat on the settee upon the landing. Whether his
heart would not let him lose the last view of his eldest-born or the
strange weakness, which had overcome him, would not permit him to move,
Angela could not tell. Archie, with a frightened face, still sat by
him. Angela stopped in front of him for a moment. She had never looked
into his face before without seeing kindness there, but now all was
sternness. She began to weep a little. Colonel Tremaine turned his head
away. To see a woman’s tears always gave him exquisite pain, but it
could not alter his resolution.
Presently Angela spoke: “Won’t you come and see us married, Neville and
me?”
“No,” answered Colonel Tremaine, in a voice that admitted of no appeal.
Angela went downstairs. Whether Mrs. Tremaine would have yielded Angela
did not know, but Colonel Tremaine’s refusal had frightened her. She
stopped before Mrs. Tremaine, and the two women eyed each other with
somber but uncertain eyes. Then Angela passed on and went out of the
small door in the corridor by the study.
Outside Neville was standing. He took the mantle from her arm and
placed it around her, “Come,” he said, “we shall have an hour to wait
until Richard returns. We need not ask the hospitality even of the
Harrowby lawn or garden. We can sit in the boat; the river, at least,
is a highway free to all.”
They walked to the little wharf at the end of the lawn, and Neville
lifted Angela into the boat, which lay gently rocking upon the
dark water. The sail had been dropped and the slender white mast
was outlined against the dark water and the darker sky. It was the
unearthly hour which is neither night nor day. A wind sharp and cool
was blowing--the wind that brought Neville to Harrowby and would take
him away. He wrapped Angela tenderly in the great cloak, and sheltered
her with his arm. It seemed to them both as if they were adrift upon
the ocean. Neville said little, not being a man of many words, and
Angela scarcely spoke at all. The wild beating of her heart choked her
speech. She had denied she was afraid, but in truth her mind was full
of fearful imaginings, of self-pity, and of a dread of the future.
Nevertheless, she had that species of courage which can disguise fear,
and Neville saw nothing in her agitation and silence to give him alarm.
She had not shown the least unwillingness to marry him. In truth the
habit of old affection was so strong upon her that Neville’s breast
seemed her natural place of refuge. She felt exactly as she had done
when as a little girl she was reproved for some childish naughtiness
and Neville, taking her upon his knee, would still her weeping and make
her laugh while tears were yet upon her childish cheeks. To Neville it
was the sweetest and the bitterest hour of his life. It was Angela who
said after an hour had passed: “Listen, I hear Richard returning!”
Neville rose at once and helped her from the boat. It was then after
four o’clock in the morning, and the wan light of the approaching dawn
was over the still and silent house, the old garden, the great masses
of trees with their delicate foliage outlined against a mournful and
stormy sky, and the weeping willow in the brick-walled spot lying out
in the wide, open fields.
Halfway across the lawn Angela and Neville met Richard.
“Everything is ready,” he said to Neville. “Mr. Brand has been in the
house half an hour. You must abate your pride, Neville, and be married
in the house.”
“No,” said Neville, in the same tone in which his father had refused
Angela’s plea to see them married. “I have been forbidden my father’s
roof, and it is the last place on earth that I should now choose to be
married in.”
Neville had rarely withstood Richard, but on this occasion Richard made
no protest, and Neville continued, with a grim, half-smile: “You can
bring Mr. Brand and Mr. Lyddon down to the wharf; that is as near being
no man’s land as one can find.”
Richard, without a word, turned back to the house, and Neville and
Angela returned to the little wharf which ran out twenty feet into the
river that whispered among its wooden piles.
In a few minutes the wedding group was formed. There were only five
persons: the bride and bridegroom, Richard Tremaine, Mr. Lyddon,
and Mr. Brand. Mr. Brand, looking thoroughly frightened, began some
high-sounding platitudes, rashly inquiring of Neville if he knew his
own mind.
“Certainly I do,” answered Neville, interrupting him, “and so does
Angela. Please proceed as quickly as possible, as my honor requires
that I should not remain away from my post one moment longer than is
necessary.”
Richard produced the license, and Mr. Brand began the wedding ceremony.
Until that moment no one had thought of a ring, but when that part of
the ceremony was reached in which the ring is necessary, Neville looked
confounded. He took Angela’s hand, however, and drew from it a little
ruby ring which he had given her when she was a child, and that was
made to do duty as a wedding ring. And so Angela Vaughn became Neville
Tremaine’s wife.
When the ceremony was over Richard shook hands with his brother, and
kissed Angela tenderly. Lyddon, also, shook hands with Neville, and
then, with a breaking heart, kissed Angela on the forehead for the
first time in his life. This, then, was the plucking of this blossom
in the flowering time. Richard made no suggestion that Neville should
return to the house, but Neville himself, after all, was quite unequal
to leaving Harrowby forever without one parting word to his father and
mother. They walked to the house, Angela between Richard and Neville,
while Mr. Brand, forgotten, lagged behind with Lyddon, who neither saw
nor heard him, although they were but a yard apart.
As the two brothers, with the new-made bride, entered the hall, they
found Mrs. Tremaine sitting on the sofa in the same spot where Richard
had left her. The candles were sputtering, and the pallid light of the
early dawn had crept into the silent hall. Colonel Tremaine still sat
motionless upon the settee at the landing on the stairs. Neville went
up to his mother and without touching her, he, with his whole heart,
his eyes, and voice, said: “I could not leave this house without one
last farewell to you and my father, and I must once more see the rooms
which I shall never see again.”
He turned to go into the drawing-room and Angela went with him. Over
the big grand piano hung a portrait of Mrs. Tremaine when she was a
little girl of six. “That was the first thing I remember,” Neville
said to Angela. “When I was a little boy Mammy Tulip told me that was
my mother, and I couldn’t understand that she should ever have been a
little child. There is my father’s portrait in his uniform when he came
from the Mexican War. I believe it was that picture and my father’s
stories of that war that made me a soldier.”
They passed into the library, the room not much used by any except
Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine, but where family prayers were always held.
Neville smiled a little as he spoke to Angela. “I think all of us have
some time or other been rebuked in this room for our inattention to
prayers, but I don’t think we were corrected often enough. Mother and
father thought themselves strict with us, but they were not half strict
enough. I wonder if they will ever again mention me at prayers as they
have always done.”
[Illustration: “And so Angela Vaughn became Neville Tremaine’s wife.”]
Angela was mute. She understood even better than Neville the depth,
the height, and the breadth of the resentment which Neville Tremaine’s
course had aroused in the hearts of his mother and father. Then they
went into the little shabby study; the ghost-like dawn was peering
through the windows. “This place is the spot where I always see you in
my imagination,” said Neville, “and in my dreams, for a soldier dreams
more than other men, I can tell you. But you are always in my dreams a
little girl, in a short, white frock, with a long plait of hair down
your back, and very sweet and restless, and a little spoiled, I think.”
Her silence for the first time struck Neville. He was holding her by
the hand, and, drawing her toward him, he said: “Are you sorry for what
you have done?”
“No,” replied Angela, “I would do it over again, but I am a little
stunned, I think. Everything is so strange, so unlike what I thought a
marriage would be.”
“Yes, very unlike, but in a little while, I think, I shall contrive a
way for you to be with me. Richard will see that you reach me, and then
our honeymoon will begin, dearest.”
They returned to the hall, and it was now the moment of parting.
Neville, drawn by an irresistible impulse, ascended the stairs to where
his father sat, still leaning upon Archie.
Father and son looked at each other steadily. Neville had half-extended
his hand, but it dropped to his side when he saw the expression on
Colonel Tremaine’s face, and then Neville, standing at attention,
formally saluted his father, as a soldier salutes his superior; a
salute which Colonel Tremaine returned in the same formal manner,
standing as straight and rigid as Neville. Archie’s boyish heart could
not see Neville go without a word. He ran forward and caught his
brother around the body, crying: “Good-by, brother, good-by!”
Neville kissed the boy on the brow.
True, these Tremaines were bone of one bone and flesh of one flesh,
because each of them was ready to sacrifice the heart, the soul,
all present, all future happiness to the principle of honor as each
understood it.
Neville went to the sofa where his mother sat. He meant to say some
words of farewell, but he could not speak, and for the first time since
his manhood he wept, the silent tears of a strong man, wrung from him
like drops of blood. Mrs. Tremaine, too, wept, but said no word. She
could bestow upon him neither her forgiveness nor her blessing, but
this wrenching apart was like the separation of the flesh and the
spirit. Neville could only turn to Angela and, taking her hand, place
it silently within his mother’s. That was his farewell.
CHAPTER VIII
THE MEETING
All Virginia had caught fire and was immediately a blazing furnace
of enthusiasm. The people were of a military temper and the spirit
militant had always possessed them. Their ancestors, having fought
stubbornly for Charles the First, had come to Virginia rather than
submit to Cromwellianism. Almost as soon as these cavaliers became
Virginians, they took up arms in Bacon’s Rebellion and fought so
stubbornly that fifty years afterwards families who had been in the
Nathaniel Bacon cause would not walk on the same side of the street
or road as those who had upheld Sir William Berkeley. They welcomed
fighting during the whole of the Revolution and in 1812 they again
faced the Redcoats. They were a primitive and isolated people and
belonged more to the eighteenth than to the nineteenth century; their
place in chronology, in truth, was of a time when fighting was loved
for fighting’s sake. They knew little and cared less concerning the
forces against which they were hurling themselves. Being an untraveled
people, they had no conception of any better or other life than their
own. They gave high-sounding names to things and places and fully
believed in the illusions thus created.
No people on earth ever went more seriously into a civil war than did
these Virginians, and civil war is serious business always. Every
family in the county was united except the Harrowby family, that one
which had been the most united, the most devoted of them all.
The news of the tragic happenings of that April night were known
magically through the whole community. Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine were
extolled as was Virginius, the Roman father. They were considered to
have performed an act of the loftiest patriotic virtue in giving up the
son whom they reckoned to have given up his honor.
Angela was generally condemned and had in the whole county only one
partisan; this was Mrs. Charteris, who was scarcely less of a Spartan
mother than Mrs. Tremaine, but who remembered that she had once been
young herself and rashly assumed that Angela must have been too
desperately in love with Neville Tremaine to refuse him anything.
Vain delusion, and wholly unshared by Angela! The entire face of
existence seemed to have changed for her in that April night and
nothing seemed to have its right proportions. But one sad truth made
itself felt at the moment when she became Neville Tremaine’s wife--she
was not in love with him. She loved him deeply and truly and would not
have turned from him in any event, even though the mother that bore him
did so. But mothers have a sense of responsibility in their love, and
Mrs. Tremaine felt as if, through some secret wickedness on her part
or Colonel Tremaine’s, she had brought into the world a traitor and
that God’s judgment was upon Neville therefor. She could not make this
intelligible to anyone except Colonel Tremaine, who himself inclined to
the same dread theory.
Richard Tremaine’s broad intelligence took a more just view of
Neville’s course, but Richard was powerless to move his parents. From
the hour when Neville went forth an outcast from his father’s house,
his name was never mentioned at family prayers, an omission which went
like a sword to the hearts of all those assembled at those prayers.
Also by a tacit understanding Neville’s name was no more spoken in the
presence of the master and mistress of Harrowby.
Apparently there was not the smallest outward alteration in Angela
herself or in her position. But in reality a stupendous change had
occurred. Angela was a wife, and subject to no authority except that
of her husband, and could no longer be disposed of as if she were a
child. Something of this showed subtly in her air and manner from the
beginning. There was a gravity and self-command which she adopted
instinctively with her new name of Angela Tremaine. No one saw and felt
this more than Lyddon. He read Angela’s heart like an open book, and
sighed for her.
Three days after her marriage, a small parcel addressed to Lyddon
reached Harrowby. It had been forwarded through the British consul at
Norfolk. Within was a letter addressed to Mrs. Neville Tremaine, and
the parcel consisted of a considerable sum of money in gold eagles.
Lyddon handed it to Angela in the presence of Mrs. Tremaine. It was
a sweet spring morning and the two were superintending the work in
the old garden just as they had done since Angela was a child. After
reading the letter she had not offered to show it to Mrs. Tremaine, but
put it quietly into her pocket.
Mrs. Tremaine, knowing from whom it came, and panting for news of the
outcast, still would not speak, and Angela, who was as sensitive to
Neville’s honor as if she were in love with him, had the haughtiness
of a wife in the presence of those who have dealt injustice to her
husband. She balanced the little packet of gold in her delicate
fingers, and her eyes, which had grown dark and serious, suddenly
assumed the inquisitiveness of a child.
Lyddon, who was watching her, knew she had never before owned so much
money as the modest sum which Neville had sent her. She glanced at
Lyddon, who was smiling, and knowing the thought in his mind, she
blushed deeply, and dropped the money into her pocket. Lyddon walked
away and Angela went on with her work of suggesting and assisting Mrs.
Tremaine in the planting of flower seeds.
Mrs. Tremaine was outwardly calm and her voice unmoved, but Angela
knew that storm and tempest raged within. An impulse of divine pity,
like the sun upon snow, flashed into her heart, and after a minute of
struggle she said softly to Mrs. Tremaine: “He is well.”
Mrs. Tremaine averted her head as if she had not heard, but Angela knew
she had, and then the next moment the mother turned quickly and kissed
the daughter-in-law who had shown mercy to her.
From the day after his return from Richmond, Richard had actively
canvassed the county for the raising of a battery of artillery of which
he wished to be elected captain. On the evening of the day when Angela
had got her first letter from Neville, Richard rode home tired with his
three days of riding and working, but exultant over his prospects. The
family were already at supper when he entered the dining room in his
riding dress and sat down to the table.
“I think, sir,” he said to his father, “the matter is settled and I
have enough votes pledged to me to secure the captaincy. We hope to
raise the whole equipment by subscription so that the State shan’t be
put to any expense whatever.”
“I, myself, will contribute all the wheat grown on the middle wheat
field,” replied Colonel Tremaine. And then, looking toward Mrs.
Tremaine, added: “We can afford to be generous now that we have but two
sons whom we can in honor own.”
Angela, who was sitting at the table, turned pale and then crimson, and
after a moment rose quietly and left the room. All knew what she meant
by this silent protest--she was Neville Tremaine’s wife and nothing
could be said against him in her presence, even by implication, without
her resenting it.
After supper, when Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine were in the library, they
sent for Angela and she came in promptly.
“My dear,” said Colonel Tremaine, in his most polished and elaborate
manner, “I have to beg your pardon for a most unfortunate allusion
which I inadvertently made at supper.”
“It was, indeed, most unfortunate,” answered Angela quietly.
Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine looked at her and felt as if the center of
the universe had dropped out. Here was this child, the companion of
Archie, daring to assert herself, nay, to assert the dignity of her
position as Neville Tremaine’s wife.
She was, however, so clearly right that Colonel Tremaine, after a gasp
or two, finished what he had begun to say.
“We understand perfectly what your attitude must be, and if by chance
allusion we seem to forget this, I beg that you will excuse us, and
believe that it is very far from intentional.”
Angela bowed and left the room.
It was not uncommon for Colonel Tremaine to make these elaborate
apologies and to ask pardon from the Throne of Grace when he had
offended, and he had been known, when the family was assembled for
prayers, to offer a ceremonious explanation for having thrown his boot
jack at Jim Henry’s head.
Toward Angela, however, Colonel Tremaine had ever been indulgence
itself and had always treated her as a favored child.
After the little scene in the library, Angela returned to the study,
where Richard and Lyddon sat, and told them what had happened. “I don’t
know how it was,” she said, “but although I was not thinking of Neville
at the time, the instant Uncle Tremaine said that about his sons whom
he could in honor own, I felt that I must not sit quiet under it. It
makes a great difference,” she added sagely, “when a woman is married
to a man.”
“A very great difference,” answered Lyddon, who could not forbear
laughing, and then growing serious he said: “You were always wanting
something to happen; wonderful things have happened and will continue
to happen, and the time may come when you will apply to the present the
old saw, ‘Happy the country which has no history.’”
Richard then took out a letter. “I had this to-day from Isabey, who
seems to have reached Richmond a few hours after I left. He is lucky
enough already to have got his captaincy of artillery and has been sent
to Virginia on a secret mission. He writes that he wishes to see me and
is likely to arrive at any moment.”
Angela listened to this with the new sense which had come to her
since the marriage ceremony between herself and Neville--the sense of
analysis. She had taken such tremendous interest in Isabey and had
dreamed so many idle dreams about him, decorating him with all the
girlish fancies of her heart; and now Isabey, the much-talked-of, the
long-expected, was nothing to her. She was still at the age when the
only interest possible was a personal interest, when her own destiny
she thought must be affected by every person who crossed her path.
Then she remembered that Isabey’s coming could mean nothing to her,
that she could no longer steal into Richard’s room to look at Isabey’s
sketches on the wall, and it gave her a slight shock. Many other things
in her new position puzzled her. She did not know in the least whether
she ought to be interested in Richard’s account of the raising of
troops in the county, and it suddenly occurred to her that when she
should join Neville, she would still be at a loss to know which side
she should take. She had been red-hot for war, but quickly and even
instantly had learned to sit silent when the coming conflict was spoken
of before her.
A day or two after was the time when the artillery volunteers were
to meet at the courthouse and elect their officers. Colonel and
Mrs. Tremaine sent Richard off with their blessing. He reached the
courthouse, which was ten miles away, by ten o’clock in the morning. It
was a day of brightness, and the old colonial courthouse and clerk’s
office lay basking in the warm April sun.
A great crowd had assembled, chiefly men from eighteen to forty-five,
but there were boys and graybeards present, and a few ladies. The
election of officers was held _viva voce_, and Richard was elected,
almost without a dissentient vote, captain of the battery of artillery.
The enrollment was large because Richard Tremaine carried men’s bodies
as well as minds with him.
When the business part of the programme was over, there was a call for
a speech, that invariable concomitant of every species of business
transacted in Virginia. This was responded to by Colonel Carey, who had
an inveterate passion for speechmaking, inherited from a long line of
speechmaking ancestors.
The colonel mounted the stone steps of the old courthouse and began
with his usual preliminary, which was the declaration that he was
totally unprepared for this honor and averse to public speaking, and
then promptly drew from his pocket a manuscript of the speech it
took him precisely three-quarters of an hour to deliver and which
had been prepared for the occasion as soon as secession had become a
living issue. The exordium of the colonel’s speech was that which is
invariably required of every orator on Virginia soil--a tribute to the
women of Virginia.
Richard Tremaine, standing on the edge of the crowd of all sorts
and conditions of men, listened gravely to the colonel’s roaring
platitudes, his torrent of adjectives, his prophetic visions. The
colonel was a fighting man, but Richard had no doubt would indulge his
speechmaking, if allowed, when bullets were whizzing and shell tearing
up the ground around him.
Colonel Tremaine had frequently complained that during the Mexican War,
Randolph Carey was always making speeches when the Mexicans were doing
their best work, while Colonel Carey often told of his annoyance when,
in a ticklish position, Colonel Tremaine would insist upon discussing
tailors and quoting long excerpts from the “Lake Poets.”
Richard, remembering this, smiled. Never were there two more determined
old fire-eaters than this couple of Virginia colonels.
While these thoughts were passing through Richard’s mind, Colonel Carey
was still thundering upon the courthouse steps. Like many others, he
believed that a loud enunciation had all the force of reason, and wound
up his speech by shouting that he saw among them a young man destined
to lead the hosts of Virginia to victory upon many a hard-fought field
and who, when the Southern Confederacy had achieved the first place
among the nations of the world, would stand high upon the roll of
statesmen. He referred to his young friend, young in years, but old in
wisdom, courage, and understanding, Richard Tremaine, Esq., of Harrowby.
At this, Richard Tremaine bowed gracefully and recognized that the
colonel had made a very good opening for the battery of artillery.
Cries of “Speech! Speech!” came in deep tones of men’s voices and
pretty feminine cries, and Richard Tremaine, mounting the courthouse
steps in his turn, said more in three minutes than the colonel had said
in his three-quarters of an hour.
Standing in the noonday light of the springtime, his figure outlined
against the mass of the old brick building, Richard Tremaine looked
like one of the straight vigorous young trees transplanted from the
primeval woods.
When he had finished speaking he walked across the courthouse green
to the clerk’s office. There was still much business to be attended
to concerning the enrollment and while Richard, with a group of
gentlemen, including Mr. Wynne, the gray-haired clerk of the court,
were discussing details, a horseman appeared before the open door, and,
flinging himself from his horse, entered the clerk’s office. A shout
went up, “Here’s George Charteris!”
He was a handsome, black-browed youth with a hint of mustache, and
wore a students’ cap set rakishly on the side of his head.
Cries of “Hello, George!” “How are you, George?” welcomed him. “Where
did you come from?”
“From Baltimore, straight,” answered George Charteris, going up to
Richard Tremaine and clapping him on the shoulder. “I heard four days
ago how things had gone and I determined to make straight for home.
Maryland is all right, gentlemen, she will be out of the Union in a
week. Baltimore is on fire with enthusiasm, and everybody might have
known what would happen as soon as Abe Lincoln tried to put his foot on
the neck of Maryland.” Here he raised his slight boyish figure up, and
his dark eyes flashed as he said: “I was in the fighting on the 19th of
April.”
They all looked at him with new eyes. This stripling had seen blood
flow and smelled powder burn. Murmurs of interest arose and Richard
Tremaine cried out: “Go on, boy, tell us about it.”
“I was staying at Barnum’s Hotel,” said George, delighted with the joy
of seventeen at telling his own “Iliad,” “and early in the morning I
was out on the streets which were crowded. Everybody knew the Yankee
troops would be passed through Baltimore that day, and the people were
determined that it shouldn’t be done without a struggle. The Governor,
an infernal old rapscallion, would not call the State troops out, so we
could only get together a lot of fighting men with stones and brickbats
in their hands and revolvers in their pockets. There were hundreds of
us around the station when the train full of bluecoats, thousands of
’em, came rolling in. I never saw so many soldiers in my life before.
We began to throw stones at the train so as to force the soldiers to
come out, and we did. There was a crash of breaking glass. I, myself,
threw a stone at a car window out of which an officer was peering
and I saw him fall back with blood upon his forehead. Then, after a
fusillade, the bluecoats came pouring out of the train and met us
face to face. We fired at them with our pistols and then the soldiers
formed and charged up the street. Of course, we couldn’t resist them,
so we scattered, but we made a stand at two or three places and did as
good street fighting as was ever done in Paris. I had read how they
made barricades by just upsetting a cart and tearing up paving stones.
There were a lot of us youngsters and in ten minutes we had made a
first-class barricade.”
George’s face was flushed and he pushed his students’ cap still more
rakishly to one side. He felt himself every inch a man and gloried at
coming into the heritage of manhood. While he was speaking he turned
his back to the open door. Before it came a lady, dark-haired and
white-skinned like himself--his mother. Mrs. Charteris raised her hand
for silence among the listening group and smiled, but her eyes, which
were exactly like these of her tall stripling, sparkled as did his.
George continued, folding his arms and drawing himself up as he talked:
“A line of bluecoats came charging up the street. They were very
steady, but so were we. They fired a volley, but we knew it was blank
and didn’t mind it. Then when they got close to us we gave them our
pistol fire. We didn’t use blank cartridges; three of the bluecoats
fell over and then all at once the soldiers swarmed upon us. It seemed
to me as if the earth and air and sky were all full of soldiers. They
were on top of me and around me and then, in some way, I can’t imagine
how, I tore myself loose and ran as hard as I could. I found myself
down on the docks among the shipping. There was a schooner making ready
to leave, and the captain was just stepping aboard. I spoke to him and
as soon as he opened his mouth I knew he was a Virginian. I told him
that I was a Virginia man, boy, I mean, trying to get back to tidewater
Virginia, and he told me to come along with him, that he was bound for
York River. We got off directly, but the wind failed almost as soon as
we reached Chesapeake Bay. We lay there becalmed for three days and
on the last day we got the Baltimore newspapers and one of them had a
poem in it, a great poem. It’s called ‘Maryland, My Maryland.’ It’s the
finest thing I ever read in my life.”
He took out of his pocket a newspaper clipping and, in a ringing voice
and with all the power of feeling, read the lines of the poem.
The effect was something like that produced by the first rendering of
the “Marseillaise.” As George finished, every man present sprang to his
feet and followed Stonewall Jackson’s advice, to “yell like devils.”
Richard Tremaine found himself hurrahing as loud as anybody. George
stood in an involuntarily heroic attitude, tasting the rapture of being
a hero. In a minute or two a soft arm stole around his neck, and close
to him he saw his mother’s delicate, handsome, middle-aged face, her
eyes, still young and exactly like those of the boy. He caught her in
his arms and kissed her rapturously. The mother and son were evidently
near together. When the cheering had subsided a little, Mrs. Charteris
turned to Richard Tremaine.
“Mr. Tremaine,” she said, “I have a contribution to make to your
battery of artillery. Here is my son, the only son of his mother, and
she a widow. You are welcome to him. I only wish I had ten more sons to
give my country.”
Richard Tremaine took Mrs. Charteris’s hand and kissed it. “It was
mothers like you,” he said, “who made Sparta and Rome.”
Mr. Wynne, the clerk of the court, a small, oldish man, with stiff gray
hair and a prim pursed-up, thin mouth, spoke: “Wait a bit,” he said.
“This Charteris boy is under age. He is too young to enlist.”
“I assure you he is not,” replied Mrs. Charteris positively. “He was
eighteen years old his last birthday. I, his mother, should know.”
Everybody present doubted whether George Charteris was really eighteen
or not, but Mr. Wynne settled it. He coolly took down a ledger and
turning over the leaves rapidly, came to a certain entry in it.
“Here, madam,” he said, suavely, “is the record of your marriage
license. It is dated fourth of June, 1843. Not quite eighteen years
ago.”
There was a moment’s silence and then an involuntary burst of laughter
from everyone present except Mrs. Charteris, who blushed deeply,
and the stripling, who looked thoroughly disappointed at the turn of
affairs.
“Never mind, my son,” said Mrs. Charteris, smiling. “Another two years
will see you old enough to serve your country.”
“Meanwhile,” said Richard Tremaine, putting his hand on the boy’s
shoulder, “send him to Harrowby and let Mr. Lyddon teach him along
with Archie. That boy, you know, is just about as crazy as your boy to
enlist, and I shouldn’t be surprised if George and Archie and my father
were all to run away together and join the army.”
“You are very kind,” answered Mrs. Charteris, “and if Colonel Tremaine
will allow it, and Mr. Lyddon will be so good, I think I can’t do
better with my boy.”
“I think you could do a great deal better, ma’am,” replied George,
promptly. “There are plenty of schools where nobody knows my age and I
can easily pass for eighteen or even twenty, and I am going to do it.”
“That’s just the way my brother Archie talks,” said Richard Tremaine.
“But sixteen-year-old boys are not good for campaigning.”
“Aren’t we, though,” replied George, slyly, “wait and see.”
“Observe, gentlemen,” continued Richard Tremaine, smiling as he looked
about him. “It is much to have such a spirit in our lads, but far more
such a spirit in their mothers, as Mrs. Charteris has shown. That alone
will make us invincible.”
CHAPTER IX
SPARTANS ALL!
The next day was Sunday, and half the county, that as to say, the
aristocratic moiety, had assembled at Petworth Church for the morning
service. The great wave of dissent which swept over Virginia after
the Revolution, and which was powerfully reënforced by the eloquence
of John Wesley and George Whitfield and other Methodist and Baptist
divines, had very much reduced the congregation of Petworth Church.
If, however, the vacant pews had been filled by the descendants of
those who had left it, these who had remained stanch to Anglicanism
would have resented it deeply. With the loss of numbers and of
political power, the social influence of the remnant remained
unimpaired and was even enhanced. The spirit of resentment which had
originally caused those who had remained true to the traditions of
Petworth and set a social ban upon those who had seceded into the newer
communions was added to the force of long custom and the indifference
of the dissenters.
Occasionally, a Baptist or Methodist family would appear in a
shamefaced way at Petworth Church, but in that age and time proselytes
were not welcomed or even desired.
The old church, which was designed by Sir Christopher Wren, was a bit
of the seventeenth-century architecture, standing serene and undismayed
in the nineteenth century, which in that part of Virginia yet lagged
a hundred years behind the age. The church was overgrown with ivy,
in which innumerable birds nested. In summer, when the diamond-paned
windows were opened to let in the blue and limpid air, the voice of
the clergyman was almost drowned in the splendid improvisations of the
larks and blackbirds that thronged about the old, ivy-covered walls.
The dead and gone vicars were buried under the main aisle, while in
the churchyard outside were ancient tombstones covered with long
inscriptions, moss-grown like everything else about the church.
Usually, the place was as placid as peaceful Stoke Pogis at evening
time, but on this April Sunday it was alive with people all throbbing
with excitement and on fire with enthusiasm. Besides the great event
which had stirred them all, the secession of Virginia, and the sending
forth to war of all the men capable of bearing arms, was the local
tragedy--Neville Tremaine turning traitor. The Tremaines were, taken
all in all, the greatest people in the county. Their wealth was
considerable, and their heritage of brains larger still. They had
always given the county something to talk about and did not fail in
this emergency.
In the minds of the people assembled at Petworth Church on that Sunday
morning was the species of curiosity, which is miscalled sympathy, to
see how the Tremaines bore the first disgrace in their family. Colonel
Tremaine was a stanch churchman, and Mrs. Tremaine never failed, rain
or shine, on Sunday morning to walk into church upon Colonel Tremaine’s
arm and to marshal her flock before her, a flock which for many years
past had consisted only of Angela and Archie.
There was no pretense in the community of sympathy with Angela, only
inquisitiveness mixed with scorn and contempt. Many doubted whether she
would have the assurance to present herself at church after her late
disgraceful alliance, for so her marriage with Neville Tremaine was
reckoned. But Angela, surmising this and with the hot courage of youth,
would not remain away.
The Tremaines were always prompt in arriving, and on this Sunday
morning, punctually at a quarter before eleven, the great lumbering
Harrowby coach, with the big bay horses, drew up before the iron gate
of the churchyard. It was Hector’s privilege to drive the carriage
on Sundays according to the peculiar custom by which the regular
coachman was superseded whenever there seemed any real occasion for his
services. The Sunday arrangement was of Mrs. Tremaine’s making, who,
regularly on Sunday morning, directed Hector after leaving his horses
in charge of Tasso, who was on the box, to come into church and pray
to be delivered from the devil of drink. This invariably gave great
offense to Hector, but he could not forego the honor and glory of
driving the Harrowby carriage on Sunday and the pleasure of a weekly
gossip with his colleagues who drove other big lumbering coaches.
The horses were quiet enough, but it was Hector’s practice to lash
them violently just as he was entering the grove in which the church
stood and to pull them up almost upon their haunches before the
churchyard gate. This programme was executed to the letter on this
particular Sunday.
The congregation gathered about the green churchyard and, standing
upon the flagged walk which led to the door, watched Colonel Tremaine
descend and then assist Mrs. Tremaine out of the carriage. There was
some one else to alight, Angela, now Mrs. Neville Tremaine.
At the same moment, Richard and Archie, who preferred riding to
driving, dismounted from their horses, and Lyddon, who had walked
through the woods to church, contrived to appear upon the scene,
desiring to see for himself how Angela would be received. As Colonel
Tremaine, with Mrs. Tremaine on his arm, walked along the flagged path,
it seemed as if another twenty years had been laid upon them since
the last Sunday. Colonel Tremaine’s stiff military figure had lost
something of its rigidity, and instead of looking about him and bowing
and saluting with the elaborate and somewhat finical courtesy which
distinguished him, he looked straight ahead, neither to the right nor
to the left, and walked heavily, as if conscious of his seventy-two
years.
Mrs. Tremaine was pale and wan and it was noticed that she was all in
black, although her dress, as usual, was rich--a black silk gown with
mantle and bonnet of black lace. Behind them walked Angela. The day was
warm and she wore a white gown and a straw hat crowned with roses.
One rapid survey had showed her what to expect. The girl friends with
whom she was most associated, for she could not be considered intimate
with any, the Carey girls and Dr. Yelverton’s three granddaughters,
looked timidly at her and instead of coming forward with effusion
to greet her, as they had done all their lives, turned away. George
Charteris, who had cherished for Angela the love of a sixteen-year-old
boy for a nineteen-year-old girl, stared her angrily in the eye, and
would not have spoken to her but for a vigorous nudge given him by Mrs.
Charteris, who alone spoke kindly to Angela. She did not, however,
advance, and Angela, for the first time in her life, walked alone and
shunned across the churchyard and to the church door.
She suddenly grew conscious of Richard’s voice behind her speaking
with a stranger, evidently in surprise at seeing him, and then both
advanced. Angela turned involuntarily and recognized instantly from his
picture Philip Isabey.
He was of a type site had never seen before--the unmistakable French
creole, below rather than above middle height, his dark features well
cut and delicately finished as a woman’s, and more distinguished than
handsome. He wore a perfectly new Confederate captain’s uniform, and
gilt buttons glittered down the front of his well-fitting coat. To most
of the people present it was the first Confederate uniform they had
seen, and it stirred them with consciousness of war and conflict at
hand.
Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine had stopped at the church door, and Richard,
coming up with Isabey, introduced him to them. “My old university
friend,” he said, “and chum of my Paris days.”
Colonel Tremaine greeted Isabey with overwhelming courtesy, and Mrs.
Tremaine said with sweet reproach: “Why is it that you didn’t come
straight to Harrowby?”
“Because, my dear madam,” replied Isabey, holding his cap in his hand,
“I only reached here last night and I was told by the tavern keeper at
the courthouse that I should certainly meet my friend Tremaine at this
church to-day.”
“You went to Billy Miller’s tavern?” cried Colonel Tremaine,
aghast. “Great God, nobody goes to a tavern who has any respectable
acquaintances! We could get on very well without such a thing as a
tavern in the State of Virginia.”
Isabey smiled a winning smile which showed his white teeth under his
close-clipped black mustache, and then Richard said coolly: “Let me
introduce you to my sister, Mrs. Neville Tremaine.”
Isabey bowed, and was astonished to see Angela blush deeply when she
returned his bow. He had gathered something from the talk of those
around him, in the previous half hour, of Neville Tremaine’s action
and of Angela’s position, and he had seen the hostile glances which
attended her. Isabey, well versed in women, took a comprehensive view
of Angela, and thought her most interesting. The subdued excitement,
the smoldering wrath, the burning sense of injustice which animated
her, spoke in her air, in the expression of her red lips, and in the
angry light from her eyes. But Isabey’s glance was kind. He looked at
her as if he did not think her a criminal. On the contrary, he conveyed
to her a subtle sympathy; in truth, he thought with the good-humored
tolerance of a man of the world that these haughty provincials were
engaged in a rather cruel business toward this young girl.
The two did not exchange a single word beyond the formal introduction,
Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine taking up the few minutes which remained
before the service began in demanding and commanding that Isabey return
with them to Harrowby and bringing also any friends he might have with
him.
“No one at all is with me,” replied Isabey. “I am simply sent here on
military business which I shall be able to transact in a day or two
with the assistance of my friend Tremaine and then I must report at
Richmond, but it will give me the greatest pleasure to make Harrowby my
home the little while that I shall be in this part of the country.”
Then Mr. Brand’s voice was heard through the open door proclaiming
that “the Lord was in His Holy Temple.” The wags had it that the
Lord never was in His Holy Temple until Mrs. Charteris was seated in
her pew, but on this occasion Mr. Brand, after waiting ten minutes
for his congregation to finish their gossip in the churchyard, had
boldly proclaimed that “the Lord was in His Holy Temple,” while Mrs.
Charteris was still gossiping at the church door. The congregation then
flocked in and the services began. The Tremaines’ pew was one of the
old-fashioned square kind, with faded red moreen curtains. In it sat
Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine with Angela. They were followed by Richard
Tremaine and Philip Isabey. Archie had taken advantage of the occasion
to lag behind and sit in a back pew with George Charteris, where they
could whisper unheard by their respective mothers during the whole of
the sermon.
Lyddon, who could by no means stand Mr. Brand’s sermons, remained
outside, preferring to face Mrs. Tremaine’s gentle reproving glances
for having missed the words of wisdom.
To Angela, the sudden shock of seeing Isabey, this man about whom
she had dreamed her idle girlish dreams so many years, was secretly
agitating. For the first time in her life a personality overwhelmed
her, as it were. She was conscious of, rather than saw, Isabey’s
clear-cut olive profile, his black eyes, with their short, thick, black
lashes, his well-knit figure, and detected the faint aroma of cigar
smoke upon his clothes. She forgot the presence of Colonel and Mrs.
Tremaine and Richard. She heard not one word of Mr. Brand’s vaporings,
nor was she conscious of any sound whatever, except the rapturous
trilling bursting from the full heart of a blackbird upon the willow
tree just outside the window.
Isabey was different from Richard and Neville Tremaine, and yet
not in the least inferior to them. His grace in small actions was
infinite--that composed grace which only comes with thorough knowledge
of the world. His speech, even, had been new to her. It had the
correctness of a language which was first learned from books, for
Isabey’s first language was French, not English. He kept his eyes
fixed upon Mr. Brand and apparently listened with the deepest attention
to the thundering platitudes which resounded from the pulpit. In
reality he heard not a word. His heart was filled with pity for the
pale girl who sat next to him, her eyes fixed upon the open prayer
book, of which she turned not a single leaf. She looked much younger
than her nineteen years and seemed to Isabey a precocious but unformed
child. Her angles had not yet become curves and she had that charming
freshness of the April time of girlhood. The one thing about her
which indicated womanhood was her eyes. They were not the wide and
fearless eyes of a child, but downcast, sidelong, and with the varying
expression of the soul which has thought and felt. Isabey concluded
that her mind was considerably older than her body. Angela sat during
the whole service and sermon thrilled by Isabey’s personality. When the
first hymn was announced and the congregation rose she mechanically
joined in the singing. Her voice was clear and sweet, though untrained,
and Isabey, listening silent, turning upon Isabey two lustrous,
wondering eyes. She was singularly susceptible to music, and the beauty
and glory of Isabey’s voice, a robust tenor of a quality and training
more exquisite than anyone in that congregation had ever before heard,
completed the enchanting spell he had laid upon her. One by one other
voices dropped off like Angela’s, and the last verse was almost a solo
for Isabey. He was averse to displaying this gift and was almost sorry
that he had joined in the singing except for the interest he took in
surreptitiously watching Angela. She looked at him with the eyes of
a bewitched child, like those who followed the Piper of Hamelin. And
Isabey, who knew that a siren lurks in all music, felt more of pity
than of gratified vanity when he noticed Angela’s rapt gaze.
Mr. Brand preached a stormy sermon full of patriotism and breathing
forth fire and slaughter against everything north of the line drawn by
Mason and Dixon. His warlike denunciations, his tremendous philippics,
echoed to the roof of the church which had heard Cromwell denounced
by vicars who had been driven from England by the Roundheads, and who
exhorted their congregations to be true to their royal masters. It had
heard a royal master denounced at the time of the Revolution, and now
heard the union of the States condemned as roundly. The prayer for the
President of the Confederate States was followed with a sort of fierce
piety by the congregation. Meanwhile, the fair day grew suddenly dark.
The wind rose and the great limbs of the willow trees dashed against
the church windows, while the landscape was flooded in a moment with a
downpour of April rain. Loud thunder was heard and the dark church was
illuminated by frightful flashes of lightning, which seemed to enter
every window at once.
As the prayer for the President of the Confederate States was
concluded, a tremendous peal of thunder, long and reverberating,
crashed overhead. It made the walls of the old church shake and the
diamond window panes rattle as if in an earthquake. The clergyman
stopped short--nothing could be heard above the roar of the thunder,
and the faces of the congregation could only be seen by the pale glare
of the lightning. It produced a sort of shock among them, but in a few
minutes the storm passed away as rapidly as it had come. The rain,
however, still descended in sheets and wrapped the green landscape in
a white mist like a muslin veil. When services were finally concluded
it was impossible to go out in the downpour. The people, however, were
determined not to lose their weekly reunion, especially as there was so
much to discuss, and gossiped cheerfully in the aisles.
The clergyman, having doffed his vestments, came out into the body of
the church in search of his Dulcinea del Tovoso. Mrs. Charteris met him
with her hands outstretched and a malicious light in her dark eyes.
“What an inspiring sermon you preached!” she said, “it’s enough to make
women fight, much more men, and how sad it is to think we are to lose
you!”
Mr. Brand looked slightly disconcerted.
“I have no intention whatever,” he said, “of leaving Petworth Church. I
feel it my duty to remain with my flock. My sheep must be shepherded.”
“Oh!” cried Mrs. Charteris, “I feel sure that your virtuous resolution
can’t withstand your martial ardor.”
“I am a man of peace----” began Mr. Brand.
“But there is a time for war and a time for peace,” tartly quoted Mrs.
Charteris, “as you said in your sermon just now. Oh, no, Mr. Brand,
we know what a sacrifice it would be to your martial spirit to remain
here, and we can’t ask it of you! The youngsters, you know, now call
you the Fire Brand, and as for the statement Mr. Wynne makes, who knows
when everybody was born and married, that you are over forty-five years
of age--why, dozens of the ladies of the congregation can prove that
you have told us you were not a day over forty.”
Mr. Brand sighed helplessly. The pursuit of ladies of spirit with sharp
tongues and considerable estates in their own right was not always a
bed of roses.
Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine both went out of their pew and mingled with
the congregation, talking freely of the epoch-making events of last
week.
Angela, however, silent and disdainful, remained in the pew, and Isabey
feeling sorry for her also remained, and began to talk with her in a
subdued tone.
“You have a very pretty voice,” he said. “Why didn’t you keep on
singing?”
“Because,” answered Angela in the same half-whisper, “I could do
nothing but listen to your singing. I never heard anyone in my life
sing so beautifully.”
Isabey smiled a little. “I am not particularly proud of the
accomplishment,” he said. “I don’t care very much for singing men
myself, and I have never taken singing very seriously since I was a
youngster in Paris. Some day I will tell you how I was taught to sing.”
Then after a pause he continued: “It is such a pleasure to me to see
Tremaine again. We were chums, as you know, and lived together in
Paris, and wore each other’s clothes and borrowed each other’s money
for two years.”
“I know all about it,” she answered.
“And I should like to have seen Neville Tremaine, your husband. We
were friends, too, although I never, of course, saw so much of him as
of his brother.”
As Isabey said “your husband,” Angela shivered a little, and her color,
which had returned again, went and left her pale. It suddenly occurred
to her with the inexperience and radicalism of youth that it was wicked
for her to take an interest in any man whatever other than Neville,
and at the same moment it flashed upon her that nothing which Neville
could say or do, that neither his coming nor going could affect her so
powerfully as the coming of this stranger.
Her marriage remained to her an astounding and disorganizing fact which
she could not wholly realize, but which made itself felt at every turn.
It made it wrong for her, so she thought, to listen so eagerly and even
breathlessly to Isabey, and yet she could not put from her his magnetic
charm.
She was conscious also that nearly every man and certainly every woman
in the congregation was surreptitiously watching her, and it seemed
that in talking so interestedly with Isabey she was showing a want
of dignity and feeling in the very face of her enemies, for so she
reckoned every person in Petworth Church that day, except, perhaps,
Mrs. Charteris.
In a quarter of an hour the rain ceased. The sun burst forth in noonday
splendor, and the people on leaving the church went out into a world of
green and gold and dripping diamonds.
Isabey, who had driven to church in the tavern keeper’s gig, thankfully
accepted a seat in the Harrowby carriage. As the old coach jolted along
the country road by green fields and through woodland glades, the
whole world shining with sun and rain, Angela found herself listening
with the same intensity to all Isabey said in his soft, rich voice.
Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine were charmed with him, for Isabey had an
extraordinary power of pleasing. He mentioned that his stepmother,
Madame Isabey, and her daughter by her first marriage, Madame Le Noir,
were then in Richmond as refugees from New Orleans.
“They must not remain in Richmond,” cried Colonel Tremaine decisively,
and, turning to Mrs. Tremaine, said: “My dearest Sophie, it is
impossible to think of these ladies left alone in Richmond while their
natural protector, Captain Isabey, is in the field. They must come to
Harrowby to remain during the war.”
“Certainly,” responded Mrs. Tremaine, “and bring their servants, of
course.”
Isabey opened his black eyes wide. He had heard of Virginia
hospitality, but this invitation to house a whole family for an
indefinite time amazed and touched him.
“I thank you very much,” he said, “not only for myself but for my
stepmother and Madame Le Noir. It is certainly most kind of you.”
“I shall not be satisfied with your thanks,” replied Colonel Tremaine,
putting his hand on Isabey’s knee. “Those ladies must come to Harrowby
at once.”
“The weather is warm,” murmured Mrs. Tremaine, “and it must be terrible
in a city during warm weather.”
“Your relatives are at the Exchange Hotel probably, as that is the only
place to stay in Richmond. When I was a boy it was the Eagle Tavern.”
“Yes, they’re there,” answered Isabey.
“We must both write to-morrow,” said Mrs. Tremaine, “inviting Madame
Isabey and Madame Le Noir to come to Harrowby. We should write to-day
except that it is Sunday.”
Isabey had heard of the Sabbatarianism in Virginia and perceived that
it was extreme, like Virginia hospitality.
Angela said little, but she felt a silent pleasure at the thought that
Madame Isabey and her daughter, Madame Le Noir, would be established at
Harrowby. It would be something different from what she had known so
far and break the quiet monotony against which she chafed. She already
pictured Madame Isabey as looking like a French marquise, and the
daughter, Madame Le Noir, as the feminine replica of Isabey. She did
not reflect that neither one was the least blood relation to Isabey.
When the carriage reached Harrowby, Angela went up to her own room,
and, taking off her flower-crowned hat, studied herself carefully in
the glass.
Was she really pretty, and what did Isabey think of her? And did he
like her voice? And the hundred other questions which an imaginative
and unsophisticated girl asks herself when she meets, for the first
time, the man who has power over her, followed. She had dreamed and
speculated so much about Isabey--what he would look like, what he would
talk about--and, now that she had seen him, he was twice as charming as
she had ever imagined.
And then it came over her as it did at intervals, like a cold blast
from the north, that she was Mrs. Neville Tremaine, and that a great
gulf lay between the Angela Vaughn of last Sunday and the Angela
Tremaine of this Sunday.
She remained in her room until the bell sounded for the three o’clock
dinner, when she went downstairs.
Isabey, who had spent the time with Richard in the old study, was
surprised to find himself eager to see Angela again, and wondering what
expression she would wear.
It was a very different one from what he had first seen upon her face,
for as she came downstairs Richard advanced, and putting his arm around
her, said affectionately, “Little sister, where have you been all this
time?”
Angela, who had been all wrath and vengeance, was soothed by this
tenderness, and smiled prettily.
Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine were both kind to her, but there was no more
tenderness in their manner to her. She was a part and parcel of their
disgraced son, and without a word being spoken on either side, Angela
felt the icy chill which had fallen between them.
Richard alone, of all the Tremaines, was quite unchanged toward her.
When they were at table Isabey’s presence, together with Richard’s
kindness, put new animation into Angela. She talked gayly and laughed
merrily. Isabey was as much enchanted with the beauty of Angela’s
speaking voice as she had been with his singing voice.
When dinner was over, Mrs. Tremaine and Angela went into the garden,
where all the little negroes of the place were assembled for their
weekly Sunday-school. In winter this was held in the spinning house
beyond the hedge but in spring and summer the old garden was the place
of learning. Mrs. Tremaine read the Bible to these black urchins, while
Angela, with the self-confidence of nineteen, expounded the catechism
to them and taught them to sing simple hymns.
Isabey and Richard Tremaine were standing on the little wharf jutting
into the blue river, which danced in the afternoon light, when the
fresh young voices of the negro children rose in a hymn.
“Come,” said Richard, “I know that you are ashamed of singing so well,
but give these little darkies a treat and sing their hymns with them.”
Isabey went willingly enough with Richard into the garden. As they
walked down the long, broad path, he saw Mrs. Tremaine enthroned upon
the wooden bench under the lilacs at the end of the garden, while
twenty-five or thirty negro children, from tall boys and girls down
to small tots of four years old, were ranged in a semicircle around
her. Angela was acting as concert master and led the simple singing.
The voices of the negro children had the sweetness mixed with the
shrillness of childhood, but for precision of attack and correctness of
tone they would have put white children to the blush.
As Isabey came up, Angela held out the prayer book to him and he sang
with her from the same page. The negro children instantly turned
their beady eyes upon him, but with a truer artistic sense than the
congregation of Petworth Church, they kept on singing.
Isabey’s supposed familiarity with the hymn tunes, which he had heard
for the first time that day, pleased Mrs. Tremaine immensely, who
had an idea that all well-bred persons were Episcopalians, and that
Catholicism, in which Isabey had been bred, was a dark dream of the
middle ages, which had now happily almost disappeared from the earth.
When the Sunday-school was over and the little negro children had
scampered back to the “quarters,” as the negro houses were called,
Richard proposed the Sunday afternoon walk. This was as much a part of
the Harrowby Sunday as was the three o’clock dinner.
Usually, the whole family went upon this promenade up the
cedar-bordered lane along which a footpath ran, edged with wild roses
and blackberry bushes. But on this Sunday afternoon, Mrs. Tremaine
gently declined, and took her exercise upon the broken flags of the
Ladies’ Walk, Colonel Tremaine, with the air of a Louis Fourteenth
courtier, escorting her. Archie begged off in order to ride over and
spend the night at Greenhill with George Charteris, so only Angela and
Lyddon were left to accompany Richard and Isabey.
They started off a little after five o’clock and soon reached the woods
across the high road. The declining sun shone through the branches on
which the delicate foliage was not yet fully out. The grass under their
feet was starred with the tiny blue forget-me-nots, and Angela knew
where to find the trailing arbutus.
Isabey, whose association with women had been almost wholly French, was
secretly astonished at a young girl standing upon such a footing with
men. Neither Lyddon nor Richard addressed much conversation to her, and
that always half-joking, but it was plain to see that she had a part
in their companionship and understood well what they were talking about.
They spoke of books, and Angela was evidently familiar with those which
were meat and drink to Richard and Lyddon. Isabey was not so good a
classical scholar as either of the other two men, but in modern French
literature and in the Romance languages he was far superior to either.
“Do you remember,” asked Richard, “the craze you had for Alfred de
Musset, Gustav Nadaud, and those other delicious rapscallions of their
time?”
“Certainly I do,” answered Isabey.
“And can you spout them as you did when we lived together in the Latin
quarter?”
“Rather more, I think,” answered Isabey. “The better I know those
rapscallion poets, as you call them, the more I like the fellows.”
“Then give us some of them, such as you used to do in the old days,
when I would have to collar you and choke you in order to make you
leave off.”
They were standing in a little open glade, across which a great
ash tree had fallen prone and dead. Isabey, half-sitting upon the
tree trunk, began with his favorite Alfred de Musset. His voice and
enunciation were admirable, and his French as superior in tone to
Lyddon’s as the French of Paris is superior to that of Stratford-le-bow.
If the spell of Isabey’s singing enchanted Angela, so even in a greater
degree did his repetition of these latter-day poets, who, leaving the
simple external things, tune their lutes to the music of the soul, a
music always touched with melancholy and ever finding an echo in every
heart.
Isabey, with a strong and increasing interest, watched Angela slyly.
She was so unsophisticated and had led the life so like the snowdrops
in the garden that things overimpressed her. She listened with her
heart upon her lips to the verses which Isabey repeated, and her color
came and went with an almost painful rapidity. The latter-day French
poets had been until then an unopened book to her, and the effect upon
her was overmastering. They introduced her into a whole new world of
passionate feeling, and it seemed to her that Isabey, who had opened
the gateway into that garden of the soul, was the most dazzling man on
earth.
Isabey saw this, for Angela was easily read. It was a new problem for
him, these young feminine creatures, who cultivate their emotions and
live upon them; who cleverly simulate intellect, but who are at bottom
all feeling; who can listen, unmoved, to the tale of Troy Town, but
who blush and tremble at a canzonet which tells the story of a kiss.
When Angela listened with rapt attention or when, as presently, she
spoke freely and gayly, Isabey thought her handsome, although not
strictly beautiful, nor likely to become so. But what freshness, what
unconscious grace was hers! She might have been one of Botticelli’s
nymphs, with the woods and fields her natural haunts and proper setting.
When the quartet turned homeward through the purple dusk, Angela felt
as if the familiar, everyday world were steeped in a glow, new and
strange and iridescent. Isabey had given her the first view of art as
art, of music, of world-beauty, and hers was a soul thirsty for all
these things.
He seemed to her the most accomplished man on earth. She knew well
enough, however, that Isabey was not a man merely of accomplishments.
If that had been the case she would not have been so impressed by those
accomplishments. But she knew that he was a man of parts intrusted with
serious business, and it was this which made his graces and his charm
so captivating.
Lyddon, too, was a man of parts, but Lyddon was awkward beyond words;
was bored by music, and although he could repeat with vigor and
earnestness the sonorous verse of Rome and Greece, it was too grave,
too ancient, too much overlaid with the weight of centuries to appeal
to Angela as did this modern poetry.
The instinct of concealment, which is the salvation of women, kept
Angela from showing too obviously the spell cast upon her by Isabey. It
was noticeable, however, that she was more animated than usual.
When supper was over, Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine, contrary to their
usual custom, went to the old study with the rest of the household and
their guest. Colonel Tremaine was deeply interested in what Isabey had
to tell him of the military situation at the South, and Angela listened
in a way which showed she was accustomed to hearing and understanding
serious things.
Isabey found out in a dozen ways that the study was quite as much
Angela’s habitat as anyone’s. There was her little chair in a
corner with her small writing table; above it were the books which
were peculiarly hers, besides her childish library of four or five
volumes. The flowerpots in the windows were hers, and when Richard
Tremaine, pulling her pretty pink ear, declared that he would throw the
flowerpots out of the window, Angela boldly responded that the study
belonged as much to her as to him, and that she would have as many
flowerpots in it as she pleased.
At half past nine o’clock the great bell rang for prayers, and the
whole family and all of the house servants were assembled as usual in
the big library.
Isabey liked this patriarchal custom of family prayers and listened
with interest to Colonel Tremaine’s reading of the Gospel for the day,
and Mrs. Tremaine’s soft and reverent voice in her extemporary prayer.
He noticed, however, the strange omission of Neville’s name, and when
the point came where it might have been mentioned, there was a little
pause, and Mrs. Tremaine placed her hand upon her heart, as if she felt
a knife within a wound. Perhaps she made a silent prayer for Neville,
whose unspoken name was in the mind of each present. Isabey glanced
toward Angela and observed her face suddenly change. She raised her
downcast eyes, and stood up for a moment or two, then sat down again.
In truth, Angela experienced a shock of remorse and amazement. She,
Neville Tremaine’s wife, had scarcely thought of him since she had
first seen Isabey that day, nor had Neville, at any moment of her life,
absorbed her attention as had this newcomer to Harrowby.
The thought came to her that, perhaps, it was after all because she had
seen in her life so few strangers that Isabey so impressed her, yet he
was a man likely to attract attention anywhere. But deep in her heart
Angela realized that Isabey possessed for her an inherent interest
which no other human being ever had possessed or could possess.
He left the next afternoon. He had had plenty of time to observe Angela
and had found out a great deal about her. He was filled with pity for
her, that pity which is akin to love.
CHAPTER X
THE ARRIVAL OF THE STRANGERS
Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine had carried out their intention of writing to
Madame Isabey and Madame Le Noir, in Richmond, inviting them to make
Harrowby their home during the war. Isabey had smiled, rather grimly,
while expressing his thanks. He could make a very good forecast of
how the two ladies from New Orleans would impress the simple Virginia
household, but, being a wise man, did not attempt to regulate the
ladies in any particular whatever.
When Isabey had left, Angela felt, for the first time, a singular
sensation as if the sun had gone out, leaving the world gray and cold.
How commonplace seemed her life, how inferior the familiar books and
things and places to those new books and things and places of which
Isabey had shown her a glimpse! She had loved the piano and had joyed
in singing her simple songs, but now how primitive, how crude her music
seemed contrasted with Isabey’s exquisite singing! He had promised to
tell her how he had learned to sing so well, but he had forgotten to do
so.
Angela spent some days in idle dreaming, not the delicious dreams which
usually come of idleness, but dreams painful and perplexing. She wrote
long letters to Neville which she destroyed as soon as they were
written, for they were all a reflex of Isabey. She had placed upon her
dressing table a daguerreotype of Neville which he had given her a year
or two before. She took it up, looked at it dutifully half a dozen
times a day. How dear was Neville, if only she were not married to him,
and but for that awkward fact how freely she could have talked with him
about Isabey; but now because Neville was her husband there were things
she could never mention to him!
It was some days before she recovered her balance. It was, however,
no time to be idle at Harrowby, for Mrs. Tremaine had undertaken to
equip a field hospital for Richard Tremaine’s battery of artillery.
She contributed to this most of her linen sheets and pillowcases, and
organized a household brigade of maids and seamstresses to scrape into
lint all the pieces of old linen to be found. Angela did her part with
readiness and energy. And, as the case always is, work steadied her
mind and her composure. Her heart and soul were growing by leaps and
bounds, and in a month she progressed as far as she would have done in
a year ordinarily. She wrote a letter to Neville regularly once a week
and gave it to Lyddon, who contrived to get it to the British Consul
at Norfolk, through whom it was forwarded, and she heard once or twice
during the month from Neville. He wrote her that he knew not from day
to day where he would be, and was kept on the wing continually. Nor
could he fix any time when there would be a chance of her joining
him, but that of one thing she might be certain, he would not delay
an hour in sending for her when it should be possible for him to have
her. In these letters he always mentioned his father and mother with
the deepest affection and without resentment. Angela read those parts
of his letters to Mrs. Tremaine, who listened in cold silence, but who
repeated them to Colonel Tremaine when the father and mother alone
together made silent lament over the disgrace of their eldest-born.
Richard Tremaine was but little at home during the next month. A large
camp of instruction was formed about fifteen miles from Harrowby where
troops were pouring in not only from Virginia but from other Southern
States. These men had to be drilled and trained to be soldiers and
the task was heavy. There was much illness among these green soldiers
unused to living in the open, and Mrs. Tremaine and Mrs. Charteris,
with other ladies in the county, were angels of mercy to the sick.
Mrs. Charteris had accepted Richard Tremaine’s suggestion to send
George Charteris over to Harrowby to study with Archie under Mr. Lyddon
as the means of keeping him at home until he should be eighteen.
George Charteris, to whom Angela had been the star of his boyish
soul, now showed her coldness and disdain. So did everybody in the
county, however, with the solitary exception of Mrs. Charteris. Angela
remained quietly at home, a thing not difficult to do when one has no
invitations abroad. She went to church on Sundays, but, beyond a few
cool salutations, had nothing to say to anyone. When the first burst
of indignation against her in the county was over, the attitude of the
people among whom she had been born and bred became somewhat modified,
but it was then Angela who, standing upon her dignity, would have
nothing to say to them. She had a natural longing for companions of her
own age and sex, but when the Yelvertons and Careys made a few timid
advances toward her she repelled them resentfully.
Meanwhile, letters had been received from Madame Isabey and Madame Le
Noir acknowledging the hospitable invitation to Harrowby and accepting
it at the end of the month. Madame Isabey’s letter was in French, but
Madame Le Noir’s was in English of the same sort as Isabey’s, fluent
and correct, but of a different flavor from the English of those who
are born to speak English. Angela looked forward with excitement and
even pleasure to the advent of the strangers. Their society would
provide her with the novelty which she secretly loved. She imagined she
would be much awed by the stateliness of Madame Isabey, but anticipated
being in complete accord with Madame Le Noir, a widow, barely thirty.
Her very name, Adrienne, breathed romance to Angela, who was accustomed
to Sallys and Susans and Ellens and Janes, and she had not yet found
out that names do not always mean anything.
The whole journey of the New Orleans ladies from Richmond had to be
made by land, as river transportation was entirely stopped, owing
to the patrolling of the Federal gunboats. It was arranged that the
Harrowby carriage should meet the guests at a certain point on the road
from Richmond. As usual the regular coachman was displaced in Hector’s
favor, and Colonel Tremaine went in the carriage out of exquisite
hospitality, and likewise for fear that Hector might in some way have
got hold of the applejack which had replaced the French brandy and
champagne at Harrowby, and land the ladies in a ditch.
Two of the best rooms in the house were prepared for the expected
guests, and a couple of garret rooms allotted to the two maids who were
to accompany the ladies.
On a lovely May afternoon the coach with Madame Isabey and Madame Le
Noir was due at Harrowby. Never had the old manor house looked sweeter
than on this golden afternoon of late springtime. The great clumps
of syringas and snowballs, like giant bouquets on the green lawn,
were in splendid leaf and flower, and flooded the blue air with their
perfume. The old garden was in the first glory of its blossoming, and
the ancient wall at the end, where stood the bench called Angela’s,
could scarcely support the odorous beauty of the lilacs, white and
purple. The river singing its ceaseless song ran smiling and dimpling
to the sea. All was peace outwardly, although peace was riven within
the household. Angela was palpitating with excitement at the thought of
the strangers’ arrival. She had never seen anyone in her life from a
place as far off as New Orleans, except Isabey and Lyddon. The ladies
of high degree, who were to arrive, belonged in a way to Isabey, and
it was through him that they were invited to take up their domicile at
Harrowby. Angela dressed herself carefully in a pale-green muslin left
over from last year. There had been no question of new gowns for women
that year; an army of men had to be clothed and shod, and for that the
women of the South heroically sacrificed their fal-lals.
Mrs. Tremaine, herself, placid and dignified, was secretly a little
agitated at the coming advent of these strange new guests. Luckily,
Hector being absent, everything went on properly in the department
of the dining room, and there were no complications about lost keys,
disappearing brandy bottles, and the usual corollary of a butler with
magnificent manners, a disinclination for work, and a tendency to steep
his soul in the Lethe of forgetfulness. Toward five o’clock, everything
being in perfect preparation, Angela went into the garden to pace up
and down the long walk and think, to speculate, to dream chiefly of
Isabey, for she had not succeeded in putting him out of her mind. As
she passed across the lawn she met George Charteris about to return to
Greenhill. He went by her with a sort of angry indifference. Angela
noticed this without feeling it. She seemed not four years but a whole
decade older than George Charteris, and eons seemed to have passed
since she was flattered by his boyish admiration.
As she sat on the bench under the lilacs she remembered the old
yearning which had been hers, when the lilacs last bloomed, for
something to happen. Things were happening so fast that her breath
was almost taken away. And then looking toward the house, she saw the
old coach rolling up. Hector, by some occult means, had succeeded in
getting a nip of applejack, and in consequence Colonel Tremaine sat on
the coach box and drove, while Hector, with folded arms, expostulated.
There was, however, no room for Colonel Tremaine inside, as it was
entirely taken up by the two ladies, their maids, and bandboxes. A cart
containing their trunks followed behind.
By the time the cavalcade drew up to the door, Angela, who was fleet of
foot, was standing on the steps with Mrs. Tremaine. Colonel Tremaine,
springing from the box and bowing profoundly, opened the carriage
door and Isabey’s stepmother descended. Madame Isabey was the size
and shape of a hogshead. She had once been pretty and nothing could
dim the laughing light in her eyes and the brilliance of her smile.
She radiated good humor, and when Mrs. Tremaine advanced, embraced,
and kissed her on both cheeks, she poured forth a volley of thanks in
French, of which Mrs. Tremaine understood not one word. Madame Isabey
spoke English tolerably, but in moments of expansion invariably forgot
every word of it. Then she seized Angela, whom she called an angel,
a darling, and a little birdlet, of whom Philip had written her. If
Angela was slightly disappointed in the state and majesty of Madame
Isabey, there was no disappointment when Madame Le Noir descended.
Her eyes were dark and her complexion olive like Madame Isabey’s, but
there the resemblance ceased. Adrienne’s face, delicate, melancholy,
beautiful, was of exquisite coloring, although without a touch of
rose. Her hair was of midnight blackness, her complexion creamy, and
she had the most beautiful teeth imaginable, which showed in a smile
faint and illusive that hovered about her thin, red lips. Her figure
was perfectly modeled, and her gown, her hat, her gloves, everything
betokened an exquisite luxury of simplicity. She spoke English fluently
in the most musical of voices. Lyddon, who from the study window, was
watching the debarkation, promptly came to the conclusion that no
woman with so much personal charm and elegance as Madame Le Noir could
possibly have any mind whatever.
A greater contrast to Angela could not be imagined. With that singular
sensitiveness about clothes which is born in the normal woman, Angela
realized at once that her gown was of last year’s fashion and the
brooch and bracelets which she wore, according to the custom of the
time, were not suited to her youth and slimness. She and Adrienne
glanced at each other and in an instant the attraction of repulsion
was established between them, that jealous admiration which is after
all the highest tribute one woman can pay another. Not more was Angela
overwhelmed with Adrienne’s matchless grace, her air of being the
perfect flower of civilization, than was Adrienne impressed by Angela’s
nymphlike freshness. Thirty is old for a woman near Capricorn, and
Adrienne Le Noir looked all her thirty years. Her beauty had been
acquired, as it were, by painstaking and was certainly preserved by it,
while here was a creature, with the freshness of the dawn and much of
its loveliness, whose beauty was no more a thing of calculation than
the wood violets or the wild hyacinths which grew shyly under the yew
hedge along the Ladies’ Walk.
Madame Isabey, who waddled into the house, escorted by Colonel Tremaine
with elaborate welcomes and many genuflections, was charmed with
everything. Finding Mrs. Tremaine did not understand a word of French,
Madame Isabey poured forth her thanks in Spanish, which did not mend
matters in the least. She grew ecstatic over the dazzling account which
Isabey had given of Angela, and Angela, to her own annoyance, blushed
deeply at this--a blush which did not escape Adrienne, whose soft black
eyes saw everything.
Angela’s ear was not attuned to French, and although she had a really
sound knowledge of the language, she was mortified at having to ask for
a repetition of what Madame Isabey was saying. She received another pin
prick by Adrienne’s speaking to her in English.
After the ladies were shown to their rooms they were invited to rest
themselves until supper, which was at eight o’clock. Angela went
downstairs and again sought the garden seat. She was followed by
Lyddon. “Wonderful old party, Madame Isabey,” he said, throwing his
long, lanky figure on the bench. “I perceive, however, that she is
amusing and means to be pleased, and the other lady--by Jupiter, I have
never seen a woman more beautiful than she!”
Angela started.
“Why, Mr. Lyddon,” she said, in a surprised voice, “Madame Le Noir is
very, very pretty, but I shouldn’t call her beautiful!”
“My child, men will always call Madame Le Noir beautiful because she is
seductive; that is beauty of the highest order.”
Angela laughed.
“I didn’t think you were so keen on beauty, Mr. Lyddon.”
“I’m not; I let the ladies alone as severely as they let me alone, but
I know a beautiful woman when I see one. This Madame Le Noir has the
beauty of the serpent of old Nile. I dare say there will be a match
between her and Captain Isabey soon.”
“Why do you think so?” asked in a tremulous voice the wife of Neville
Tremaine.
“It is what the ladies call intuition. They were not brought up
together at all as brother and sister; that much I know from Captain
Isabey, who mentioned that he was at the university when his father’s
second marriage occurred.”
Angela sat silent revolving these things in her mind.
Isabey married! She had thought of him for years as a hero of romance,
a knight of dreams, but she had never contemplated him as married.
Lyddon continued:
“They have a way in those New Orleans families of keeping all the money
in the family connection. I judge that it would be a good financial
arrangement for Madame Isabey’s daughter to marry her stepson, and
the suggestion will come quite naturally from the old lady and will
probably be accepted.”
Lyddon advanced these airy hypotheses with such an air of certainty
that Angela took them just as he intended, seriously and definitely.
He had trained this flower for Neville Tremaine, and he did not wish
Isabey to inhale all its fragrance.
A little before eight o’clock Adrienne came down into the hall where
the lamps and candles were lighted. She was exquisitely dressed in a
gown of the thinnest white muslin and lace, which set off her delicate,
dark beauty. She had already made a conquest of Colonel Tremaine by
her graceful affability, and riveted the chains upon him by her soft
manners and her well-expressed gratitude. Women without penetration
seldom took any notice of Lyddon, but Adrienne had much natural
discernment, and she recognized under Lyddon’s ill-fitting clothes and
general air of abstracted scholarship a very considerable man. As she
talked, standing in an attitude of perfect grace with one bare and
rounded arm upon the mantelpiece, Lyddon concluded that he would add a
second to his private portrait gallery of women, Angela having been the
only one up to that time. Adrienne Le Noir was neither a green girl nor
a simpleton nor a would-be wit, nor any of the tiresome things which
Lyddon always took for granted with young and pretty women. She made
no pretentions to be well read, but she had studied the book of life
and had mastered many of its pages, and Lyddon suspected that she was
better acquainted with the human document than most women. He found
himself wondering what sort of a marriage hers had been, and surmised
that she was by no means broken-hearted. Her pensive air struck him as
being rather an expectant than a retrospective melancholy.
When supper was announced Madame Isabey had not yet appeared, and
Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine would have died rather than gone in the
dining room without her.
“I am afraid you will not find my mother very punctual,” said Adrienne
with a smile. “Even Captain Isabey has never been able to make her
punctual, and she will do more for him than for anyone else in the
world. I often tell her that he is her favorite child, not I.”
“It is most delightful,” said Colonel Tremaine grandly, “to see so
affectionate a relation existing between a stepmother and a stepson.
No doubt Captain Isabey, with whom we all became infatuated, regards
Madame Isabey as a mother.”
Adrienne laughed a little. “I scarcely think that,” she said. “My
mother never saw Captain Isabey until he was more than twenty years
old, but he is very chivalrous, as you know, and was always most
attentive to my mother, and she has a kind heart. She admires Captain
Isabey, and is very proud of him.”
“As she may well be,” responded Colonel Tremaine impressively. “And
to you, my dear madame, such a brother must have been an acquisition
indeed.”
“But he is not my brother,” replied Adrienne, quickly and decisively.
“I never saw Captain Isabey until just before my marriage, and although
we are the best of friends and I haven’t words to express his goodness
to me, I don’t look upon him as a relative.”
Lyddon glanced at Angela as much as to say: “Just as I thought.”
It was in vain that Adrienne urged that the family go into supper.
Neither Colonel nor Mrs. Tremaine would budge until Madame Isabey
appeared. At last, after waiting twenty minutes, Madame Isabey came
bustling down, finishing her toilet in full view of Colonel Tremaine,
Lyddon, and Archie, and explaining that Celeste, her maid, never could
put her hand on anything. Colonel Tremaine then offered her his arm
and they proceeded to the dining room. Madame Isabey declined both tea
and coffee, and with much innocence asked for red wine, but when Mrs.
Tremaine explained that all the wine at Harrowby had been sent to the
field hospital, the old lady, with the utmost good humor, took a glass
of sugared water instead.
She chattered incessantly in French to Colonel Tremaine, and by dint
of repeating everything over three times and the use of the sign
language made him understand what she was saying, and listened with the
greatest good humor to his rusty French. She talked much about Isabey,
to whom she was evidently attached, and the fact that he had let fall
some words of admiration concerning Angela at once established her in
Madame Isabey’s good graces. The old lady was not deficient in humor
and gave an amusing description in mixed French and English of their
hurried flight from New Orleans, and thanked God that she had found a
comfortable place to rest her bones until the war should be over or she
should be turned out of doors.
“No fear of that, madame,” replied Colonel Tremaine, laughing in spite
of himself. Then Madame Isabey launched into praise of Philip Isabey,
speaking of him as her son. “You, my dear colonel and Mrs. Tremaine,
can sympathize with me as only parents can. I have given my only son,
my Philip, to his country, and you, I hear, more fortunate than I, have
given two sons and one more remains to offer.”
Colonel Tremaine’s handsome old face grew pale, while a flush arose
in Angela’s cheeks. A silence fell which showed instantly to Madame
Isabey that she had made a false step, and she suddenly remembered the
story about Neville Tremaine which she had heard and, for the moment,
forgotten. After a pause, slight but exquisitely painful, Colonel
Tremaine replied: “We have only one son in the Confederate service.”
“Oh, were you ever at the carnival?” cried Madame Isabey, determined to
get away from the unfortunate subject.
“Yes, madame, I was at the carnival of 1847,” replied Colonel Tremaine,
glad to take refuge in the safe harbor of reminiscences of 1847.
“I remember that carnival. I was as slight as your finger, and could
waltz all through the carnival week without being fatigued.” Here
Madame Isabey, with her two fingers and a lace handkerchief deftly
wrapped around her hand, made a very good imitation of a ballet dancer
waltzing and pirouetting on the bare mahogany table. Mrs. Tremaine was
secretly shocked at such flippancy, and Adrienne sighed a little over
the incurable levity of her mother.
One present, however, enjoyed it hugely. This was Archie, who
recognized that Madame Isabey’s heart and soul were about the age of
his own. He grinned delightedly and sympathetically at Madame Isabey.
So did Tasso and Jim Henry, but Hector, assuming an air of stern
rebuke, marched up to Madame Isabey, and in a stage whisper announced:
“Family prayers, m’um, is at half past nine o’clock, mu’m.”
“What does he say?” asked Madame Isabey inquiringly. And Lyddon gravely
explained that Hector wished to know at what hour she would like
breakfast in her room.
After supper, Madame Isabey, who had heard the outlines of Angela’s
story, taking her by the arm, walked up and down the hall, her
voluminous flounces and large hoop making her look like a stupendous
pin cushion. But her smiling face, dimpled with good humor, showed that
she had not outlived the tenderness of sympathy.
“My dear,” she said, speaking slowly and in English, “I know it all.
You adored Neville Tremaine and married him for the best reason in the
world--because he asked you. We are not accustomed to what you people
in Virginia call love marriages, but I rather like them once in a while
when there is a little money back of them. My last marriage was a love
marriage, but I had a fine house in New Orleans and a couple of sugar
plantations, and my husband had two more sugar plantations and a larger
house than mine, so you see we could afford to be sentimental. My first
marriage was arranged for me, but I frankly admit that I preferred the
last one. It sometimes happens that a second marriage is a first love.”
Angela with Madame Isabey’s fat arm upon her slender one, and the old
lady’s dark, bright eyes seeking hers, was inwardly horrified at Madame
Isabey’s confidence, but maintained a discreet silence as Madame Isabey
prattled on.
“So was Adrienne’s marriage for her, but she is different from me. She
didn’t take it kindly. Oh, I don’t mean she objected! My daughter is
far too well bred, too well governed, for that. She is superior to me
in understanding and everything else, but she was very _triste_ all
the time poor Le Noir lived, and when he died, after two years of
marriage, Adrienne appeared relieved. That was ten years ago, and I
believe she intends to make a love marriage the next time.”
Then, catching a glimpse of Lyddon shambling across the hall to the
old study, Madame Isabey darted after him with an activity and grace
singularly contrasted with her size and shape.
“Come here, you Mr. Lyddon, you Englishman,” she cried. “Tell Madame
Neville Tremaine and me what you think of love marriages.”
“It is a subject upon which I never dare to think,” replied Lyddon in
his scholarly French.
“That’s the way with you blessed English,” cried Madame Isabey
laughing. “You never think, you only act, you English. I am telling
Madame Neville that there are worse things than love marriages, and as
for all this racket about her husband remaining in the Union Army, tra
la la.”
However astounded Angela might be by Madame Isabey’s frank confessions,
her goodness of heart and her desire to make herself acceptable was
obvious, nor was she without charms and interest.
When they went into the drawing-room, Colonel Tremaine asked Adrienne
if she played.
“Yes,” she replied, smiling, and seating herself at the piano, swept
away the music on the rack, and ran her fingers softly over the keys.
Her playing was to Angela as great a revelation as Isabey’s singing.
It was so finished, so full of art, so unlike the noisy transcriptions
of operas and descriptive pieces to which Angela was accustomed.
She listened, thrilled, but with a sinking heart. Each of her
accomplishments seemed to disappear, one by one, in the light of
Adrienne’s superiority.
When Adrienne had finished playing, Madame Isabey cried: “Oh, you
should hear Adrienne and Philip sing together the most charming duets
imaginable! My child, sing for our friends.”
Adrienne acquiesced readily and gracefully. She was in no wise averse
to showing her gifts before this young girl already a wife, whom Philip
Isabey had admired so openly.
Adrienne’s voice was not remarkable, but her method, her feeling, her
deep musical intelligence made her songs charming.
Then to complete Angela’s mortification, as it were, Mrs. Tremaine
asked her to play. Angela, with the courage which would lead a forlorn
hope, went to the piano and very wisely chose to do what she could best
do. She played a waltz with perfect rhythm, but she had nothing of the
phrasing, the tone color, the power of expression which marked the
finished musician.
The waltz was, however, inspiring enough, or rather too much so, for
Madame Isabey crying, “The music gets into my feet, it makes me waltz,
I can’t help it,” sprang up, and catching Archie by the arm, cried
out: “Oh, you dear little red-headed boy, come and waltz with me!”
Archie, nothing loath, seized her about her capacious waist, and the
two floated round the big drawing-room to their own delight and to the
discomfiture of all present except Lyddon and the servants, whose black
faces peering in at the door were expanded into smiles which showed
all their ivories.
Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine were aghast; Mrs. Tremaine had never really
considered the waltz respectable.
Neither age nor size could impair Madame Isabey’s grace, and Archie,
enveloped in her flounces, his round, red head peering over her
shoulder, found less difficulty in steering her than many a sylph-like
girl. Lyddon, smiling grimly, leaned with folded arms against the
mantelpiece. He forebore to take a chair, meaning to make his escape at
the first moment. Suddenly Madame Isabey darted up to him and crying,
“Here is an opportunity to teach you the divine waltz,” proceeded to
drag him around the room, keeping time meanwhile with a refrain of
“one, two, three, waltz around.”
Angela turned round, and for the first time in a month burst out
laughing. So did Colonel Tremaine, while a subdued guffaw from the
window showed that Lyddon’s predicament had not been wholly lost
on Tasso, Jim Henry, Mirandy, and their colleagues. Lyddon, when
he recovered his senses, found he had waltzed half round the room
with Madame Isabey, but then tore himself loose, and rushed away,
considering whether or not he should be obliged to give up the
comfortable berth at Harrowby, which he had held for twelve years,
rather than live under the roof with this extraordinary old lady.
Madame Isabey sat down panting. The laugh which went round relieved for
a moment the tension which had prevailed at Harrowby ever since that
fateful night of Neville’s departure.
CHAPTER XI
HOW THE DAYS WENT ON AT HARROWBY
After a few days life at Harrowby settled down to a regular routine
under its new conditions. A Virginian’s house is not his castle, but
the castle of the stranger within his gates.
Madame Isabey and Adrienne had breakfast in their rooms, and Adrienne
did not appear until the day was well advanced, while Madame Isabey
sometimes was not seen until late in the afternoon. Celeste, Madame
Isabey’s maid, who was an African replica of her mistress, could not
speak a word of English, and thought if she screamed loudly enough at
Hector, in French, that she could make herself understood. Hector,
falling into the same delusion, bellowed back at her in English, and
the noise was only stopped by Angela being on hand every morning to
explain Celeste’s wants to her colleagues.
Adrienne’s maid was like her mistress, quiet, soft-spoken, and
intelligent.
It was, however, just as well that these handmaidens did not understand
everything which went on at Harrowby. The tea, coffee, and sugar were
getting low, and Mrs. Tremaine proposed to Colonel Tremaine that the
family should entirely give up the use of these luxuries and should
drink coffee made of parched potatoes and sweetened with honey while
reserving the real article for their guests. To this Colonel Tremaine
instantly acquiesced.
Lyddon could not bring himself to drink the potato coffee and
compromised on milk for his breakfast, while he watched with admiration
Colonel Tremaine gulping down a coffee-colored liquid, and protesting:
“My dearest Sophie, your potato coffee is as good as the best Old
Government Java I ever drank in my life.”
Mrs. Tremaine, at the other end of the table, drank sassafras tea
and, being unwilling to say that it was as good as the best oolong,
declared: “Sassafras tea is very good for the complexion. When I was a
girl, mother always made me drink a cup of sassafras tea every day for
a month in spring to improve my color.”
Colonel Tremaine was proud of Mrs. Tremaine’s heroism, but it rose
to heights which he found difficult to reach when she said to him
some days afterwards: “My dear, it seems to me that we should set
the example of giving up luxuries of dress. We have on hand a large
quantity of homespun, both blue and brown, for the servants’ clothes,
and I think it would be a good idea if we should wear homespun. You
will recall that in grandpapa’s diary of the Revolution, he mentions
that for four years he and Grandmamma Neville wore homespun entirely.”
Colonel Tremaine winced.
“Do you really think it necessary, Sophia?”
“I do think it quite necessary, as an example,” responded Mrs. Tremaine
promptly, who had the spirit of sacrifice in her as strong as had
Jephthah’s daughter. “Tulip, you know, is an excellent tailoress, and
between us we will make you a suit of clothes which you will be proud
to wear, and it will be an example of patriotism and devotion to the
cause.”
Colonel Tremaine could never resist any appeal made to him upon ethical
grounds and consented to this painful proposition. He condescended,
however, to plead that he still be allowed to wear his ruffled shirts
as long as they lasted, promising not to renew them while civil war
continued.
To this Mrs. Tremaine reluctantly agreed. The suit of clothes was
immediately begun and when it was finished and put on, and Colonel
Tremaine, accustomed to the best tailors in Baltimore, surveyed himself
arrayed in Mammy Tulip’s handiwork, the iron entered into his soul. For
a whole week thereafter, he called Mrs. Tremaine “Sophia.”
Meanwhile, Mrs. Tremaine had made for herself a homespun gown, severely
plain, but well fitting. She hinted at Angela’s wearing homespun, but
to this Angela made no reply. Six months before Mrs. Tremaine would
have had the gown made and would have directed Angela to wear it. But
now she scrupulously refrained from anything beyond suggestions.
Whatever Angela might have done in the matter of the homespun gown was
checked by the presence of Adrienne Le Noir, who had an apparently
endless succession of Paris gowns, which neither she nor Madame Isabey
showed the slightest desire to sacrifice upon the altar of their
country.
Richard Tremaine, who had been at the instruction camp when the New
Orleans guests arrived, did not return to Harrowby for a fortnight.
He had worked night and day organizing his battery of artillery, which
was attached to the great camp of instruction where seven thousand men
had been rapidly assembled and other troops were pouring in daily.
At last, however, Richard Tremaine found time to ride the ten miles to
Harrowby late one afternoon, arriving after dark and leaving the next
morning by daylight. He had an entire evening at home. Angela herself,
completely dazzled by Adrienne Le Noir, was curious to see the effect
she would produce on Richard, who had never met her, as she chanced to
be abroad when he visited Philip Isabey in New Orleans.
Angela also expected Adrienne to be conscious of Richard Tremaine’s
charms and force. But although exquisite politeness prevailed on both
sides as between a host and guest, and that guest a woman, it was plain
that there was not much sympathy between them.
Lyddon spoke of this the next evening to Angela when, after family
prayers, she followed her old habit of stealing into the study for an
hour.
“I thought,” said Angela, with much simplicity, “that Madame Le Noir
and Richard would fall in love with each other as soon as they met.”
“My dear child,” laughed Lyddon, lighting his pipe, “everybody in the
world does not go about falling in love with everybody else. I will
say, however, that I thought Madame Le Noir very little impressed with
Richard. You know he is a man born to succeed with women. My own belief
is that Madame Le Noir has another man in her mind, which makes her
perfectly cool and indifferent to all the rest of the world.”
“What man is that?” asked Angela, knowing perfectly well what Lyddon’s
answer would be.
“Captain Isabey, of course.”
Angela felt a strange sinking of the heart. “Do you think they’re
engaged?” she asked.
“Oh, I don’t know anything about that, but I should think not! If
they’re engaged, there is no reason why they should not be married.
Both of them are quite old enough to know their own minds. Isabey,
you know, is some years older than Richard. I should say there was no
engagement, but it looks to me as if eventually Madame Le Noir and
Isabey would be married.”
Angela, whose round elbows were on the table, leaned her chin upon her
hands in a favorite attitude of hers, and Lyddon, who could almost see
the workings of her mind, knew that from the hour she had first seen
Isabey he had possessed extraordinary interest for her. He could have
told the very instant that the recollection of Neville Tremaine now
occurred to Angela. She had been looking down with meditative eyes upon
the table, when suddenly she drew back, and glancing up, as if she were
frightened and puzzled, said quickly:
“I haven’t had a letter from Neville for nearly three weeks, but I have
one ready to send him. I will give it to you to-morrow.”
“Poor Neville,” said Lyddon, “his fate is hard. I never knew a man in
whose honor I had greater confidence, and yet he is reckoned dishonored
by those nearest to him; nor a man of stronger natural common sense,
yet he has gone against the almost unanimous opinion of his own section
in the United States Army. Destiny, my dear, is a queer thing.”
“Very,” answered Angela. She was thinking of another strange act
of the hand of fate. No man would be less likely to coerce a woman
into marrying him than Neville Tremaine; his pride, as well as his
principles, would seem to make it impossible; yet deep in her own
heart, Angela knew that she had been coerced. It was like one of those
promises which are extorted from children never to tell an untruth,
never to repeat a certain fault, a promise under compulsion and so
little voluntary that it can scarcely be reckoned binding.
Angela, however, meant to be bound by her promise. But always since
she had first seen Philip Isabey his image had haunted her--haunted
her more even than before she had seen him. She had dreamed of him
for years and it so happened that the dream came true. He was exactly
as she had pictured him and this of itself was enough to give him a
peculiar interest.
She turned these things over in her mind sitting in the same attitude,
at the table, the mellow light of two candles falling upon her white
skin and dark eyes. The window toward the river was open, and the odors
of the May night stole softly into the room. Lyddon roused her from her
reverie.
“I have found a new field of usefulness,” he said. “I looked up
the subject of making tallow candles. I used to be pretty good at
chemistry when I was at Balliol. The old lead candle molds used by
Colonel Tremaine’s grandfather during the Revolution have been found in
the attic.”
“I found them,” answered Angela, reproachfully.
“And a good find it was. We’re to use tallow candles, but the beehives
furnish enough wax for Madame Isabey and Madame Le Noir and for the
Bible reading at night. Mrs. Tremaine told me gently that they always
used wax candles for the Bible reading and that it didn’t seem to her
right to use tallow candles for that.”
“Poor Uncle Tremaine, did you ever see anybody in your life as wretched
as he is in those homespun clothes made by Aunt Sophia and Mammy Tulip?
And he loves his clothes so much!”
“Yes, I thought him a sad sight when he appeared in homespun and drank
his potato coffee. I have, however, made another important chemical
discovery.” Here Lyddon looked hard at Angela and winked his left eye.
“Have you observed how the colonel’s hair has been turning red?”
“And green,” responded Angela, with animation. “It is the most
melancholy sight I ever saw in my life.”
“So I thought, and I looked up a formula, of which black walnuts was
the chief ingredient, and recommended it to Colonel Tremaine as a hair
tonic--warranted to make the hair grow and prevent falling out and
baldness. He shook my hand with tears in his eyes. I have got it all
ready in this bottle.” Lyddon pointed to a big bottle on the wooden
mantelpiece. “And you will see that the colonel’s spirits will rise in
the next day or two.”
Lyddon was quite correct in his prognostication. At supper the next
evening Colonel Tremaine appeared resplendent, his pigeon wings, on
each side of his forehead, a lustrous black instead of a rich brown,
but the colonel, serenely unconscious, looked with eyes of profound
gratitude at Lyddon.
The next day the candle-making began in earnest, and Colonel Tremaine,
who had always used wax candles on his dressing table, came down to
tallow ones. He sighed and tried to reconcile himself by the reflection
that his ancestors, during the Revolution, thought themselves well off
when they were able to get tallow candles.
Mrs. Tremaine, on the contrary, made every sacrifice with eagerness
after having been forced to make the greatest sacrifice of all, in
having her best beloved torn from her, torn from honor and good repute,
and fallen from his high estate. It seemed to her as if all else were
easy. She was glad of an excuse to wear homespun, to give up her
linen sheets, to spend her days in labors heretofore unknown to her.
If she had been in the Middle Ages, she would have used the scourge
and worn sackcloth. God’s hand lay heavy upon her, so she thought,
and not doubting its wisdom, believed that she deserved the terrible
chastisement which had fallen upon her.
In that latitude May is summer time, and the heat descended upon
Harrowby. It was, however, well adapted to withstand the torrid days.
No Italian villa is better suited to these fierce summer heats than the
old Virginia country houses with their unstained floors, polished like
a looking-glass by dry rubbing with sand and wax, the scanty mahogany
furniture, the large doors and windows, free from dust-carrying
draperies, and through which the summer breezes wander fitfully.
Harrowby was as pleasant in summer as in winter, and Madame Isabey, who
had the coolest room in the house, was never tired of congratulating
herself upon having fallen upon her feet as it were.
In spite of the horror and amazement which her dancing created, and
the grim suspicion that in the privacy of her own apartment she smoked
cigarettes--a devil’s invention hitherto unknown at Harrowby--there was
soon no doubt that she became a favorite with everyone about the place,
excepting only Hector, who regarded her with severe disapproval and
refused to be placated. He compared her to the daughter of Herodias,
to Jezebel, and to every other unsavory character in the Bible. With
all else at Harrowby, however, her genuine good humor, her airy spirit,
her real goodness of heart, commended her strongly. Archie became
her devoted slave, and Lyddon called Madame Isabey Archie’s elective
affinity. George Charteris paid his _devoirs_ at the feet of Adrienne,
who could never remember whether his name was George or Charles.
Between her and Angela came about that deep, fierce, and wordless
antagonism which exists when the shadow of a man stands between two
women. No carping word passed between them; on the contrary, all was
courtesy. There was no assumption on Adrienne’s part concerning her
accomplishments, her toilets, her thorough knowledge of the world
contrasted with Angela’s innocence and ignorance. Nor did she make the
mistake of underrating her rival. She secretly envied Angela her power
of listening to, and even joining intelligently in, the conversation of
men, and recognized that Angela was fitted for companionship as well as
love.
Adrienne herself knew that, although she might have many lovers, she
could never have a friend among men. The man she married, if he should
cease to be her lover--what then? He would still admire her; there
would still be the charm of her voice, of her manner, her appearance,
her music, but she reasoned with a woman’s painful introspection that
her charms were of the sort which one day vanish away. She had long
known that the only lasting spell which a woman can cast upon a man is
the spell of mental charm, for the spell that lasts must be one which
knows no change and which is always at command. Angela had that charm
in a remarkable degree.
Adrienne felt a secret jealousy when she observed Angela’s
companionship with Lyddon and felt a deep inward mortification when
Lyddon, talking about books with Angela, would courteously change
the subject to something concerning which he supposed Adrienne to be
interested.
She had never before seen a girl well trained in books, and her idea of
a bookish woman was an untidy person with an ink smudge on her middle
finger. She had seen in Paris women at the head of brilliant _salons_,
but these women were no longer young and were usually arbitrary and
of commanding social position. But here was a girl all softness, who
dressed her hair beautifully, and whose muslin gowns were radiantly
fresh, and to whom a scholar like Lyddon could talk freely.
Angela was, however, eating her soul out with envy of Adrienne. Like
most girls of nineteen, she knew neither past nor future, and it seemed
to her as if Adrienne would ever remain the beautiful, seductive
creature she was now. Angela felt herself distinctly inferior, and as
she had enjoyed that subtlest form of flattery, being made much of,
this feeling of inferiority was painful to her. But in this, as in all
things else, the world was changed. The soul of things was altered and
nothing was as it had once been.
One morning in early June, when the family was assembled at breakfast,
Colonel Tremaine pointed out of the open window and across the
wide-pillared portico to the broad, bright river running honey-colored
in the morning sun.
A small sloop, painted a dull gray, was passing up the river, the fresh
breeze swelling her brown sails and carrying her fast through the
bright water.
“That’s Captain Ross’s vessel,” said Colonel Tremaine. “He has
evidently run the blockade and has probably brought a valuable cargo
with him.”
“Wouldn’t it be well, my dear,” asked Mrs. Tremaine, pouring out the
colonel’s second cup of potato coffee, “if I should order the carriage
this morning and go to Captain Ross’s house? We’re running short of
supplies of many things.”
“It would be most judicious, my dearest Sophie,” answered the colonel,
his white teeth showing in a smile, “if Captain Ross were a patriotic
person, but unluckily he declines to receive either the State money of
Virginia or Confederate money, and we have no other sort.”
Mrs. Tremaine sighed and answered after a moment: “I’m not surprised
at Captain Ross. I always thought him a very ordinary person, and he
proves himself to be entirely without patriotism.”
Mrs. Tremaine, ever willing to give all she had to the Confederacy,
thought it strange that Captain Ross should not undertake the risks and
dangers of blockade-running and then sell his goods for a promise to
pay.
“It isn’t that I mind our privations,” Mrs. Tremaine continued. “And
I’m sure you, my dear, wouldn’t hesitate at any sacrifice for our
country, but it distresses me to think that our guests shouldn’t have
their accustomed comforts.”
It distressed Colonel Tremaine very much that with two wardrobes full
of clothes, he was compelled to wear homespun, but it distressed him
far more to think that the guests under his roof should want for
anything, and so he expressed himself.
“I really relish the substitute for coffee which your ingenuity,
my dearest Sophie, has supplied, but I’m afraid that Madame Isabey
wouldn’t care for it.”
“Naw, suh,” said Hector, hurling himself into the conversation. “Me an’
de ole lady had a collusion ’bout dat coffee. I teck some ob your ’tato
coffee up to dat ole lady----”
“Madame Isabey, you mean, Hector,” said Mrs. Tremaine in mild reproof.
“An’ she th’o it outen de window. She ain’t got no fear ob de Lawd,
her Gawd, an’ when I tole her that Paul de Porstle say you ain’t gwine
th’o de chillen’s bread to de dogs, she tole me to shet my mouf--to
shet my mouf.”
No one had ever yet been able to shut Hector’s mouth; and no one had
ever seriously tried except Madame Isabey.
Angela, who sat by, took no part in the discussion. Suddenly she
remembered the packet of gold eagles which she had received from
Neville more than a month before. As soon as breakfast was over, she
ran upstairs and got her rouleau of gold and, coming down, found
Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine walking up and down the long portico toward
the river. She went up to Mrs. Tremaine, and, holding out the little
parcel, said to her in a trembling voice:
“I have some gold which Neville sent me; you’re welcome to all you want
of it, Aunt Sophia.”
A deathlike silence followed. There was something astounding to
Mrs. Tremaine that this child should have the strange species of
independence which the possession of money gives, and then the thought
flashed instantly through the mother’s mind that Angela by some secret
means had lately heard from Neville and had not seen fit to mention it.
Mrs. Tremaine turned pale, and her eyes, fixed upon Angela, had in them
an imploring expression.
Angela remained silent. The subtle changes made by her new status
confused and embarrassed her. And then, still holding out the money,
she said: “Here is the gold. I should like to keep half of it. I mean I
shall keep half of it to go to Neville when he sends for me. The rest
is yours.”
Mrs. Tremaine drew back icily. It was difficult for her to accept the
money, and more difficult to refuse it. But something in her air and
manner caused Angela suddenly to burst into a passion of tears. As she
stood sobbing, Colonel Tremaine put his arm around her, and said kindly:
“My dear little--” but he did not say _daughter_, as he would have
said a few months ago or even then except for Mrs. Tremaine. He felt
instinctively that Mrs. Tremaine did not wish that word to be used.
Angela was the daughter-in-law and not the daughter to her, and Mrs.
Tremaine, the tenderest-hearted of women, looked with somber eyes upon
Angela’s tear-stained face.
What could this girl know of the passion of mother love which consumed
the older woman’s heart? What could she know of the yearning for
that secretly favored child, that son who in her heart she preferred
to everything on earth, even to Colonel Tremaine, while she said to
herself, to Colonel Tremaine, and to all the world, and even to her
God upon her knees, that Colonel Tremaine was the first object of her
existence, knowing all the while that this was a pious lie, and that
Neville Tremaine was the idol of her heart, and had ever been and would
always be first. It seemed to her a hidden insult that Angela should be
willing to divide her money, but jealously withheld the letter which
Mrs. Tremaine fancied she had received.
The same thought entered Angela’s mind, and, less ungenerous, she said
quickly: “I have had this money some time, and I have had no letter
from Neville of which I haven’t told you, Aunt Sophia.”
And then Mrs. Tremaine, understanding Angela as women understand these
subtle conflicts between each other, felt that Angela had, indeed, been
generous, and it was time for her to show some generosity.
“Thank you, my dear,” she said. “Since you are kind enough to offer us
a part of your money, I shall be much obliged. I will accept it with
pleasure.”
CHAPTER XII
THE IRON HAND OF WAR AND CIRCUMSTANCE
Two hours afterwards, the great coach with the big, long-tailed bay
horses, was on its way to Captain Ross’s house.
Within the coach sat Mrs. Tremaine and Madame Isabey. Captain
Ross’s house, a small frame building painted a staring white, was
only a couple of miles away. Already the news of his successful
blockade-running had got abroad, and the space under the trees was
filled with all sorts of vehicles carrying all sorts of people from
Mrs. Tremaine in her coach and pair down to a ramshackle Jersey wagon
drawn by a decrepit mule.
Half the women of the neighborhood were there, and all intent on
buying. The merchandise was piled up in the front room of the house,
known as the “settin’ room,” where Captain Ross’s business manager,
Didlake, presided over the sales. Nothing was sold by the yard or the
pound; the ladies were too eager for that, and bought whole packages
at once. Some of them had gold, but all of them had Confederate or
Virginia State money, which they offered to Didlake, but which was in
every case civilly but firmly refused.
Then came a torrent of invective against his want of patriotism in
declining Confederate money, and demands to see Captain Ross.
This request Didlake, who was suavity itself, politely evaded. “He’s
asleep, ladies. He tumbled over like a log as soon as the anchor kissed
the mud this morning and he got ashore, and I ain’t got the heart to
wake him up. There never was a time from Sunday night, when we slipped
out of Baltimore, until this morning, when we got into Mobjack Bay,
that we wasn’t in sight of a Yankee vessel. They didn’t see us because
we was painted the right color, but we seen them, and I tell you it
wan’t no time for the capt’n to be sleeping. I give out myself last
night and had a good night’s rest, but this is the first time Capt’n
Ross has shet his eyes even to wink, since Sunday night.”
This only produced additional clamors on the part of the ladies to see
Captain Ross before parting with their scanty supply of gold. But while
they were eagerly discussing and denouncing Captain Ross’s turpitude to
the Confederate cause, Madame Isabey, suddenly catching sight of some
organdies which were, indeed, a fair and tempting vision, pulled out a
long silk purse.
“Meestaire what’s-your-name?” she said calmly to Didlake, “I am what
you call a patriotic lady, but these organdies are so very nice and the
war may last a long time. I will pay gold for all I take.”
“Thank you, marm,” replied the unabashed Didlake, and Madame Isabey,
promptly selecting piece after piece of what she wanted, and determined
to make sure of her purchases, opened a door near at hand into a small
bedroom and proceeded to throw on the bed bundles, hard and soft, but
mostly hard. At the tenth throw Captain Ross’s shaggy head uprose from
the bed and he shouted:
“Good God! madam, you’ve nearly knocked my brains out.”
The rest of the ladies fled precipitately, deeply shocked by this
untoward accident, but Madame Isabey stoutly held her ground.
“Oh!” she cried; “it makes no difference. I will throw the bundles on
the floor, meestaire.” This she proceeded to do while Captain Ross
covered his head up and soon began to snooze again.
Having taken her choice of everything and paid for it in gold, like
a man, as Didlake said, Madame Isabey was in possession of enough
contraband goods to set up a small-sized shop.
Mrs. Tremaine had been a modest purchaser and so had most of the other
ladies, but Madame Isabey had got the choice of everything. When the
parcels were loaded into the old coach, there was scarcely room for
Mrs. Tremaine and Madame Isabey with her enormous hoop skirt.
As the two ladies were exchanging confidences out of the coach window
with the group around them concerning prices and qualities, a diversion
was created by Mrs. Charteris driving up in a big barouche, while by
her side sat Mr. Brand. Ever sanguine, Mr. Brand had not yet learned
that every civility offered him by Mrs. Charteris was invariably used
by that lady for his discomfiture. So far, he was the only gentleman
who had appeared upon the scene of action, but as soon as he was on the
ground and had assisted Mrs. Charteris to alight, the ladies flocked
around him. Over their pretty piping voices was heard Didlake’s suave
basso.
“Look here, Mr. Brand,” he called out, with an affectation of
innocence, “we brought some real contraband goods this time that the
ladies ain’t seen yet and don’t want to see. It’s guns and pistols. I
can sell you as good a Colt’s revolver, army regulation pattern, as you
ever see in your life, Mr. Brand. We all knows your duty lies here, but
we are looking to see you and George Charteris and Colonel Tremaine and
that red-headed boy, Archie, all run away to jine the army.”
The impudence of this annoyed Mr. Brand excessively, particularly in
the presence of Mrs. Charteris, who never ceased badgering him openly
and secretly for not joining the army. Mrs. Charteris, who was known
to have more spirit than any ten men in the county, now turned her
attention to Didlake.
“Mr. Didlake,” she cried, “I want to buy some things here, but I
understand you and Captain Ross won’t take Confederate money, the money
of your country.”
“Well, marm,” Didlake began, and halted. He was a little afraid of Mrs.
Charteris, who was reckoned the best business woman in five counties.
“Don’t ‘Well, marm’ me, Mr. Didlake. May I ask in what kind of currency
do you expect to pay the interest on your mortgage which I hold?”
Didlake remained silent, seeing the pitfall before him, and Mrs.
Charteris continued vigorously, but laughing meanwhile at Didlake’s
plight:
“Very well, then, you’ll pay that interest in gold. It has been due
some little time and I shall have pleasure in spending it on the spot.”
And with this, she figuratively collared Didlake, drove him into the
house before her, made him produce the amount of his debt in gold, and
proceeded to lay it out on the spot in purchases.
Madame Isabey, who had heard something of Mr. Brand’s devotion to Mrs.
Charteris and the Charteris acres, was deeply interested in this duello
and could scarcely be torn from the scene, but Mrs. Tremaine gently
reminding her that it was now high noon, they drove away.
Meanwhile, an unexpected visitor had reached Harrowby. As Angela sat
reading alone in the cool green light of the darkened drawing-room,
she heard the clatter of hoofs upon the gravel outside and the next
moment, glancing through the jalousies, she saw Philip Isabey dismount
from his horse and walk up the steps. Her heart gave a great leap, and
she involuntarily put her hand to her breast. Perhaps it was because so
much had happened, so much was happening, that even her strong young
nerves were a little tense.
The next moment Isabey was being ushered in by Hector. Isabey
thought he had never seen more witchery in a woman than in Angela at
that moment. She was palpitating and flushing beautifully, and the
unconscious coquetry of her sidelong glances was charming. Through
her thin white bodice and sleeves could be seen her delicate neck
and slender arms, and she seemed to embody all freshness, coolness,
and purity. Her glances, however, took note of Isabey’s slight but
well-made figure, his perfectly fitting uniform, the masculine charm,
if not beauty, which was his.
“I’m so sorry Madame Isabey is not here,” said Angela, after the first
greetings were exchanged. “She has gone with Aunt Sophia to Captain
Ross’s, the blockade-runner, this morning, and Uncle Tremaine is out
riding. Madame Le Noir, however, is at home, and I will send for her at
once,” and she touched the drawing-room bell.
“You may send for her,” replied Isabey, laughing, “but I know Madame
Le Noir; you will not find her up and dressed at eleven o’clock in the
morning.”
“You will stay some time?” said Angela, accustomed to lavish
hospitality.
“If I am asked--yes. I shall be at the instruction camp for a week
upon military business. In fact, I spent last night there with Richard
Tremaine and found that my affairs could be transacted equally well at
Harrowby, so Tremaine sent me down here to stay a week.”
Guests to spend a week at Harrowby were common, but the prospect of
the week before her made Angela’s flush grow deeper. Just then Tasso
appeared, and Angela sent him to Adrienne’s room with the message that
Captain Isabey had arrived.
Then they sat down together, Angela in a corner of a deep old mahogany
sofa while Isabey drew up his chair. He wondered at himself when he
realized the shock of pleasure, nay, of delight, which this girl’s
presence gave him. He was well into his thirties and had lived much,
but Angela was as new to him as he was to her. He knew intimately the
French type of woman only. He had seen many girls of other types,
but seeing is not knowing. He had never known any girl in the least
resembling Angela. On this occasion he was astonished and charmed
by her ease and dignity as a hostess. Angela, in truth, had been
accustomed to play hostess on occasions from the time she was ten years
old. The combination was not rare in the Virginia woman of the day, of
a childlike ignorance of the world together with a most perfect womanly
self-possession and grace. But it was quite new to Isabey.
Apart from all of this, Angela had for him an interest which no other
woman had ever possessed. True, he remembered the time when the
presence of Adrienne had made his pulses leap, when the sweep of her
delicate robe, the fragrance of her hair, would banish from him the
whole world, but that had been long ago when he was a boy of twenty
and Adrienne herself was then engaged to marry the eminently worthy
and wealthy Le Noir, of one of the best families in New Orleans. For
Isabey, that intoxication had passed, and he had rightly reasoned that
it would scarcely be likely an impressionable young fellow, such as he
was thirteen years before, should see a girl as charming as Adrienne
and not fall precipitately in love with her.
However, he had recovered from it whole and sound as lads of twenty
come out of these desperate fevers of love and when, a few years
later, Adrienne was free, the fever had not returned. Isabey admired
her; she pleased every artistic sense he possessed and he believed her
capable of a passionate attachment. But since that early and boyish
infatuation, she had never stirred love within him. He rather wished
she had, because Madame Isabey was always throwing out feelers in the
matter. It would be so very convenient and acceptable in every way for
the marriage to take place. And the fitness of it was so obvious, too
obvious, so Isabey thought.
Adrienne was too clever, too well bred, too much mistress of herself to
betray whatever of chagrin she felt at Isabey’s attitude of easy and
brotherly friendship, and Isabey had too much manly modesty to suppose
that Adrienne yearned for him. He saw, however, that life for her was a
broken dream. She had all that could awaken love, and yet love was not
hers.
Men being exempt from the matchmaking mania, Isabey had not
magnanimously thought of some other man whom Adrienne might bless
until that very day when on his ride to Harrowby he had reflected
upon Richard Tremaine’s frankly expressed admiration for her, and
wondered if something more might not come of it. And at the same time
he thought, with a mingling of rage and amusement in his heart, that
from the hour he found that he could go to Harrowby, Angela’s face
and her slim figure had been continually before him. Poor child! What
fate might be hers! He had seen enough, and surmised more during that
first visit at Harrowby, to suspect that Angela had arranged a loveless
marriage for herself just as a loveless marriage had been arranged for
Adrienne by others.
And then Isabey, manlike, began to feel genuine self-pity for himself.
Here, at last, in this quiet Virginia country house, had he met the
woman who could awaken his interest and perhaps stir his heart, and she
had been married one week before he met her. These thoughts returned
to him as he sat watching Angela in the corner of the sofa fanning
herself slowly and gracefully with a great, green fan.
Isabey told her of Richard’s doings at the instruction camp and spoke
of him with admiration. “I thought I knew Richard Tremaine well, and
as you know, when two youngsters have chummed together as Tremaine
and I did at the university and in Paris, they haven’t usually an
overwhelming admiration for each other, but it is impossible not to
recognize Tremaine’s capacity. It appears greater whenever there is
a great opportunity. He has it now and you will see this time next
year he will be known as one of the best artillery officers in the
Confederate Army.”
Angela was once more impressed by the studied correctness of Isabey’s
speech, which, however much he might be master of English, showed that
it was not his native language, and this added still more to his charm,
serving as it did to differentiate him from all other men she had ever
known in her life.
Upon the wall opposite them hung a fanciful painting of Neville and
Richard when they were little boys in white frocks. According to the
sentimental fashion of the time, they were represented as doing what
they had never done in their lives. Richard, sitting upon a bank of
violets, held a bird cage with a bird in it, at which Neville was
throwing roses. The picture had a quaint prettiness upon which Isabey
remarked, asking if they were portraits of the two brothers.
“Yes,” answered Angela. “The one with the bird cage is Richard and the
other is my--my husband.”
“As you know, I haven’t the pleasure of knowing Captain Neville
Tremaine as well as I know Richard, but, of course, I honor and respect
him the more for the action he has taken, which I believe was the most
painful sacrifice imaginable. I am not of those rabid men who think
that there is but one view of military honor. I think I should have
acted differently if I had been in Neville’s place, but I am very far
from condemning him.”
“Thank you,” said Angela, tremulously. “You don’t know how hard it
is to me to feel that every hand is turned against Neville, every
heart hardened toward him. You see, all of us love Neville better,
I think, than anything in the world; he was Aunt Sophia’s and Uncle
Tremaine’s favorite son, though they always denied they had a favorite,
but Richard and Archie knew it and all of us, and there never was
any jealousy of Neville. Richard was the cleverer, Neville says that
himself, but Neville was the best loved, and now his parents seem to
hate him.”
Angela, as she spoke, leaned back and half-averted her face and lowered
her long lashes, a trick she had when she was distressed or displeased.
Isabey, listening to her, was overwhelmed with a wave of pity. She was
unconsciously telling the story he had suspected from the beginning,
that she had married without exactly knowing what love was. He gently
encouraged her to speak of Neville, and every word she said confirmed
his theory. She could not say too much in praise of Neville, but she
said no word which showed that his presence made heaven for her or that
his absence meant desolation.
“Of course, I shall go to Neville as soon as I can,” she said. “He is
not able to have me yet, but I shall go the instant he writes me to
start. Everyone at Harrowby was kind to me when I was a child, but
Neville was the kindest of all, and now when he is an outcast I am the
only one who will go to him and comfort him. I don’t mean that Richard
is bitter against him. Richard feels as you do, but Aunt Sophia and
everyone else is against him. Aunt Sophia and Uncle Tremaine, you know,
won’t mention his name at family prayers; think of it!”
She leaned forward and two indignant tears dropped upon her pale,
pretty cheeks.
“Oh,” she said, “if I could tell you all!”
Unconsciously she put out her hand, and Isabey, scarcely knowing what
he did, took it. His training was thoroughly French, and he had the
old-fashioned French idea that only the man who loved a woman should
touch her hand. When he felt Angela’s soft palm upon his, it thrilled
him, and Angela, realizing the delicate pressure of his fingers,
suddenly withdrew her hand.
But at that moment the invisible chain was forged. They could not look
at each other with indifference, and were perforce instinctively on
their guard with each other.
“I--I don’t know what made me do that,” Angela faltered. “But
everything is so strange to me now, and I feel so friendless. Six
months ago I had a plenty of people to love me, now I seem to have no
one.”
Then the soft frou-frou of dainty skirts and Adrienne’s delicate
footfall was heard, and the next moment she stood before them.
Never had Angela or Isabey, either, seen Adrienne look more seductive,
for beautiful she was not in its regular sense. The heat had brought
a faint flush into her usually colorless face and a smile parted her
scarlet lips. She was, as always, exquisitely dressed, and there was
about her that singular aroma of elegance which is the possession of
some women.
She and Isabey greeted each other with the utmost friendliness, but
in the French fashion, with bows and not with a clasp of the hand.
Nevertheless, Adrienne felt instinctively that she had arrived at an
inopportune moment. As she approached she had heard Angela’s voice, low
and tremulous, and Isabey’s, in replying, had that unmistakable note of
intimacy which Adrienne had never heard him use before toward any woman.
He was entirely at his ease, although he wished very much that Adrienne
had stayed away a little longer. Angela, however, showed a slight
confusion, and then Lyddon walked into the room. He carried an English
newspaper, and, after a few minutes’ talk, asked to read aloud the
leading article in it concerning the Civil War in America. Its view was
pessimistic, and it asked some puzzling questions concerning the future
of the South whether it succeeded or failed. Lyddon was surprised to
find that Isabey’s thought had gone beyond the conflict and that he,
too, saw the enormous difficulties which lay in the path of the South
whether slavery remained or was abolished.
“But,” he said, after an animated discussion with Lyddon, “there is
nothing for us to do but to fight and march and march and fight. We
have been driven to fight, and I think we love to fight. We can’t think
about to-morrow; there may be no to-morrow for a good many of us.”
Angela longed, while the two men were talking, to ask questions, but
following the rule which she had laid down for herself, to take no part
in discussions about the war, remained silent.
So did Adrienne. She felt her inability to join in conversations like
those and had too much tact to attempt it.
Isabey and Lyddon presently recognized that they were leaving the
ladies out of their talk and promptly returned to a subject in which
all were interested--the makeshifts of the war time.
Lyddon had turned his learning to good account, and had devised means
for preparing a good toilet soap in addition to his formula for candles
and for what he euphemistically called a hair tonic.
While they sat talking Mrs. Tremaine and Madame Isabey returned from
the blockade-runner’s. The latter rushed up to Isabey and embraced him
affectionately--an embrace which he returned.
“Ah!” she cried. “We have been to a block--blockhead----”
“A blockade-runner, you mean,” responded Isabey, laughing.
“--and I have bought organdies, such charming organdies from Baltimore,
almost as good as those we get in New Orleans and from Cuba, and
Adrienne and I will be well dressed during the whole war.”
Such was not Mrs. Tremaine’s idea, who thought that everybody should
dress in sackcloth during the war. But she was too well bred to
intimate anything of the sort. Her hospitable instincts made her turn
to Angela and say: “Angela, have you ordered ‘snack’ for Captain
Isabey?”
Isabey looked puzzled, and Lyddon explained that snack was a good old
Anglo-Saxon word which was used in lieu of luncheon among a people who
had breakfast at eight o’clock and dinner at three.
Angela, feeling conscience-stricken, slipped out on the back porch,
where she discovered Hector looking disconsolately at a large and not
uninviting tray of “snack.” Hector, however, surveyed it with much
dissatisfaction.
“Look a heah, Miss Angela,” he grumbled, “dey ain’t no lemonade heah.
Dey ain’t been a lemon on dis heah plantation sence Marse Linkum was
norgorated, an’ dis heah cider ain’t fitten for gentlemen. De cakes
ain’t got no sugar in dem, dey jes’ sweetened wid honey, an’ don’t
taste like nuttin’ ’tall.”
Angela held up a large, round disk, as big as a dinner plate, of
waferlike biscuit.
“These thin biscuit are very nice, don’t you think, Uncle Hector?” she
asked anxiously.
“Thin biscuit ain’t nuttin’, Miss Angela,” gloomily responded Hector,
picking up the tray and walking off toward the drawing-room. “When
Gineral Lee has done enfalated Gineral McClellan an’ got him in a
sortie, den we can git sumpin’ fitten to give folks for snack. An’ dem
swells from New Orleans, I ’clar to Gord, Miss Angela, I ’shamed to
take dis heah tray in de parlor.”
“I am very sorry, Hector,” sighed Angela, “but it is the best we can do
in war times. At least there is enough.”
“Sech as ’tis,” was Hector’s scornful rejoinder as he marched into the
drawing-room, where he proceeded to hand the tray, making apologies,
_sotto voce_, for everything he offered.
“I hope, marm,” he said grandly to Madame Isabey, as he presented
the tray first to her, “that you’ll ’scuse dis heah cider, but de
lemons is unexpected give out, an’ ole Marse is ’way out ridin’ over
de plantation wid de cellar key in his pocket, so we cyarn’ git no
champagne.”
“Hector,” said Mrs. Tremaine mildly, “there is no more champagne here.
We give our friends gladly what we have, but this is a time of war, and
such luxuries as we had we have sent to the soldiers.”
Madame Isabey took a little of the cider and declared she liked it,
while Isabey helped himself as if it had been Veuve Cliquot of the
first quality. So did Lyddon, who really liked cider, and who offended
Hector very much by saying that good cider was better than the
second-quality champagne which was usually found in America.
It was the source of perennial amusement to Isabey as to Lyddon, the
feudal relationship between master and man in Virginia, and he was
touched by the jealous regard for the family credit which Hector,
in common with so many of his race, showed. Isabey said so to Mrs.
Tremaine, but Mrs. Tremaine only opened her eyes in gentle surprise.
She was really much more concerned for Hector’s feelings in the serving
of so homely a repast than she was for her own or for those of her
guests.
Then Colonel Tremaine came in and presently it was three o’clock, and
dinner was served.
After dinner all the ladies took their siesta according to the Virginia
summer fashion. Lyddon and Isabey went out and smoked in the garden.
Isabey liked Lyddon’s conversation and always listened to it with
pleasure. But on this day he found himself woolgathering. He listened
with his usual courteous attention, but he felt still within his lean,
brown hand the involuntary touch of Angela’s rosy palm.
It was an impulsive thing for any girl to do, but to Isabey, unused
to the Anglo-Saxon freedom between man and woman, it was a phenomenal
thing. He attributed it to the fact that Angela had been brought up
with a boy and almost as a boy, but upon the absolute innocence and
purity of her act he would have staked his life. And the turn of her
head and the dewy freshness of her face haunted him.
It was easy to feel pity for so charming a creature. How wholly
different was she from Adrienne--one the perfect flower of
civilization, the other a wood violet.
Angela lay upon the great four-posted bed in her room, with the window
shutters closed. The summer afternoon was still--so still she could
actually hear the beatings of her own heart and she was thinking of
Isabey. She knew that she had done an unconventional thing in suddenly
putting her hand in his, but her intention had been too innocently pure
to give her any sense of shame. With closed eyes she lived over the
two or three seconds when her hand lay in his. Suddenly she thought of
Neville.
She rose from her bed quickly and, going to the dressing table on which
she kept a daguerreotype of Neville, she clasped her hands and hung her
head as if overwhelmed with guilt. She was a wife, and she had dared
not only to think of another man, but to touch his hand with hers! If
Neville were there it would be so easy, she thought, to confess it to
him. She would even write him a letter and tell him about it. But some
instinct of common sense restrained her. It occurred to her that the
singular change in all her other relations of life affected her with
regard to Neville himself. Some things which she had once told him
frankly she must now consider well whether she should tell him at all.
Of one thing, however, she was certain--she must stop thinking of
Isabey. She took a book and read resolutely until the cool of the
afternoon when it was time to dress. But because she tried to put
Isabey out of her mind, his presence was there the more.
She could hear his voice talking with Lyddon, and caught the whiff of
his cigarette as he passed under her window. She must be on her guard
against Isabey. When away from him she must not think of him, and when
with him she must not even look at him. How new and peculiar it was
that she should be on her guard against any man in the world!
A little after five o’clock she went downstairs. For the last half
hour Adrienne had been playing soft chords upon the piano in the
drawing-room. Angela went into the room and said as she always did when
Adrienne went to the piano:
“Pray keep on playing. I do so love to hear you play.”
And then, whether by a coincidence or not, Isabey entered the room.
Adrienne played some of the sweet, mysterious music of Chopin, and
Angela listened with delight. So did Isabey, but Adrienne was conscious
that the music laid no spell upon him. There was a large, round mirror
over the piano and in it she could clearly see Isabey’s eyes fixed on
Angela.
Upon the music rack were some duets, and Adrienne, turning them over,
hummed little bits of them, but Isabey made no offer to sing them with
her, and when she spoke of singing as an art Isabey said coolly: “The
fact is, I have always been ashamed of my singing. It sounds as if I
had given much more study to it than I really gave.”
“You promised,” said Angela, turning her clear gaze upon him, “that
some time you would tell me how you came to sing so well.”
“The truth is,” he replied, laughing, “I had Mario for a teacher. I
lived one summer in a villa on Lake Constance, next one where Mario
lived. He took an interest in me and insisted on teaching me singing.
I was a youngster then, and Mario was really a delightful old fellow.
Lord Chesterfield says that no gentleman should ever pursue any
art so far as to be mistaken for a professional, and it is a wise
observation, because, if a man does that, he usually unfits himself for
anything else. I did not, however, get so far as that. Mario, meaning
to do me the greatest kindness in the world, wrote a letter to my old
father in New Orleans, saying that if I would study singing seriously I
might, in a year or two, be second tenor at the Paris Opera. You should
have read my father’s letter in reply.”
“I read it,” said Adrienne, laughing.
“The old gentleman, when he was violently angry, wrote in English,
in which he was not very proficient. He wrote me: ‘You do come home
immediately at once, now, at present. You shall disgrace yourself by
singing in the opera. Come home, I threaten.’ I came home by the next
steamer. For a long time my father would not listen to me sing and
swore every time music was mentioned. Then, one day, when he was asleep
in his chair, I went to the piano and began to sing a song his mother
had sung to him long years before in France. When I turned round, after
the song was finished, he was weeping. After that he sometimes listened
to me sing.”
While they were speaking Lyddon had strolled in.
“You will find your singing a very useful accomplishment as long as the
war lasts,” he said to Isabey. “Music, you know, has a singular psychic
influence upon soldiers, and when the real work begins, the man who can
sing a good song at a bivouac is really a very useful person.”
“I read in a book once,” Angela began with animation, “that when a ship
goes to sea, if they can get a good ‘shanty’ man they will take him
whether he is any use or not, just because he sings.”
“What Angela has read in books is really wonderful,” said Lyddon
gravely. “Can’t you tell us, my little dear, about the kind of music to
which the Spartans marched to battle?”
“Mr. Lyddon is making fun of me,” Angela explained. “But he doesn’t
know how often I hoaxed him when I was a child. I would make him read
Latin to me just because he reads it so beautifully and would pretend I
understood a great deal more than I really did, and often when he would
give me what he calls solid books to read, I would read them just to
make Mr. Lyddon think how clever I was.”
“I never taught but one girl in my life,” murmured Lyddon. “And if God
will forgive me----”
“I think I must have a very mean disposition,” continued Angela. “I
remember how safe and triumphant I used to feel when, if Archie missed
his Latin grammar, Mr. Lyddon would give him a clip over the head with
the book, but when I couldn’t do arithmetic, Mr. Lyddon could only ran
his hands through his beard and growl: ‘She must have a governess. I
shall tell Mrs. Tremaine this day.’”
Adrienne sat silent. Her childhood and girlhood had none of these
recollections. She had practically never seen a man until she was
married.
In the dusk of the evening Richard arrived. He was full of news
from camp, and brought word that the Federals were establishing a
camp of instruction, larger and more complete in every way than the
Confederate, about fifteen miles on the other side of Harrowby. It was
not likely, however, that any actual fighting would take place, both
armies reserving their forces for the Titanic struggle around Richmond.
And as the case had been for months past, while the war was discussed,
and it was always being discussed, the negroes were seen furtively
listening to all that went on.
Isabey remained a week as he had expected. Most of his days were spent
in camp, but every evening he rode the ten miles back to Harrowby.
Mrs. Tremaine and Colonel Tremaine remarked to each other upon Captain
Isabey’s filial attention to his stepmother. Madame Isabey was quite
willing outwardly to take Isabey’s attentions, but inwardly she hoped
that it was Adrienne’s presence which drew him to Harrowby.
Not so Adrienne. Perfect man of the world as Isabey was, and careful
as he might be that he should not betray the compelling interest which
Angela possessed for him, he could not disguise it from the other
woman. Adrienne was reminded of a Spanish saying she had heard long
ago: “I am dying for thee and thou art dying for some one who is dying
for another.”
Nor did Lyddon suppose for one moment that Adrienne was the magnet
which drew Isabey. Nevertheless, with a perfectly clear conscience,
he reiterated to Angela that he supposed a marriage would shortly
take place between Captain Isabey and Madame Le Noir. And to Lyddon’s
discomfiture, he saw a look of incredulity come into Angela’s
expressive face. It would have been better if she had shown anger or
distress, but she did not. Without speaking, she conveyed to Lyddon
her inward conviction that Adrienne was nothing and never could be
anything to Isabey.
Lyddon thought that the best thing possible was for Angela to join
Neville at the very earliest opportunity.
CHAPTER XIII
WARP AND WOOF
When Isabey left Harrowby, Angela had again that fearful sense of loss
which with the young follows upon the going away of any person who
fills a great place in the mind.
She remembered having that feeling of desolation when she was barely
ten years old and Neville had first gone to West Point. Afterwards,
however, although she always parted from him reluctantly and made a
loud lament, the feeling had not been so poignant as when she was a
child.
Now, however, it returned in full force and not for Neville but for
Philip Isabey. She began to think as Lyddon did, that the sooner she
joined Neville the better.
When she had parted from him it had not occurred to her that she should
not soon see him again. She knew not what war was, but as time passed
on and the first great conflicts began, she realized that every parting
with a soldier might mean a last farewell. She might hear any day of
Neville’s death and also of Philip Isabey’s.
But it was the thought of the latter which made her heart stand still,
then beat tempestuously.
Her letters to Neville were frequent, and she managed to forward them
through Lyddon, who, as a British subject, could communicate with the
British Consul at Norfolk and the British Minister at Washington.
After much delay, these letters reached Neville. His replies were far
more irregular. He was not at the front, but engaged in recruiting duty
in the far West--a duty he always disliked and which he felt now to be
a practical illustration of how little he was trusted by those among
whom he had cast his lot. He accepted it with outward stoicism, but
inwardly it humiliated him to the very marrow of his bones. His work
led him to the roughest part of the then thinly settled West. It was
no place for a woman and least of all for a girl like Angela, who had
never been outside of her native county three times in her life.
When Angela got a letter from Neville she always went immediately
to Mrs. Tremaine and told her what was in the letter. Mrs. Tremaine
received this in perfect silence, but she was always tremulous for a
day or two afterwards. She, who had heretofore possessed a sort of
calm alertness, went about now with a strange preoccupation. Neville’s
room had been closed and locked and Mrs. Tremaine kept the key. In it
were some of his boyish books and belongings, but Mrs. Tremaine made
no offer of them to Angela. There were times when she would disappear
for an hour or so, and all at Harrowby knew that she spent those
stolen hours in Neville’s dark and dismantled room. She paid these
visits secretly, and would not even speak of them to Colonel Tremaine,
although once or twice he met her coming out of the door, and his
eyes, full of pain and sympathy, tried to meet her averted gaze.
Every night at prayer time when the moment came that Neville’s name
had once been mentioned, Mrs. Tremaine could not control a slight
agitation, and once at the omission Colonel Tremaine groaned aloud.
At that, Mammy Tulip, suddenly throwing her white apron over her face,
broke into loud weeping. “My chile,” she cried. “Dat boy I nus same
like he wuz my own an’ ain’t never gib he mammy a impident word sence
he been born, an’ now he ma an’ pa doan’ name him at pray’r time.”
Angela went up to Mammy Tulip and, putting her arm around the old
woman’s neck, leaned upon her broad shoulder, her heart wrung with pity
for Neville. But even in that moment she knew that she was not in love
with him.
With the early summer the stupendous clamor of war and the carnival of
blood began.
Richard Tremaine’s battery had been ordered to the front and was in
most of the great battles of the summer of 1861. Often long periods
of time passed when no news of him reached Harrowby. The Richmond
newspapers, received twice in the week, which had been leisurely
read two or three days after they arrived, were now seized upon with
avidity, and the grewsome list of dead, wounded, and missing was
scanned with anxious eyes by Colonel Tremaine.
Angela, hovering about him as he read over this direful list, would
glance at it herself. Suppose she should find Isabey’s name in it. How
would she take it? She had never fainted in her life, but she had a
haunting fear that if she should read Isabey’s name among the killed
she should faint or shriek or in some way betray herself.
Madame Isabey was keyed up also to periods of anxiety, although she
showed a spirit of cheerfulness and courage which was remarkable. The
life at Harrowby, so placid without, was full of fears and tumults
within, and was extraordinarily different from the years of pleasuring
which Madame Isabey had spent between New Orleans and Paris, but she
made no complaint, nor did Adrienne, though, if anything, it was harder
on her than on the older lady.
Adrienne had few resources, music being the chief. But with natural
tact she forbore from spending long hours at the piano, which she
would have done in her own home. Her taste for reading lay in a
few pessimistic French poets and romancers, but even with these,
the time was heavy on her hands. She had found life disappointing
from the first. Formed for love, her first marriage had been as
loveless as it was respectable. Then had come a mortal wound to her
pride--when she was free Isabey no longer cared. It was not as if
they had been separated and her image had gradually faded from his
mind; they had been thrown constantly together during the seven years
of her widowhood, and all their world was continually suggesting
the appropriateness of their marriage. So that the idea of it was
necessarily before Isabey’s mind, yet he had spoken no word, and
Adrienne felt a sad certainty that no word would be spoken by him.
She had a quiet pride which not even jealousy could lash into
resentment. She saw the sudden witchery which this nineteen-year-old
Angela, this wife who was no wife, had cast over Isabey, and did not
wonder at it. Angela was to Adrienne as much an unknown quantity as she
herself was to Angela. Adrienne felt herself robbed of something which
could be of no use to Angela, who possessed it, and Adrienne was thirty
with her youth behind her while Angela, not yet twenty, was entering
upon those ten years which to most women count for more than all that
has gone before or can come after.
The most unfailing courtesy prevailed between these two women. They
exchanged small kindnesses, spent some hours of every day together in
feminine employment, but a great gulf lay between them.
Angela felt instinctively and intuitively the things which Adrienne
knew, and reasoned upon them calmly and sadly. Adrienne had everything
and yet she had nothing. A still and mortal antagonism had been growing
steadily from the first between the women, but not the smallest
indication of it was given in manner or behavior. Both were women of
the highest breeding, and each was secretly ashamed of the ignoble
passion of jealousy which possessed them, and had the art to conceal it.
Something of what each suffered was dimly suspected by the other and
was actually known to one person--Lyddon. Of the two, he felt more
sorry for Adrienne, torn from a life of gayety brightened by art and
music, and transplanted like an exquisite exotic into the depths of a
sunless forest. He felt acutely sorry for her and tried in many ways
to lighten the burden of _ennui_ which he suspected, in spite of her
composure, lay heavy upon her. But there was no common ground between
them.
Lyddon, observing Angela day by day, saw her, as it were, growing up.
In January she had been a child: in July she was a woman with more
problems and perplexities weighing upon her than happen to most women
during the course of a long life.
Everyone at Harrowby was in a state of unrest, the negroes not the
least so. Several of the house servants could read, and occasionally
newspapers would disappear mysteriously and after a time be replaced.
In the summer nights these children of the sun would build a fire out
of doors in their quarters, and sitting around it in a circle, the
house servants would tell in whispers what they had picked up of the
great events going on.
The early autumn in warm climates is a depressing time of feverish
heat alternating with shivery nights like the fever and ague which
was certain to appear at that season. In November, when the cool
weather had declared itself and all danger of fever was supposed to
be passed, Madame Isabey had a slight touch of it. In a great fright
she determined to go to Richmond, where she might consult a doctor.
Adrienne, of course, must go with her, so it was arranged that the two
ladies, late in autumn, should leave Harrowby for the winter in the
Confederate capital.
Adrienne looked forward to it with something like pleasure. Life
at Harrowby was wearing on her. She felt its sameness, which was
now without serenity, and the exciting and kaleidoscopic life of a
beleaguered capital would be a distraction to her. Adrienne’s problems
were not inconsiderable.
In December, therefore, the hegira occurred. The whole journey to
Richmond was made by carriage and took three days. Colonel Tremaine, in
the excess of gallantry and good will, declared to Madame Isabey: “My
boy, Hector, madame, shall drive the coach upon this occasion, and I
will cheerfully do without his services in order to feel sure that you
are in safe hands.”
“O Heavens!” cried Madame Isabey, who abhorred Hector. “That ridiculous
old creature, always getting tipsy and quoting the Bible and telling
romances--such romances! About the war in Mexico! And you, yourself, my
dear Colonel, tell me that the creature is a grand coward. Never can I
let him drive me!”
Colonel Tremaine colored with displeasure. Not even Mrs. Tremaine had
dared to speak the truth so openly about Hector. But the courtesy due a
guest made the Colonel pass over Madame Isabey’s frankness.
“I, madame,” he responded, a little stiffly, after a moment, “shall
have the pleasure of accompanying you, as I always intended. I could
not think of allowing two ladies to travel from Harrowby to Richmond
alone, although I do not believe that any actual danger may be
apprehended.”
“Until Hector gets drunk and upsets the carriage in a ditch,” whispered
Lyddon to Angela, who was present.
The start was made on a bright morning in the middle of December. The
Harrowby carriage, like all those of the period, had boxes under the
seats meant to carry clothes and a rack behind for a trunk, and that
accommodated the ladies’ luggage. In addition was a large box filled
with provisions and with a dozen bottles of Mrs. Tremaine’s very best
blackberry wine, for supplies were scarce and dear in Richmond. It was
arranged that the ladies should return in April.
To themselves and to all the family at Harrowby, except Archie, there
was a slight feeling of relief at the separation for the winter.
Archie had become devotedly attached to Madame Isabey and insisted on
following the carriage on horseback a day’s journey to show his regret
at parting with his elderly friend, who never ceased to amuse and
delight him.
The parting was courtesy itself on both sides. Mrs. Tremaine accepted
as a certainty that the ladies would return in April to remain during
their pleasure. Many of the county families had guests upon the same
indefinite terms, and the arrangement was thought in no way remarkable.
Madame Isabey and Adrienne both expressed the deepest gratitude for the
kindness shown them, and promised to return in the spring. Yet there
was a certain and secret feeling of satisfaction on both sides when the
carriage drove off.
Colonel Tremaine sat by Hector’s side upon the box to see that he did
not upset the carriage at the first opportunity, and Archie, like a
true cavalier, galloped by the carriage window. He was not expected to
return until the morrow. But at sunset on the same day he was seen
riding rapidly down the wide cedar-bordered lane. Angela, who was
returning from an afternoon walk with Lyddon, said to him: “Archie must
bring bad news.”
So thought Mrs. Tremaine, who saw him from the window and came out on
the porch to meet him.
“It’s nothing, mother!” he cried, “only Richard is a little ill in
Richmond. He caught the measles, just think of it, just think of it!
And father met a messenger coming to tell us of it. He sent me back to
tell you and to say that if you start at once you will be able to catch
up with him at King William Court House to-morrow night, where he will
sleep. I am to drive you in the Stanhope gig.”
“I shall be ready to start in half an hour,” replied Mrs. Tremaine
without a moment’s hesitation.
Immediately preparations were begun for her departure. Angela
followed her, anxious to be of service, and to her Mrs. Tremaine
gave the keys and a few household directions. Angela had taken a
share in housekeeping since she was twelve years old and accepted the
responsibility now laid upon her as the most natural thing in the
world. Most of the autumn labor on the estate was over; the negroes’
clothes and shoes were made, and the winter provisions laid in. The
chief thing to be attended to was an army of turkeys, ducks, and
chickens, and Mammy Tulip, as an expert, had charge of the fowl yard.
Only one thing remained to be arranged, and that a difficult matter.
How was Mrs. Tremaine to get news of Neville when his letters to Angela
came? Pride forbade her to ask, but Angela, who knew what was in her
mind, said gently to her as she tied Mrs. Tremaine’s bonnet strings for
her: “Whenever I hear from Neville, Aunt Sophia, I will let you know.”
Mrs. Tremaine made no reply in words, but her eyes were eloquent.
It was arranged if Richard’s illness was slight, as was supposed, that
Colonel Tremaine would probably return, while Mrs. Tremaine would
remain with Richard in the little town near Richmond where he had been
taken ill.
After Mrs. Tremaine had left the house which had been so populous only
the day before, it had in it but two occupants--Angela and Lyddon.
George Charteris came over every day to do lessons with Lyddon, but he
avoided Angela, and she, while indifferent to his dislike, kept out of
his way.
It had been Mrs. Tremaine’s parting injunction to Angela to have
family prayers for the servants, and so at half past nine o’clock on
the first evening, the servants were all assembled in the library
as usual. Angela read the Gospel, as Colonel Tremaine did, and then
followed closely Mrs. Tremaine’s simple prayer, but when she prayed
for “the sons of this house,” she named Neville first, as had been the
case from the day of his birth until the day of his defection. A loud
Amen burst from Mammy Tulip, followed by a dozen other Amens from the
other servants. When the negroes’ Amens had died away, Lyddon said
distinctly, “Amen!”
Prayers being over, the servants dispersed, and all the house closed
for the night, Angela, as usual, went into the study, and sat an hour
with Lyddon. In the perplexities and the strange events which had
arisen in her life, she had found great comfort in Lyddon. His talk to
her always subtly conveyed the lesson of endurance, and after being
with him, Angela always felt more able to endure. He brought before her
the elemental fact that all the griefs, disappointments, perplexities,
and passions of human life were to be found in the smallest circle,
nay, under every roof.
The conduct of the house and estate, even for a short time, gave Angela
much to do, and in the days that followed she had but little time to
think. It was a full week before any news came of the travelers. Then
arrived a letter from Colonel Tremaine saying that he and Mrs. Tremaine
had reached Richard and found him, although not seriously ill, low in
health, and as the winter had set in with great severity there was no
prospect of moving him for at least a month. Archie would remain with
his mother to bring her and Richard home when the latter was able to
travel, but Colonel Tremaine would return to Harrowby within a few
days, certainly before Christmas eve.
This day was close at hand. Christmas means little, however, as a
festival, in time of war. Angela contrived to fill the stockings of the
negro children with apples and walnuts and molasses candy made in the
kitchen by Mummy Tulip, but otherwise there was no attempt at festivity.
Some of the neighbors and friends had already lost brothers and sons in
the bloody battles of the summer, and the rest were too much concerned
for the fate of their best beloved to attempt any merrymaking.
Mrs. Charteris, whose heart was as good as her tongue was active, had
taken in a family of refugees which included five children, and as she
assumed the duties of doctor, nurse, and governess, her hands were
full, and she scarcely had time even to revile Mr. Brand, who showed no
signs of taking up arms for his country.
The weather, which up to that time had been singularly mild and
beautiful, suddenly grew gray and stormy and bitterly cold. No guest
had passed the doors of Harrowby since Colonel Tremaine left. It was
now the day before Christmas, and all day long Angela had anxiously
watched for Colonel Tremaine’s arrival.
About five o’clock, when it was already dark, and earth and sky and
river were all an icy and forbidding gray, Angela stood by the hall
fire with Lyddon, who had just come in from his afternoon tramp.
“I do so hope,” Angela said, “that Uncle Tremaine will get here before
it snows. Mammy Tulip says that she feels it in her bones that snow
will fall deep and everything will be frozen up. She thinks so because
she hears the owls hooting at night or something of the sort.”
“I think so,” replied Lyddon, “because the wind is from the northwest
and the clouds have hung heavy all day.”
“How different it is,” cried Angela, “from last year!”
She came close to Lyddon and, as she often did in her earnestness, laid
her hand upon his arm and looked with dark and bewildered eyes into his
face.
“Last year,” she continued, “all was peace; this year all is war. Not
only everywhere, but here in my heart. It seems to me as if I were at
war with everyone in this house except you.”
“Poor child!” was all Lyddon could reply.
Angela drew back on the other side of the hearth and said: “But I want
to be at peace. I would like to be at peace with Uncle Tremaine and
Aunt Sophia--I love them so much. Even Archie is changed toward me, and
that little insignificant George Charteris looks at me with contempt
when he takes off his hat to me. And do you remember how pleased I was
at the idea of Madame Isabey and Madame Le Noir coming here? Well,
Madame Le Noir is at war with me.”
“Life is all a battle and a march,” was Lyddon’s answer.
He glanced at the dim and worn painting of Penelope and the suitors
over the fireplace. Here, indeed, was a Penelope, and Lyddon considered
she had narrowly missed having an unconscious suitor in the person of
Philip Isabey. Luckily he had gone away before the impression made upon
him by Angela had deepened and changed the current of his being.
Lyddon looked critically at Angela. She was certainly growing very
pretty, with a kind of beauty captivating as it was irregular. She
would never be classed as a beauty, but was as charming as Adrienne Le
Noir was seductive.
While these thoughts flashed through Lyddon’s mind he glanced toward
the western window and saw in the gloom of the wintry evening the
Harrowby carriage coming down the cedar lane.
“There’s Colonel Tremaine,” he said.
Angela’s thoughts were suddenly diverted into practical channels. “I
must have Uncle Tremaine’s fire lighted at once!” she cried, and,
stepping out upon the back porch, she rang the bell five times, which
was supposed to summon Tasso, but, after ringing in turn for Mirandy
and Jim Henry, finally succeeded in getting both of them, who proceeded
to hunt the place for Tasso instead of lighting the fire themselves.
Meanwhile the carriage was at the door, and Angela, snatching up her
crimson mantle and throwing it over her fair head, ran down the steps
and herself opened the carriage door.
Out stepped Colonel Tremaine and kissed her affectionately. But there
was another person within the carriage--a man, pale and worn and
haggard, with a leg and an arm bound up. It was Philip Isabey.
The shock of seeing him was shown in Angela’s expressive face. Instead
of the warm and ready greeting which a guest usually receives, she
stood at the carriage door, her mantle dropping off her shoulders,
looking at Isabey with eyes which had in them something both of fear
and of delight. She felt more emotion at this sudden apparition of him
than she had ever felt at seeing anyone in her life before. And with it
an instinctive dread of being thrown with him again instantly sprang
into life.
Isabey, himself, had the disadvantage of being a close observer. He had
looked forward to this meeting not with fear but with pure delight, and
was prepared to watch how Angela greeted him; she was so guileless that
she was easily read by an experienced eye.
He held out his hand feebly and said in his old, pleasant, musical
voice: “How glad I am to see you again!”
Then Colonel Tremaine began explaining sonorously: “My dear Angela,
I had the extreme good fortune to come across Captain Isabey when he
most needed a friend. He had been severely wounded and, though out
of danger, was quite helpless, and lying on the floor in a miserable
shanty. I, of course, picked him up, bag and baggage, and, instead of
leaving him in the hospital at Richmond, brought him back to Harrowby.
You must do for him what my dearest Sophie is doing for our beloved
Richard--be nurse, amanuensis, reader, and companion for him.”
“I will do all I can,” answered Angela, as if in a dream. And then
Lyddon appearing, he and Colonel Tremaine assisted Isabey up the steps
and into the hall.
It was not until he was seated in a great chair before the hall fire
and in the full glare of the blazing lightwood knots, that Angela saw
the havoc made in him by wounds and illness. He was very thin, and his
gray uniform was shabby and too large for his shrunken figure. His dark
complexion had grown pale, and there was a painful thinness about his
eyes and temples. His voice, however, had the same cheerful, musical
ring.
Isabey, in truth, was filled with rapture. By the hand of fate he had
been brought out of the direst misery into the companionship, without
seeking it, of this girl whose image he had been unable to drive from
his mind. His imagination had already been at work. He knew perfectly
well the conditions which prevailed at Harrowby. No one would be there
except Colonel Tremaine, Lyddon, Angela, and himself. He would see
Angela every day and all day long. She would minister to him, and he
might ask services of her inexpressibly sweet to receive from her. And
he would have long hours when he could talk to her unheard by others.
He had pictured to himself the welcome which would shine in her face
when she saw him, and the divine pity with which she would listen to
the story of his sufferings.
He did not fail to remind himself that Angela was not for him; she was
the wife of another man. But it is not in masculine nature to refrain
from inhaling the odor of a delicious flower which belongs to another
man or of breathing the air of heaven, although it may be in the garden
of another.
Any thought of betraying himself to Angela, or acquiring any ascendency
over her, was very far from Isabey’s mind, but when at last they had
met he had seen enough of agitation in her to know that the meeting
meant something to her as well as to him. And being a very human man,
he was penetrated with secret joy.
He saw still more plainly when she stood looking at him by the
firelight that she was reckoning up with a sympathy dangerously near to
tenderness all of his wounds, his pains, his fevers, all the miseries
which he had suffered. It seemed to Isabey then as if they were but a
small price to pay for a month in Angela’s society or even for that one
hour of peace and warmth and rest with Angela looking down upon him
with eyes of sweetest pity.
Colonel Tremaine, in response to Lyddon’s inquiries, began to tell
about Richard, and Angela, forcing herself to look away from Isabey,
listened to the story:
“We found our son recovering from the measles, a most grotesque
complaint for a soldier to have, but he had not taken proper care of
himself during the illness and was in a very low state when we arrived.
If he had been in fit condition to travel like our friend Captain
Isabey, we should have at once brought him to Harrowby, but the snow
is four feet deep in the upper country, and it is impossible to think
of moving Richard at this inclement season. His mother, therefore,
remains with him and Archibald also to minister to them both. I felt it
my duty to return to Harrowby. Your Aunt Sophia, my dear, has sent you
a letter, so has your brother Archibald, and Richard sent you his best
love and says you are to write to him as well as to your Aunt Sophia.”
And Colonel Tremaine handed two letters to Angela.
“Our son had heard that Captain Isabey had been badly wounded, and was
somewhere in the neighborhood of Winchester. I at once caused inquiries
to be made and found that he was easily accessible----”
“I beg your pardon,” interrupted Isabey with a wan smile, “coming to
fetch me meant traveling twenty-five miles over mountain roads in
December after a fortnight of snow.”
“At all events,” cried Colonel Tremaine expansively, “I was able to
find Captain Isabey, and, unlike our son, he was in a condition to
be moved, and the surgeon said if he could be made comfortable and
have rest and proper treatment for a couple of months, his right arm
and right leg would be as good as his left arm and left leg. So I
and my boy, Hector, wrapped him up in blankets, bundled him in the
carriage----”
“And drove most of the way himself,” said Isabey in a voice of
gratitude.
“And here he is, and I think, my dear Angela, if you could get him some
of your aunt’s excellent blackberry wine----”
Angela disappeared as soon as the word blackberry wine was mentioned.
In a few minutes she returned with a glass of it, piping hot with
spices in it. By that time she had recovered her composure and was the
Angela of old.
“This,” she said, smiling as she handed the glass to Isabey, “is an
Elizabethan drink--one of what Mr. Lyddon calls his formulas. In the
Elizabethan days, you know, people made wine out of everything.”
“And very good wine, too,” responded Isabey. “Better, no doubt, than
the doctored stuff of the post-Elizabethan days.”
He took the glass from Angela’s hand and drank the mulled wine, warm
and comforting. The wine and the fire brought the color into his pale
face and warmth into his chilled body. Angela, leaning her elbow upon
the mantle, said meditatively and with the air of the chatelaine of
Harrowby: “What would be the best room for Captain Isabey?”
“Richard’s room,” suggested Lyddon. “It’s on the same level with the
study.”
“Capital!” exclaimed Colonel Tremaine.
“I think so,” said Angela, “and I shall go now and have it prepared.”
She went out, and in half an hour Mammy Tulip came into the hall and
delivered this message to Isabey:
“Miss Angela, she sent her bes’ ’spects an’ say Marse Richard’s room is
ready fur you, an’ I’se gwine ondress you an’ put you to baid.”
Colonel Tremaine looked much shocked. “That, Tulip,” he said severely,
“will be Tasso’s duty, who in the absence of Peter in attendance upon
his young master has charge of that room.”
Mammy Tulip received this emendation with undisguised contempt. “Tasso,
he good ’nuff fur well folks, but Cap’n Isabey, he’s wounded and
distrusted an’ I ain’t gwine let dat fool nigger ondress a sick man.”
And then to Isabey, “Come ’long, honey, an’ le’ me do fur you jes’ what
I do fur dem boys.”
Lyddon had seen this cool defiance of master and mistress every day of
the twelve years he had spent at Harrowby, but was still surprised at
it.
However, Isabey with the weakness of illness felt a placid pleasure in
yielding himself to Mammy Tulip’s motherly care, and willingly allowed
her to “hyst” him up as she expressed it, and leaning upon her stout
arm with Lyddon on the other side, Colonel Tremaine walking behind, and
Tasso, Jim Henry, Mirandy, and several of their coadjutors bringing up
the rear, the procession moved toward Richard’s room.
One charm no room at Harrowby could ever lack--a roaring wood fire.
It had already taken the chill off the unused room, and to Isabey the
glow, the warmth, the great soft feather bed with its snowy linen,
was a little glimpse of paradise. And Angela moving softly about and
concerned for his comfort was the sweetest part of the dream.
A round table was drawn up to an armchair in front of the fireplace,
and on it were quilled pens, cut by Lyddon, and red ink made from
the sumac berries, and the coarse writing paper which was the best
to be had in the Confederacy; and there were also some books. One
rapid glance showed Isabey that they were the books he liked; Angela
remembered all his tastes.
“Here,” she said, “you will have your supper, and then,” she added with
perfect simplicity, “Mammy Tulip will put you to bed.”
“And,” continued Mammy Tulip as she settled Isabey comfortably in the
chair with pillows, “I gwine to hab a big washtub brought in heah an’
a kittle of b’iling water an’ I gwine gib you a nice hot bath wid
plenty ob soap an’ towels.” At which Isabey laughed faintly and Lyddon
grinned, much to the amazement of Angela and Colonel Tremaine, who were
accustomed to Mammy Tulip’s ministrations.
Isabey did not see Angela any more that night, and did not in truth
feel able to stand further excitement.
Mummy Tulip was as good as her word, and took entire charge of him, and
when she had given him his supper and had bathed him in the big washtub
as she had threatened, and had covered him up in the great soft bed,
Isabey felt that most exquisite of all bodily sensations, release from
pain. He had not slept an unbroken night through since his leg and arm
had been torn by a shell, but by the time he realized his delicious
well-being, sleep came upon him. Nor did he open his eyes again until
next morning. The fire was again dancing in the chimney and Mammy Tulip
was standing by his bedside and holding a cup of something hot.
“It sutney is Gord’s mercy,” she said to him, “dat you an’ ole Marse
git heah lars’ night. De snow begin fallin’ a’ter sundown an’ ain’ stop
one single minit sence. De boys had to shovel a path in de snow so ter
git f’om de kitchen to de house, an’ dey had to breck de ice in de
waterin’ troughs fur de ho’ses an’ cows an’ sich.”
Isabey felt if anything an increase in his ease of body and mind at
what Mammy Tulip told him. There was something ineffably seductive in
the thought that he was, as it were, shut in from the whole world by
the rampart of snow and ice. That he could lie in the soft bed and
rise when he chose, and be washed and dressed like an infant, and take
that short and easy journey into the study where he would find the
companionship of books and Lyddon’s strong talk and Colonel Tremaine’s
warm courtesy and best of all--Angela.
For many months he had marched and fought and starved by day and night.
In summer heats, in autumn’s drenching rains and chilling nights he
had ridden and tramped through mud and latterly through snow, and had
known hunger and sleeplessness and, with all, incessant fighting. Then
had come a day of battle when almost the last shot that was fired
had nearly torn him to pieces. Following had come a time of fearful
suffering in a wretched shanty, where all that could be done for him
was an occasional hurried dressing of his wounds by a surgeon who had
learned to do without food or sleep. Around Isabey had been others
suffering as miserably as himself, and his mind was distracted from
his own tortures by watching with pity others more tortured than
himself.
Now, however, all this seemed a painful dream, and here he was in
warmth and peace and ease and paradise for a little time, and when
these should have done their work he would be ready once more for hard
campaigning.
CHAPTER XIV
SNOWBOUND
Isabey remembered that it was Christmas morning. Snow had been falling
all the night through and lay white and deathlike over the land.
The Christmas was unlike any Christmas which Harrowby had ever known.
There were neither wreaths nor decorations nor any Christmas cheer.
After breakfast, the negro children came into the hall, where Angela
distributed their Christmas stockings with such homely sweets as she
could provide, and the children went away quietly.
The shadow of the war was upon them, too, and they understood dimly in
their childish way the vague unrest, the fears, the agitating hopes of
their elders, to whom the universe was changing daily and who knew that
things would never be as they had once been.
Angela was glad of the excuse of Isabey’s illness to keep the house
quiet. Colonel Tremaine retired to his library; the day to him was one
of bitter introspection. Lyddon, whom no weather could daunt, went for
a tramp in the snow. Angela busied herself with her household affairs
and then wrote a letter to Neville and afterwards to Mrs. Tremaine,
Richard, and Archie. It was the first time in her short life she had
been separated from them all on Christmas day.
It was twelve o’clock before Isabey was dressed and helped into the
study. There he found Angela sitting in a low chair reading. With Mammy
Tulip’s help, she made him comfortable on the old leather sofa drawn
close to the glowing fire. Hector, having cheerfully permitted Mammy
Tulip to perform all the services which Isabey’s disability required,
was on the spot to assume the direction of things and to compare the
campaign of Joshua round the walls of Jericho with General Scott’s
entrance into the City of Mexico.
He was, however, rudely cut short by Mammy Tulip hustling him out of
the way while she brought Isabey the inevitable “something hot.” Hector
retired with Mammy Tulip to have it out on the back porch, and Angela
and Isabey were left alone together.
“Mr. Lyddon will have George Charteris in the dining room every morning
after this,” she said. “This is to be your sitting room and you are to
send everybody out of it when you feel like it; Uncle Tremaine, Mr.
Lyddon, and me.”
“I shan’t send you away,” said Isabey in a low voice and quite
involuntarily. Angela blushed deeply.
She rose and went to the window through which was seen a world all
white under a menacing leaden sky. Even the river was covered with snow
and its voice was frozen.
“I never mind being snowbound,” she said, coming back to the fire. “It
always seems to me as if I could think and read better in winter than
in summer.”
“And in summer you enjoy and feel. Is it not like that?” asked Isabey.
“Yes,” replied Angela, smiling. “When I was a little girl and Mr.
Lyddon would talk to me about Nature, I thought Nature was a great
goddess and was smiling in the summer when the sun shone and the birds
chirped, and in the autumn, when everything was dull and gray and
quiet, that the goddess was in the sulks. Then in winter when the snow
and ice came I thought Nature was in a bad humor and had quarreled with
her lover, the sun. What strange notions children have!”
“And what a strange, poetic little child you must have been!”
“All real children are strange and poetic, I think; but, you see, not
many small girls are taught by a man like Mr. Lyddon. Now tell me what
happened to you when you were wounded.”
Isabey sighed. “When I’m stronger,” he said. “But now I want to put
it all away from me for a little while. I mean to give myself a whole
month of peace.”
“The doctors said two months.”
“The doctors always say two months when one month will do. Then I shall
be ready to go again. A soldier’s life is not all hardship. War is the
game of the gods.” After a moment he added in a perfectly conventional
tone: “I hope you hear good news from Captain Tremaine?”
“It’s good news that he’s well,” replied Angela. “I hear from him
irregularly. I should have been with him long ago if he could have had
me, but he’s out in the far West, where there are no railroads or
stages or anything. I believe,” she added, the flush, which had died
from her face, returning quickly, “the very people for whom Neville
sacrificed everything don’t trust him. It’s because they don’t know
him. They only know that he is a Southern man in the Northern Army. I
feel so sorry for Neville and so indignant for him that I could weep
with grief and anger.”
“It’s also very hard for you,” said Isabey, gently.
“Yes, very, but what I endure is only a trifle compared with what
Neville has to suffer. You know he had great ambitions and he’s a fine
officer, everyone says that, and now all is forgotten and he has no
chance. But I ought not to inflict all of my burdens and vexations upon
you. Shall I read to you a little?”
“With pleasure,” answered Isabey.
Angela went to the bookcase and brought back several volumes. “These,”
she said with authority, “aren’t the books which you particularly like,
but the books which Mr. Lyddon says are soothing. They’re all poetry
books. Poetry, you know, calms and makes one forget this workaday
world.”
Isabey picked up a volume of “Childe Harold.” “I should like you to
read this to me. One likes the old familiar things when he is as weak
as I am. When I was in Europe I always carried ‘Childe Harold’ in my
pocket and read it among the very scenes which Byron describes. You
see, I was very young.”
“Youth may be wise. That’s just what I should do if I had seen Rome and
Venice and the Rhine.”
“Some day you will.”
Angela shook her head. “Neville isn’t fond of travel, and besides
we shall be poor because his father and mother will never give him
anything after this. He was to have had Harrowby, and we should have
settled down here as quietly as Uncle Tremaine and Aunt Sophia.
Richard, you know, meant to enter public life, and so the place wasn’t
so much to him, and he would have got, like Archie, other property
instead of Harrowby. Uncle Tremaine and Aunt Sophia used to talk about
it before them, but now all is changed. Neville will have nothing, not
an acre, not a stick, not a stone to call his own.”
“But he will have you,” replied Isabey, in a low voice and really
thinking aloud.
“And I shall have him,” responded Angela, quickly, and looking steadily
into Isabey’s eyes. She had uttered no word of reproach, but Isabey
after a moment said quietly:
“You must not be offended with me now for anything I say. I’m so weak
in body that it affects my will. I often found myself when I was lying
on the floor of that wretched hut asking the doctor for things which I
knew in advance he could not have supplied to save his life. Be patient
with a man who doesn’t know very well how to bear pain of any sort.”
What woman could resist that? Angela said nothing, but her eyes spoke
forgiveness.
[Illustration: “He lay watching Angela with her quick-changing
expression.”]
Then she opened the book and began to read. Her reading was good and
her understanding of the lines perfect. Isabey knew them well, and
their far-off, half-forgotten music fell softly upon his spirit. He
lay watching Angela with her quick-changing expression, her easy and
graceful attitude. It was all so sweetly, divinely peaceful, and then
before he knew it his eyes closed and he slept.
Angela read on, the music of her voice filling the low, small room. She
did not put down the book until Isabey slept soundly. Then she watched
him with her heart in her eyes.
If he had returned well and strong and full of the charm, the grace,
the captivations, the splendid accomplishments which had so dazzled her
at their first meeting, she would have been on her guard. But who need
be on her guard, she asked herself, with a wounded soldier, a man as
helpless as a child, and who was entitled to have all things made soft
and easy for him? And how ashy white he looked, the whiter from the
blackness of his hair!
In his sleep he moved his right arm and groaned without waking. Angela
rose and, changing the position of his arm a little, Isabey moaned no
more. The silence in the room was broken only by his light breathing
and the occasional dropping of a coal upon the ashes. Without was that
deep and dreamlike silence of overwhelming snow. It seemed to Angela as
if not only the face of the world but all the people in it had changed
within the year.
The Christmas before she had never seen Isabey, but her mind working
on the problem as women’s minds work, it seemed to her us if she had
really known him ever since those days when as a little girl she saw
the pictures of him taken with Richard. Her childish imagination had
seized upon Isabey’s image with a sort of foreknowledge; she had been
in love with him before she ever saw him.
When this thought occurred to her, she reasoned with herself coolly. To
be in love with a name, with a fanciful image even of a real man was
not love. She had been in love with _Lara_, with _Childe Harold_, even
some of those old Greek and Roman heroes whose names she had spelled
out painfully when she was a child at Lyddon’s knee.
However, one of these heroes--Isabey--had taken shape and had come
bodily before her, and deep down in her heart, this airy romance, this
thing of dreams had become something real and menacing to her happiness.
As she sat before the fire thinking these thoughts, Isabey waked
without stirring. He had been dreaming of Angela and to find her close
to him, her delicate profile outlined against the dark, book-covered
walls, to hear the occasional rustle of her gown, and to watch her
dark, narrow-lidded eyes in the gleam from the firelight, seemed to him
a continuation of his soft and witching dream. He observed that her air
and expression had matured singularly since he had first seen her, when
the syringas bloomed, the lilacs were in their glory, and the blue iris
hid shyly under its polished leaves, but outwardly Angela was not yet a
woman any more than the little rose bushes of last year’s planting were
rose trees now.
The silence, the warmth, the sweetness seemed to enwrap Isabey, and
without was that white and frozen world which made each homestead a
solitude. He lay thus for half an hour furtively watching Angela. Then
she turned toward him and met his dark eyes.
“I thought you were asleep,” she said, stepping toward him.
“I was asleep,” he replied, smiling, “and dreamed.”
“Do you remember it is Christmas day?” she asked, arranging his pillows
for him.
“I believe I knew it, but I have not exerted myself to think since I
have been under this roof. Everything is too deliciously sweet.”
“It is the strangest Christmas,” said Angela, returning to her low
chair. “Everything as quiet as death, not a sound in the house. I
filled the stockings of all the little negro children with apples and
nuts and molasses candy and gave them out early this morning. But I
made them keep quiet for fear of waking you. They were quiet enough;
something odd seems to have come over the negroes.”
“I should think so. With their ignorance of events and inability to
read and knowing neither geography nor history, don’t you suppose they
must be secret excited and bewildered by this war, in which they have
so huge a stake?”
“So Mr. Lyddon says. Every one of them is different, it seems to me,
since the war broke out, even Mammy Tulip and Uncle Hector. I don’t
mean that they are not just as faithful, but they listen to us when we
talk, and watch us, and I think repeat to each other what we say. I
wonder how I shall feel when I go North to Neville and shan’t have any
black people to wait upon me.”
“You will feel very queer, I dare say. I never grew accustomed to being
waited upon by white men all the time I was abroad. It is true that
I had my own boy with me, but I often felt a yearning for the kindly
negro faces, and longed to hear them laugh when they were spoken to.”
While Angela and Isabey were talking, Colonel Tremaine came in. He had
taken advantage of Mrs. Tremaine’s absence to array himself in a suit
of before-the-war clothes, and was feeling much more at ease in them
than in homespun, and so expressed himself.
“Mrs. Tremaine’s wishes, my dear Captain Isabey, are paramount in
this house, and especially with me, and have been from the day that I
determined to ask her to become mine. She makes it somewhat a point of
conscience that I shall wear a suit of homespun, woven and spun on the
estate, and made by Mrs. Tremaine herself with the assistance of her
woman, Tulip. But I frankly confess that I feel more comfortable in
the clothes made by my Baltimore tailor. In other respects, I submit
cheerfully to the privations of the war. I have no longer any objection
to tallow candles, or to blackberry wine, or to potato coffee sweetened
with honey, or even to being shaved with soft soap made by Tulip and
of the color and consistency of mud and molasses and presented by
Hector in a gourd. And I can offer you some apple brandy manufactured
last summer in the Harrowby kitchen. It is better than the alleged
French brandy which I bought from Captain Ross, the blockade-runner.
I accused him of having watered it. This he strenuously denied, but it
appears he had diluted it on the voyage and had inadvertently used salt
water, and if you will believe me, the scoundrel swore to my face that
he had not mixed any ingredients with the brandy, although it was as
salt as Lot’s wife. Running the blockade appears to make great liars of
all connected with the trade.”
Isabey duly sympathized with Colonel Tremaine’s grievances over the
salt-watered brandy, and the Colonel continued:
“In many ways we still enjoy the comforts to which we are accustomed.
The land brings forth fruitfully. The hens, ducks, and turkeys seem to
vie with each other in producing a multitude of eggs. The fish still
run in the river, and the oysters have not so far concerned themselves
with States’ rights, so at least we shall not starve while you are with
us.”
Isabey replied with truth that in lowland Virginia one might live like
a lord as long as the sun rose and the rivers ran.
At three o’clock the Christmas dinner was served, and around the
great mahogany table gathered a group smaller than it had ever held
before--Colonel Tremaine, Lyddon, Angela, and Isabey for a part of the
time. The dinner was rich in oysters, fishes, meats, and vegetables,
but deficient in sweets. When, according to the old custom, the cloth
was removed and the decanters on coasters were sent around the table,
Colonel Tremaine proposed the Christmas toast to “our absent ones--the
lady who reigns over this mansion and also over the heart of its
master, to its sons--” here he paused.
Angela said in a quick, tremulous voice, “Neville, Richard, and Archie.”
Colonel Tremaine’s face darkened. The mention of his traitor son, as he
regarded Neville, was always painful to him, but he did not refuse to
drink the toast.
When the dinner was over the short wintry afternoon was closing
in. Snow was again falling heavily in a world already wrapped in
whiteness and silence. There were no sounds of merrymaking from the
negro quarters. All seemed to share the mood of tenseness and somber
expectation.
Colonel Tremaine was visibly depressed. It was the first Christmas he
had spent in forty years apart from Mrs. Tremaine and he felt it deeply.
As the twilight closed in, Angela, wrapped in her red mantle, with
the hood over her head, went out into a misty world of snow and faint
moonshine, which penetrated a break in the overhanging clouds. A
pathway had been cut through the snow to the garden gate and thence
down the main walk to the old brick wall at the end. Angela began
to pace up and down her favorite walk. Her sense of aloneness and
aloofness was complete. The swirling white eddies shut everything from
her except the bare shrubs in the garden standing like ghosts in the
faint spectral glare of the moon on a snowy night.
She began to question herself. Would she, if she were entirely free
to act, go at once to Neville? She answered her own question and
satisfactorily. Certainly she would. Did she love Neville? Yes, just
as she had always done, from the time she was a little girl and never
felt so safe with anyone as when her tiny hand lay in Neville’s boyish
palm. Was she in love with him? Ah, no! And would she ever be? To that,
too, her heart gave no doubtful answer, but a strong negative. She was
never to have a dream of love, any of those soft illusions which make a
young girl’s heart tremble.
Then relentlessly she asked herself if she was in love with Isabey. She
stopped in her walk and looked about her with scared eyes, as if love
were a specter to affright her. She was enveloped in the misty veil of
the falling snow which eddied about her and which was lighted by that
ghostly and silvery sheen of the hobgoblin moon.
Did she not feel the color come to her face whenever she caught
Isabey’s eyes fixed upon her? Did not her heart beat at his footsteps,
and did not his mere presence electrify the atmosphere?
Then another question forced itself into her mind, like a dagger into
an open wound. Was Isabey in love with her?
She had never thought or even suspected such a thing until he had
returned, the pitiful wreck of his former self. But Angela being, like
all the rest of her sex, learned in the secrets of the heart, had found
out what Isabey in truth was too ill, too weak, to conceal--that she
was dear to him.
Had they met one week earlier!
“But then,” she replied to herself, “it would have made no difference;
I could not have refused to stand by Neville when all the world was
arrayed against him.”
Whatever she or Isabey might suffer, Neville’s heart should be at
peace. She would be to him so tender, so affectionate, so watchful to
please him, that he would never suspect she had not given him her whole
treasure. And, feeling this, she had an expansion of the soul which
seemed to raise her in her own esteem.
Why need she be on her guard against Isabey? He had suffered so much.
He was the object which most appeals to a woman’s heart--a wounded
soldier. He was so weak, so worn, that no woman on earth could refuse
him her pity. And of his integrity, his delicacy, she had not the
smallest doubt. It seemed to her then so easy to be loyal both to the
real and to the ideal.
She resumed her walk in the swirling snow. At the same moment Isabey,
lying on the couch in the study watching the pallid twilight of the
snowstorm without and the rosy glow of the fire within, was asking
himself some of the same questions which Angela put to herself in the
storm-swept garden.
Was he in love with this girl? Yes. And more, he loved her with all
his heart. She was already the wife of a man whom he admired and
honored; she was born among different surroundings from his own: bred
differently from any girl he had ever known; of different blood and
religion and customs to his own, and yet an unbreakable chain had been
forged between them.
The first circumstance of this was strange to him--Angela’s suddenly
putting her hand in his that summer day, now six months past. He was
accustomed to the French method of training girls, and here was
Angela, who enjoyed even greater freedom than was usually accorded to
those girls of colder climes than Louisiana. This wife of barely twenty
was trusted as if she were a woman of sixty, and although this was new
to Isabey, it touched and enlightened him.
In place of Angela’s inexperience he had a thorough knowledge of the
world; hence he did not adopt Angela’s innocent delusion that it
would be easy to reconcile the real and the ideal. But for her, he
would at some time or other have acquiesced in one of those marriages
which are arranged with a view to fitness in every respect except the
perfect union of hearts. Often this union came; Isabey was by no means
prepared to condemn those methods concerning marriage which he had been
accustomed to all his life. A conventional marriage, however, no longer
was possible for him, but at least he could enjoy the month in paradise
which had come to him out of the blue.
The thought that he would be tended by Angela, that he would be able
to command, by the royal will of a wounded man, her sweet presence,
her soft voice in reading to him, her conversation, which was full
of archness and simplicity, captivated him. The delicious glow which
overspread his spirit extended to his body and gave him an exquisite
sense of ease and comfort. In that month which he allowed himself he
would become well acquainted with Angela’s mind. He had taken but small
interest in women’s minds before, although he keenly appreciated their
accomplishments. Angela had few of these accomplishments, but as well
expect accomplishments of a wood nymph. The study of her intelligence,
however, was like exploring a beautiful pleasance where there were
groves, gardens, and crystal fountains. She was one of the few women he
had ever seen whom he felt convinced age could not wither nor custom
stale.
He was so lost in his delicious reverie that he did not hear the quiet
opening of the door, and then Angela with her usually pale cheeks
scarlet with the tingling cold, her eyes sparkling, and the snowflakes
still lying on her red mantle, stood by him.
She shook the snow off the mantle and cried: “I had such an exciting
walk! It was only up and down the garden path from the gate to the
bench under the lilac bushes, but it seemed to me as if I had never
before seen the garden look quite as it did. You know, there is a moon,
although there is a snowstorm. That doesn’t happen often. And then I
had such strange thoughts!”
“Were they unhappy thoughts?” asked Isabey, turning his black eyes upon
her.
“N--o, not at all unhappy, but singular. You see, up to a year ago
nothing had ever happened to me, and now all things are happening, all
things are changing.”
Isabey rose weakly from the couch, and, taking Angela’s hand in his,
kissed it with the tenderest respect.
“I hope,” he said, “that all will work toward your happiness. I hope
some day you will be happy with Neville Tremaine, but you can afford to
be a little kind to me.”
“Yes,” replied Angela, looking into his face quite calmly. “I can
afford to be kind to you. One of the things which came to me just now
in the garden was that as soon as Neville and I are together I must
do everything I can for his happiness. You see, he has always done
everything for me, and I’m afraid I haven’t given much thought to doing
anything for him. But now you may depend upon it I shall really study
Neville’s happiness; I shall be as generous as he is.”
“You have already been very generous. You married him when all the
world had turned against him.”
“Then I shouldn’t be generous halfway. I ought to be with him and make
him happy.”
She sat down in the low chair in which she had read to him. It seemed
to her if Isabey and she had spent hours in explanations they could not
have understood each other better.
So thought Isabey. Angela could never be his, but at least he had found
that jewel which all men seek and few discover--that other half of his
being, the woman who perfectly understood him. He remembered that the
hearts of men and women are like the cello and the violin--both are
required to form the perfect strain of music.
CHAPTER XV
THE HEGIRA
It is possible in remote country houses, especially when snowbound,
for one day to be exactly like the other for a long period. Such was
the case at Harrowby during the month after Isabey’s arrival. Each day
repeated itself; it was the worst winter known for thirty years in
eastern Virginia, and one snowstorm succeeded another. The river was
frozen, cutting off communication by water. George Charteris managed
to plunge on mule-back daily through the snow to Harrowby, but no such
mode of progression was possible for Mrs. Charteris. Angela, fired by
George Charteris’s example, had her side-saddle put on a sure-footed
mule and so ventured out a few times, but found riding rather more
difficult than walking. She had not since her marriage paid visits
anywhere except to Greenhill, and the mutual attitude of herself and
the county people was such that she had no visitors. The mails were
interrupted, and, although Mrs. Tremaine wrote daily, her letters were
long in coming and generally arrived in a batch. Richard was recovering
slowly, but Mrs. Tremaine could not think of leaving him, and Archie
would remain with them until his mother could return to Harrowby.
Madame Isabey and Adrienne were established at a Richmond hotel, and
the elder lady from her letters seemed perfectly happy. There was much
going on in the Confederate capital, and, to add zest to events, was
the continual prospect of siege and battle. She wrote that Adrienne was
much admired. At the first levee the ladies attended at the Confederate
White House, Adrienne had attracted universal admiration. The fame of
her charming voice having reached the President, he had asked her on
the occasion of her first formal visit to the executive mansion to sing
and play for him. His grave and anxious face had lightened under the
spell of her little French songs so full of grace and sentiment and
so exquisitely rendered. Great attention was shown her by everyone,
and they were asked to “refugee” for the war in several distinguished
families, but Madame Isabey declared she preferred Harrowby, and had
not seen any boy so sweet as “Monsieur Archie” with his rose-red hair.
Refugeeing was exactly like the life her grandfather lived when he was
an _émigré_ in England in 1789. She often thought what a delightful
supply of stories she would have to tell of her days as an _émigré_ in
Virginia.
Adrienne, too, wrote, and her letters were more interesting though
less expansive than Madame Isabey’s. These first letters had been
written in ignorance of Isabey’s arrival at Harrowby, but when that was
known Madame Isabey expressed the greatest solicitude, and would have
come back instantly except for the impassability of the roads between
Richmond and Harrowby.
Adrienne received in a letter from Angela the news of Isabey’s presence
at Harrowby one night just as she was dressing to go to a levee at the
White House, where she was certain to be courted and admired by all,
from the grave-faced President down to the boy lieutenants, who rode
from camp into Richmond for an evening’s pleasuring. It was, perhaps,
the knowledge that Isabey and Angela were together which brought the
color to Adrienne’s lips and cheeks and the light to her eyes. She
realized, as women do, the marked admiration she excited, the way in
which the eyes of the Confederate officers followed her slight figure
in her pale-blue draperies with diamonds in her hair and on her breast.
If only her vanity had been wounded by Isabey’s coldness to her charms
it would have been soothed by the flattering attentions lavished upon
her. But Adrienne’s wound was deeper than that. While she was receiving
with soft and smiling grace the compliments and gallant speeches of
young officers and the more insidious flattery of older men, she was
like that Spanish lover whose body was at Cordova, but whose soul was
at Seville.
Angela’s letter had described quite naturally and prettily how each day
passed at Harrowby, and Adrienne had no difficulty in calling up the
scene. At that time in the evening they were all sitting in the study
in order to keep Isabey company. Lyddon was probably reading to him
while Angela did needlework and--and Colonel Tremaine dozed during the
reading and waked up to compliment Lyddon upon his “instructive and
entertaining performance.”
Adrienne by some psychic force felt as if this scene were passing
before her in the midst of the crowded levee with the hubbub around
her, the voices high-pitched as men’s voices grow in time of war, and
with the deep and only half-concealed excitement of soldiers who turn
from looking into women’s eyes to meet the face of death in a thousand
different forms, and of women who laugh tremulously to-night because
after to-morrow they might never laugh again. The crowd, the laughter,
the voices, the glances, bold, or shy, or meditative, seemed wholly
unreal to Adrienne, and what was tangible was the scene in the quiet
study, with Lyddon’s calm voice, as Angela had described--Isabey’s
eyes fixed upon Angela with that expression of profound interest and
tenderness which Adrienne had observed more than once. When the levee
was over and she was back in her room at the hotel, she sat for a long
time before her mirror, surveying herself in her laces and diamonds.
She pitied Isabey quite as much as herself, for Adrienne was not
incapable of generosity. Isabey was only a few days too late when he
reached the gate of paradise; it was closing, and nothing can arrest
the closing of those immortal gates. One thing, however, Adrienne
divined with the prescience of love, that Isabey would have a month
of happiness, a little time of radiance when Angela’s image, already
strongly impressed upon him, would become a part of himself. The
thought of this was poignant to her and kept her awake as she lay in
her bed.
Angela had written that Isabey’s improvement was wonderful even in the
three or four days he had been at Harrowby. It continued so, and in a
week he was another man. The thinness about his temples disappeared,
and his face was no longer pinched and wan, nor did his uniform hang
so pitifully loose upon his figure. In a fortnight he was well except
for his arm and leg. He could, with the assistance of a stick, limp
about the ground floor, but his arm was still in a sling. Nevertheless,
he would abate none of his invalid privileges as far as Angela was
concerned. He made the same silent appeal to her for her gentle
ministrations, and it never occurred to Angela to withhold them. Life
went on, dreamlike, in the isolated country house, and was sweeter for
being so dreamlike. Little news of any sort reached them either from
the Confederate camp fifteen miles in one direction or the Federal
camp twenty miles the other way. The outside world seemed so distant
to Angela that what she heard of the crouching dogs of war so close at
hand made little impression upon her. However, it was brought home to
her through the most unlikely of mediums--Mammy Tulip.
One night the old woman followed Angela to her room at bedtime, and,
after shutting the door, came up to her and whispered mysteriously:
“Miss Angela, ef you will wrote a letter to Marse Neville, and watch
outen de window to’des my house ’bout twelve o’clock, an’ ef you see me
come to de door an’ wave a candle an’ you drap de letter on de groun’,
somebody will pick it up, an’ Marse Neville will git it sho’.”
“What do you mean, Mammy Tulip?” asked Angela in amazement.
“Chile, doan’ you neber ax me what I mean; you jes wrote dat letter an’
gib my lub an’ ’spects to Marse Neville, an’ tell him to say he pra’ers
jes’ as reg’lar as he change he shirts. I know he ain’ neber gwine
to fergit to change he shirt, wartime or no wartime; an’ you drap de
letter outen de window----”
She caught Angela by the arm, and continued in an agitated whisper:
“Fur Gord’s sake, doan’ tole nobody ’bout drapping de letter on de
groun’.”
Angela was astonished, but could get no explanation out of Mammy Tulip,
except pleadings that she write the letter, and then the old woman
waddled off.
Angela wrote Neville a long letter, telling him what was happening at
Harrowby, the news of Richard and of his mother, of Isabey’s presence
there, and lastly assuring him of her love and constant remembrance and
desire to join him as soon as possible.
It was eleven o’clock before the letter was finished. Formerly Angela
could dash off letters to Neville as fast as she could write, but now
she wrote carefully weighing every word. She sat on the floor before
her fire, looking into the dying embers and puzzling over many things.
She could not form the least conjecture how her letter would reach
Neville, but a little before twelve o’clock she looked out of her
window and saw a candle waving at the door of Mammy Tulip’s house. Then
Angela softly raised the sash, and the letter, sealed and addressed,
fluttered out into the darkness and dropped upon the snow-covered
ground. Angela, after a glance at the black sky and the white earth,
put down her window and went to bed, where she soon fell into the deep,
sweet sleep, that glorious heritage of youth and health of which she
had not yet been robbed.
Next morning, however, the explanation of Mammy Tulip’s action became
apparent, and the nearness of the Federals was brought home to everyone
at Harrowby. Tasso, Jim Henry, Mirandy, Lucy Ann, and more than twenty
of the younger negroes failed to report to Hector’s bugle call.
When Angela came downstairs to breakfast she saw the unwonted spectacle
of Hector laying the breakfast table.
“Dem worthless black niggers is done gone to de Yankees,” Hector
explained, sententiously, “wid some o’ de likeliest young niggers on
dis heah place.”
Angela was astounded.
“Gone to the Yankees! Gone to the Yankees!” she repeated.
“Yes, Miss Angela.”
Colonel Tremaine and Lyddon came in and Hector told his story.
“Las’ night,” he said, “’bout twelve o’clock, a’ter all de lights in
de house was out, dey started afoot wid dey bundles. De walkin’ in de
snow is mighty bad, but dey thought ’twould keep ole Marse from girtin’
a’ter ’em an’ bringin’ dem back.”
“I have no desire whatever to bring them back,” replied Colonel
Tremaine with dignity, “and when the war is over we shall exact full
compensation from the North for every negro enticed away from his
master or mistress. Angela, my dear,” he continued, turning to her, “we
must bring in two of the field hands in place of Tasso and Jim Henry,
and I will endeavor to recruit for you three or four maids from the
spinning and weaving rooms.”
Here Mammy Tulip bounced in wrathfully, apologetic, and yet with a
species of shamefaced triumph. It was her first view of freedom for her
race. Mirandy was her granddaughter, and Mammy Tulip tried to explain
Mirandy’s defection.
“Tasso an’ Jim Henry an’ de rest on ’em kep’ on arter Mirandy to go wid
’em, an’ things is mighty nice wid dem Yankees now. De colored folks
wid dem dance ebery night, and dey can git a fiddler any time fur a
quarter, an’ quarters is plentiful wid de Yankees. An’ sech funerals!
De music a-playin’ an’ hollerin’ wid pleasure an’ sometimes two or
three gret big funerals a day!”
Angela was too stunned at Mirandy’s levanting to appreciate this view,
but Mammy Tulip, seeing this, assumed a still more apologetic attitude.
“Mirandy, she hol’ out long time. She say she cyarn’ lave Miss Angela,
an’ ef it hadn’t been for dem funerals, I doan’ believe Mirandy ever
would a gone ’way. An’ de larst thing she say was: ‘Please ax Miss
Angela to ’scuse me.’ Den she cry an’ say, ‘O granmammy, what Miss
Angela gwine do widout me?’” And then Mammy Tulip suddenly whisked
herself out of the room so as to avoid being questioned.
Hector perforce had gone out to bring in breakfast, a labor which he
had long since foregone.
As soon as Mammy Tulip and he were out of the room, Lyddon said to
Colonel Tremaine: “Hector, as well as the old woman, knows all about
it, as you see. No doubt the plans of these young negroes were made
long ago, and probably every other negro on the plantation knows it.”
Colonel Tremaine looked pained and mystified.
“It seems incredible to me,” he said, “that Hector, who has been my
boy for nearly sixty years, should know of any such design without
informing me. When I took him to Baltimore in ’52, he carried all the
money for the journey in a belt around his waist, and when a negro
abolitionist would have beguiled him into escaping to Philadelphia,
Hector remarked that he had money enough in his belt to buy the
abolition negro and all his family. It is impossible that he should
change in his attitude toward me.”
“The attitude of every negro toward every white person is changed,”
coolly replied Lyddon. “Why should it not be?” Just then Hector came
in with the tray from the kitchen, carrying mountains of muffins and
batter cakes. Colonel Tremaine sought his eye, but Hector, for the
first time in his life, evaded the look.
“Very well,” cried Angela, with spirit, “if all the negroes go away we
can do as Marie Antoinette and her ladies did at the Little Trianon.
I can make the butter, uncle, if you will milk the cows.” At which
Colonel Tremaine smiled grimly, and remarked that during the Mexican
War he had acquired the accomplishment of being able to milk a cow into
a bottle and generally without the knowledge of the cow’s owner.
This flight of the negroes from Harrowby was paralleled by what
occurred within a few days at numerous estates in the county. The young
negroes went off in droves, taking advantage of the snow to avoid
pursuit.
George Charteris had a harrowing tale to tell of every house servant
at Greenhill disappearing in a single night, and this with a family of
refugees, including five small children, in the house. Mrs. Charteris
had been forced to import a plowman into the dining room as butler, who
put his fingers in the glasses at dinner and called sauce for the suet
pudding “slush for de tallow roll.”
Angela’s experiences were not unlike these. A couple of raw ebony
youths, Tom and Israel, otherwise known as Izzle, occupied but did not
fill the places of the well-trained Tasso and Jim Henry. They were
frightened half out of their lives at “Unc’ Hector” and fled from his
face when he was endeavoring to teach them their business. They fell
over each other in their desire to oblige “Miss Angela,” whom they
adored, and collided with each other at frequent intervals during every
meal.
“I ’clare to Gord, Miss Angela,” groaned Hector, “dem black niggers
gwine lose me my ’ligion. At pra’r time ’stid o’ praying I jes goes
down on my knees and cusses dem niggers same like Abraham cussed Isaac
and Rebekah. If Job had had black Torm an’ Izzle, he would have cussed
the Gord an’ died, an’ I ain’ no better’n than Job. Lord A’mighty! I
wonder what General Zachary Taylor, ole Ruff an’ Ready, as dey called
him, would a’ done wid Torm an’ Izzle.”
“The best he could, I suppose, Uncle Hector,” responded Angela promptly
and with the positiveness of youth.
But housekeeping with Hector, who knew not the name of work, and Torm
and Izzle became a complicated matter. Hector’s sole real employment
for many decades had been to shave Colonel Tremaine every morning, and
to this he laboriously added blacking the Colonel’s shoes and brushing
his suit of homespun.
Mammy Tulip, however, came nobly to the front and did the work of
butler and valet, cuffed Torm and Izzle when they were idle, and in
general kept the whole Harrowby establishment from falling into chaos.
She maintained a strange reserve toward Angela, whom she had cradled
in her arms, but at the end of a few days came to her with the same
mysterious suggestion that a letter be written to Neville. Angela wrote
again and dropped her letter out of the window as before. Next morning
George Charteris brought over the news that the plowman butler at
Greenhill had disappeared in the night for the Federal lines and half a
dozen of the few remaining able-bodied negro men at Greenhill.
Angela’s mind was illuminated. Mammy Tulip knew of these impending
flights and was shrewd enough to see in them a means of communicating
with Neville. That the scheme worked was soon shown by Angela’s
receiving a fortnight later a reply from Neville, who was still in
the West. It was given to her privately by Mammy Tulip. It bore the
receiving postmark of the military post office at Yorktown and from
there had been sent to its destination through hands unknown by Angela,
but perfectly well known to Mammy Tulip.
This secret communication with the outside world had in it something
painful and disquieting to Angela. These servitors of another race,
these feudal dependents whom she had been bred to believe absolutely
devoted to the white family and to have no independent life of thought
and action, had reversed all these beliefs. They had abandoned their
masters, but not their own kith and kin, with whom they kept in
touch secretly and silently. Angela spoke of this next day to Isabey
when they sat as usual in the study, Angela reading to him. She had
discovered in herself a strange inability to keep anything from Isabey.
Her nature was frank and open, and she could reason well enough on what
she should tell or withhold from Neville, but Isabey’s presence was a
magic spell which seemed to unlock her heart and mind, and she could
not keep from him her most secret thoughts.
Isabey had learned to know the signs of Angela’s coming confidences,
the way in which she would timidly approach a subject, and then as
if by some uncontrollable impulse tell him all. He had been speaking
of this departure of the negroes and of the dangers which would
await them, in their ignorance and helplessness, exposed to the
demoralization which infests all camps. In a moment Isabey saw that he
had touched a sensitive chord. Angela laid down her book and going to
the window looked out upon the dull wintry landscape. Isabey watched
her with that sense of inward triumph which every human being feels who
controls the will of another. In a minute or two she came back, and,
standing before Isabey’s couch, said in a whisper:
“Last night I had a letter from Neville. It came to me so mysteriously,
not through Mr. Lyddon.” And then she poured out the story about Mammy
Tulip.
“I didn’t promise her not to tell,” Angela said breathlessly at the
end, “for I must open my heart sometimes and I have no one--no one----”
“Except me,” added Isabey quietly, and then could have struck himself
for saying it. But he was only human after all, and he loved Angela
with a strength and passion which amazed even himself.
Angela, as the case always was when Isabey made betrayal of himself,
flushed deeply and lowered her eyes, and then after a moment recovered
herself and said coldly:
“And Mr. Lyddon. I have always told Mr. Lyddon everything since I was a
little child.”
“Yes, and Mr. Lyddon,” Isabey said, composedly.
Angela’s involuntary readiness to pour out her heart to him always
touched him as nothing else on earth had ever done, but she likewise
commanded his admiration and respect by the steadiness with which she
upheld the letter of the law. Isabey often thought that no woman of
forty could have maintained the attitude of loyalty to her husband with
more tenacity and dignity than this girl of barely twenty. The garrison
might be weak, but the citadel was strong.
Just then Lyddon entered unexpectedly, and Angela, as if to prove she
had no separate confidences with Isabey, told Lyddon the story. Lyddon
expressed no surprise.
“You blessed Southerners,” he said, “have all along expected water
to run uphill. You may make a human being a chattel legally, but you
cannot make him so actually.”
“Then would you make them citizens?” asked Angela, tartly; and Lyddon
good-humoredly taking up the cudgels, a warm discussion followed on the
question of slavery. Angela, like many Southern women, was familiar
with the dialectics of the question and was able to make a clever
defense of a doubtful position.
Isabey listened in amused silence, watching Angela’s usually soft
manner growing more excited, her eyes becoming brilliant, and the
quickness of her intelligence in meeting Lyddon’s arguments. The
discussion was ended by Lyddon’s saying, laughing: “Come now, little
girl, you’ve said all you know on the subject and have done better than
a good many orators on the hustings. However, I only discuss it with
you because I can’t talk about it to anyone else in the county except
with Captain Isabey here. The ribbon around your neck is all awry, and
your hair is tumbling down just as it always does when you get warm in
argument. What a nice arguing wife Neville will have!”
“I shan’t argue with Neville,” replied Angela in her sweetest voice,
and looking straight at Isabey. “Neville knows more than anyone in the
world. He’s always right and always has been. I thought so from the
time I could first remember, and I haven’t changed my opinion.”
“That’s the way I shall wish my wife to talk when I have one,” was
Lyddon’s rejoinder, a possibility so preposterous that both Isabey and
Angela laughed at the mere suggestion.
In writing to Mrs. Tremaine that day Angela could not forbear telling
her of the letter she had received from Neville and that he was well
and hoping from week to week he and Angela might be united. Nor could
she refrain from telling the same thing to Colonel Tremaine, who
listened to it in cold silence, which presently changed to agitation.
However fierce his resentment against that once loved, eldest son, he
could not pretend indifference; love cannot be strangled.
After that once or twice a week Mammy Tulip would come to Angela with
suggestions that she write to Neville, following the same method as at
first, and Angela invariably did so. The steady march of negroes to the
Federal lines revealed easily to Angela what became of her letters.
The month which Isabey had given himself had passed quickly, and at
the end of that time he was ready, as far as his health was concerned,
to take the road. But broken and lacerated limbs are not mended in a
month, and Colonel Tremaine put an absolute veto upon Isabey’s leaving
Harrowby.
“My dear sir,” he said, authoritatively, “I am an old campaigner and I
can assure you that a soldier who is practically legless and armless is
no help to an army, and merely serves to eat up the provender. You are
absolutely useless in any capacity until you are able to walk and use
your right arm freely, and until then it is your duty--your duty, sir,
to our country--to remain at Harrowby and recuperate.”
“It’s rather hard,” remarked Isabey, “to sit here in idleness and
comfort, eating and sleeping and reading and dozing when every man who
can carry a musket is needed at the front.”
“How do you think,” asked Colonel Tremaine, calmly, “you would get on
riding a horse? It would be necessary to help you up and help you off
again, and as for arms, you would have to manage your horse, and fire
your pistol at the same time with your left hand. And if all went well,
the best that you could expect would be to be in a hospital at the end
of a week. No, sir, you will remain at Harrowby.”
Colonel Tremaine’s logic was unanswerable, and Isabey remained.
Nevertheless, he had waked from the soft dream in which he spent the
first few weeks of his return. It was now February and the land still
lay in an icy grasp, but spring would soon be at hand, and Isabey felt
a soldier’s impatience to be at his post. Angela’s society was not less
delicious to him; rather had he become more absolutely enchained. But
being a man he put fetters upon his will, his inclination, his voice,
and, taking his passion by the throat, mastered it. Only his eyes
remained uncontrolled, and sometimes in unguarded moments were eloquent
in a language which Angela perfectly understood.
Only Lyddon saw this; Colonel Tremaine never saw anything.
CHAPTER XVI
THE TONGUE OF CALUMNY
One Sunday morning a week or two after this, Angela announced that
she intended to ride to church. The roads were still impassable for
carriages, but a sure-footed horse could make his way along. Colonel
Tremaine at once said that he, too, would join the enterprise. When
Angela, in her riding habit, came downstairs about ten o’clock she
found the horse at the door and a third one, upon which Hector was
assisting Isabey. The horse was a retired cob of Colonel Tremaine’s and
had passed his fifteenth birthday and being well gaited was admirably
suited as a charger for a wounded officer. Just as Isabey had settled
himself in the saddle and gathered the reins in his uninjured left
hand, Colonel Tremaine came out.
“My dear sir,” he protested to Isabey, “this is extremely rash. You are
not able to manage a horse.”
“I think I can manage this one,” answered Isabey, smiling, “and I
mean to risk it. It makes me feel like a soldier once more to be on
horseback.”
Colonel Tremaine swung Angela into her saddle, a privilege which Isabey
envied from the bottom of his heart, and the three started off.
It was a shining winter morning, and the snow-covered earth glittered
in the crystalline light. In many places the roads had thawed, and
progress was difficult, but Isabey showed himself able with one hand
to manage his steed. Angela, who rode like a bird, looked well on
horseback, and Isabey began to believe, as Lyddon did, that some day
her girlish charms would develop into real beauty.
When they reached Petworth Church a fair-sized congregation had already
assembled. There were among them a few old men and some schoolboys.
Of these not one advanced to assist Angela from her horse, but this
Colonel Tremaine did with old-fashioned grace. Isabey, meanwhile,
managed to swing himself off his horse without much difficulty and limp
up the flagged path on the one side of Angela, while Colonel Tremaine
was on the other. The coldness toward Angela had in no wise abated
since the May Sunday, nine months before, when her marriage to Neville
Tremaine had become known, but no one until now had actually refused to
speak to her. On this day, however, every eye was averted from her, and
even Colonel Tremaine was avoided.
Mrs. Charteris was not at church, but George Charteris was there. He
dared not refuse to speak to Angela, but the whole Harrowby party
observed him skulking behind the churchyard wall, and keeping out of
sight when Angela went into the church and when she passed out so that
he might escape speaking to her.
Angela said no word nor did Colonel Tremaine, but both, as well as
Isabey, surmised that something had gone abroad concerning her which
incensed the people still more against her. She was very far from
insensible to the treatment she received and was silent all the way
riding home. In the afternoon when, according to her custom, she went
into the study to read to Isabey, he saw that she had been weeping,
and guessed the cause of it. When he gently alluded to it, Angela
burst into a passion of tears and left the room. Isabey clenched his
one sound fist and longed to take vengeance upon the people who, as he
thought, so cruelly ill-treated this innocent girl. He revolved in his
mind the increase of hostility toward Angela and at last determined to
go to see Mrs. Charteris and ask her if she could account for it.
Next day, having proved his ability to mount a horse, he asked for his
charger of the day before and rode over to Greenhill. He was careful
to time his visit so that George Charteris would be studying with Mr.
Lyddon; Isabey felt that he could not answer for himself if he should
catch sight of the boy that day. When he reached Greenhill he was shown
into the old-fashioned drawing-room, and presently Mrs. Charteris
sailed in. She sat down on a huge horsehair sofa and made Isabey
sit beside her, who, not yet wholly familiar with Virginia manners,
wondered whether Mrs. Charteris expected him to make love to her after
such a familiarity.
“I have been very busy all day,” she said. “As you have heard, perhaps,
all of my house servants have decamped, and with a family of refugee
children under ten years of age there is much to be done.”
“I have no house in Virginia in which to entertain refugees,” murmured
Isabey. “God be thanked for it!”
“Oh, you wicked, inhospitable creature!” cried Mrs. Charteris. “Do you
mean to say that if you had a house and your fellow countrywomen were
running away from the Yankees you wouldn’t throw open your house and
heart to them?”
“Oh, yes, I would throw open my house and heart to them, but,
meanwhile, I should go and camp out in the forest! Five children under
ten years of age! It is sweet to die for one’s country in preference to
living in the house with five children.”
Mrs. Charteris was much disgusted with him for these sentiments,
and so expressed herself. She then inquired after Madame Isabey and
Adrienne in Richmond, and how the family at Harrowby were doing in Mrs.
Tremaine’s absence, and especially after the hegira of most of the
house servants.
“We are doing remarkably well,” answered Isabey. “Mrs. Neville Tremaine
is, you know, a very accomplished housekeeper and manages admirably the
raw hands imported into the house,” Isabey continued, speaking easily
and naturally of Angela, meaning to lead up to the object of his visit:
but Mrs. Charteris suddenly forced his hand. She paused a moment, and
then said with a sad and perplexed air:
“Captain Isabey, may I give you a caution?”
“Certainly,” replied Isabey, smiling. “I am the most cautious man
alive, and have more cautions than enterprises, but I should not mind a
few more.”
“It is a serious business upon which I wish to warn you,” replied Mrs.
Charteris, gravely. And then, leaning toward him, she continued in a
low voice: “Be very careful what you say before Angela Tremaine!”
Isabey looked at her in astonishment, and made no reply, and Mrs.
Charteris spoke again quietly:
“You know the suspicion about her which has gone all over the county.”
“I do not know of the slightest suspicion which attaches to Mrs.
Neville Tremaine,” replied Isabey, in a tone which startled Mrs.
Charteris. She looked at him narrowly. He had perfect command over his
temper, his tongue, and his features, but the blood had suddenly poured
into his dark face, and Mrs. Charteris’s eagle eye saw it and promptly
grasped that Angela Tremaine possessed great interest for Isabey. It
only made her more keen to put him on his guard.
“What I mean,” she said, “is that Angela Tremaine is in constant
communication with Neville Tremaine, and it is believed that she sends
Neville news of the Confederates which, of course, is meant to injure
us.”
“In short,” said Isabey, rising and standing very erect, “that Mrs.
Neville Tremaine is thought to be a spy. Excuse me, but such a
suspicion never entered my mind before, nor do I feel able to entertain
it now. Who is responsible for this rumor?”
“Everybody,” replied Mrs. Charteris, rising and throwing her hands
wide. “It is all over the county. At church yesterday I hear that no
one spoke to Angela.”
“That is true, for I was present. And this on a suspicion merely. She
a young girl, grown up in this community, known to all of you since her
babyhood!”
“My dear Captain Isabey, you seem unacquainted with the tricks of love.
Angela probably adores Neville and may consider it her duty to tell him
all she knows concerning the movements of the Confederates.”
“Never! Mrs. Neville Tremaine has too nice a sense of honor for that.
I hardly think you can realize the seriousness of the charge which is
made against her.”
“It is serious enough,” answered Mrs. Charteris in a grave voice.
“And what could she possibly know,” asked Isabey, “that would be of the
slightest consequence? How strange are women, after all! Nothing is too
gross for them to believe.”
Mrs. Charteris took this slur upon her sex with perfect calmness. She
saw that, despite Isabey’s outward composure, he was shaken to the
center of his soul. He was the most courteous of men, and his attitude
toward women was one of delicate compliment, and these last unguarded
words which had escaped from him, and that, too, in the presence of
a woman, were significant. Isabey walked up and down the room. Mrs.
Charteris remained standing, with one hand on the back of her chair,
and, picking up a fan, fanned herself with some agitation. Isabey,
after a few turns up and down the room, came back and scrutinized her
as closely as she had examined him a few moments before.
“I think,” said Isabey, coolly changing the subject, “that the
psychology of this war time is profoundly interesting. Not only
everything is changed, but everybody. Two years ago you Virginia
people were the quietest provincials that ever lived. I know you
well. I have visited in Virginia, and I have seen hundreds of you at
your baths and springs, and all of you are alike in some respects. I,
who know the great round world well, was always impressed by these
Virginia people as having been drugged. You didn’t seem to realize that
the world was closing in round you, around the whole South, for that
matter, and that some day a convulsion must come. I myself own three
hundred negroes. My father owned nearly a thousand, but I have been
preparing for a change ever since I grew a mustache. I have not gone on
investing in land and negroes quite unconscious that any other values
existed. If the North should succeed and the negroes should be free, I
should not be penniless, but for most of the people of the South all
values would be destroyed.”
Mrs. Charteris suspected that this digression was really meant by
Isabey to lead away from the subject of Angela, which apparently was
of such acute interest to him. But she answered promptly enough and
according to her lights:
“You are not one of these crazy abolitionists, I hope. What would we do
with the negroes if we freed them? Look at my place. I have a hundred
of them here, happy, well-fed, well cared for, nursed in illness,
provided for in old age, decently buried when they are dead. Every
Sunday afternoon I give up my time to teaching a Sunday-school among
them. Every negro woman on this place has one of my silk dresses which
I have given her. What do you say to that?” she cried vehemently.
Isabey laughed at Mrs. Charteris’s final enumeration of the disposition
of her old silk gowns, and the tension between them was somewhat
relieved, but he went on:
“I say the psychology of this struggle is strange. I think it is
like what the old noblesse in France went through at the time of the
Revolution. They would not believe that anything was going to happen
until something had happened. Two years ago this county was like a
Garden of Eden for peace, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” replied Mrs. Charteris, “a great deal too much like the Garden
of Eden. I was the only person in the county who ever quarreled with
anybody, and nobody would ever quarrel with me with the spirit and
energy I should have liked. We talked and thought of nothing except
the best way to make mango pickle, the new fashions from Baltimore,
and our trips to the White Sulphur Springs in summer. Now we spend our
time scraping up our old linen sheets and pillowcases into lint for the
soldiers, our looms and spinning wheels are going like mad, and we make
jokes when we sweeten our potato coffee with honey instead of sugar.
Every man in the county who can handle a musket or saber has gone to
the war.”
“Except the Rev. Mr. Brand,” said Isabey, gravely, at which Mrs.
Charteris suddenly rippled into laughter.
“My son is simply watching his chance to slip away to the instruction
camp. He would be returned, of course, by the military authorities,
because his age is known, but if he can get as far as Richmond he can
pass himself off for full eighteen. Archie Tremaine is just the same,
and Mrs. Tremaine and I know what is in those boys’ hearts. When my boy
runs away he will take his mother’s blessing with him.”
Mrs. Charteris spoke with a kindling eye and the color suffused her
smooth cheek. Isabey looked at her admiringly. Her matronly beauty was
resplendent, and the high courage which made her eager to give this
darling only son to her country was worthy of the brave days of old.
Then Isabey spoke again of Angela, but evidently under restraint.
“I wish,” he said, “that you, with your determination and
high-handedness, would stand by Mrs. Neville Tremaine and help to
disprove this horrid suspicion against her. It is ridiculous, as I say.
She has nothing to tell about military matters that would be worth any
man’s listening. She knows nothing; how can she?”
“One can hear a good many things,” replied Mrs. Charteris.
“My dear madam, you can depend upon it, the military authorities at
the North know quite as much as Mrs. Neville Tremaine or any other
girl in this county can tell them. Her position is painful enough, God
knows, and this frightful suspicion makes it that much worse. Only
exercise your own sound sense for a moment, Mrs. Charteris, and see how
impossible it is that Angela--that Mrs. Neville Tremaine should be able
to communicate anything.”
But Mrs. Charteris was obstinate. She was not a military critic, and
was well convinced, as she said, that people knew a great many things.
At last, however, she heard Isabey say under his breath: “Poor, poor
Angela!” Then Mrs. Charteris’s excellent heart was touched. She put her
hand impulsively into Isabey’s and said:
“After all, it may not be true, and I will stand Angela’s friend.”
Isabey pressed her plump hand softly and said in his musical,
insinuating voice:
“I knew you would be intelligent enough to see the absurdity of the
story, and kind enough not to hound that poor girl with the rest. I
feel for her very deeply. My strong attachment to Richard Tremaine
since our university days and the kindness of the Tremaines to my
stepmother and her daughter has touched me deeply. The thought of the
grief and mortification this story might bring to them is very painful
to me.”
Mrs. Charteris, being a woman, suspected that there were other reasons
than the attachment to Richard Tremaine and Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine’s
kindness which accounted for Isabey’s interest in Angela. The novel
thought pierced her mind that it was possible for a man to feel a deep
personal and secret interest in a married woman, but he must be a very
peculiar man, thought Mrs. Charteris, for she had never known such a
thing to be in Virginia. She looked at Isabey, therefore, with new
interest, and concluded that the French Creoles were very different
from the Virginians.
“Now,” she said triumphantly, “you must have snack.”
Isabey gracefully submitted, and drank a couple of glasses of
blackberry wine, and ate some cakes with coriander seeds in them and
sweetened with molasses, handed by the successor of the ex-plowman.
When Isabey was leaving, Mrs. Charteris went with him out upon the
porch and pointed to a great snow-covered field which the year before
had been down in clover and which another season would grow cotton. She
uttered at the same time the axiom of the whole South:
“As long as we can raise cotton we can whip the North. Cotton is king!”
Isabey returned to Harrowby uncertain whether or not Angela had an ally
in Mrs. Charteris.
After a month of storm and snow and sleet, Nature smiled once more.
The days grew long, the sun shone with the ardor of spring, and under
the melting snow the first tender shoots of grass made a bold stand.
Isabey watched for the first time the drama of the development of the
garden--a drama interpreted by Angela.
On a still, sunny March day he limped up and down the garden path with
Angela, who talked with lips and eyes to him. She examined the tracks
her little feet made along the path and laughed at them.
“You see,” she said, “I am wearing a pair of new shoes made by Uncle
Mat, the shoemaker who makes for the servants. I haven’t had any new
shoes for more than a year, not since the war began. So I had Uncle Mat
make me a pair in order to save my best shoes for the time when I shall
go to Neville. Uncle Mat can’t sew shoes--he only pegs them; and see
what funny marks the pegs leave in the damp ground.”
Isabey looked at the tracks of the clumsy little shoes, but not even
Uncle Mat could wholly disguise the high-bred beauty of Angela’s feet.
“Last night,” she continued, “I forgot all about the shoes being
pegged, and after I went upstairs sat for a long time with my feet to
the fire. The heat drew every blessed peg out of the soles, and this
morning Uncle Mat had to drive them back again, to stay until I put my
feet to the fire again. Oh, I don’t mind this; it is just like Marie
Antoinette and the Princess Elizabeth in the Temple!”
Pacing slowly up and down the broad, bright walk, she told with a grave
and serious air the story of the garden.
“Now,” she said, “in the springtime the overture begins. I have never
been to an opera, but I know exactly how it all goes; Mr. Lyddon and
Richard and Neville have told me. First the flutes and violins begin
softly, you know, and their odor is delicate. Then presently the other
flowers join in this silent music; the snowballs and the syringas are
added to the orchestra. I always think the big lilac bushes and the
calycanthus, that delicious sweet-smelling shrub which grows all over
the place, are like the bass viol and the violoncello in the orchestra,
they are so strong and overpowering. And the great pink crape-myrtle
is like the big drum; it blooms so loudly. The little flowers, like
the lilies of the valley and the violets and the hyacinths, are like
the new prima donnas, who are young and timid and afraid to sing out
loud. But then come the roses. They are the great prima donnas, who
are confident of themselves and know they will be applauded and come
out smiling and sing as loud as ever they please. And the whole opera
begins: June, July, August, September, October, and November, when the
curtain comes down and the music stops until the next performance,
which begins again in March.”
Isabey smiled. After all, in many ways she was only a poetic and
fanciful child. Her imagination, stimulated by the reading of many
books, was vigorous, but she had in her the spirit of daring and
adventure, and her eyes and cheeks quickly kindled into flame at
the mere mention of action. He wondered what was to be the path her
delicate feet were to tread through life. If only he might walk beside
her forever!
The snow was all gone from the garden and the lane, but lingered in
patches in the woods, and in the old graveyard in the field there were
still white drifts upon the graves.
“In a week or two,” said Angela, “I will take you into the woods and
you can see the pink buds of the chestnut trees. They have the most
delicious fragrance of all the trees.”
“I shan’t be here by that time,” replied Isabey quietly. “When I am
able to walk as far as the woods I shall be able to return to duty.”
He watched her as he spoke, knowing well that at the mention of
separation the blood would drop out of her cheeks and her eyes would
become dark and troubled, like a pool over which a cloud is passing.
Nevertheless, Angela spoke quickly the thought in her heart:
“Of course. A soldier can’t shirk his duty--you least of all. I could
just as soon imagine Neville or Richard seeking inglorious ease as
you. Though Neville is with the North, it makes me proud to feel that
no Southern man skulks at home.”
“That is true,” remarked Isabey. “Most of them want to go, and the
others dare not remain behind; the ladies won’t let them.”
“Do you mean to say,” indignantly asked Angela, “that any Southern man
would stay at home now?”
“A few would,” coolly replied Isabey. “But they are more afraid of
their womenkind than they are of Northern bullets. I know several men
of my own age in New Orleans who would have been very glad to find
business in Paris until this little zephyr blows over, but not one of
them ever dared to mention as much to his wife or mother or sisters.”
“How long will the war last?” asked Angela.
“Until there is not enough lead in the Confederacy to fire another
round. We are not only fighting for our independence but for our whole
social and economic structure. No people ever had so great a stake in
war. How do we know what will happen if the war goes against us? A
military despotism may be established; we may be reduced to a position
like Carthage!”
Angela paused awhile and then asked:
“When will you go away from Harrowby?”
“Next week, I think. You see, although I am not able to go out on the
firing line just yet, I can do a great many things in camp. I have
written, therefore, to General Farrington at the camp of instruction,
offering my services for ordinary regimental duties and saying I can
report next week. And I have written my servant, whom I left with
a brother officer in my battery, to report at the instruction camp
as soon as possible; so you see I am preparing to break up my winter
quarters.”
“Then,” said Angela, “we must do everything we can to get you in good
condition and supply you with some comforts as soon as you are in camp.
I shall give you some tallow candles and blackberry wine and everything
else a soldier can use.”
How well fitted she was, thought Isabey, to be a soldier’s wife!
No idle repining, no tears to make the parting harder, no timid
apprehensions to be combated, were in this girl, but calm courage,
hope, cheerfulness, and faith.
That day a letter was received from Mrs. Tremaine. Richard was well
recovered and able to join his battery. His mother and Archie were then
in Richmond, staying at the hotel with Madame Isabey and Adrienne.
Adrienne was a great belle, and their little drawing-room was full of
officers every evening, riding in from the surrounding country for an
hour or two, to listen to Adrienne’s pretty French songs and delightful
conversation.
Mrs. Tremaine fully expected Adrienne and Madame Isabey to return
with her, but they had received a pressing invitation from some
friends above Richmond to spend a month or two, and had accepted it.
They promised, however, to return to Harrowby in the early summer
and to remain during the war. Archie was much disappointed because
Madame Isabey would not return to Harrowby with them, and declared he
admired her more than any of the pretty girls he had seen so far in
his career. Mrs. Tremaine hoped that Captain Isabey was improving and
that Angela had omitted nothing to make him comfortable. Hard as the
parting had been with Richard, Mrs. Tremaine wrote she could no longer
be satisfied away from Colonel Tremaine, and hoped, as this was the
longest separation of their married life, that they would never be
apart again.
Colonel Tremaine was like a lover expecting his mistress, and Angela
busied herself more than ever in training the green hands about the
house, so that Mrs. Tremaine should not miss the familiar servants who
had gone to the Yankees. There were no longer twenty-five of them to be
called by the bell on the back porch. Ten only answered to the call,
and most of these were half-grown boys and girls.
A few days before Mrs. Tremaine arrived Isabey left Harrowby. On the
morning of his departure he lingered for a moment in the old study,
recalling the exquisite hours he had spent there listening to Angela’s
voice, watching her slight and supple figure and delicate hands as she
ministered to him. The sweetness and pain of it was so sharp that he
could not linger, and, going out, he began his farewells.
The servants were all sorry to part with him. Mammy Tulip, who had
“nursed him like a baby,” as she expressed it, called down blessings on
his head and warned him to keep well away from Yankee bullets, which
Isabey gravely promised her he would do.
Hector declared that the parting reminded him of when he bade a last
farewell to General Scott at the end of the Mexican War.
“De gineral when he shook my han’ say: ‘Hector, dis heah partin’ is
de hardest I ever see, but, thank Gord, I had you while I need you
most--when we was fightin’ dem damn, infernal, low-lived Mexicans. An’
as fur dat scoundrel, Gineral Santa Anna, I never would ha’ cotch him
ef it hadn’t been fur you.’”
Out on the porch in the spring morning stood Angela, Colonel Tremaine,
and Lyddon. Nothing could exceed the kindness of their parting words.
Colonel Tremaine urged Isabey to come to see them whenever the pressure
of his military duties relaxed, and especially if he fell ill to
remember that Harrowby was his home. Lyddon said with truth that
Isabey’s presence during the stormy winter had brightened Harrowby.
When Angela bade him farewell, Isabey thanked her with French ceremony
for her kindness to him and said truly it had helped more than anything
else toward his recovery.
“I hope it did,” replied Angela. “You were a very good patient, and I
liked to attend upon you.”
“Pray when you write to Neville give him my warm regards,” said Isabey
boldly, “and tell him that I respect his course while I lament it.”
“Thank you,” answered Angela with dignity. “I shall have pleasure in
writing this to Neville.”
Isabey still halted a little in his walk, but was able to mount and
ride gallantly away. As he cantered down the cedar lane Angela stood
watching him. All had left the porch except herself. At the end of the
lane, half a mile away, she saw Isabey stop his horse and turn in his
saddle and look long at the hospitable roof which had sheltered him.
Far in the distance though he was, she waved the corner of her scarlet
mantle to him and he took off his cap in reply. Angela turned toward
the garden with a strange feeling in her breast as if a chord had
snapped, like the breaking of the G string on a violin. No other chord
could replace it.
CHAPTER XVII
LIKE THE LITTLE TRIANON
Four days after Isabey left Mrs. Tremaine and Archie returned. Colonel
Tremaine had met them on the road halfway between Richmond and Harrowby.
Mrs. Tremaine was full of courage and cheerfulness. Richard’s recovery
had been complete, and as she said the first night the family were
assembled around the supper table:
“I have never seen our son look so strong and so handsome as he did
when I parted from him the day before we reached Richmond. At first it
was terrible to me to see him ill. I have been spared the anxieties on
that account which most mothers endure, for you well know, my dear, how
hardy our sons have been from their birth. But Richard’s spirits were
so good, his determination to become thoroughly well so contagious,
that I really never felt any anxiety on his account except that he
would return to the army before he was able. However, with the help of
the surgeons I managed to keep him in his bed long enough to cure him,
and I assure you, my dear,” she continued, smiling at Colonel Tremaine,
“there is a kind of lovemaking between a mother and son which is almost
as sweet as that between lovers.”
At which Colonel Tremaine, flourishing his hand dramatically, replied:
“My dearest Sophie, I have ever felt our sons to be my only rivals.”
The only fly in the colonel’s ointment was that he felt compelled as
soon as Mrs. Tremaine arrived to resume his suit of homespun, which he
regarded very much as Nessus did his celebrated shirt.
At prayers that night the name of one son was omitted, and Neville’s
name was no longer mentioned after Angela ceased to fill Mrs.
Tremaine’s place.
Everything had gone on in an orderly manner, and Mrs. Tremaine was
particularly gratified that Angela had taken as good care of Isabey as
could be desired.
“I feel,” she said to Angela, “that in caring for Captain Isabey we
perform a patriotic as well as a pious duty. Some day during this
dreadful war it may be returned to my sons.”
“I hope so, if the occasion should come,” answered Angela. “But if I
should hear that Neville were wounded he would not be dependent upon
strangers. I should go to him whether he sent for me or not, or even if
he sent me word not to come, still I should go.”
Mrs. Tremaine turned away pale and silent, as she always was at the
rare mention of her eldest-born.
In a day or two letters arrived from Isabey, one to Colonel Tremaine
and another to Angela. Lyddon brought them on a bright spring noontime
from the post office, where there was an intermittent delivery of
letters.
She read the letter and then handed it to Mrs. Tremaine. It was
graceful and cordial and full of gratitude. After being passed around
it was returned to Angela. Half an hour afterwards Lyddon saw her walk
across the lawn and down to where the river ran wine-colored in the old
Homeric phrase.
Angela’s right hand was closed, and as she reached the shore, lapped by
the bright water, she opened her hand and dropped a hundred tiny bits
of paper into the clear green-and-gold water, and stood watching them
as they were tossed in the crystalline spray.
“It is Isabey’s letter,” said Lyddon to himself.
The orchestra of spring, as Angela had called it, was now playing
gloriously, and it seemed to her as if the ice-bound winter were but
a dream with all the beautiful unreality of a dream. She resolved to
put Isabey out of her mind, but who ever yet put the thing beloved
out of mind? All she could do whenever she thought of Isabey was to
call up a passionate loyalty to Neville Tremaine and to make herself
the most solemn of promises that never should any woman exceed her in
the kindness, tenderness, devotion, consideration that she would give
Neville Tremaine, not having the greater gift to bestow upon him.
Isabey in a camp of five thousand men found plenty for a man to do who
had not full use of his right arm and leg.
His sanguine expectation of being able to join his battery in the field
was not borne out. In riding he wrenched his arm painfully, which
revived the whole trouble, and the doctors gave him no hope that his
arm would sufficiently recover for him to rejoin his battery before the
late autumn or early winter.
Meanwhile the ugly suspicion against Angela, of which Mrs. Charteris
had told him, came back in a hundred ways. It was undoubtedly true that
information concerning the Confederates was mysteriously conveyed to
the Federal commanders.
The charge that Angela Tremaine had supplied this information was
hinted at rather than spoken before Isabey. Once only had it been said
outright--at the officers’ mess by a raw young lieutenant ignorant of
most things. Isabey had turned upon him meaning to contradict the story
in a manner as cool as it was convincing. But suddenly an impulse of
rage seized him and before he knew it he had dashed a glass of water in
the face of the offender.
At once there was a fierce uproar, and Isabey ended the brief but
painful scene by rising and saying with some agitation:
“I have no apology to make for resenting a shocking charge against an
innocent and defenseless woman. I believe it has never yet been known
that any man in Virginia was ever called to account for defending the
name and fame of a woman.”
With that Isabey left the mess tent. The ranking officer at once
administered a stern rebuke to the young lieutenant and forbade that
he should demand the satisfaction, common enough in those days, from
Isabey for his act. Nevertheless, when the matter had been arranged,
the officers exchanged significant glances which said: “It won’t do to
speak of it, but--” and that “but” meant that it was believed Angela
Tremaine was playing the spy. Isabey felt this and his soul was wrung
by it.
With only thirty-five miles between the two great opposing forces,
each side began to throw out feelers before the actual shock of arms
commenced. The Federals made raids and reconnoissances through the
country at unexpected times.
Incidentally, the farmsteads and estates were swept clear of horses,
mules, cattle, and sheep, and the houses were searched for Confederate
soldiers. This last was done rather in the nature of a warning than in
expectation of making any captures. Occasionally private soldiers, who
had got leave on various pretexts and slipped home for a few hours,
were picked up by the Federals; but the Confederates were wary and no
important captures were made. Small Federal gunboats ventured up the
broad, salt, shallow rivers which made in from the seas and intersected
the low-lying, fertile country. But these expeditions, like those by
land, were rather for investigation and warning than of a punitive
nature. It might be supposed that these raids by land and water were
alarming to the women and children left alone in their homes while
their husbands, sons, and brothers were in the Confederate army. On
the contrary, the Virginia ladies appear to have struck terror to the
hearts of the Northern officers, who, however bold their stand might
be against the Confederate soldiers, were pretty sure to beat a quick
retreat before the sharp language and indignant glances of the Virginia
ladies.
Mrs. Charteris, when waked in the middle of the night by a horde of
Federal soldiers around her house and a fierce pounding at the hall
door, rose and, arraying herself in her dressing gown and with a
candle in her hand, went down surrounded by her excited servants, and
opened the hall door herself.
There stood a Federal officer, who politely desired her not to be
alarmed, as he had merely come to search the place for a Confederate
officer supposed to be in hiding there.
“Thank you very much,” tartly replied Mrs. Charteris, thrusting her
candle into the officer’s face and causing him to jump back a yard or
so. “I see nothing to frighten anybody in you or any of your men. There
is no Confederate officer here; they are all waiting for you with arms
in their hands outside of Richmond.”
In vain the officer endeavored to stop the torrent of Mrs. Charteris’s
wrathful eloquence and to escape the proximity of the candle which
she persistently thrust under his nose. It ended by his beating an
ignominious retreat to the gunboat lying in the river.
A few souvenirs in the way of ducks and turkeys and Mrs. Charteris’s
coach horses were carried off, but, as she triumphantly recounted at
church the next Sunday, “It was worth losing a pair of old carriage
horses--for both of mine were getting shaky on their legs--for the
pleasure of speaking my mind to that Yankee officer and see him run
away from me!”
Nearly every place on the river was visited at some time during the
spring by the gunboats, and the inland plantations were also raided
at different times by detachments of cavalry. Harrowby, however, by a
singular chance, escaped.
This was strange in itself and mightily helped the story floating about
concerning Angela’s supposed communication with the Federal lines.
The flight of the negroes to the Yankees had come to an end because
practically all of the young and able-bodied had gone. Only the older,
feebler, and more conservative ones, and the young children and their
mothers remained. There was no doubt that the negroes who stayed
at home had advance notice of the Federal incursions and kept up a
continual intercourse with those who had fled to the Federal camp. No
one realized this more than Angela, who suddenly began to get letters
with considerable regularity from Neville.
He had been sent East and was then for a short time at Fort Monroe,
but knew not how long he would be there. It was easy enough to get
his letters as far as the Federal lines, and then there was always
opportunity of passing them from hand to hand among the negroes until
they reached Mammy Tulip, who, in turn, gave them to Angela. Neville
wrote in a spirit of sadness and even bitterness.
“I could be useful here,” he wrote, “far more than recruiting in the
West. We are as short of trained artillerists as the Confederates are,
and ordinarily I should have already had an opportunity to distinguish
myself. But I am distrusted by all except the few of my classmates of
West Point, who know me well. If ever I can get to the front then I can
prove to all that I am a true man and as ready to die for the Union
as any soldier who follows the flag. For yourself, make ready to come
to me at any day, for you may be assured that at the first possible
moment I shall send for you, the sweetest comfort left me.”
Then came a few words of deep tenderness which Angela read with tears
dropping upon the page. How hard a fate was Neville Tremaine’s, after
all!
She hastened to write to him, and would have put the letter then in
Mammy Tulip’s hands, but the old woman nervously refused it. She seemed
to have some vague and terrifying fear of keeping Angela’s letters in
her possession.
“De Cornfeds,” she whispered mysteriously to Angela, “might find
out dat I’se got a letter for a Yankee officer, an’ den--good Gord
A’might’! Dey might tek me up an’ k’yar me off to Richmun’ an’ hang me
’fore Jeff Davis’s door. Naw, honey; you watch out to-night an’ when I
kin tek dat letter, I light de candle in de window an’ wave it up an’
down. An’ den you drap de letter on de groun’ an’ it will git to Marse
Neville, sho’. But I fear to tek it now.”
It was in vain to reason with Mammy Tulip, and Angela had to follow the
same routine whenever she wrote to Neville.
Meanwhile, the changes within the one year of the war concerning the
negroes had been very great at Harrowby. There was no longer that
superabundant life and motion made by the two hundred black people,
of whom now scarcely seventy remained. As each one had left, Colonel
Tremaine reiterated with stern emphasis his determination to exact full
compensation to the last farthing from the Government at Washington
for the loss of his negroes. The remnant of servants left at Harrowby
was made up of the very old, the very young, and the mothers of the
children. Not a single young man remained on the place, although ten or
twelve of the older ones, headed by Hector, were still too loyal to the
old _régime_ or too indifferent to the new to run away. Peter, Richard
Tremaine’s body servant, stood loyally by his young master.
Hector’s assistants in the dining room had gradually decreased in size
until by midsummer of 1862 they were two small boys of fifteen, who
were almost as skillful in eluding work as Hector himself.
Mrs. Tremaine, for all her executive ability, was totally unequal to
doing any of the work of the household. She was accustomed to planning
and contriving, ordering and directing, but her delicate hands were
unable to do the smallest task requiring manual dexterity.
Not so Angela. The places of Mirandy and Sally and their colleagues
had been taken by small black girls whom Angela trained with tact
and patience but whose childish powers were unequal to women’s work.
Angela, however, was equal to anything, and Lyddon complimented her
in classic phrase the first morning he saw her with her cotton skirts
pinned up, her beautiful slender arms bare to the elbow, and a red
handkerchief tied with unconscious coquetry around her fair hair as she
wielded the broom and swept the drawing-room.
Mrs. Tremaine nearly wept at the sight, and Colonel Tremaine groaned
aloud. Angela, however, was in high spirits. She was too young, too
full of vitality, too humorous to be depressed at this new turn of
Fate.
“The fact is,” she cried, sweeping industriously, while Colonel and
Mrs. Tremaine watched from the hall and Lyddon peered in from the
window, “all we have to do is just to imagine that we are noble
_émigrés_ in England about 1793. You, Uncle Tremaine and Aunt Sophia,
can do the sentimental part of the business. Archie and I with Mr.
Lyddon will do the work. Archie, you know, is chopping wood at the
woodpile, and I have a job for you, Mr. Lyddon.”
“What is it?” asked Lyddon helplessly. “If it’s dusting, well, I can
dust books. As for chopping wood like Archie, I should not only chop
off both of my feet, but my head as well. However, I will do anything
in God’s name I can.”
“I can find you something,” knowingly replied Angela, “and something I
dare say those old Greek ragamuffins, of whom you think so much, did in
Thessaly and thereabouts.”
“My dearest Sophie and my dear Angela,” cried Colonel Tremaine
valiantly, “I feel that I must do my share in this domestic cataclysm.
I cannot chop wood--I am seventy-two years old--but I believe that I
could wind off the reels the cotton for the looms. I will do my best,
my dear Angela, if you will kindly instruct me.”
Angela stopped her sweeping and ran and fetched a cotton reel--a rude
contrivance consisting of a slender stick of wood about two feet high
stuck in a wooden box, with a large reel at the top on which the hanks
of cotton, fresh from the spinning wheels, were wound into balls for
the old-fashioned hand looms in the loom house.
“I think,” said Colonel Tremaine, with profound interest in the
subject, “that it would be better to carry the paraphernalia in the
drawing-room. Like most of my sex, I dislike extraneous objects in my
library.”
Just then Archie appeared, red, perspiring, but grinning with delight
at his wood-chopping performance. He was charmed with the thought of
seeing his father wind cotton, and ran with the reel, which he placed
in the drawing-room. Then Angela put a hank of cotton on it, found
the end, started the ball, and instructed Colonel Tremaine in his new
employment. Mrs. Tremaine, quite woe-begone, yet complimented Angela
and Archie upon their readiness and industry. It was as if the two were
again children.
Hector and Mammy Tulip both came in to see the extraordinary sight of
“ole Marse wukkin’.” Hector was indignant at the turn of affairs.
“I ’clare, Marse,” he said, with solemn disapproval, “I never speck
fur to see you wukkin’ like Saul an’ de witch uv Endaw in de Bible. I
tho’t you was proud enough fur to lay down an’ starve ’fore you demean
you’sef wid wuk.”
“That is what you would do, you black scoundrel,” inadvertently
responded Colonel Tremaine, forgetting that others were present, and
then hastily adding: “Not that I have ever observed in you any serious
disinclination to do your proper work.” Which showed a very great want
of observation on Colonel Tremaine’s part.
The Colonel, sitting in a large pink satin armchair with the reel
before him, began his self-imposed domestic labors, remarking grimly
to Mrs. Tremaine: “It can no longer be said, my dearest Sophie, that
there is a distaff side to our family.”
“My dear,” replied Mrs. Tremaine in pathetic admiration, “the spectacle
of you, at your time of life, eager to assist in the household labors
and to lighten our tasks as much as possible is truly a lesson to be
commended.”
Colonel Tremaine, thus encouraged, sat up straight in the pink satin
armchair and proceeded to what Angela wickedly called his “Herculean
task.”
The reel, however, was refractory, and it took Archie to mend it and
Mammy Tulip to show him how. Hector, totally unable to tear himself
away from the spectacle of Colonel Tremaine at work, remained as critic
and devil’s advocate. In the end it required the services of Mrs.
Tremaine and nearly the whole domestic staff, including an awe-stricken
circle of negro boys and girls, to assist Colonel Tremaine in winding
half a hank of cotton.
Angela was as good as her word in providing work for Lyddon. When
Colonel Tremaine was thoroughly started upon his undertaking, Angela
triumphantly called Lyddon out on the dining-room porch. There stood a
great churn with a stool by it.
“Come, Daphius,” she cried, “your Chloe has work for you to do.”
She produced a huge apron of Hector’s, and, tying it around Lyddon’s
neck and making him roll up his sleeves, duly instructed him in the art
and mystery of churning. Lyddon thought he had not seen her in such
spirits for a long time, and as she stood laughing before him, her
cotton skirts still tucked up and her beautiful bare arms crossed and
the coquettish red silk handkerchief knotted high upon her head, she
was a captivating picture.
“Now,” she cried, “you must sing in order to make the butter come.”
“_I_ sing!” cried Lyddon, wrathfully, but beginning to wield the
dasher. “When I sing pigs will fly.”
“But you must sing, ‘Come, butter, come,’ like the negro children sing,
and then if the butter won’t come you must get up and dance the back
step.”
She flung into a pretty dancing step, singing the old churning song
meanwhile.
Lyddon suddenly stopped churning and looked over Angela’s shoulder on
to the green lawn beyond. He laughed, but he was not looking at Angela.
When she finished she turned around, and there was Isabey standing with
his foot on the first step of the porch.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE VISITATIONS OF WAR
Angela’s shock of delight at seeing him was obvious to Isabey, and the
two poor souls looked into each other’s eyes with love and longing for
one brief moment. Then reason and good sense resumed their sway.
Isabey came up the steps and held out his hand, and Angela, scarcely
knowing what she did, put hers within it.
“I couldn’t imagine what was the matter,” he said, laughing and shaking
hands with Lyddon, who stopped churning long enough to do so. “I rode
up to the front of the house, and saw not a soul; then I ventured
around to the back and witnessed the present inspiring spectacle.”
“Angela put me to it,” replied Lyddon. “Of all the house servants only
Hector and Mammy Tulip are left and some small blacks whose names I
never have found out. Colonel Tremaine, Archie, and I couldn’t let
Angela do all the work, so we have ventured to assist.”
“Hercules churned, I’m sure,” cried Angela, recovering herself, and
once more adopting an arch and merry tone. “Perhaps I shall put Mr.
Lyddon to spinning yet.”
“If you dance for him,” responded Isabey, smiling, “he will do better
than Herod and give you his own, not another man’s head upon a charger,
if you ask it.”
As he spoke Angela became suddenly conscious of her pinned-up skirts,
her bare arms, and the gay silk handkerchief around her hair. In a
moment her skirts were unpinned, her sleeves rolled down, her bright
hair uncovered, and she was a picture of demureness.
Then, examining the churn and seeing the butter had come, Angela
called Aunty Tulip to take charge of it, and they all went into the
drawing-room.
Mrs. Tremaine greeted Isabey with the utmost cordiality, as did Colonel
Tremaine. The Colonel, however, did not rise from his satin chair, but,
quickly releasing Isabey’s hand after grasping it, said solemnly:
“My dear fellow, will you excuse me for two minutes until I finish this
hank of cotton? I have undertaken to assist the ladies of my family
in the tasks made necessary by the departure of our house servants,
and I feel that nothing, not even the arrival of a friend so valued as
yourself, can interfere with my nearly completed labor. Just a moment
more.”
He returned to his winding. Isabey then inquired about Richard, and
afterwards, turning to Angela, asked with calm courtesy when she had
heard from Neville and if he were well. Angela answered readily,
Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine maintaining, as always when Neville’s name
was spoken, a cold silence.
Then, as the last winding of the hank of cotton was finished, the reel
was removed and Colonel Tremaine was prepared to entertain his guest.
Isabey looked fairly well but still limped slightly, and said that the
accident to his arm which occurred a month before had prevented his
coming to Harrowby. He mentioned that the general commanding at camp
had sent him down to get certain topographical information which he
would ask privately of Colonel Tremaine, and that he would spend the
day, preferring to return to camp by night.
There were some county maps in the old study, and thither Colonel
Tremaine, Lyddon, and Isabey repaired and spent nearly the whole day in
studying them.
The evening came, soft and sweet as July evenings are. Angela had been
busy all day long and had seen Isabey only at the three-o’clock dinner.
But the consciousness that she was in sound of his voice was like wine
in her veins.
In the afternoon she dressed herself carefully in a fresh white gown
and went out upon the lawn. Her afternoons were usually spent on the
lawn and in the old garden, which was now in its glory. All was a
wealth of bloom and perfume.
She remained in the garden thinking, hoping, fearing, and believing
that Isabey would seek her there.
When the shadows grew long and the sun hung low behind the purple woods
he came to her. She was standing before a great bed of hollyhocks which
flaunted their merry faces boldly in the soft air.
“How changed it is since we were last in this garden!” Isabey said;
“but I am not changed;” and then cursed himself for having been
betrayed into something dangerously near to sentiment. Angela, as the
case had ever been, passed with proud unconsciousness over his words.
“The garden has not gone back this year as much as one would think,”
she said, moving toward the broad main walk. “As you know, we have only
two or three small boys to work it now, but it is so old and so well
conducted that it seems impossible for it to become wild or irregular.”
They walked up and down the garden path a few times, and Angela
gathered some of the July roses, those princesses of the garden.
Isabey spoke with impatience of his being still unable to rejoin his
battery and called the surgeons fools for not curing his arm quickly.
Then, in an unguarded moment, he spoke of the delicious hours of those
snowbound days six months before.
Angela said little, but Isabey saw the quick rising and falling of her
fast-beating heart.
Presently they went back to the house and soon supper was served. At
table the conversation turned upon Colonel Gratiot, then on duty at
the camp of instruction, whom Colonel Tremaine had known as a brother
officer during the Mexican War.
“Gratiot is sixty years old, if he is a day,” complained Colonel
Tremaine bitterly, “and always was a puny fellow; yet he can serve his
country, while I, who never knew a day’s illness in my life and can
stand twelve hours in the saddle as well as I ever could----”
“And can wind a whole hank of cotton in three hours,” interjected
Archie, laughing.
“--am not permitted to serve my country because I am too old! I wish
you would say to Gratiot for me that I should be very pleased to renew
my acquaintance with him, and perhaps he may be able to come down and
spend a day and night with me, the infernal Yankees permitting.”
When supper was over the family sat, according to the Southern custom,
on the long porch which faced the river. Angela found herself sitting
next Isabey and listening to his smooth, musical voice as he and
Colonel Tremaine and Lyddon talked together. His speaking voice had as
much charm as his singing voice and to Angela’s sensitive ear it had a
note of sadness in it.
She had been accustomed to the conversation of men of sense, and
realized with a secret and shamefaced pride that Isabey’s conversation
did not fall short of the talk of any man she had ever heard, not
excepting Lyddon’s.
The night had fallen and only a few stars shone dimly in a troubled
and moonless sky. The river ran black and phosphorescent; a faint wind
stirred the great clumps of crape-myrtle on the lawn.
About nine o’clock Archie, after listening for a minute, rose silently
and, opening the glass doors leading into the dining room, had a clear
view through the hall to the open front door.
Colonel Tremaine was saying, “I opine that the first campaign of
Hannibal----”
“The Yankees are coming,” said Archie, coolly and quietly. “I see
hundreds of them galloping down the lane.”
Isabey sprang to his feet. He knew the topography of Harrowby well, and
his horse, already saddled, was fastened to the block close to the
back porch; but it was vain to think of escape that way.
“Run,” he said quietly to Archie, “and take the saddle and bridle off
my horse, and throw them under the porch, and turn the horse loose. I
shall make for the marsh back of the garden.”
“Archie’s boat with oars is tied on the river shore behind the garden,”
whispered Angela, all her wits coming to her at once. “I can show you,
and we can’t be seen from the front if we fly now.”
Isabey’s cap was in his hand and Angela’s red mantle lay over the back
of her chair. She threw it around her, hiding her white dress, and
together they ran swiftly down the steps and across the lawn.
Isabey suffered agonies in his still unhealed leg, but nevertheless
made great speed. Not a word was spoken as they rushed through the
darkness around the corner of the old brick wall of the garden and to
the marshy river edge.
Tied to a stake lay a small boat with two oars in it. Angela stepped
into the boat, assisted by Isabey with cool politeness, who lost not a
second in following her.
“I can pull with my left hand,” he said, taking up an oar.
“And I,” replied Angela, “can pull the other oar. I know how to manage
a boat. We must make for the big willow tree which dips down into the
water across the marsh.”
By that time they could hear the trampling of many hoofs, the sound of
voices, and the whinny of a horse.
“That’s my horse,” remarked Isabey, as the boat shot across the still,
black water. “I hope Archie succeeded in hiding the saddle and bridle.”
“You may trust Archie to think and act quickly,” replied Angela.
“Hadn’t you better lie down in the boat?” she continued anxiously, her
voice sounding strange to herself in the darkness.
“No use; if the Federals see the boat at all they will certainly stop
it, and I would rather be caught sitting up than lying down.”
Angela said no more, but bent to her oar to keep up with Isabey’s
steady stroke. Ten minutes brought the boat to the farther edge of the
marsh, where a huge willow, storm-beaten, bent toward the water which
lapped its branches. It was in luxuriant leaf, and when, Isabey putting
the branches aside, the boat glided in, they found themselves within a
tent of branches and leaves, secure even at midday from observation.
The oars were laid in the bottom of the boat but close at hand, and
Angela and Isabey were alone in a world of their own under a murky
night sky. The air had grown warm and sultry, and heat lightning played
upon the mass of black clouds on the western horizon. Every moment the
darkness increased and the night, like a great black bat, seemed to
press with huge and stifling wings upon the earth. In the stillness of
the darkness they could hear the trampling of hundreds of iron hoofs
and the shouts and cries of men searching the house and grounds and
garden. Through the overhanging willow branches lights could be seen
flashing from window to window of the Harrowby house as the search for
Isabey proceeded. It was so dark under the willow tree that they could
not see each other’s face. The tide was high, but the pungent odor
of the salt marsh filled the heavy night air. Afar off a night bird
uttered an occasional melancholy note, but that alone broke the silence
which encompassed them.
“Are you frightened?” asked Isabey, in a low voice.
“Not in the least,” replied Angela, in the same subdued tone. “Oh!”
As she spoke there was a phosphorescent gleam close to the boat and a
water-snake’s body was seen to writhe quickly past. Angela, who could
face real danger unflinchingly, was full of feminine fears. She clasped
her hands and shrank, panting, toward Isabey. He restrained the impulse
to put his arm around her, but he involuntarily laid his hand on hers
and said:
“It is nothing. I can keep all ugly things away from you to-night.”
“I know you can,” answered Angela. “I am not in the least afraid
of Yankee bullets or anything like that, but hideous creepy things
frighten me horribly;” and she shuddered as she spoke, allowing her
hand to remain in Isabey’s. Then came a long silence. Isabey could feel
her hand trembling in his. She was not thinking about him, but about
the water-snake and the slimy things which terrified her woman’s soul.
Isabey had no qualms of conscience in thus holding her hand in his;
she was, after all, only a frightened child, and to soothe her fears
by a reassuring touch was no defilement of her. Angela, however, could
not remain insensible to that touch, and after a while she withdrew
her hand, saying, with a long breath: “I will try and not be afraid
any more. Isn’t it ridiculous? I have not the least fear of dying or
of scarlet fever or runaway horses or anything like that, but I have
paroxysms of terror from caterpillars and daddy longlegs and a snake--”
She covered her face with her hands as she spoke.
“Come, now,” said Isabey, reassuringly, “there is nothing for either of
us to be afraid of; may I smoke?”
“Never,” said Angela, aghast. “You will be seen from the other shore.”
“Oh, no; I can hold my cap before my cigarette, and the distance is
too great anyhow for the tip of a cigarette to be seen.” He lighted
his cigarette and smoked placidly, holding his cap up meanwhile. The
sounds of voices, of rattling sabers, of armed men searching the garden
increased. It was evident that a thorough hunt of the garden was being
made.
“They are trampling all over your flower beds,” whispered Isabey. “They
seem to be looking in the violet bed for me, but as a sleeping place it
is not as desirable as the poets have represented.”
“How can you make jokes at this time?” said Angela reproachfully.
“My dearest lady, every soldier has been in far worse places than this.
A fighting man must learn to look danger in the eye and advance upon it
with a smile. You should see your Stonewall Jackson when the Yankees
begin to give us grape in earnest. It is the only time Stonewall ever
looks really gay and debonair.”
Isabey went on talking gayly for a time, but Angela, he soon saw,
was throbbing with nervous excitement and in no mood to heed his airy
conversation. Then he fell silent; the sweet consciousness that she
was agitated, palpitating, miserable for him, gave him a feeling of
rapture. She was the wife of his friend and sacred to him, but that
had not prevented his falling in love with her. And she, the soul of
truth and loyalty, was too unsophisticated, too ignorant of the world
and of herself, to conceal from him that he was, at least to her
imagination, the first man in the world. Her instinctive dignity and
good sense made her secret safe from all except Isabey, but he with the
prescience of love saw it. He foresaw with calm courage that the time
would come when she would learn to love Neville Tremaine--when children
would be laid in her arms, and when this dream of her youth would seem
only the shadow of a dream. But Isabey felt that it would be among the
unforgotten things which sleep but never die in women’s hearts.
An hour passed as they sat together, as much alone as if the world
held none other than themselves. Isabey, although conscious of the
delicate intoxication of Angela’s nearness, was yet thoroughly alert,
while Angela, with every nerve at its utmost tension, was silent
and apparently composed. Isabey felt rather than saw that she was
profoundly moved. As they listened and watched the opposite shore they
could see that the troopers had withdrawn from the garden and that
the search for Isabey, which had included the stables and the negro
quarters, had been abandoned.
Presently the sound of retreating hoofs was heard, and the detachment,
which numbered several hundred, rode off. The hot, still air had grown
more inky black, and a dead silence took the place of the commotion
in and around the Harrowby house. The negroes had gone off to their
quarters, and lights shone only from a single window of the library.
Presently the sound of a horse carefully picking his way around the
marsh and advancing toward the willow tree was heard, and a step which
Angela at once recognized.
“That’s Archie,” she said. “I think he is bringing you your horse.” The
next minute Archie had slid down the bank and into the boat.
“Wasn’t it great?” he cried. “You ought to have seen those
Yankees--three hundred of ’em, commanded by a major. They were cocksure
they had you, Captain Isabey. They surrounded the whole place, garden
and all, and then searched the house. Father harangued them, and a
private soldier told him to shut up, which made father very angry.
Then the soldier was cuffed by another soldier, who said to father:
‘Go on, old cock; I like to hear you talk--just as if you had two
hundred niggers to jump when you spoke.’ ‘Niggers!’ roared father.
‘That word, sir, is not admissible in polite society. Negro is the name
of the black race, and any diminutive of it is a term of contempt of
which I strongly disapprove.’ ‘By Jiminy!’ said the soldier, perfectly
delighted. ‘Give us some instructions in manners, my old Roman gent,
and if you would throw in a few dancing lessons we would be a thousand
times obliged.’ Then mother, quite angry, said to him, ‘How dare you
speak so irreverently to my husband? He is seventy-two years old, and
this is the first disrespectful word that was ever uttered to him.’”
As neither of his auditors spoke, the boy went on:
“All the soldiers around were laughing, but they quieted down as soon
as mother spoke. Then an old sergeant came up and touched his cap and
said very respectfully to mother, ‘Don’t be frightened, marm; we ain’t
a-going to do you or this gentleman here any harm. We’re jest looking
for that Rebel captain that we know came this way before twelve o’clock
to-day, but we wouldn’t alarm you for nothing, marm.’ ‘Alarm me,’ said
mother, smiling. ‘I can’t imagine myself alarmed by you.’ Then a young
rough-looking fellow, a lieutenant, came up, and my mother’s words
seemed to make him mad. ‘Very well, madam,’ he hollered, ‘I’ll show
you something to alarm you.’ He picked up a newspaper, twisted it up
into a torch, and lighted it at the candle on the hall table. ‘Now,’ he
said, ‘if you don’t tell me within one minute by the clock where that
Rebel rascal is, I’ll set fire to this house and burn up everything in
it.’ ‘Just as you please,’ replied mother, exactly in the tone when she
says, ‘Archibald, my son, come in to prayers.’ The soldiers around her
all stood and looked at her and my father while the lieutenant kept
his eyes on the clock. ‘My dearest Sophie,’ said father, ‘this is most
annoying, and it is peculiarly humiliating to me that it is not in my
power to demand satisfaction from these villains for their discourtesy
to you.’ ‘Pray, don’t let it trouble you, my dear,’ replied mother.
‘The only thing that distresses me is that you should be subject at
your time of life to such insults.’
“Then the sergeant went up and, taking the newspaper out of the
lieutenant’s hand, threw it into the fireplace. ‘Look here,’ he said,
‘I have been thirty years in the United States army and I never heard
an officer say anything like that before to a woman. You have been
in the army about three months. You got your commission because your
father made a lot of money in a pawnbroking shop. The major’s just
outside, and if you say another impudent word to this lady I’ll prefer
charges against you as soon as we get back to camp.’ You should have
seen the lieutenant wilt then.
“The major was a big, oldish sort of man, very polite, but bent on
finding Captain Isabey if he could. He had every hole and corner
searched, and asked all the negroes what had become of you. They all
owned up that you had been at Harrowby at supper-time, but none of them
had seen you since. Mammy Tulip defied them and called them ‘po’ white
trash.’ Uncle Hector went and hid in the garret closet and was hauled
out by the heels when that place was searched. While they were looking
about the grounds and stables the soldiers wrung the necks of all the
fowls they could lay their hands on; but the horses were all out in the
field and they didn’t trouble the cattle or sheep. The worst thing they
did was when they found all father’s bottles of hair dye and caught my
white pointer and poured the dye all over him. He’s as black as a crow.
That made father furious.
“Mr. Lyddon was very cool through it all. He told the Yankees he was a
British subject, but they were perfectly welcome to search his room,
only if they laid their hands on anything he would report it to the
British Minister at Washington. At last they seemed to give up finding
Captain Isabey, and then the major sent for me. I made out I was scared
to death, and when the major talked very threateningly to me, to make
me tell what had become of Captain Isabey, I whispered in his ear that
Captain Isabey had gone to spend the night at the rectory, seven miles
off; and so I have sent them off after Mr. Brand. They will get there
about midnight, and I don’t believe Mr. Brand will be alive to-morrow
morning. They will frighten the old fellow to death.” And Archie
chuckled, gloating over Mr. Brand’s prospective sufferings. “Then they
all rode down the road. As soon as the last one had ridden off I took
your saddle and bridle and slipped into the field and got your horse,
and here he is, and if you will follow the road through the woods to
Greenhill you can strike the main road in an hour, and there will be
at least ten miles between you and the Yankees. They will be going
lickety-split in the wrong direction.”
Isabey grasped Archie’s hand, while Angela, throwing her arms around
his neck, kissed him, whispering: “Oh, what a clever boy you are, and
how proud Neville and Richard will be of you!”
There was a brief farewell. Isabey pressed Angela’s hand, saying, “I
thank you more than anyone else for my escape,” and then, mounting his
horse, melted away in the darkness. Archie got in the boat and, taking
both oars, pulled swiftly back to the wharf at Harrowby. Angela’s heart
was full of thankfulness. Then, suddenly and strangely to herself, she
found tears upon her cheeks.
CHAPTER XIX
“I CAN’T GET OUT!” SAID THE STARLING
A fortnight afterwards Madame Isabey and Adrienne returned to Harrowby.
They were received with the greatest cordiality, and were glad to be
there once more, but after a year of refugeeing they had begun to
feel the truth of the words uttered by the great Florentine in his
wanderings:
Salt is the savor of another’s bread,
And weary are the feet which climbeth up
The stairs of others.
There seemed, however, nothing else for them to do. Madame Isabey had
no more knowledge of affairs than the birds in the bushes, nor had
Adrienne. They were still in receipt of a good income from foreign
investments, and through Lyddon’s ingenuity they managed to receive it
in gold. But the idea of offering any compensation to Colonel and Mrs.
Tremaine would have shocked and offended their hosts beyond measure,
and this Madame Isabey and Adrienne knew. Other plans than a return
to Harrowby might have been devised by other women, but not by Madame
Isabey and Adrienne. No word had been written them of the departure
of all the house servants, and Angela managed by rising with the dawn
to keep from the observation of their guests the shifts to which the
Harrowby family was reduced in order to keep the house going with
the half-grown boys and girls that took the place of a trained staff
of servants. Adrienne’s maid after having spent two days at Harrowby
slipped off to the Yankees. Old Celeste managed to dress Adrienne, who
had never dressed herself in her life. Madame Isabey frankly gave up
all attempts at a toilet and restricted herself to peignoirs, which she
wore morning, noon, and night. Archie was delighted to see her back,
and she was charmed with the account she heard of his behavior on the
night of the Federal visitation and called him ever afterwards “my
brave little red-headed angel.”
Lyddon set to work the very day after the visitation to prepare a new
supply of hair tonic for Colonel Tremaine, and although not a moment
was lost in the preparation, the colonel’s locks had turned a greenish
brown before the tonic was ready. The aspect of Archie’s white pointer
at first of a coal-black color and then shading into the same greenish
brown as Colonel Tremaine’s locks was harrowing to both Colonel and
Mrs. Tremaine. In vain Hector covered the unlucky pointer with soft
soap and scrubbed him in boiling water until he howled in agony.
Lyddon’s formula was too good to be easily obliterated. But by the time
the dog became white Colonel Tremaine’s locks were again of an ebony
black.
Madame Isabey received letters from Isabey at the camp fifteen miles
away, who wrote that he could not expose his friends to the risk of
another raid by coming to Harrowby. However, Colonel Gratiot, Colonel
Tremaine’s old friend of the Mexican War, seemed unterrified by
Isabey’s experience, and wrote that he promised himself the pleasure
of visiting his old friend for the night on the next Sunday but one,
arriving in the afternoon. He would come, however, in citizen’s
clothes, and it might be as well that he should be called Mr. Gratiot,
as it was perfectly well known that the negroes kept in close touch
with the Federal lines twenty miles away. Colonel Tremaine told this to
the family when the servants had all gone off for the night.
It was something new and exquisitely painful to be on guard against the
servitors who had heretofore been regarded as a part of the family, but
the expediency of it could not be disputed.
On the morning of the Sunday when Colonel Gratiot was expected to
arrive in the afternoon, Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine went to church,
the Colonel driving Mrs. Tremaine in a ramshackle buggy; the coach
horses had long since been put to the plow. Angela had begun to find
the Sunday rest very agreeable, and as her appearances at church were
invariably occasions of pain and distress to her, however proudly
borne, she determined to remain at home on that Sunday. Madame Isabey,
as usual, stayed upstairs, as she rarely appeared before the afternoon.
Lyddon and Adrienne were pacing up and down the Ladies’ Walk.
Adrienne’s graceful head was bare and she warded off the ardor of the
sun with a dainty black parasol. She always felt intensely flattered
when Lyddon talked to her, and strove to learn how to talk to a scholar
who rarely trimmed his beard and admitted that a woman’s mind was a
problem far deeper than calculus and deserved to be ranked with the
insoluble things like the squaring of a circle. She never understood
how Angela dared to laugh and chat so freely with Lyddon, and how a
single name, an obscure phrase, half a quotation, would convey a world
of meaning to them. This she felt herself powerless to achieve, but she
had a sincere admiration for Lyddon, perhaps because Isabey had. Lyddon
admired and pitied Adrienne. He realized all her charms, her softness,
her grace, but she belonged to another world than his.
He had in his life known but one woman who could enter into his world,
and that was Angela, probably because he himself had taught her;
and although he was but a scholar, pure and simple, indifferent to
money and clothes beyond his daily clean shirt, and careless of the
glittering side of life, he was as acutely sensitive as Alcibiades
himself to the beauty and charm of women. He had sometimes met women
with whom he had an intellectual companionship, but they were, with
the solitary exception of Angela, middle-aged, plain, dowdy in dress,
and had invariably lost all their illusions. The middle Victorian era
had no knowledge of women of _esprit_. He admired the Virginia type of
maid and matron; they reminded him of the lilacs and apple blossoms
which grew so luxuriantly over the fertile lowland Virginia. He had
been astonished at their capacity for affairs and by their knowledge of
politics, but their taste in literature was simple and chiefly confined
to the “Lake Poets” and to the novels of the day. Angela he regarded as
a brand saved from the burning, and he had taught and trained her to
shine at another man’s table, to decorate another man’s home. Women
as young and pretty and inconsequent as Adrienne generally avoided
Lyddon, and he could not but be as much flattered by her notice as she
was flattered by his. But as they walked up and down the broken flags
in the cool, bright July morning, Lyddon realized that Adrienne was
not greatly different mentally from the average woman. He surmised,
however, in her a disappointment silently borne and he had from the
first suspected the nature of this disappointment. Here was another
human being like Heine:
I stand before Life’s great soup pot;
But alas! I have no spoon.
Angela, sitting reading in the darkened drawing-room, wondered what
Lyddon and Adrienne were talking about so earnestly, and felt a
tinge of womanish jealousy. Lyddon was hers and Adrienne was clearly
poaching. While these thoughts were in her mind, the drawing-room door
opened, and Hector, with a great flourish, announced: “Colonel Gratiot,
Miss Angela. I knowed him in de Mexican War ’long wid Gineral Scott an’
dem wuffless Mexicans.”
Angela rose and gracefully greeted Colonel Gratiot, introducing herself
as Mrs. Neville Tremaine. And Colonel Gratiot, who knew her story, at
once recognized her and seemed prepared to meet her.
He was a small, thin, keen-eyed man, made of steel wire, and with the
catlike quietness which often marks the man of fiery action.
“That pompous old wind-bag Hector,” he said, “knew me in a moment.
I haven’t seen him since we were in Mexico more than fifteen years
ago, when he was the laughingstock of the whole regiment. It’s no use
trying to pass myself off now as Mr. Gratiot; Hector will have informed
everything on the plantation who I am.”
“My uncle and aunt will be sorry to miss any part of your visit,” said
Angela. “They’re at church, but will be home by one o’clock.”
“I shall be very well entertained meanwhile,” replied Colonel Gratiot
gallantly, and accepting Angela’s invitation to be seated and her
prompt offer of either blackberry wine or hard cider by way of
refreshment.
“I’ll take the cider,” replied Colonel Gratiot, with an air of
resignation. And then, Hector having brought the cider in and
apologizing profusely for it, Colonel Gratiot and Angela were again
left alone. The old soldier’s small figure was almost lost in the
depths of a great armchair from whence he surveyed Angela critically
and with admiration. There was a pathos concealed under her easy and
self-possessed manner, and pity for her stirred Colonel Gratiot’s
honest old heart. “She is pining for her husband,” he thought, “the
poor, pretty young thing!” He began to ask Angela questions about what
she was reading and what she was doing, and then spoke of Isabey, but
always with tact and grace. “Captain Isabey,” he said, “I reckon one of
my smartest officers. I hope, after we have licked the Yankees, that
Isabey will remain in the army. He is cut out for a soldier, and a fine
career awaits him. If he would only stick to a military life!”
The instant Isabey’s name was mentioned a flood of color poured into
Angela’s face, but she answered coolly enough: “We were very much
alarmed for him the night the Yankees came, but he escaped.”
“I don’t intend to give the Yankees the same chance,” responded Colonel
Gratiot. “I sent word to Tremaine that I should stay the night, but
this message was for the purpose of throwing anyone off the scent who
might convey news of my movements; in reality I shall leave before
bedtime to-night.”
After half an hour’s talk Colonel Gratiot, who was a connoisseur in
women, concluded that Mrs. Neville Tremaine was a very interesting, not
to say fascinating, girl, informed beyond her years in many things, and
a child in some other things. While they were talking Adrienne entered,
looking in her thin black gown like a portrait in pastel, so clear,
so soft, so dark. Colonel Gratiot congratulated himself upon having
even for a short time the society of two such charming women. Adrienne
exerted herself to please him, and Colonel Gratiot was surprised when
one o’clock arrived and with it Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine. Colonel
Tremaine was delighted to see his old chum, and they retired to the
library, where they remained shut up together for two hours, recalling
past scenes and discussing the military aspect of the present time.
Just before the three-o’clock dinner the two gentlemen came out of the
library and joined the ladies in the drawing-room, where Lyddon was
introduced to Colonel Gratiot. When dinner was served the table was
loaded down with mountains of fried chicken, ham cured in the smoke of
chestnut ashes, and every variety of sea food, fruit, and vegetables
which a prolific country could produce.
“This doesn’t look like wartime,” said Colonel Gratiot.
“My dear fellow,” replied Colonel Tremaine, impressively raising one
of the great old cut-glass decanters, “this beverage is raspberry
vinegar.” Here the Colonel gave a snort of contempt. “I can no longer
live for my country, because Dr. Carey says that I am too old to
march or fight; but I can die for her--yea, die daily, as St. Paul
said, drinking raspberry vinegar. The ladies swear it is good for the
complexion. I am glad it is good for something.”
“You know, my love,” replied Mrs. Tremaine, reproachfully, from the
head of the table, “that my raspberry wine is considered the best in
the county and is made from my great-grandmother’s recipe.”
Colonel Tremaine replied by a quotation from Horace, and Colonel
Gratiot, always gallant, declared that he believed Falernian to be
infernal stuff, not half as good as the wine of Mrs. Tremaine’s
manufacture.
Everybody called Colonel Gratiot “Mr. Gratiot” except Hector, who
pointedly called him “Kun’l” every two minutes.
After dinner, when the gentlemen retired to smoke upon the great
pillared portico facing the river, Colonel Gratiot was so enthusiastic
over the ladies of the party that he unbosomed himself to Lyddon in the
temporary absence of Colonel Tremaine.
“By Jove, sir! I’m not surprised after seeing Mrs. Tremaine and Madame
Le Noir--Lord! those two women ought always to be seen together, they
set each other off so well: Mrs. Neville Tremaine so fair, so tall,
the color coming and going in her face, and her eyes three shades in a
minute, ready to laugh or to weep, and with a heart as brave as Trojan
Hector’s; and Madame Le Noir with eyes and hair so black, and with
everything, from the crown of her head to the sole of her little foot,
finished and polished to the last degree. Nothing on earth could make
that woman weep unless she wished.”
Lyddon agreed with all of this and perceived that Colonel Gratiot was
an authority upon the fair sex.
Madame Isabey, as usual, did not appear when guests were present, as
that would necessitate a toilet beyond a peignoir.
About five o’clock in the afternoon, Adrienne having taken her siesta
and reappeared, Angela proposed that they should take a walk. Neither
was ever quite at ease when alone with the other, but, both being
gentlewomen, they maintained every outward form of extreme politeness.
“Let us walk in the garden,” said Adrienne. “I cannot, like you, take
those long tramps through the woods. You must remember that I am
town-bred.”
Angela felt a secret dislike to walking up and down the well-known
garden path with Adrienne and sitting together upon the bench under
the old brick wall. That spot she felt to be consecrated, in a way, to
her inmost thoughts and feelings, and with Adrienne she never spoke of
inward things. Nevertheless she made no objection, and the two walked
up and down in the waning summer afternoon as the shadows grew long on
the green lawn and the river changed from green and silver to red and
purple in the glowing sunset.
“This time last year,” said Adrienne, with her charming French accent,
“we were quite new to Harrowby. The life seemed so strange to me then.
You see, we usually spent our summers in France, and a few times we
went far, far up in French Canada. This day two years ago we were in
Paris, and we went, mamma and I with Philip Isabey, to the great ball
at the Tuileries. I never saw the Empress look so beautiful. She was in
a cloud of tulle, and diamonds, like dewdrops, sparkled all over her.
She never was outshone by her jewels; many women are. You, for example,
should never wear many jewels.”
“I promise you I never shall,” replied Angela, laughing. “I have none,
and Neville will not be able to give me any, for he will never have
anything except his pay as an officer.”
“How do you know that?” asked Adrienne, watching Angela.
“Neville tells me so, and, besides, if my uncle and aunt will never
speak their son’s name, or even ask me when I hear from him, do you
think they would leave him any money?”
“They are very angry with him now. They will not always be so.”
“Oh, yes, they will! It is not anger: they think Neville a traitor, and
they will never get over it.”
“So you hear from your husband often?”
“Yes.”
“And write to him often?”
“I have opportunities of communicating with him. I can’t tell you what
they are.”
“I don’t wish to know,” quickly replied Adrienne, “I never ask personal
questions. But this life you are living is as strange to you in a way
as to me.”
“Quite so. This time two years ago, when you were going to balls at
the Tuileries, I thought of nothing except of how merry we would be at
Christmas when Neville would be here, and of my new riding habit from
Baltimore, and of what music and books I should order. Now there is a
gulf between me and everybody I ever knew and loved in my life, except
Neville and Mr. Lyddon, perhaps. And at any moment a summons may come
to me to join Neville. Then I shall go away, never to come back, and
will leave behind me everything I ever knew or loved except Neville.”
Something in Angela’s tone as she said this, in the despairing
expression of her eye, told much to Adrienne.
“Yes,” she said, putting up her hand to shield her eyes from the long
lances of light from the dying sun, “you will never see Captain Isabey
again.” The words went like an arrow to its mark. Angela remained
silent with downcast gaze for a minute, and then, recovering herself,
she turned toward Adrienne and said calmly, but with eyes sparkling
with indignation: “Probably I shall not again see Captain Isabey; but
what does that matter, and why do you say that to me?”
“I do not know why I said it,” replied Adrienne, “except that no one
who ever lived and felt can be always discreet; certainly I cannot. But
from the hour you met him he has had a singular influence over you.”
Angela’s quickness of wit answered for experience in fencing, and she
replied coolly: “Neither Captain Isabey nor any other man, except my
husband, has any influence over me.”
A pause followed, and then Adrienne said, with more than her usual
gentleness: “I do not know what made me speak Philip Isabey’s name.
The truth is one leads such a retired life here. I live so constantly
upon my own thoughts and feelings that when I speak it is often merely
thinking aloud. In my former life we spoke of what happened from day
to day. There was not much time for thinking, for our life was very
gay; and now it seems to me as if I were becoming acquainted with
an Adrienne Le Noir whom I never knew before. You, who have lived a
life of reflection, with many hours of solitude each day, really know
yourself much better than I know myself, and you are better governed in
your speech and even in your thoughts.”
Angela remained silent. She saw that jealousy, the most ignoble of
passions, had seized upon Adrienne, making her hover near a subject of
conversation dangerous in the extreme--Philip Isabey. She, however,
with some skill, turned into a safer path of conversation.
“This life we are leading all over the South is very strange. We are
cut off completely from the outside world. Those we love best may be
imprisoned, may suffer agonies, may be killed in battle or die of
wounds, and it might be weeks before we would know it. All around us a
fearful turmoil is going on and we sit still and helpless. We are like
people on a raft in mid-ocean--we may be ingulfed at any moment; and
meanwhile we watch the sun from hour to hour, not knowing what the day
brings forth to anyone on earth except ourselves. Come, it is growing
chilly and we must go in.”
After supper and family prayers the Harrowby family bade good-by to
Colonel Gratiot, whose saddled horse was standing at the door. He,
however, remained with Colonel Tremaine until eleven o’clock, when
the moon would have gone down. The house speedily grew still and dark
except in the library, where the two men sat with maps spread out which
they examined by the light of a couple of tallow candles. As Colonel
Gratiot was following a certain route with his finger, his quick ear
caught a sound, and he said to Colonel Tremaine:
“Something has fallen on the ground outside.”
He went to one of the great windows and, opening the shutter softly,
looked out. At the same moment a light appeared in the window of one of
the negro houses, Mammy Tulip’s house, some distance off, toward the
lane. “Come here,” said Colonel Gratiot to Colonel Tremaine coolly,
“some one is signaling from that house over yonder.”
“Nonsense!” replied Colonel Tremaine. “They are probably sitting up
roasting apples.”
Just then the window overhead was softly lowered and Colonel Gratiot,
peering out, saw a letter lying on the grass. “Some one will come to
get that letter,” he whispered to Colonel Tremaine.
Colonel Tremaine looked with incredulity and defiance in his eyes
at Colonel Gratiot, who managed to banish all expression from his
countenance. Colonel Tremaine, who had been standing, sat down heavily
on a chair. Colonel Gratiot, with the shutter still ajar, watched, and
in five minutes a dark figure moved across the lawn, picked up the
letter, and ran off. And then, as if by magic, there were a hundred
dark figures, men in blue uniforms, surrounding the house. Colonel
Gratiot ran, as if he were sixteen instead of sixty, across the room,
into the hall beyond. When he reached the front door, men were pounding
on it, and their blows resounded through the house. The Colonel turned
and sped toward the dining room, with its glass doors opening upon the
long portico facing the river. The house was dark, but he made his way
without difficulty. He opened the glass door, and there, lying out in
the black river, his quick eye caught the outline of a small gunboat.
Not a light was seen on her and no sound was heard except the swish of
her wheels as she backed water to keep from drifting down the river.
As the Colonel stepped out on the porch he was caught in the arms of a
big sergeant, who handled him with one hand as if he were a baby, while
with the other he fired a pistol in the air. Instantly rockets went up
from the gunboat. Colonel Gratiot knew he was a prisoner and submitted
with perfect composure.
“Look here, my man,” he said pleasantly, “I have rheumatism in that
left arm of mine. I can’t run away--there are too many of you; so
loosen your grip, if you please.”
“Excuse me, sir,” answered the sergeant, respectfully. “I know all
about you, sir; and I know that you are hard to catch, and harder to
keep.”
“You flatter me,” said the Colonel, smiling; “you forget that I am
sixty years old.”
“No, I don’t, sir,” remarked the sergeant, with a grin, “but I don’t
let you go until I hand you over to the lieutenant. Here he is now,
sir, coming round the corner of the house. We thought you’d jumped out
of the window on the stable side.”
A young lieutenant came running around the corner of the house, and,
springing up the steps of the portico two at a time, saluted and said:
“Colonel Gratiot, I believe. You are my prisoner.”
“I certainly am,” replied the Colonel, grimly, as the sergeant released
him and saluted; then, looking round in the half-darkness over the
numbers of dark soldiers in blue uniforms surrounding the house, and
the gunboat puffing and grinding away in the river, he continued:
“You took an immense deal of trouble to catch an old fellow like me.”
“You are worth it, sir,” replied the lieutenant, smiling delightedly.
“And we were out for big game this time.”
By now the whole house was roused. Lights were moving about in the
upper part, and the negroes, excited and with a strange mixture of
triumph and timidity, had begun to collect in and about the house. In
five minutes every one of the Harrowby house except Angela was down in
the great hall, which was full of soldiers, with a few officers among
them.
The commanding officer made an apology to Mrs. Tremaine and the ladies
for disturbing them, but pleaded the exigencies of war. He permitted
Mrs. Tremaine to make up, out of Colonel Tremaine’s scanty wardrobe, a
parcel of clothing for Colonel Gratiot, who was a head shorter and even
narrower than Colonel Tremaine. Colonel Gratiot’s horse, saddled and
bridled, was found and carried on board the gunboat, as the sergeant
facetiously remarked, for the Colonel to ride. The game being bagged,
Colonel Gratiot was marched on board, and in a few minutes not a
Federal soldier remained at Harrowby as the gunboat churned its way
down the river in the darkness.
Up to that moment, so great had been the excitement and so quick had
been the movements of the Federals that no one had asked or even
thought of Angela’s whereabouts. But suddenly Lyddon spoke: “Where is
Angela?”
No one could answer, so Lyddon, taking a candle in his hand, went
quietly upstairs and along the corridor until he reached her door, when
he knocked loudly on it. Angela’s voice from within replied like the
starling: “I can’t get out! The key is broken in the lock.”
Lyddon took out his penknife and in half a minute had unlocked the
door. Angela came out of the room, her rich fair hair falling loose
about her shoulders. She had huddled on a skirt and concealed the
deficiencies of her toilet with her red mantle.
“What has happened?” she asked excitedly and seizing Lyddon’s arm. “I
heard the most terrible noise, and looked out of the window, and saw
that the place was full of soldiers, and then I slipped on my clothes
and tried to get out and couldn’t. You can’t imagine how terrible it
was to be shut up there and know that something dreadful was happening
outside.”
“Nothing particularly dreadful has happened,” replied Lyddon, calmly.
“Colonel Gratiot has been bagged, that is all. A gunboat with a lot of
soldiers was sent after him.”
By that time they were at the stairs, and Angela, running lightly down,
joined the group in the hall. As soon as she reached the hall, which
was dimly lighted by a couple of candles on the mantelpiece, everybody
began to talk to her at once except Adrienne, who remained, as always,
beautifully composed. Even Mrs. Tremaine became excited, while Madame
Isabey poured out her feelings in English, French, and Spanish. Archie
interjected his account, while Hector bawled above them all:
“All de derangements was mos’ unmilitary. Miss Angela. Dey didn’ have
no scouts, no aide-de-camps, no ban’ ob music, no nuttin’ ’tall.
When me an’ Marse, we stormed de heights at Chapultepec, de ban’ was
a-playin’ ‘I wants to be a angel,’ an’, I tell you, me an’ Marse made a
heap ob Mexican angels dat day.”
“I think, ladies,” said Colonel Tremaine calmly, “that you had better
try and get your beauty sleep, which has been so rudely disturbed. If
you will excuse me, I will retire. Come, boy,” to Hector, “and get
my boots off.” Hector followed the Colonel, still mumbling about the
glories of Chapultepec and Buena Vista. All soon took the Colonel’s
advice, except Angela and Lyddon, who lingered after the others had
departed.
Angela, with her newly developed instinct of thrift, blew out one of
the candles on the hall mantelpiece. The remaining candle cast a faint
light upon the dingy Penelope, who had waited in that spot during a
century for her Ulysses. All the events of the night had passed so
swiftly that there was not really much to tell, but Angela wanted to
hear it all over again and in connected fashion.
“Wasn’t it strange,” she said, “that the last time a Confederate
officer was here, Captain Isabey, the Federals came after him, although
they didn’t get him, and now they have caught Colonel Gratiot?”
“No, I don’t think it was at all strange. You may depend upon it, the
Federals know all they want to know from the negroes.”
“Do you mean to say that these servants of ours, who are our very own,
are betraying us?”
“Oh, no, that is not the word to use. They wouldn’t betray Richard, but
they wouldn’t mind giving a tip about Isabey or Colonel Gratiot. None
of you Southern people seems to realize what a stupendous stake the
negroes have in this conflict.”
“I realize it,” answered Angela, “when we have to depend upon Uncle
Hector and Aunt Tulip and half a dozen half-grown black boys and girls
to do the work of this house, and you are put to the churn.” Then,
suddenly becoming conscious of her unbound hair, she seized it in both
hands and with rapid and graceful dexterity wound the shining coils
around her head, and fled up the dark stairway.
CHAPTER XX
A SOLDIER’S ERRAND
The capture of Colonel Gratiot, following upon Isabey’s narrow escape,
made an immense stir in the county. There had been other descents by
night and day upon places, and a few Confederate private soldiers had
been picked up, but there had been nothing like the concerted design
which had resulted in the capture of officers.
From a little spark of suspicion grew a great flame of accusation
against Angela. The minds of men and women were so unbalanced, so
tortured, so driven hither by calamity, that anything could be believed
of anyone.
The greatest braggart in the county had died like a hero, cheering
on his men; the softest spoken university-bred men had become hard
swearers and iron disciplinarians; the most shiftless of idlers had
made admirable soldiers; and all seemed to go according to the law of
contrary.
Angela herself was quite unconscious of the storm which raged against
her in the county. She kept close to Harrowby and saw no one, even
rarely George Charteris, who still came daily to study under Lyddon.
Heretofore George had been content to pass Angela with a cold and
negligent bow, after having for years before pestered her with his
boyish lovemaking. Now he avoided as far as possible meeting her on his
daily visits to Harrowby. But once, when it was inevitable, he passed
her on the lawn without removing his hat. Angela stopped and looked
after him with blazing eyes of wrath. Was it possible that this boy
dared to insult her by not speaking to her?
She said nothing of this, keeping it with many other bitter things in
her own heart. But the next day when George came out of the study door
Angela faced him in the path. He was forced to make her something in
the nature of a bow and, after an unpleasant pause, said: “Do you wish
anything of me?”
“Nothing at all,” responded Angela sweetly, “only to find out whether
you were a gentleman or not. Good morning.”
She passed on leaving him consumed with inward rage.
Colonel Tremaine went nowhere except to the post office for the
semioccasional mail, and to church, and no one dared mention to him the
grim suspicion against Angela. But deep in his heart he himself felt
sometimes a sharp and piercing doubt of Angela. He dared not speak of
it even to Mrs. Tremaine, and put it away from him with all his inborn
chivalry and the parental affection for the girl which was a part of
his nature.
In spite of himself he could not forget the opened window, the
answering signal, and the letter dropped on the lawn. He tried to
assume that even if the worst were true and Angela were communicating
with Federals, she did not understand her own wrongdoing, but this
view was totally unconvincing even to himself. Angela was no fool,
and never had been, and it was impossible to give her the credit of
ignorance.
When Colonel Tremaine looked at her going about her daily tasks
with fiery energy and even a feverish gayety, when he saw how this
young creature, so lately a child, had grown so self-controlled, so
unshakably courageous, she was acquitted in his own mind. But when
he waked in the night, or when he sat in the library writing up his
diary, or read in the ill-printed Richmond newspapers of Federal raids
and captures, a suspicion would rise in his mind that would not be
strangled.
No more Confederate officers came to Harrowby, which Colonel Tremaine
reckoned a blessing.
Isabey had come no more; he remained in camp, going about his duties
with unswerving regularity but without cheerfulness, and was restless
at the surgeons’ prohibition against his going to the front for some
months to come. There was plenty of work for him to do, but, like most
men with a gnawing pain in the heart, Isabey wanted action, action,
action to drive away the specter of his lost love, which had for him
all the power of the first love and the last. He remembered with a grim
smile his early infatuation for Adrienne, which was so natural as to be
almost inevitable.
He recalled that he made verses in those days and set them to music
and sang them to Adrienne. He could not have made a verse about Angela
to save his life, and concluded that when men could write, as did
Petrarch, Tasso, and Dante Alighieri, of a wrecked passion, it could
not have hurt very much. He recalled that Paolo had not written a line
about Francesca, and it seemed to him that the tragic love of those
two poor souls was paralleled in his own case. For, put it away as he
might, he could not deny to himself that Angela’s heart had struck an
answering chord to his.
He reasoned with himself that it would have been too much happiness
if Angela had been free to marry him: but at least he had what was
next best and a million times better than what falls to the lot of
most dwellers upon the earth--the full and perfect confidence, the
completest sympathy and understanding, with the only woman he had ever
loved. He remembered the ancient saying that each mortal has so much of
the wine of life given to him, sweet or bitter, strong or weak, and the
goblet may be of gold or of base metal. He concluded that his share was
strong and bitter, but it was served to him in a golden goblet.
There was a species of lofty flattery on Angela’s part in the perfect
confidence with which she treated him. She had not hesitated to spend
long hours alone with him in the old study during the month when they
were snowbound; and Isabey reckoned those hours as spent in the Elysian
Fields of the soul.
In the beginning he had tried to put her image from him, as the normal
man of gentlemanly instincts does concerning the wife of his friend;
but after that month when Angela had tended him and eased his wounds
of body and laid the soft spell of her constant presence upon him,
the thought of her would not vanish away. It was easy enough to keep
her name out of his speech or even when he spoke it to do so quite
naturally, but to banish her sweet image--ah, no man who loved as
Isabey could do that.
Each night when he slept the sleep of exhaustion after a day of hard
work in his regimental duties some faint dream of Angela would pass
through his sleep.
He was thinking of this one night sitting in his tent in camp and
working hard over some regimental papers. It was now autumn, and not
since that May night had he been to Harrowby or seen Angela’s face. His
excuse for not going was good, as no Confederate officer had ventured
within the zone of danger except under orders, and such orders had
not been given to Isabey. Colonel Gratiot had been exchanged and had
returned to duty, but Isabey had not seen him since.
It was close upon midnight before his work was finished. Isabey rose
and, lifting the flap of his tent, looked out upon the misty night.
A fine, cold rain was falling and the lights in camp shone dull and
yellow in the murky darkness.
While he stood looking out upon the night an orderly emerged from the
darkness and handed him a note from the commanding officer, General
Farrington, requesting Isabey’s presence at headquarters immediately.
Isabey, taking his cap and military cape, made at once for the
headquarters building. The long lines of tents were still, and the
steady tramp of the sentries back and forth alone broke the silence.
The headquarters building was a rude structure of logs containing
several compartments, for they could not be called rooms. The orderly
outside the general’s door immediately passed Isabey in, and he entered
a room to the left roughly fitted up as an office. At a big deal
table, lighted by a couple of tallow dips, sat General Farrington. He
was a burly man with a loud, shrill voice, and a saber and spurs which
generally clattered furiously. To-night, however, he was singularly
quiet and his usually jovial countenance had a somber expression.
Isabey knew in a moment that there was unpleasant business on hand.
General Farrington, on greeting Isabey, carefully shut the door himself
after observing that no one was in the next room. The two men then
sat down at the table, Isabey taking off his wet cap and cloak. There
was a pause, and then General Farrington spoke in a quiet voice, very
different from his usual method of hallooing.
“I have sent for you to-night, Captain Isabey, to direct you to perform
a duty which is as distressing for me to order as it can possibly be
for you to execute.”
Isabey bowed. General Farrington’s air and manner had told him as much
before.
“It is this,” continued the general. “There has been, as you know,
much mysterious communication with the enemy. There are, of course,
innumerable ways by which this information could be conveyed, but
suspicion strongly points to one person.”
Isabey rose to his feet, and the words burst from him without his
volition. “Mrs. Neville Tremaine!” he said.
“Yes,” replied General Farrington briefly. Isabey sat down again.
“It is a most infamous lie--!” he began, and then stopped. His head
was in a whirl. He longed to knock down his commanding officer so
coolly voicing this odious charge against the woman Isabey loved and
respected above all women in the world.
“Mind you,” said General Farrington, still quietly, “I am not fully
committed to the belief in Mrs. Neville Tremaine’s guilt. I am,
however, inclined to think that she is used as an unconscious tool
by unprincipled persons. She is in constant communication with her
husband--that I know--and I believe that through her information leaks
out which is extremely dangerous to us. I have talked with Colonel
Gratiot since his exchange, and there is not the slightest doubt
that some signaling was going on the night he was captured. It is
significant that Mrs. Neville Tremaine was out of the way both times
the Federals made an incursion by night upon Harrowby.”
“The first time,” replied Isabey coolly, “she was absent because she
was assisting in my escape; but for her I should certainly have been
captured.”
“Very likely, and I have considered that circumstance. But the night
Colonel Gratiot was captured she was also not to be found. However, in
these conflicting circumstances I determined to make a test myself. I
wrote to Colonel Tremaine a fortnight ago, saying that I should spend
last night at Harrowby, and contrived to get the note to him through
reliable hands. Of course I never had the slightest intention of going,
and to-night I received information that last night a Federal gunboat
came up the river again, landed a force with much secrecy and dispatch,
and would certainly have got me if I had been there. That settled it as
far as Mrs. Neville Tremaine is concerned.”
“But it is probable that everyone on the plantation, black and white,
knew that you were expected,” replied Isabey, still composed and
self-controlled.
“That is true, and I can’t arrest everybody, black and white, on the
plantation. Whether Mrs. Neville Tremaine is giving information to
the enemy or not I am not prepared to say, but I think that prudence
imperatively demands that--that--” General Farrington got up and walked
up and down the narrow room, came back again, and then, looking Isabey
full in the eye, he said “--that Mrs. Neville Tremaine be quietly
arrested and sent into the enemy’s lines; and it is you whom I desire
to do this.”
“I of all men in the world! My relatives have received the hospitality
of the Harrowby family for more than a year. There is no woman on earth
whom I respect so much as I do Mrs. Neville Tremaine.” Isabey stopped,
conscious that the words and his tone had revealed something. One look
into General Farrington’s keen eyes showed that he understood the full
meaning of the admission.
“No doubt it would be a most painful duty to you, but it is equally
painful to others. You are the third officer whom I have sent for this
evening to do this piece of business, and each of the others asked me
to reconsider. Then your name occurred to me. I wondered I had not
thought of it before. You are peculiarly well situated to do it. You
are, I believe, intimate with both of Colonel Tremaine’s sons, and you
could readily make it appear that you have been designated merely to
escort Mrs. Neville Tremaine within the Federal lines in order that
she may join her husband. You have the tact and judgment to allay any
suspicion which might arise in the minds of Colonel Tremaine and his
family, and the fact that your relatives are guests at Harrowby would
make it seem the most natural thing in the world that you should be
the one chosen to escort Mrs. Neville Tremaine. You will approach the
Federal lines under flag of truce, and everything possible will be done
to make it appear that Mrs. Neville Tremaine is going of her own free
will to her husband. But you must not forget, Captain Isabey, that you
will be performing a military duty, and that Mrs. Neville Tremaine must
be closely watched, and not the slightest opportunity given her to
communicate with the enemy until she is safely within their lines.”
Isabey remained silent, sitting with folded arms, and his black eyes
fixed on General Farrington’s light blue ones. His soul was in a
tumult, and, being a fighting man, he felt a perfectly natural and
human desire to wreak vengeance on the man who had given him this work
to do; but his sober common sense had in no wise deserted him. If the
hateful thing had to be done, was it not better, as General Farrington
said, that it should be done by one who loved the ground on which
Angela trod, and who could no more have doubted her integrity than he
could have murdered her?
“I give you much liberty in carrying out my orders,” said General
Farrington, after a while. “I understand fully the disagreeable nature
of what I am directing you to do; and one of the consolations I have in
this matter is that everything possible will be done, to save not only
Mrs. Neville Tremaine’s own feelings, but those of Colonel Tremaine’s
family. Surely you can arrange so that Mrs. Neville Tremaine’s
departure will appear a voluntary act?”
“There is not the slightest difficulty in persuading anyone of that,”
replied Isabey, in a low voice, “except Mrs. Neville Tremaine herself.
It would be impossible to deceive her.”
“I should like this duty executed at the earliest possible moment, but,
of course, at a time and hour which would not excite alarm or suspicion
in the minds of the rest of the family. If you leave early to-morrow
morning, it will answer. Here are your written instructions, and here
is some gold with which to provide Mrs. Neville Tremaine.” General
Farrington drew out of his breast pocket a few gold pieces wrapped up
in brown paper. “It is all I have,” he said, holding it out.
“I thank you,” replied Isabey, stiffly, “but I have some gold, too. I
should prefer, and I think Mrs. Neville Tremaine would prefer, that I
should furnish the money for her necessary expenses.”
He read the carefully written instructions given him, and they were
perfectly intelligible. He was to be at Harrowby by two o’clock the
next day, and at the earliest possible moment was to escort Mrs.
Neville Tremaine to the Federal lines. A brief official note to Mrs.
Neville Tremaine was inclosed, in which she was notified that if she
was again found within Confederate lines she would be subject to arrest
and imprisonment.
“This you will give to Mrs. Neville Tremaine at parting,” said General
Farrington.
As Isabey folded the papers up and put them in his breast pocket
General Farrington said to him:
“I would rather put fifty men in jail for life than arrest this one
girl. I feel as if I were plunging my sword into the breast of a dove.
But this is war, Captain Isabey.”
Isabey said no word, and, silently saluting, went out again into the
night. The cold rain struck him like a sharp hand in the face.
As he had said, it was easy enough to make it appear that Angela, under
his protection, was seeking her husband; but Angela herself, how should
he tell her, what words could he use to soften it? Ah, there was no
softening it! And suppose she should refuse to go? She was an impulsive
creature, knowing little of the world, full of rash courage, and the
last woman on earth to sit calmly under a charge of treachery. And if
she went quietly it would be to go to Neville Tremaine’s arms, and he,
Isabey, would be the one to send her to that haven. He would never
see her again, of that he felt quite sure; nor could he bear to see
her as Neville Tremaine’s wife. In one more day, one day of shame and
wretchedness, he would be forever parted from Angela.
Isabey was no more generous in his love than are most men. He wanted
Angela’s sweet society for himself, and grudged every look and word
she might give her husband. He realized what Angela did not--that all
those sweet confidences, however innocent, between Isabey and herself,
that turning to him always for his opinion, that delicious intimacy of
the soul between them, must come to an end when Angela held her real
position as a wife.
Angela, in a way, was as novel to Isabey as he was to her. He had
never, under the social customs in New Orleans, been thrown into a
close and unguarded intimacy with any woman as with her. Her heart
and mind had been like a volume of poetry open before him, and he had
read on, pleased, touched, amused, reverencing, and surprised. She
knew so much in some ways and so little in others. The thing of which
she knew least, but could feel most, was love. If she had possessed
more guile or even more knowledge of herself, she would never have
slipped into that soft, sweet intercourse with Isabey. All of them,
the whole Harrowby family, were the most guileless people that Isabey
had ever known. The mere saying of the words which made Angela the
wife of Neville Tremaine on the wharf that April night at Harrowby was
confidently felt, not only by the Harrowby family, but by the whole
community, to put her definitely and forever out of the reach of any
other man than her husband. Such a thing as a flirtation with a married
woman had never been heard of among those patriarchal people. They had
never known anything between the perfect dignity of a wife and the
bottomless pit of degradation into which, once in a hundred years, a
woman sometimes fell to be lost forever in the abyss.
“Wherever divorce is unknown, and the honor of women is protected by
men with arms in their hands, this state of society must result,”
thought Isabey, as he plodded along through the rain back to his tent,
and he would be the last person in the world to wish this unwritten law
changed. He would rather have died than speak a word of open love to
Angela. But love speaks without words, and to people more worldly-wise
than these simple Virginian country gentry Isabey’s secret might have
been suspected long ago.
When he reached his tent he rolled himself in his blanket and lay
down in the darkness, not to sleep, but to dream, to think, to suffer
torments. The waking hours of a night are usually long, but when the
rosy dawn crept in, Isabey thought it was the shortest night he had
ever spent.
The October morning was of an exquisite softness. The Indian summer
had come, that time of mellow sunshine, of faint blue mists upon the
uplands, of caressing winds among the fading leaves when summer turns
back, as it were, for a last farewell. Old Euripides said, in the long
ago, “In all fair things, the autumn, too, is fair.”
Isabey left camp about seven o’clock in the morning, so that he might
allow his horse a long rest before reaching Harrowby, for after that
there might be hard riding. He had settled the details of how he should
convey Angela to the Federal lines. So good a horse-woman as she could
easily ride the twenty miles over the level road. It would be better,
however, that the journey be made at night. The season was mild and the
moon was at its full, so that there would be no hardship involved. But
Isabey recognized that it would be just as well that they should not
be seen together riding upon the highway a long distance from Harrowby.
When he reached the Federal lines, he would, of course, be obliged to
leave her. He apprehended no trouble for her; there were gentlemen
among the Federal officers who would readily assume charge of a brother
officer’s wife. It was all simple enough, only it broke Isabey’s heart.
As he rode soberly along through the blue-and-gold October morning he
kept a moderate pace and it was quite eleven o’clock before he reached
the place where he meant to rest his horse. It was in the little glade
in the woods where he remembered to have walked with Angela and Richard
Tremaine and Lyddon the first spring afternoon he ever met Angela,
almost a year and a half before. Then it had been springtime; now it
was autumn, and the dead leaves were thick underfoot.
Isabey dismounted, took the saddle off his horse, and sat down on the
same fallen tree where he had sat with Angela. He was not equal to much
exercise on foot, and sat quite still, living over the past with Angela
and dreading the interview that lay before him.
How would she take his message? Would she weep and wring her hands as
women usually do in such emergencies? Would she turn upon him and visit
him with her indignation. Or would she be angry with an icy anger?
It might well seem to this unsophisticated girl a terrible thing to
be thrust alone among soldiers, men whom she had never seen and whom
she daily heard reviled, to depend upon them for her safe conduct to
Neville.
Isabey’s heart was so tortured with this thought that he got up and,
in spite of his injured knee, walked up and down like a madman. The
squirrels looked at him curiously, and a family of wood robins, which
was preparing to fly southward, grew frightened, suddenly rose, and
with a rush of wings cleft the blue air. Isabey glanced at his watch
every few minutes and when it was half past one threw the saddle on his
horse, mounted, and, picking his way through the underbrush, struck the
cedar lane, down which he cantered rapidly.
Time was when no guest could approach Harrowby without being heralded
by a multitude of negroes, young and old, rushing in the house and
announcing the coming guest as if it were the most stupendous and
sensational event which had ever occurred. Not so now. There were only
a few negroes left on the estate and they were not much in evidence.
As Isabey neared the house he was struck with its lonely aspect as it
lay basking in the unclouded midday. No one was moving about and not
even a sleeping dog was in sight. The river lay bright and still like
a lake. Over the whole scene brooded the peculiar stillness of autumn
noonday, broken only by the distant clanking cry of a mob of crows
circling high in the blue air, while below them a vulture, silent,
contemptuous, and majestically evil, winged his steady flight upon
unquivering wings toward the wooded uplands.
It occurred to Isabey that Angela would most likely be in the garden,
and as he came within sight of the broad main walk he glanced down
toward the bench at the end and saw the flutter of a crimson mantle.
He sprang from his horse and, throwing the reins over the gatepost,
entered the rusty iron gateway and walked quickly toward Angela at the
end of the garden.
In spite of Isabey’s jingling spurs, which announced his arrival when
he was still some distance off, he had a good opportunity to observe
Angela before she looked up and saw him.
The mantle had half-slipped off her shapely shoulders and her head
was bare. Little vagrant breezes had ruffled her beautiful hair. Some
coarse knitting lay in her lap, but she was not at work upon it. She
seemed so lost in abstraction that she did not notice the sound of
Isabey’s approach or even when he stopped and gazed full upon her.
The sudden sharp cry of the crows overhead seemed to rouse her at last.
She raised her eyes and her glance fell upon Isabey, his trim figure,
in the gray uniform, silhouetted before her and the buttons gleaming
like fire in the golden light.
The change that came over her was like the lighting of a lamp in an
alabaster vase. Isabey had seen that same flash of joy in her eyes
the night he had arrived wounded at Harrowby. Now it smote him to the
heart. He knew--what Angela did not know--that when a woman changes
color, smiles, trembles, and casts down her eyes at the coming of a
certain man, it has a tragic meaning. She half-rose from the old bench
and put her slender hand into Isabey’s, a custom which, from Isabey’s
French education, always seemed strange and exciting to him.
He asked how she had fared since last he saw her, but Angela, without
replying, began to question him about his disabled arm and knee.
“I think they are both quite well, or rather well enough, but the
surgeons (may evil befall them!) swear to General Farrington that I am
not yet fit to be sent to join my battery, and he listens to them. But
I hardly think they will be able to keep me in camp after this.”
Then they sat down, and Angela, taking up the knitting, said to him
eagerly, like a child:
“Do you see what this is? All the ladies in the county are knitting
stockings for the soldiers. Very well; I concluded that I would knit
some stockings for my soldier, for Neville. I felt so triumphant when I
told Aunt Sophia about it. She said nothing--you know that icy silence
which falls upon her whenever Neville’s name is mentioned--but she made
no objection. Do you know that the Federals paid us another visit night
before last?”
Yes, Isabey knew it, and knew much more about it than Angela suspected.
But he merely asked her how things went off on the occasion.
“It was exactly like the night they came after Colonel Gratiot, but
this time they didn’t catch anybody. A letter had come from General
Farrington saying that he was coming to Harrowby to spend that night.
Uncle Tremaine was in a terrible way and so was Aunt Sophia. They
didn’t like to write to the general telling him not to come, because
it might look inhospitable or as if they were afraid, but it really
was quite serious business. Uncle Tremaine swore--the first time, I
believe, in forty years--and Aunt Sophia told him that there was a
place prepared down below for blasphemers. And then Uncle Tremaine
begged her pardon and my pardon and Mr. Lyddon’s pardon and made public
confession of his fault that night at prayers. However, when General
Farrington didn’t come we all felt easy. But about twelve o’clock the
negroes all came running to the house, and we saw the gunboat at the
wharf, just as the time before. The house was searched, the stables,
and every place, but, of course, no one was found. It is the first time
I have ever seen Uncle Tremaine really discomposed, and he has not been
like himself since. We lost nothing except our night’s rest. And a
great many ridiculous things have happened which I shall tell you about
some time.”
Angela stopped, suddenly. Something in Isabey’s expressive face gave
warning. She looked attentively at him and waited for him to speak. The
pause grew awkward and even painful, and Isabey, in spite of his usual
self-control, showed a slight agitation.
“My dear Mrs. Tremaine,” he said, “I have come here to do you what I
hope is a service. I know that you wish very much to join your husband,
and this very day I am prepared to take you part of the way.”
Isabey said so much by way of preparing her, as he had not the
slightest idea that Angela’s acute intelligence would not fathom
the whole story very quickly. She did so, even more quickly than he
expected.
“Yes,” she said, after a moment, looking at him with her piercing
sidelong glance, “I do wish to join my husband, but so far he has not
sent for me. I may be only an impediment to him. And why should you be
the one to take me to him?”
“It is necessary that you should go immediately, and I will escort you
to the Federal lines.”
“Is Neville ill,” asked Angela, adding, after a moment, “or dead?”
“Not as far as I know,” answered Isabey. “This has nothing to do with
Neville’s well-being.”
Angela looked at him with wide eyes of amazement. “To take me to my
husband,” she said, after a moment. “You? It is very strange, most
strange.”
“But you are not unwilling to go?”
Angela hesitated, and the color dropped out of her face, leaving her
deathly pale. All at once her whole heart seemed revealed to her. Once
set forth upon her journey to join her husband meant separation, an
eternal separation, from Isabey. He watched her, reading easily the
meaning of her pallor and tremors, and understanding equally well her
quick recovery of herself, the calm courage, and even high spirit, with
which she replied: “Certainly it is my wish as well as my duty to join
my husband; but why you, I can’t understand--” Nor could Isabey, his
eyes fixed upon Angela’s pale face, understand either why he should
be the instrument to put the coming degradation upon her, and be, as
it were, the executioner of his own happiness--that faint and shadowy
happiness which a man enjoys in the presence of the woman he loves but
who is irrevocably beyond his reach.
Then Angela, without waiting for a reply to her first question, asked:
“Where shall I meet my husband?”
“That I can’t tell you. We can reach him by military telegraph as soon
as we are within the Federal lines.”
“Are those my husband’s directions?”
“No,” said Isabey, taking out his white handkerchief and passing it
over his face, on which Angela’s fixed glance noticed drops were
standing.
“Then what are my husband’s directions? Why has he not informed me?”
To this Isabey made no reply; but his agitation, although well
mastered, could not be wholly concealed.
Angela rose to her feet, and Isabey rose also. Facing each other, she
said to him in a voice which she vainly endeavored to make calm: “There
is some mystery about this which must be explained to me. Tell me the
truth, and tell me all the truth.”
There was no gainsaying this, and Isabey, unconscious that he called
her by her first name, replied: “Angela, since you command me, I must
tell you the truth. There is a cruel and most unjust suspicion abroad
against you. The people in the county think and say that you are
conveying information from the Confederate side to your husband.”
Angela straightened up her slender figure and smiled contemptuously.
“Is that all?” she asked. “Then it is very easily disproved. What do I
know about military matters? Who speaks of them before me? If I told
all I knew, or have ever known, it would be nothing.”
“So I believe; but the capture of Colonel Gratiot gave rise to these
reports, and the coming of the gunboat up the river the night that
General Farrington was expected to be at Harrowby was an unfortunate
coincidence. General Farrington sent for me last night and told me that
you must be escorted within the Federal lines, and at once. I asked
him why I, whose family had received such kindness from the Harrowby
family, should be required to do this hateful duty, and he told me that
it could be done with least publicity if it were in my hands.”
Angela remained silent for a few minutes, looking down. She was
revolving things in her mind and Isabey, who had a high opinion of her
natural good sense, did not interrupt her consideration of the position.
“It would be best,” she said, after a pause, “that I go quietly with
you, letting everyone in this house think that you bring me a command
from my husband. It is by far the best, that you will go with me to
the Federal lines. Yes, oh, more than that--stay with me until you can
give me into Neville’s hands. I implore you!” She clasped her hands and
looked, with eyes dark and full of sudden tears, at Isabey. After all,
she was but twenty and had lived a life almost as secluded as Miranda
upon her solitary isle, and the thought of being left alone with
strangers had in it for the moment something terrifying to her.
“I wish it could be so,” replied Isabey, his heart in his eyes. “But I
am afraid--I am afraid it cannot be. It will only be a question of a
day or two.”
“How shall we travel?”
“On horseback; you don’t mind a twenty-mile ride, do you?”
“Not in the least, and I can carry a portmanteau on my horse.”
Then, without more words, they turned and walked slowly up the broad
path.
As they went Angela looked about her with troubled eyes.
“I feel,” she said, “as if I were going to another planet or into
another world. I wonder if I shall ever return here again or ever, ever
walk in this garden again with you!”
“We shall never walk here any more,” replied Isabey, in a low voice.
Angela glanced toward him, and each read the other’s soul. Then they
averted their eyes; their glances were too poignant. After a pause
Isabey said: “When I have taken you to your husband I shall hope for
your happiness. You are very young and life holds much for you. Some
day I shall see you a happy wife.”
“I am sure you will,” replied Angela, calmly. “I have no one in the
world except Neville and I shall devote my life to him, and why
shouldn’t we be happy together?”
“You will be very happy together,” replied Isabey. Like Angela, he
believed in a decent cloaking of the chained passions, those wild
beasts which, if they are not subdued, devour men and women.
CHAPTER XXI
DUST AND ASHES
As Isabey opened the iron gate for Angela to pass through, they noticed
the few negroes left on the place running toward the main entrance of
the house, which faced landward.
They were exclaiming loudly, after the fashion of their race, at
something which was coming slowly down the long cedar lane. It was
an ordinary one-horse tumbril cart, driven by a negro sitting on a
plank laid athwart, and in the cart lay a long narrow box covered over
with a military cloak. Tied behind the cart followed a horse, fully
accoutered, with the stirrups crossed over the cavalry saddle.
Angela, whose glance was keen, turned to Isabey and said: “That’s
Richard’s horse and that’s his body servant, Peter, driving the cart.”
Isabey’s practiced eye took in the truth at a glance--Richard Tremaine
lay dead in the cart. He walked with Angela quickly to the front of
the house. Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine were already upon the porch. They
watched with terrified eyes the cart as it drew near the wide opening
in the cedar hedge where the driveway began.
Angela ran forward and took Mrs. Tremaine’s hand. Colonel Tremaine’s
tall figure swayed a little, and, putting out his arm, he drew Mrs.
Tremaine to his side. A solemn hush had fallen upon the assembled
negroes, young and old, who watched the cart drive up.
Lyddon and Archie came out and joined the silent group upon the
pillared porch. The cart drove around the carriage path and halted in
front of the steps. The horse stood almost as still as the dead man who
lay covered up in the cart.
Peter scrambled down, and going up to the steps, his rough cap in his
hand, said to Mrs. Tremaine: “Missis, I done brought Marse Richard back
to you.”
Mrs. Tremaine said no word, but the father and mother of the dead man
clung desperately together as the bolt fell.
[Illustration: “‘Missis, I done brought Marse Richard back to you.’”]
“’Twas las’ Sunday mornin’,” Peter continued, gasping for breath
between his sentences, “in de big battle wid de Yankees. De shot went
right thru’ Marse Richard’s heart. He was a-leadin’ he battery on an’
cheerin’ he men an’ de big gun was a-bellowin’ an’ de balls was flyin’
fast. De ho’ses to de guns dey ra’r an’ pitch, an’ Marse Richard he
speak kin’ o’ coaxin’ to ’em an’ brought ’em down, an’ dey went off
at a hard gallop, de artillerymen arter ’em, yellin’. Marse Richard
was gallopin’ ahead, de Yankees was comin’ out of de woods into an
open fiel’ where we could see de ridges blue wid ’em, thousands on
’em, an’ dey had a heap o’ cannon a-spittin’ shells an’ grapeshot. De
guns was a-thunderin’ an’ de bullets was a-flyin’ wus an’ wus, an’ de
yearth a-shakin’ wid all dem ho’ses an’ gun carriages poundin’ over
it. I was runnin’ ’long arter de long gray line, an’ kep’ my eye
fixed on Marse Richard, jes’ like ole Missis tole me. He tu’n roun’ in
he saddle, an’ takin’ off he cap he wave it jes’ de same as a little
boy an’ hollered, ‘Come on, boys! Marse Robert say we got to git dem
guns,’ an’ while he was lookin’ back an’ smilin’, his ho’se went
down. It warn’t no time to stop for nuttin’, an’ de artillery went on
a-gallopin’. When I got up to where Marse Richard was, de ho’se had
done riz up, an’ Marse Richard lay on he side, wid he arm under he
haid, jes’ de same as when Mammy Tulip put him to sleep when he wuz a
little boy in de trundle-baid. I done saw enough daid soldiers for to
know that Marse Richard was gone. He drawed he breff once or twice an’
open he eyes an’ look at me an’ say, ‘Pete,’ an’ den he breff stopped.”
Peter paused, his brawny frame trembling. Not a sound was uttered; only
Mrs. Tremaine’s glance wandered from Peter, with tears streaming down
his face, around the group, as if she were in some painful dream.
Colonel Tremaine’s face was set like iron as he said in a strange
voice: “Go on, boy.”
Peter sighed heavily, and leaned against the great brick pillar of the
porch nearest him. He had scarcely slept or eaten since that terrible
hour, five days before. But he spoke again after a minute:
“Dey warn’t no doctor about, nor no nuttin’, jes’ cavalry, infantry,
an’ artillery a-chargin’, de guns a-boomin’, an’ de soldiers fallin’
over an’ hollerin’ sometimes when de bullets struck ’em an’ de shells
cut ’em all to pieces. I tek Marse Richard’s sash from roun’ he waist,
an’ wrop it roun’ he chist, so as to soak up de blood. De ho’se
stan’ stock-still, an’ I lay Marse Richard ’cross de saddle, an’ tie
him on wid de surcingle, an’ lead de ho’se offen de fiel’. I warn’
skeered, dough de bullets was a-flyin’, an’ I warn’ thinkin’ ’bout
Marse Richard. I was thinkin’ ’bout ole Marse an’ Missis. I come ’long
’bout four miles to a tavern, an’ dey laid Marse Richard out on a
baid upsty’ars, an’ I foun’ a carpenter to mek him a coffin. When de
orficers foun’ Marse Richard dat night, I had done wash him an’ dress
him an’ put him in de coffin. Didn’ nobody tech him, ’scusin’ ’twas me.
I lay he so’de an’ de hat wid de feather in it an’ he epaulets inside
de coffin, an’ de cloak over it, an’ den I wrop’ de coffin up in he
blanket. I had some gold in a belt roun’ my waist, dat Marse Richard
tole me fur to keep, case he was wounded or kilt, fur to bring him back
to Harrowby, an’ I hired dis heah ho’se an’ cyart, an’ druv it every
step of de way myself. I got ’way from de tavern jes’ as quick as I
could, fur I didn’t want nobody fur to be axin’ questions. I knowed
what ole Marse an’ ole Missis want me to do, an’ I gwine do it. When
people on de main road ax me what I got in de cyart, I tole ’em ’twas
my little Marse dat was kilt, an’ I was tekin’ him home to ole Marse
an’ ole Missis. Den I whip up de ho’se an’ nobody didn’t try fur to
stop me. An’ I done brought him home, Missis, jes’ like you tole me.”
Mrs. Tremaine put her small withered hand in Peter’s black palm, and
said to him in her own sweet, natural voice: “Thank you, Peter; you
have done exactly what your master and I wished you to do.” Then she
suddenly burst into a wild storm of hysterical weeping, and Colonel
Tremaine, himself shaken with sobs, led her gently into the house.
The stricken parents went into the library and shut the door, where
they were alone with their grief for an hour. No one went near
them, not even Archie, who watched, with awe and grief, the solemn
preparations made necessary by his Majesty, Death. Lyddon, always
unequal to practical affairs, could do nothing. He was stunned and
shaken more than ever in his life before. He went like a man in a dream
into Richard’s bedroom and closed and locked the door.
Neither Archie nor Angela knew what directions to give, and were too
full of grief and horror to understand what should be done.
Madame Isabey and Adrienne, when they heard the dreadful news, offered
to do all that was possible, but nothing lay in their power.
It was Isabey who took charge of everything concerning the dead man,
who was more than a brother to him. He had the pine coffin carried
into the drawing-room, and gave directions for the immediate making of
Richard Tremaine’s grave in the old burying ground in the field.
At the end of an hour Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine came out of the
library. Both were singularly calm, as the human soul often is when
it has received a mortal blow. They went into the drawing-room, where
Richard Tremaine’s rude coffin lay upon four chairs. It was quite
covered with wreaths and sprays of laurel, which Angela had gathered,
and which she was arranging upon the rude pine box. This was her
first close view of death, and she was awed and shaken with grief, but
very far from frightened by it. The peace and repose of it came home
strangely to her. Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine sat down at the head of the
coffin, and in a moment the old relations between Neville’s parents and
Angela, the tie of parents and child, was resurrected. Mrs. Tremaine
held out her hand instinctively for Angela’s, and the two women sat
with hands clasped. Colonel Tremaine said: “Where is my son, my only
remaining son?” He spoke unconsciously, and at these words a tremor
passed through the mother of Neville Tremaine. Was Neville, then, still
dead, though in life?
Her troubled eyes sought Angela’s, and Angela, falling upon her knees
by Richard Tremaine’s coffin, cried to his father and mother: “Have
you forgotten Neville? Will you still thrust him from your hearts?
Richard did not. He loved Neville just the same and never called him
a traitor, but a man of honor and the best of brothers and of sons. O
Aunt Sophia, won’t you take pity on Neville now?” And then, catching
Colonel Tremaine’s hand, she cried, while tears rained down her cheeks:
“Ask Aunt Sophia to take pity on Neville!”
Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine remained silent, and Angela, leaning her head
against the rude pine coffin, said, weeping: “O Richard, if you could
speak, you would plead for Neville!”
Then Colonel Tremaine asked brokenly of Mrs. Tremaine: “Shall we
forgive our son?”
“Yes, yes,” answered Mrs. Tremaine, and a sense of solemn joy came into
their riven hearts.
At that moment Archie entered and stood by his parents. All at once the
boy seemed to reach the stature of a man.
“My son,” said Colonel Tremaine, “your mother and I have given this
dear son to his country. He is now no more, and you, although you are
not yet of age to bear arms, must take your brother’s place.”
“Thank you, father,” answered Archie.
Mrs. Tremaine rose, laying her hand on his shoulder: “If it be that I
must give you up, too, I do it cheerfully. If I had to lose my son,
this is the way in which I should choose to give him up.”
Isabey, standing outside the door, heard this, and bowed his head in
reverence. He had seen this indomitable courage of the Southern women
before, and he recognized all its beauty and splendor--this calm
surrender of their best beloved, this readiness to see the dearest of
their hearts laid upon the Bed of Honor.
It was a time when tragedies moved rapidly, and Richard Tremaine’s body
was laid in the old burying ground before sunset of that day. It had
been impossible to get a clergyman in time. It was Colonel Tremaine
himself who, in a steady voice, read the burial service. The faithful
negro servants, headed by Hector and Peter, carried Richard Tremaine to
his last resting place. In the waning afternoon the solemn procession
took its way across the open field and into the old burial ground with
the decaying brick walls and the moss-grown tombs. Mrs. Tremaine walked
with Colonel Tremaine, and her step was steadier than his. She carried
in her hand a small Testament, and grasped it as if she could not bear
to part with it. Angela walked with Archie, and next them came Isabey
with Lyddon, and last of all came Madame Isabey and Adrienne, followed
by every negro on the place. Isabey thought Lyddon would drop as he
stood at the foot of the grave, so pallid was he, so totally unnerved.
It was Mrs. Tremaine who spoke words of courage to him.
“Take comfort,” she said. “We shall all meet again in a place of
refreshment, light, and peace.”
Colonel Tremaine’s voice grew steady as he uttered the awful words,
“Dust to dust,” and threw the first shovelful of earth upon the coffin
in which lay so much of pride and joy, excellence and comeliness of
mind and body as had died with Richard Tremaine. When the grave was
filled up and the mound made into shape, those who loved Richard
Tremaine best walked back through the October twilight to the old house
which was to know him no more.
Archie went and put on his brother’s gray uniform, from which the
officer’s insignia of rank had been cut. Before the main door stood
Richard Tremaine’s horse, saddled and bridled and accoutered, and
another horse for Peter. When he came out upon the porch, Mrs. Tremaine
took Archie in her arms and, kissing him, said:
“Take your brother’s place, and be worthy of him and of your father.”
“I will, mother,” answered the boy, weeping, while he kissed her.
Colonel Tremaine, placing his hands upon Archie’s uncovered head, said
to him: “You are our Benjamin, but we give you willingly. Remember,
boy, that your mother and I shall require a good account of you.”
“You shall have it, father,” replied Archie, drawing himself up and
looking a man, not a boy. But suddenly he became a boy again, and,
throwing his arms around his father’s neck, kissed Colonel Tremaine’s
furrowed cheek, saying: “I will do my best, father. I am not as clever
as Richard, and can’t be an officer like him, but I can fight, aye,
and die, too, as bravely as he.” Then he went up to Angela, and, again
remembering that he was now a man and a soldier, took the initiative
in a way he had never done before. “Good-by, Angela,” he said, kissing
her, “and when you write to Neville give him my love. Tell him,
although we are fighting on different sides, he is just as much my
brother as Richard was. I haven’t said anything about him, but I think
of Neville every day and love him just as much as I did my brother
Richard, and I believe he is as brave and true a man as Richard was.”
The boy, as he spoke, looked fearlessly into the eyes of his parents.
He had never before dared to speak Neville’s name in their presence,
but now, being a man, he spoke like a man. At his words Colonel and
Mrs. Tremaine grew deeply agitated. They had reckoned their eldest-born
a traitor and false to his honor; but this boy, the youngest of all
their household, looking at things with clear young eyes, reckoned
Neville a true man. And Angela replied steadily:
“Dear Archie, I shall tell Neville so. He loves you and everybody at
Harrowby, and he is where he thinks his duty calls him.”
There was something strange and piteous in these two young creatures
daring to touch this family tragedy. It staggered Colonel and Mrs.
Tremaine, already trembling under the heavy hand of calamity. Their
anxious eyes sought each other as if asking, “Have we done wrong in
casting out our son from our hearts?”
Then Aunt Tulip spoke:
“Mist’iss,” she said solemnly, “’tain’t right fer you an’ ole Marse
not to forgive dat chile. He allers wuz as good a boy as any on ’em,
an’ ain’t never give you an’ ole Marse a minute’s trouble ’twell he
went wid de No’th. Ef he mar an’ par done fergit him, mammy ain’. I got
six pya’r o’ yarn socks fer him. Ev’y time I knit a pya’r o’ socks fer
Marse Richard I knit a pya’r fer Marse Neville an’ lay ’em away in my
chist, an’ I gwine sen’ ’em to him some day, an’ I ain’ feered to say
so.”
Neville’s hold was strong upon the children and the negroes, and when
they, forgetting subordination, mentioned his forbidden name with love
and recollections, the father and mother were overborne.
Up to this time not one word had been spoken concerning Angela’s
departure, but the mention of it could no longer be delayed.
“Aunt Sophia,” said Angela, “I have had a message which takes me to
Neville. Captain Isabey brought it, and he will have charge of me until
I am within the Federal lines.”
In the agitation and excitement of that terrible day, no one had
thought to ask the reason of Isabey’s presence at Harrowby, which
Angela thus explained.
“You will see my son soon?” asked Mrs. Tremaine, tremulously. “Thank
God! Then you can tell him--” Mrs. Tremaine hesitated, and Angela,
knowing what she would have said, supplied it:
“I shall tell him that you and Uncle Tremaine forgive him and love him.
I hope to see Neville at latest in two days, as Captain Isabey says
that we must start at once--to-night.”
Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine, having had forgiveness wrung from them
for their eldest son, seemed to feel a strange anxiety that this
forgiveness should reach Neville quickly, and Colonel Tremaine said:
“As soon as Archie is out of sight we must prepare for your departure,
Angela, my love.”
Archie, who had listened silently to all that had passed, did not
trust himself for another farewell, and, running down the steps, flung
himself on his horse and galloped off, Peter riding after him.
The group on the porch watched his boyish figure in the obscure
twilight as his horse clattered down the cedar lane and disappeared
in the dusk of the woods at the end; then, with that singular energy
which sometimes possesses people when the seal has been placed upon a
tragedy, they all turned to think of Angela’s affairs. Captain Isabey
briefly explained to Colonel Tremaine that he had been deputed to
escort Angela within the lines and to arrange for her as best he could
afterwards. It was known that Neville was within fifty miles of the
Federal lines, and Angela would have no difficulty in reaching him
under proper escort.
A glimmer of the truth penetrated Colonel Tremaine’s mind, and was
followed by a complete illumination--Angela was a suspect, but was
innocent, as innocent as the day when, a wailing infant, she was
brought to Harrowby in Mrs. Tremaine’s arms.
“You will make an early start in the morning, I suppose,” said Colonel
Tremaine to Isabey.
“We must start at once; my time is short,” replied Isabey. “Mrs.
Neville Tremaine is a good rider and will not mind the twenty miles
from here to the Federal lines. It is not yet six o’clock and we should
reach the lines to-night. My directions admit no delay.”
Colonel Tremaine, having been a soldier himself, understood the need
for haste. Mrs. Tremaine made no objection. She would not have delayed
Angela one single hour in carrying that message of forgiveness to
Neville and was secretly eager for her to start. Isabey, who had the
art of seducing reason, and was at all times a powerful advocate, made
light of the twenty-mile ride by moonlight, and mentioned one practical
consideration, that the weather was mild and the roads dry, while a
delay of twelve hours, even if it were possible, might mean, at that
season of the year, a journey in bad weather.
Mrs. Tremaine went to Angela’s room to assist her in putting up the few
articles she could carry in her portmanteau. Angela, already dressed
in her riding habit, sat before her dressing table, her long fair
hair being plaited down her back, as when she was a little girl, by
Mammy Tulip, for no hairpins could hold that mass of hair during a
twenty-mile ride. Mrs. Tremaine was perfectly calm. She had received a
mortal blow, as mothers do when called to give up a child, but she had,
in a way, recovered the son until then lost to her. She spoke tenderly
of Neville, sending him messages, and, sitting at Angela’s table, wrote
him a few lines eloquent with a mother’s love.
“It seems to me,” said Angela, with tender superstition, as Mrs.
Tremaine handed her the letter to Neville, “that Richard’s spirit must
have spoken for Neville, and since I must be the bearer of such heavy
grief to Neville as Richard’s death will be, isn’t it good of God that
I should, at the same time, be able to tell him that you and his father
forgive him and love him?”
“God is ever good,” replied Mrs. Tremaine. She had a deep and
consistent piety, which had never, until the breaking out of the war,
had any real test, but it sufficed her when the moment came in which
all faith, all love, is tested.
Madame Isabey and Adrienne had kept to themselves that day, except for
joining the funeral procession to Richard’s grave. They rightly judged
that there was little room for strangers in those heartbreaking hours,
and although their sympathy was deep with those under whose roof they
lived, they lacked the means and even the language in which to express
it. Angela went to their rooms to bid them farewell. Madame Isabey,
whose heart was deeply sympathetic, kissed her and wept over her.
Adrienne could not remain unshaken by those tragic and fateful hours
which had seen two sons taken from Harrowby, one by death and one by
war, and another restored, at least in affection.
For the first time in their lives Angela and Adrienne kissed each
other. Adrienne had scarcely spoken a word to Isabey during that whole
sad day. It was to her as if she saw his shade and not the real man
moving about, helpful to others, forgetful of his own grief, and only
remotely conscious of Adrienne’s presence. From her window, as the moon
rose, she saw Angela and Isabey mount and ride away. The deep blue
heavens were gloriously starred, while a faint rosy glow still lingered
on the western edge of the world.
Lyddon, who had been more moved and agitated that day than ever in his
life before, shut himself up in the old study. As he sat in the great
worn leather chair all the scenes which had passed in that old room
returned to him and the flight of time was like a dream in the night.
He recalled Angela in her white frock climbing up on his knee and, when
he would have turned away from her, thrusting the odd volume of the
“Odyssey” in his face and asking him in a wailing, babyish voice: “Do,
pray, Mr. Lyddon, read me something out of this nice old book.” How
childishly clever it was of her to find out that the “Odyssey” was the
spell through which she was to conjure him! And she was gone, perhaps
never to return. Then Archie, but yesterday a lad and now a man, was
gone to take his place upon the firing line. Neville was Lyddon’s
first pupil at Harrowby, a handsome, gentle, silent stripling, fond
of reading and fonder still of mathematics, which he mastered with a
marvelous ease and precision that delighted Lyddon. And Richard, the
most brilliant of them all, his character as admirable as his mind, his
superiority affectionately proclaimed by Neville and laughingly denied
by Richard. Never were there two brothers’ souls more closely knit
together. And the pride and joy of Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine in their
children, for Angela was a child to them, had always seemed to Lyddon
one of the most beautiful things in existence. Into this exquisite
family life had come in the twinkling of an eye a dissension and
division, a separation, the most frightful that could be imagined--as
much worse than death as disgrace is worse than death. To-day only had
that great gaping wound been healed. It did not seem fanciful to Lyddon
that Richard Tremaine, lying stark in his new-made grave under the
bare branches of the weeping willows which made dappled shadows in the
moonlight, should in the far-off land of spirits know of this healed
wound. It seemed to Lyddon as if Richard’s life were like a broken
melody, and at the thought he groaned aloud. Presently he took down a
battered volume and read from it those words of Sir Walter Raleigh: “O
eloquent and mighty Death! Whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded;
what none have dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath
flattered, thou hast cast out of the world and despised. Thou hast
drawn together all the far scattered greatness, all the pride, cruelty,
and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow
words: ‘_Hic jacet_.’”
Everything in the room seemed to speak Richard’s name to Lyddon, to cry
aloud his virtues, his gifts, his graces, and Lyddon, to escape from
them, flung out of doors.
The moon shone in pale splendor over the autumn woods and the river was
a sheet of silver. Lyddon, looking toward the garden, saw Adrienne’s
slender black figure pacing up and down the Ladies’ Walk under the
black shadows of the yew hedge. It suddenly came to him that this woman
was suffering a sort of death in life--the death of love and hope. He
had seen long ago how things were with Adrienne and with Isabey as
plainly as he had read what was passing in Angela’s soul, for Lyddon
was acute and it is impossible for people who live under the same roof
to successfully practice disguises one to another. Adrienne was young,
had far more of positive beauty than Angela, had grace and splendid
accomplishments and wealth, which gave her leisure to think over all
she had not. Her first marriage had been loveless and childless and
Lyddon felt sure she would never make another. There was in her life
none of those stupendous griefs, shocks, alienations, and losses which
had shaken the family at Harrowby; but there was a silent, aching
disappointment, an aridity which had become her portion at the time
when most women know the joy of living and which would be hers through
all time. In the midst of his own desolation Lyddon felt pity for
Adrienne, and joining her the two walked together up and down the
flagged walk. He talked to her of Richard, and she listened to him with
a sympathy which was touching and consoling. But through all her words
rang a note of patience without hope of joy.
“Death is not the worst of evils,” she said, with perfect sincerity.
“For one who has suffered, life merely as life is nothing. If one can
work and can be happy and can give happiness in return, that alone is
living. We grieve, not because Richard Tremaine is dead, but because so
much that he might have done remains undone.”
Lyddon, whose agitation was deep, found himself calmed and even a
little comforted by Adrienne.
After an hour they saw candles gleaming through the library window and
knew it was time to go within. As they turned toward the house Adrienne
said suddenly:
“They must be well on their way by this time. They will grow more
intimate in these few hours than in half an ordinary lifetime. The tie
established between them will be very strong.”
Lyddon knew, although she spoke no name, that she referred to Isabey
and Angela.
“Quite true,” he said briefly; “but the tie was strong between them
long ago.” And then, realizing that, like Adrienne, he had said what he
never meant to utter, he stopped aghast and spoke no more until he was
assisting Adrienne up the steps. Then he added: “Luckily, both of them
have remarkable self-control. It is not enough in these fateful cases
merely to have a high sense of honor. Some of the wildest and most
unfortunate things on earth are done by people who have honor but no
discretion. Those two, however, have both honor and discretion.”
“You are right,” was Adrienne’s response.
They went together into the library, where the few remaining servants
were now collecting for family prayers.
The stand, with the open Bible on it and two wax candles in silver
candlesticks, was in its usual place, and in a moment the door opened
and Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine entered and took their accustomed seats.
Colonel Tremaine, in an unshaken voice, read from the Gospels, and Mrs.
Tremaine made the usual prayer for all under the roof of Harrowby, and
then uttered another prayer which had not passed her lips since the
April night, eighteen months before, when Neville Tremaine had been
ordered from his father’s roof, an outcast:
“We ask Thy mercy and guidance for the sons of this house, Neville and
Archibald.”
CHAPTER XXII
LOVE AND LIFE
At the same hour of the night Angela and Isabey were riding steadily
along the moonlit open road toward the Federal lines. The flat and
peaceful country was bare with the bareness of autumn and the wind
rustled over the broad fields of stubble and through the melancholy
woods. There was little evidence of the warfare which was raging only
a short distance away. The homesteads were silent and dark; there were
not many lights kept burning in those troublous times.
As Isabey and Angela rode along the highway through a world all white
moonlight and black shadows, they spoke little. Whenever Isabey looked
at her he noticed that there were tears on her cheeks, which she
brushed away with her little gloved hand. When they were an hour from
Harrowby they entered a great stretch of sandy road through which
they walked their horses. Isabey, knowing it would relieve Angela’s
overflowing heart to speak of Richard Tremaine, encouraged her to do
so, and they talked of the dead man. Isabey told of their student life
together, both in Virginia and in Paris.
“I have no other friend like Tremaine,” he said. “It seems to me that
among all who loved him there is no one who can quite fill Richard’s
place. Mr. Lyddon told me to-day that Richard was an unforgettable man.
I replied that he was an unforgettable friend.”
“But he is gone,” cried Angela, who had never seen death before, and
who knew for the first time the strangeness which comes with the
absence of the beloved. “He will never come into the study any more and
sit in the great chair opposite Mr. Lyddon and talk with him on deep
and profound things. His father will never again have Richard’s arm
to lean upon when he walks up and down the hall in the twilight. They
often did that together. And his mother will never again have him at
her side when she makes the prayer at night. Richard always sat on her
left and Neville on her right. Archie sat by Uncle Tremaine, because he
was such a restless little boy. Everybody--Mr. Lyddon, Uncle Tremaine,
and Aunt Sophia--thought Richard more brilliant than Neville, although
his mother certainly loved Neville best. But now all love and pride is
turned into anguish. I have been asking myself ever since I knew that
Richard was gone, ‘Where is he now? How far has he fared? Does he know
how broken-hearted we are?’”
“Ah,” replied Isabey, putting his hand upon the pommel of Angela’s
saddle, “you have got hold of that great question, ‘Whence goes the
soul?’ Every thinking human being traverses this problem; you will not
be able to escape from it. You will turn it over and over and read the
thoughts of many minds concerning it. After all, soldiers and saints
take the same view of this great matter. We do our duty, expecting to
render an account to the Great Commander. We know no more and it is
certain we can do no more.”
Isabey smiled a little at his brief preachment to Angela, but she was
so young and had read so few pages in the book of life that in many
ways she was a child in her questioning.
“I never talked with anyone about this,” she said. “It seemed to
me always as if it was impossible that anything could separate us
at Harrowby. Yet you see what has come--a frightful separation for
Neville, and Richard gone we know not where or how or even why.”
Both fell silent and remained so for a long time.
They had left Harrowby before seven o’clock and Isabey had thought they
would be able to make the whole distance, including an hour’s rest for
the horses, before midnight. But when at nine o’clock they had still
half the distance before them, he noticed how pale and tired Angela
looked. They stopped their horses to drink of a little brook that ran
silvery in the moonlight and then rippled darkling under a rude bridge
and into a thicket beyond where the autumn leaves still hung withered
upon the overhanging branches. Beyond lay a belt of pine woods, and
when they came to a little clear space within it Isabey said: “Here is
a spot where you may rest in safety and unseen. You can scarcely sit
your horse.”
“It is true,” replied Angela, wearily.
Isabey’s horse picked his way, followed by Angela’s, under the odorous
feathery branches of the pine trees where the ground was softly
carpeted with brown pine needles. When they were out of sight of the
road and well in the heart of the woods, Isabey dismounted and took
Angela from her horse. Her young strength had given out and she was so
fatigued that she sank, rather than sat, upon a fallen tree. Isabey
quickly tied the horses and unsaddled them; then with the saddles and
blankets he made a kind of rude couch for Angela. She lay down upon it,
and Isabey, after arranging her, began to walk up and down among the
tree trunks close by.
“Don’t leave me,” Angela called softly, in a voice like a frightened
child.
“I shan’t leave you,” replied Isabey, coming back and standing before
her, “nor even take my eyes off you. Hear the horses blowing and
snorting. Listen to them a little while. They are exactly like tired
human creatures in their complaining.”
“And I can listen also to the water under the bridge. Hear it as it
ripples past.” Angela listened a while, about five minutes, and then
Isabey, coming up softly to her again, found that the little stream to
which she had listened had become the river of forgetfulness and she
had fallen into a sudden sweet sleep.
The air was sharp, and Isabey, taking off his military cape, wrapped
it around her. Angela was so worn out with the fatigues and agitations
of the day that she slept as soundly as if she were in her own great
four-posted bed at Harrowby. Isabey, sitting on the fallen tree trunk,
kept watch over her. There were still tears upon her cheeks, and,
taking out his white handkerchief, he gently wiped them away without
waking her. Her face was pale at first, but as she felt the warmth of
the cape the blood returned to her cheeks, which in a little while
were overspread with a rosy glow like that of a sleeping child. Her
long braided hair had become loosened, and Isabey, lifting it gently
from where it had fallen against a half-bare bush, carefully disengaged
it. The silky locks fell over his hands, and he held them in his clasp
for a minute or two, then involuntarily pressed his lips upon them and
laid them upon Angela’s breast, covered with his cloak.
It seemed to Isabey the most solemn hour of his life when he found
himself alone with Angela in the darkness of the heart of the forest.
It was as if a kindly fate had given him this last farewell. He never
expected, or even desired, to see her as Neville Tremaine’s wife. He
could not disguise from himself what Angela, in her simplicity, had
not been able to disguise from him--that her soul answered to his as
the echo answers to the voice and a lake reflects the sky. She was so
little sophisticated, so frank, so fearless, that she betrayed herself
in every word and glance to his practiced eye. But not to others did
she betray herself. Though innocent she was not ignorant, and Isabey
felt a lofty pride in the same discretion of which Lyddon had spoken.
He remembered with a smile how she always brought in Neville’s name, as
if it were a talisman, when they found themselves on dangerous ground.
Isabey himself had been enough on his guard to escape a rebuff from
her or even a rebuking glance. He could look Neville Tremaine in the
eye without fear or reproach. Then, not being a man to dwell wholly
upon his own sufferings, his mind turned to Richard Tremaine. Ah,
there again was loss without repair! In war men grow not only familiar
with but contemptuous of death. Isabey had, however, but one Richard
Tremaine to lose, and when he remembered this he stopped in his halting
and stealthy walk up and down upon the pine needles and felt as if
a bolt had entered his heart. It was not meant, he thought, that he
should ever have wife or friend.
At ten o’clock, when he intended to rouse Angela, he went close to her
and found her sleeping so soundly he had not the heart to waken her.
It would, perhaps, be just as well if they reached the lines at six
o’clock in the morning. That would still give him time to return within
twenty-four hours.
The moon, hanging high in the heavens, increased in radiance, but only
here and there a patch of moonlight penetrated the plumelike branches
of the pine trees. The night grew suddenly cold and Isabey was forced
to quicken his noiseless walk. But Angela slept warmly and sweetly.
How very pretty she was, Isabey thought, in her irregular, piquant
way. She did not resemble any person or any picture that he had ever
seen. Her beauty was illusive, so dependent upon her mood that it was
difficult to reproduce. Isabey had tried often to sketch her, but he
had always thrown away the sketches in disgust. They were like Angela
and yet unlike her, having little beauty of any kind. Her charm was
one which could not be transferred through any medium whatever. Isabey
had never rated her actual beauty highly nor had it even impressed his
greatly; but when he considered her extraordinary power to interest,
to charm, to claim love as her heritage, he realized that she was one
of those women whom age could not wither nor custom stale. At first his
thoughts, his feelings, his griefs, and disappointments were fierce
and tempestuous, but as the night wore on he grew composed and even
resigned. He would take as a soldier meets death this coming blow of a
parting with Angela--take it quietly and unflinchingly and not degrade
himself by making a useless outcry against fate or fortune.
The moon grew wan and dropped out of sight and the pallid stars
heralded daybreak; it was that unearthly hour which is neither
night nor morning, when there is neither daylight nor moonlight nor
starlight, when Isabey, drawn against his will toward Angela, sat near
her and leaned over.
Suddenly she quietly opened her eyes and looked, wide awake, into his.
The hour, the place, the time, the circumstances, were such as to give
each insight into the soul of the other, and Angela saw farewell in
Isabey’s eyes. After a moment or two she spoke involuntarily, still
looking into his face: “This is the last time we shall see each other.”
She spoke softly, quietly, as if she were in a dream.
“Yes,” replied Isabey, in the same calm voice in which Angela had
spoken, “this is the last time.”
They sat quite still a minute longer, exchanging that unspoken but
intelligible language which both understood perfectly. Then Angela,
rising, held out her hand to Isabey. “Come,” she said, “we must go.”
Isabey rose, too, and they stood looking around them at the gloomy pine
trees in the faint cold light which was not light or darkness, as if
seeking to impress the spot forever upon their memories. Angela noticed
Isabey’s cloak lying at her feet, and she picked it up, saying: “You
wrapped me in your cloak; you shouldn’t have done it. But perhaps that
is why I slept in warmth and peace. I never had a sweeter sleep in my
life. I had no dream, but two or three times I was near waking, and
then I knew I was being watched over, and that made me feel so safe and
at peace, and I dropped asleep again.”
Isabey, without a word, took up the blankets, and, going to the horses,
arranged the saddles; then, lifting Angela on her horse, himself
mounted and made his way, Angela following, back through the thicket
into the straight white road beyond. Isabey looked at his watch. It was
after four o’clock in the morning. The pale gray sky was touched by the
coming dawn and a fresh wind rushed in from the sea, bringing with it a
faint mist, as cloudlike as elfland, which lay over the far-stretching
flat country. The horses, feeling the cold, were restless and struck
a sharp gait. They were not checked. Both Isabey and Angela had the
desire, having said farewell to each other, to flee from the place of
parting. They rode rapidly, without speaking to each other, except an
occasional word referring to their journeying. The wind of dawning rose
and swept away the mists and cleared the sky of clouds. All at once
the earth and the heavens were steeped in glory and the sunrise of a
new day was at hand. Isabey and Angela could see before them a long
line of breastworks and a white city of tents, and in the center a
great flagstaff up which a flag was climbing and then was flung to the
breeze with the sound of trumpets calling to one another.
Beyond the camp a great, broad, blue, rapid river flowed, and on the
opposite shore, which rose abruptly in cliffs, was another huge camp
gleaming whitely in the new-risen sun.
As they drew near the breastworks Isabey looked at Angela. She was very
pale, but she sat her horse well.
Isabey pulled up his horse. One more hateful thing remained to be
done--the delivery of General Farrington’s letter to Angela.
“I have a letter to give from General Farrington,” said Isabey gently.
“I need not say that nothing could induce me to give you such a letter
except the compulsion which is laid upon a soldier.”
He took the letter from his breast pocket and handed it to Angela, who
opened and glanced at it, her face lighting up with anger and scorn as
she read. Then, tearing the letter in half, she threw it violently from
her and, turning to Isabey, said in a trembling voice: “I feel sorry
that you should have been forced to give me such a letter. I know what
it must have cost you.”
“Thank you for saying so,” replied Isabey. “And let me speak one more
word. I would ask you not to say anything to Neville concerning the
reasons for your departure from Harrowby. It would give him deep and
unnecessary pain. Forgive me for mentioning this.”
In the storm and stress of the last twenty-four hours the thought had
vanished from Angela’s mind. All at once it returned to her--that
she was being driven away from the place of her birth and rearing by
hatred and a persecuting suspicion. It roused in her soul a tempest of
resentment and brought the beautiful angry blood to her cheeks.
“You need not ask my forgiveness,” she replied; “it is most thoughtful
to remind me, for otherwise I might have told Neville and it would
have been another pang for him, who has suffered so much. There are,
however, a few persons in the world who could never believe me guilty
of wrongdoing; Neville is one of them. No one who knows Neville will
ever dare to say one word against me where he can hear of it. I shall
always have the refuge of his love and confidence.”
Angela felt at that moment glad that she was on her way to Neville. She
had ever fled to him in all her childish griefs and sorrows, and now,
when the whole universe appeared changed to her, when she was brought
face to face on the one hand with hate and obloquy and on the other
with an unspoken love and all its mysteries and perplexities, it seemed
as if she had but one refuge, Neville Tremaine’s honest and tender
heart. Isabey, acute by nature and made more so by the prescience of
love, seeing on Angela’s part this turning to Neville, thought to
himself, “It is better so. This may be the beginning of love,” and then
was stabbed to the heart by his own thoughts. Only yesterday Angela had
been among the butterflies in the sun, and to-day she seemed like some
beautiful flowering plant cast upon the ocean. For so the great outside
world appeared to Angela.
When they came in sight of the sentry, Isabey, tying his white
handkerchief to the point of his saber, rode up and asked to see
the officer of the guard. He quickly appeared, a well-meaning,
mild-mannered young man who had recently exchanged the ferule of a
country schoolmaster for the sword of an officer. He looked keenly,
with unsophisticated admiration, at Angela, and, with the careless ease
of the volunteer, offered to pass Isabey and Angela to the tent of the
commanding officer.
When they reached, under this escort, the headquarters tent, the
commanding officer was standing before it. He was a gray-mustached
veteran who had been through the Florida wars, the Mexican War, and
that eternal warfare with the Indians on the frontier. The unexpected
presence of a lady did not disconcert him in the least. He had escorted
officers’ wives across the continent when every man in the escort had
been ordered to reserve a bullet for the ladies in case the party
should be overpowered by the Indians. He had himself taken his young
wife to a frontier post where she was the only woman among five hundred
men, and he secretly thought the ladies of the present day rather
wanting in the spirit of those fearless women of forty years before.
Isabey introduced himself and then made the necessary explanations with
tact and briefness. The old general’s bearing was courtesy itself, and
with his expert knowledge of military and social etiquette which was a
part of his training everything went smoothly.
“I have the pleasure of knowing your husband, madam,” he said, with
old-fashioned grace, to Angela. “I was once his instructor at the
Military Academy. His command is, I judge, about forty miles from
here and I can readily communicate with him by military telegraph.
If Captain Isabey will allow me to take charge of you, I can have you
conveyed, under proper escort, to Captain Tremaine--or is it Major
Tremaine? Promotion is rapid in these days.”
“He is still Captain Tremaine,” replied Angela, a slight blush coming
into her face. There had been no promotion for Neville, and Angela well
knew why.
Nothing remained for Isabey to do. He had been directed to place Mrs.
Neville Tremaine in safe hands and he felt that he had done so when he
put her in charge of the chivalrous old general. Then came the formal
farewell, which each wished to make brief--their real farewell had been
said the dawn before under the whispering pines.
Angela put her hand in Isabey’s and, with a smile both of the lips and
eyes, said: “I thank you more than I can say, and I also thank you in
Nev--in Captain Tremaine’s name. He will express his gratitude to you
himself and far better than I can.”
“It is nothing,” responded Isabey, calmly and gracefully. “I shall
always be happy to do a service to any of the Tremaine family, and
particularly to Captain Tremaine, whom I consider only a little farther
off as a friend than Richard Tremaine. When I recall all your kindness
to me at the time that I was wounded, I feel that I can never do enough
to show my appreciation of it. Pray remember me to Neville Tremaine.
Adieu--or good-by, as you say.”
“Good-by,” replied Angela, gently pressing his hand. And in another
moment he was gone.
Then the general, with antique courtesy, himself showed Angela
into a compartment of the headquarters tent which he desired her to
consider her own until she should depart to join her husband. It held
a small iron bed and some boxes which did duty for a toilet table and
washstand. The general apologized to Angela for the plainness of her
surroundings, but reminded her that she was a soldier’s wife and must
not mind trifles.
Then, the general leaving her, an orderly brought in Angela’s
portmanteau and she exchanged her riding habit for a conventional
costume, and combed and plaited her long, fair hair. In half an hour
the orderly, who was deputed to be Angela’s lady’s maid, informed her
that the general sent his compliments and begged the honor and pleasure
of her company at breakfast with him alone. Angela went into the outer
tent, where she found a small table laid for two and the gallant old
general waiting to receive her.
“Everything is arranged, my dear madam,” he said, as they seated
themselves. “I have secured a conveyance for you, not very stylish,
perhaps, but it will do--a small carriage and a pair of army mules,
with a soldier-driver. Your escort will be Lieutenant Farley, a nephew
of mine. I think it fair to tell you what, of course, I could not
mention before Captain Isabey, that your husband’s command is on the
march, and there is fighting going on. But, nevertheless, there is a
point at which you can intercept Captain Tremaine about thirty miles
from here and can, at least, have a brief interview.”
“Thank you,” replied Angela. “As you say, I am a soldier’s wife and so
must learn to bear a little hardship in order to see my husband, even
for a short time. Then he will decide what I shall do.”
Nothing could exceed the delicacy, tact, and thoughtfulness of the old
officer. He told Angela that she could send a dispatch by military
telegraph to Neville which would reach him within a few hours and
prepare him for her arrival. Angela thanked him again and felt as
if she had found a second Colonel Tremaine in this gray-mustached,
soft-voiced general. She began to speak with the frankness of an
unsophisticated nature of Neville Tremaine and his action in remaining
in the United States army. The general listened with the utmost
suavity, but made no comment. Angela had expected high commendation
from him for Neville, but instead was merely this smooth courtesy,
an attitude gracefully sympathetic but wholly noncommittal. Against
Neville Tremaine was an iron wall of prejudice which Angela’s soft
hands could not batter down. Some intuitive knowledge of this forced
itself upon her mind and cut her to the heart. The unspoken enmity of
his own people against Neville was easier than this secret distrust on
the part of those to whom Neville gave his service from the deepest
principle of conscience. This thought aroused something of the pride
and sensitiveness of wifehood in Angela. She changed from the attitude
of a young girl to that of a self-possessed woman, and told the
general, with the coolness and composure of twice her age, of the
obloquy visited upon Neville among his own people, “which,” she said,
with dignity and even stateliness, “is most undeserved. My husband lost
his inheritance; for that he does not grieve, but the disapproval of
his father and mother and of all those dear to him, except myself, is
very hard to bear. His brother Richard, who was killed only six days
ago, understood my husband better than anyone, and there was never any
breach between them. Richard Tremaine knew that only the strongest
conviction of his duty would keep his brother in your army.”
To this the general bowed again politely and sympathetically, but said
no word. Suspicion, that impalpable poison, that nameless destroyer,
had gone forth against Neville Tremaine and was withering him.
All at once the general’s kindness and hospitality grew irksome to
Angela. She asked when she could leave, and the general, who had been
all courtesy, felt that his guest wished to depart. He told her that a
boat was at her command, and the carriage would be waiting on the other
side. Then the general escorted her to the dock, his orderly carrying
her portmanteau, and there the young lieutenant, the general’s nephew,
who was to take charge of her for the next twenty-four hours, met them.
The general introduced him. He was a pink-and-white boy who had left
Harvard, where he had luxuriated on a large allowance, in order to
become a soldier. The general had no mind to trust Angela with any man
not of her own class in life, and had selected the greatest coxcomb,
who was also one of the bravest of his youngsters, to escort her.
Nothing could have pleased Farley better. He knew more of drawing-rooms
than of camps, and was delighted to figure as the guardian of anything
so charming as this young girl who was already a matron. The general,
assuming himself to be the obliged party and thanking Angela for the
privilege of serving her, put her into the boat in which the river was
crossed. On the other side was a rickety carriage drawn by a couple of
stout mules.
Farley took his seat by the side of the soldier who drove. The
coachman’s seat was on the same level as those within, and the roof of
the carriage overhung it. Farley had fully expected to be asked to take
a place within, but Angela totally forgot to ask him.
It was close upon ten o’clock when the carriage started off, and soon,
clearing the camp, passed through a flat green country, interspersed
with woods, along a road which had been cut up by artillery and
commissary wagons. The morning was beautifully fair and bright, and
Angela, leaning back in the carriage, had the feeling that she was
beginning a new volume of life. That other volume, which had begun with
her childhood as bright and fair as the morning, and had closed in
blood and tears and agony, was now locked and laid away forever.
A new perplexity occurred to her. If Neville had not heard of Richard’s
death, should she tell him? She was too inexperienced to know what was
judicious, but some instinct of the heart told her that the little time
she could spend with Neville, that one hour of brightness in his life
of undeserved hardship, should not be marred in any way. If he did not
know of Richard’s death already, he would learn it soon enough.
Thinking these thoughts, Angela, grave and preoccupied, with downcast
eyes, sat back in the corner of the carriage and took no note of
whither she went or how.
Farley had supposed that it was pure bashfulness which kept Mrs.
Neville Tremaine from inviting him to sit in the carriage with her, but
as they jolted steadily along the heavy road and the morning grew into
noon, and Angela was obviously unconscious of his existence, he began
to feel himself a much-injured man. He glanced back at her occasionally
and did not see her once look up, and, like most men, every time he
looked at her he thought her nearer to beauty. But she was no nearer to
conversation. Farley would have dearly liked to find out if her talk
were as interesting as her appearance, but she gave him no opportunity
of judging.
At sunset they reached a farmhouse where it had been arranged that
Angela should spend the night. It was a homely, tumble-down place, and
the mistress of it, Sarah Brown, a little withered, bloodless creature,
had clung to it, although it lay in the debatable ground between
contending armies. Sarah always ran away whenever a shot was fired, but
invariably trudged back to work and tremble and palpitate until her
fears drove her off again. She welcomed Angela with a kind of furtive
pleasure, she whose guests were usually embattled men, and showed her a
little plain room up a rickety flight of stairs where Angela might rest
for the night.
Farley thought it certain that he would meet Angela at supper, which
was served by Sarah in the kitchen. Angela, however, sent a polite
message asking to be excused from coming down and her supper was served
in her own little room.
Farley, reduced to his own society, soon went to his sleeping place,
which was on the floor of the “settin’ room.”
The next morning dawned mild and bright, and at eight o’clock the mules
were harnessed and the carriage was ready to start. Again was Farley
disappointed; he only saw Angela as she came tripping down the narrow
stair and bade him good morning.
She thanked Sarah Brown cordially, and, not daring to offer money for
her accommodation, took off a little gold brooch she wore, one of her
few ornaments, and handed it to Sarah. It was received in speechless
gratitude and admiration. Then Angela, smiling at Farley but without
seeing him, took her seat in the carriage. Farley by this time was
thoroughly exasperated with her for her want of appreciation of his
society, and he concluded that the surest punishment would be to leave
her to herself.
They drove on steadily through the same flat country, but around
them were evidences of fighting, past and to come. There were dreary
piles of brick, showing where humble houses had been destroyed by the
fortunes of war. The fences were all gone and gates had ceased to
exist. The people in the few homesteads they passed kept within doors
and the whole scene was one of desolation.
Presently, however, the stillness of the autumn day was broken by
ominous sounds. Afar off could be heard the dull thunder made by the
movement of troops, and about midday the highroad was suddenly blocked
by artillery wagons. For the first time Angela roused herself and
asked Farley, with interest, what it meant.
“Fighting, madam,” he replied promptly and expecting Angela’s face to
grow pale. On the contrary, she showed no tremor whatever and only said:
“I hope it will not interfere with my seeing Captain Tremaine, if only
for an hour.”
“I don’t think it will,” responded Farley. “This movement on the part
of the enemy is not entirely unexpected and we knew that Captain
Tremaine’s regiment would be on the march.”
Angela said no more and the carriage jolted on. The shadows were
growing long when the carriage, drawing up on the side of a wide road
leading through a belt of woods, stopped, and Farley, opening the door
and standing, cap in hand, said stiffly to Angela: “This is the point,
Mrs. Tremaine, where we are instructed to wait. Captain Tremaine’s
regiment will pass within a mile of us in half an hour and he will be
on the lookout for us.”
“Thank you,” Angela responded sweetly, and, accepting Farley’s
proffered hand, she descended from the carriage. “I think,” she said,
“I will walk a little way into the woods; but I shall keep within sight
of the road, so Captain Tremaine will see me as soon as he arrives.”
Farley, whose instructions were to remain with Angela and to place
himself at Neville Tremaine’s disposal, stood discontentedly watching
her as she walked daintily through the thicket, and he thought her one
of the most ungrateful women that ever lived.
When a little out of sight of the road Angela looked about her. It
might have been the same spot in which she had taken her real farewell
of Isabey--the same dark overhanging pine trees, their resonant aroma
filling the air, and the same slippery carpet of brown pine needles
lay under her feet. Angela, hitherto so calm, began to feel a strange
agitation. Neville Tremaine had been so much a part of her life since
her babyhood that she had never had any right conception of him as her
husband, but now all was changed. Her whole life was cast behind her
and Neville was her only refuge and her sole possession.
She wished, however, to forget all the past and set about resolutely at
forgetting. She had put Isabey out of her mind so far as she could, but
it is quite possible to throttle a thought and yet hear it breathing
in one’s ear. So it was with Angela. She fixed her consciousness upon
Neville Tremaine, but her subconsciousness was with Isabey. One thing
was certain: she could ever count upon Neville Tremaine’s tenderness,
chivalry, and unshakable kindness.
As she walked up and down with her own peculiar and airy grace, she
kept her eyes fixed on the open roadway. A mile off she could hear
distinctly the clanking of ammunition wagons, the steady tramp of
thousands of feet, the dull beating of the earth by horses’ hoofs.
Ten minutes had passed when she saw a horseman coming at a hard gallop
along the woodland road. It was Neville Tremaine. In a minute or two
he reached the carriage and flung himself off his horse. Farley spoke
a word to him. Throwing his bridle toward the soldier-driver, Neville
made straight through the thicket to where Angela stood. Angela felt
herself taken in his strong arms and his mustached lips against hers.
She clung to him, and it seemed to her as if it were Neville and
yet not Neville. Only one thing was unmistakable: the old sense of
well-being and protection when he was near came sweetly back to her.
But of all else that passed in those first few minutes she scarcely
knew, except that Neville held her to his strong beating heart and told
her how dear she was to him.
Then he put her off a little way and gazed at her with tender
admiration. Angela saw the great changes made in Neville by time and
war. He looked much older and his naturally dark skin had grown darker
with tan and sunburn. She could see, where his cap was raised a little
from his brow, the whiteness of his forehead contrasted with the
brownness of his face. He was campaigning, but otherwise there was the
same immaculateness about him--neatly shaven, smartly uniformed, his
accoutrement shining, all the marks of the trained officer.
As for Neville, his admiration for Angela burst from him as he looked
at her. “Dearest,” he said, holding both her hands, “you have become
beautiful. You are a woman now and not a child. You have grown up since
that night on the wharf at Harrowby.”
“I have gone through that which makes a girl into a woman,” replied
Angela, softly. “Until two nights ago I had every night at family
prayers to hear every name called except yours, but I called your name
in my heart.”
“I know it, I know it.”
“Two nights ago all was changed. Your mother once more mentioned your
name and your father sent you his blessing.”
“Thank God!” replied Neville, lifting his cap.
“And here is a letter from your mother. They sent you a thousand
messages, and so did Archie and Mr. Lyddon and all the servants. You
are forgiven.”
“Yes, forgiven by all who thought that I acted dishonorably. One
person, however, I shall never need any forgiveness from, because he
knows and respects my motives--my brother Richard.”
Richard’s name, spoken so suddenly, disconcerted Angela for a moment.
She trembled a little and looked away and then her pitying eyes sought
Neville’s, but she replied calmly: “Yes, Richard never said one word in
condemnation of you.”
“That is like him. Of all men I ever knew in my life, I think best
of Richard. Not because he is my brother, but because he is better,
larger-minded, braver, than any other man I ever knew. I had a letter
from him by flag of truce a fortnight ago and managed to reply by the
same means. He has no doubt got my letter by this time. I have so many
things to ask you, so many things to tell you, the chief of which is
how much I love you; and I only have one hour with you.”
And then Angela, with tender sophistry, replied: “I would not miss the
chance of spending this one hour with you; but surely I can be near
you--nearer than at Harrowby.”
“Yes,” answered Neville gravely; “we shall be fighting probably, if not
to-night, certainly from early in the morning, and a soldier cannot
look beyond the present hour. If I am alive, we shall meet again
within the week. If I am killed, you will return at once to Harrowby.”
Angela caught Neville’s arm. The thought of a world without him
staggered her. “Don’t say that,” she cried breathlessly, and then
stopped. In another moment the tragedy of Richard’s death would have
burst from her involuntarily.
Neville, thinking he saw in Angela’s face and words and tone that a
love for him, like his love for her, had been born in her soul, caught
her to his breast in rapture. The hour passed so quickly to Neville it
seemed as if they had but scarcely exchanged their first confidences
when it was time for him to go.
He gave Angela his last instructions--to remain for at least three
days, or until she should hear from him, at the little farmhouse where
she had spent the night.
“I shall do exactly as you say,” answered Angela quietly. “And you may
depend upon it that I shan’t fall into a panic and run away.”
“I know that you will never fall into a panic,” answered Neville,
smiling. “I think the Southern women are very like the great captain
who asked when he was a boy, ‘What is fear?’ I don’t think you know as
much about fear as I do.”
Then, as the moment of parting approached, their voices and eyes grew
grave, and presently Neville kissed Angela in the shade of the pine
trees. They walked through the purple shadows of the late afternoon
back to the road where the carriage still stood and the orderly led
Neville’s horse up and down.
Farley, consumed with chagrin and impatience, still maintained a
gentlemanlike outside. Neville thanked him with sincere gratitude, and
Angela added some graceful phrases without taking any more interest in
him than in the orderly, a fact which Farley bitterly realized. Neville
put Angela in the carriage, and, laying a letter upon her lap, said to
her:
“Good-by. Keep this letter, but do not open it unless you hear bad news
of me. You will hear something from me within three days, in any event.”
Farley turned his back and the orderly looked hard in the opposite
direction as Neville kissed Angela for the last time.
When a soldier says good-by it may be the last farewell. Angela’s
heart was suddenly pierced with this thought, and when Neville would
have turned quickly away, she drew him back to her and kissed him once
again. The next moment he was gone.
The sun was setting when Angela found herself once more upon the road.
It seemed to her as if that brief hour with Neville had been a dream;
but all had been dreamlike with her of late. Until a year or so ago
nothing had happened. That had been her grievance: she had so longed
for life, movement, color, love, even grief, anything to move the
silent pool in which she thought herself, at twenty, anchored for life.
All at once everything came. War, persecution, estrangement, love,
death, all those things most moving in human life. She looked at the
letter addressed to her in Neville’s firm handwriting, and knew well
enough what it meant--it was what she was to do in the event of his
death; but like most young creatures brimming with life, Angela could
scarcely believe in death. It seemed to her an anachronism so frightful
as to be almost incredible.
When the carriage reached once more the public road there was, even to
Angela’s untrained eyes, every sign of approaching battle. A great,
dark blue stream, with glittering muskets which the dying sun tipped
with fire, poured along the highroad. Officers were riding at a steady
pace with their commands, while constantly orderlies dashed back and
forth, silent, grimly concentrated upon their errands.
Over the quiet autumn landscape, which should have been all peace,
brooded the spirit of coming battle. The red sun itself seemed to
Angela’s mind a great bloody disk dropping behind the dreary woods. How
many of these men marching cheerfully along would live to see another
sun set?
Suddenly a sound, distant but unmistakable, smote Angela’s ear--the
reverberation across the distant hills and far-off wide river of heavy
guns. Angela had never before in her life heard a cannon fired, but
that menacing thunder, that wolfish howl before the banquet of death
begins, could not be misunderstood. Angela felt a sensation of horror,
but nothing like fear; she came of good fighting stock, and the thought
of battle did not intimidate her. Then the far-off roar was overborne
by a loud, quick crashing of guns within half the distance. Instantly
the thrill of conflict seemed to animate the long blue line, and there
were a few quick evolutions, like a lion crouching before his spring.
Farley, who had been leaning forward listening intently, took the whip
out of the hands of the soldier-driver and laid it heavily on the
mules, and they sprang ahead. Then turning to Angela, sitting upright
within the carriage, and now fully awake to all that was going on
around her, he said:
“Pray, don’t be alarmed, Mrs. Tremaine. I can get you to the farmhouse
within an hour, where you will be quite safe and out of danger.”
“Don’t disturb yourself on my account,” replied Angela. “I only regret
that I am giving you trouble when I am sure you wish to be with your
command.”
As she spoke, the soldier-driver, with the familiarity of the
volunteer, glancing back at her, said to Farley, above the rattle of
the rickety carriage: “I don’t believe she is afeered, but it’s more
’an some of them fellows on both sides can say.”
Angela said no more, but watched with a fast-beating heart what seemed
to be tumult passing before her, but was really expedition and apparent
confusion which meant order.
In a little while the carriage struck off from the highroad and passed
into a region all quietude and peace. The distant roar of the guns
stopped for a time, and the intervening hill and valley shut off the
sounds of the marching troops. The red sun was gone and the short,
enchanted autumn twilight had fallen. When the carriage drew up at the
door of the farmhouse Angela, when Farley had assisted her to alight,
said: “I think that I should now release you from your kind attendance
on me. Captain Tremaine directed me to remain here until I should hear
from him. I shan’t need any protection, and I beg that you will feel no
hesitation in leaving me.”
Farley, whose orders were to place himself at Mrs. Tremaine’s disposal
and who had looked forward to days of inaction for himself while
fighting was going on, felt a thrill of gratitude.
“Thank you,” he replied, bowing low. “If I thought there was any
possibility of danger to you, I assure you I should not leave you; but
this place is well out of the way, and, besides, we hardly expect a
general engagement.”
Sarah Brown, slatternly, frightened, helpless, but sympathetic,
came out to greet Angela, and suddenly began to wring her hands. “I
thought,” she cried hysterically, “we would have a man here in case the
Yankees, or the Confederates either, wanted to burn the house down, and
then he would stand up for us and wouldn’t let ’em do it. Oh, my, oh,
my!”
“Nonsense!” cried Angela sharply, catching Sarah by the arm. “If
anything like that should happen, no one could help us. We are just
as well off alone. Good-by, Mr. Farley, and thank you.” And bowing
politely to the soldier-driver, she fairly dragged her hostess within.
Once inside, she managed to somewhat calm Sarah Brown’s chronic
trepidation. Sarah gave her supper, and then would, out of pure good
nature, have remained with her during the night, but this Angela
declined.
When darkness fell, all grew still, and Sarah Brown took Angela’s
advice and went to bed. Angela herself did not follow her own
recommendation, and felt a strange disinclination to go to bed. Usually
her strong young nerves had given her sleep whenever she had desired
it, but this night, when every nerve was on quivering edge, sleep
eluded and defied her. She threw her mantle around her and sat for a
long time at the open window watching the moon as it rose in silvery
splendor over the half-bare woods. How still and sad and woe-begone was
the aspect of the country! Only two nights before she had been riding
with Isabey through a region almost as still and sad and woe-begone as
this, along the weed-grown highway and untraveled forest roads, and now
that time was as far removed as if æons had passed.
As the thought of Isabey occurred to her she put it resolutely out of
her mind and began to think of Neville--how he looked, what he said.
She took from her pocket the letter he had given her, and then thrust
it back out of sight. She was not to open it unless she had bad news of
him. Existence with Neville absent had been strange enough, but with
him dead--Angela could scarcely conceive of a world without him. Her
heart was oppressed with a thousand griefs and perplexities. If only
Isabey had not come into her life, how much easier would all things
have been! She remembered Lyddon having told her once, long ago, that
human beings in this world suffer or enjoy according to the imagination
with which they are endowed, and he had added, “You have a tremendous
imagination.”
This and many other half-forgotten things came back to her memory,
and all suggested struggle and conflict. After midnight she lay down
across her hard, coarse bed and fell into a restless and uneasy sleep,
haunted by painful dreams. She was glad to waken from it, and, looking
at her watch, found that it was four o’clock. Just the time, two nights
before, when she had said farewell to Isabey. Life appeared to her all
farewells. She rose and went again to the open window, and the scene of
two nights before seemed to repeat itself before her eyes, until the
miracle of the dawning came. Then Angela’s head dropped upon the window
sill and she fell for the first time into a quiet and dreamless sleep.
The sun rose in splendor, and the whole fresh and dewy world was
sparkling when Angela was awakened by a terrible sound--the crash of
bursting shells. She looked toward the woods a mile away and heard
through the stillness of the autumn morning the fearful thunder, the
shouts and cries of conflict. Almost immediately she saw half a dozen
ambulances with their attendants driving into the open field and making
straight for the farmhouse. She knew well what it meant. Those were the
wounded seeking a place of refuge. As the ambulances reached the house
she opened her door and ran quickly down the narrow stair. The passage
door was wide open, and two soldiers, carrying a stretcher, were coming
in. On it lay a figure covered up in a blue cloak. They took their
burden and laid it down in the room to the right on the ground floor.
Following them came a surgeon, grimy, bloody, anxious-eyed, but cool.
He scarcely saw Angela, and paid no heed to her, but followed the
stretcher into the little room. Then Angela heard him say, in a quick
voice: “He is gone; there is nothing more to be done here, but plenty
to be done outside.”
He passed again through the hall, followed by the two soldiers. Three
stretchers, with wounded men groaning and moaning in their agony, were
carried into the narrow hall.
Something quite outside of her own volition made Angela walk toward
the room in which the dead officer lay. As she reached the door she
felt a hand upon her arm, and the surgeon was saying to her: “Excuse
me, but you had better not go in there. The officer is dead and much
disfigured.”
“What is his name?” asked Angela.
“Captain Neville Tremaine,” was the surgeon’s answer. “Killed leading
the Forlorn Hope; as brave a man as ever lived or died.”
* * * * *
One night, a week later, Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine sat together in the
library at Harrowby. Usually they were alone, but since the family
circle had grown so pitifully small, Lyddon had left his ancient
habitat, the old study, and sat with them in the evenings. He was
pretending to read, and so was Colonel Tremaine, but both were really
absorbed in reverie. Mrs. Tremaine, with more self-possession than
either, sat knitting. Lyddon, watching her furtively, thought how like
she was to those Spartan women who bade their sons return with their
shields or upon them. Only with Mrs. Tremaine this sublime courage was
accompanied with a gentleness and softness like a Lesbian air.
The stillness remained unbroken for an hour, when there was a sound
of hoofs and wheels upon the carriage drive. As they listened the hall
door was quickly opened and some one entered.
“That is Angela,” said Mrs. Tremaine. And the next moment Angela
entered the library. She wore a black gown, which Mrs. Tremaine
instantly noticed. The two women, looking into each other’s eyes,
opened their arms, and then were clasped together.
“Neville is gone!” cried Angela. “He is with Richard.”
CHAPTER XXIII
THE AFTERMATH
Two years and a half afterwards, on an April afternoon, Isabey, riding
the ghost of a war horse, came in sight of the old manor house of
Harrowby. It was a soft, mild afternoon, as soft and sunny as that
day, now four years past, when he had first seen the place. From the
top of the cedar lane Isabey’s keen eyes could view the whole scene in
its minutest details. The broad fields, which he remembered as green
in spring and gold in summer with wheat, were unfilled and grown up in
blackberry bushes, wild roses, poppies, and the blue cornflower, those
bold marauders who seize upon the earth as soon as it is no longer
plowed or reaped. Over all brooded a sad peacefulness, a quiet decay
and mournful silence; Nature seemed in a melancholy reverie. Spring had
come in all the soft splendor of its beauty, and yet no hand seemed
uplifted to do her bidding of cheerful toil. There were no sounds
of jocund plowmen or cheerful laborers, of laughing, brown-skinned
milkmaids who sang at their work. Isabey’s eyes traveled toward the old
graveyard in the field. The brick wall had fallen into still greater
decay than he remembered, and a few lean sheep were browsing among the
graves. Isabey looked farther on toward the house. The fences were
down, and the negro quarters, which were wont to be alive with those
merry, brown creatures, were silent and deserted. The carriage drive
was overgrown with weeds--there were no carriages any more to traverse
it. And the yew hedge was more ragged and decrepit than ever before.
The old brick mansion stood out dark and clear against the violet sky,
while the river, a darker violet, went upon its ceaseless way singing
its eternal refrain. Isabey noticed that most of the shutters in the
old mansion were closed; one or two of them had fallen to the ground,
and the top of one of the great chimneys showed a huge gap where the
mortar of a hundred years had decayed and the bricks had tumbled in.
This gave the house a look of desolation.
Isabey dismounted from his horse and, leaning upon the worm fence which
divided the fields from the highway, asked himself if he had done
wisely in coming straight to Harrowby the moment the Confederacy had
ceased to exist. At the beginning of the Civil War he had been one of
the rich men of Louisiana, with sugar plantations, great sugar mills
with an army of negroes to work them, with a fine house in New Orleans,
built and furnished after the French fashion. He had owned a racing
stable and had had a box at the French opera and all the paraphernalia
of a man of fortune. Only a little of this remained--how little Isabey
himself did not know. The New Orleans house had been confiscated and
wrecked, the sugar mills burned to the ground, the negroes dispersed
over the face of the earth, and his plantations, flooded by the broken
bayou, were as much water as land. His possessions in hand consisted
of a shadow of a horse, a threadbare gray uniform, and a little money
in his pocket.
He had reached his goal--the spot where Angela dwelt. For Isabey there
were only two places in the world--the one where Angela was, the other
where she was not. The current of his thoughts had flowed as steadily
toward her as the broad, placid river had flowed through the ages
toward the open sea. He had debated with himself whether he would seek
Angela then or wait until he had collected the wreckage of his fortune.
But some force within him, stronger than himself, had brought him as
straight to Harrowby as his poor horse could travel. He wondered how
Angela would look. She would have on a black gown, of course. She was
not a woman to put on mourning lightly or take it off quickly. He had
written many times to Harrowby and had received a few brief letters in
reply, generally from Mrs. Tremaine, worded in the simple and moving
language which she habitually used. Always there was some mention of
Angela--that she was well and strong and their greatest comfort. Isabey
knew that Archie had come unhurt out of the furnace of Civil War and
that Lyddon was still an inmate of the house which had been home to him
for so many years.
He had heard other particulars through Madame Isabey during the last
year of the war. She and Adrienne had found it possible to get to New
York and from thence to Paris. Their fortune was by no means wrecked as
was Isabey’s, and Madame Isabey wrote saying that Adrienne had found
her place still waiting for her which she had left vacant in the
brilliant society of the Second Empire, but that she had apparently
lost all taste for gayety and went to church at six o’clock in the
morning and, Madame Isabey was very much afraid, was becoming devout.
Isabey had written in the purest and sincerest friendship to Adrienne
and had received letters of the same kind in return from her. It was
very plain to him that Adrienne was changed, softened, saddened, and
already in possession of that inheritance which too often comes with
gifts like hers--the weariness and darkness of the soul.
But Isabey had not written to Angela nor had he received a line from
her. This he took as a good omen; if she had become indifferent to him
she might easily have fallen into a friendly correspondence with him.
But he dared to hope that she had not written because she could not.
He pressed toward this meeting with her in all eagerness. Now that he
was within reach of Angela, as the case often is with the true lover,
he began to feel his own rashness and unworthiness and was distrained
of himself in meeting her. He recalled Angela’s invariable habit of
walking and sitting in the old garden in the afternoon, and thought he
would try and meet her there. Five minutes would reveal to him whether
he had come in vain or not. He would not ride down the cedar lane
because he might be seen from the house; but following a path through
the stubble which led close by the old graveyard, and thence direct to
the yew hedge where the garden gate opened, he took his way, leading
his lean horse after him. When he reached the old burying ground it
seemed to him the most peaceful spot he had ever seen. Not even the
sheep were startled by his presence, but looking at him with black,
blinking eyes, went on quietly cropping the long, lush grass. Within
the graveyard was the only new thing Isabey’s eyes had rested upon.
Between two graves was a great wooden slab painted white--poverty’s
substitute for a gravestone. On it were the names of Neville and
Richard Tremaine and the dates of their birth and death, and under this
the words, “Both died in battle and in honor.”
The sight of these two graves and the thought of these two men smote
Isabey poignantly. He covered his face as he leaned upon the broken
wall. And the two graves brought home to him as never before the
wreck and ruin and illimitable disaster of the war. He had felt long
before the end came that the South must pay a frightful price for the
stupendous blunder and calamity of slavery, and that price meant all
she had of blood and treasure. And when it was paid it would leave her
stark and starving, clothed with rags and stripped of all but honor and
courage.
This thought had followed Isabey and pierced him as he marched and
fought and starved through blistering days of heat and biting days of
cold, through summer’s miasma and winter’s snows and storms of sleet
and hail. It had torn his heart when he saw gaps in the thin gray lines
filled up with tottering old men and white-faced boys, half-fed with
miserable rations, half-clothed in rags and remnants, wholly unshod,
but with musket barrels bright and ever ready to answer the order to
advance. It was impossible that such sacrifices, such valor, should be
in vain, and it came to Isabey in a great flood of illumination that
the compensation would be the sweeping away of the everlasting blight,
the deadening contamination of slavery. This thought comforted him
a little, and he turned from the graves of his friends again to the
footpath which would lead him toward Angela. The only sounds he heard
were his own quiet footsteps along the stubble path and the breathing
of his tired horse trudging patiently behind him. As he came to the
opening in the yew hedge the realization of his dream was suddenly
before him. Angela was coming toward him slowly up the broad garden
walk in the veiled brilliance of the spring afternoon.
The horse, understanding the command of silence, having had time
and circumstance enough to instill it into him, obeyed a touch from
Isabey’s hand and remained motionless. Isabey, standing a little behind
the yew hedge, had time to study Angela’s face as she came close to
him, her eyes fixed upon the ground. She was dressed all in black, and
around her was thrown a black mantle, the mantle which had once been a
splendid crimson, but which had been dyed to the garb of widowhood. As
her habit was, her head was bare, and the vagrant wind toyed with the
little waving locks upon the white nape of her neck.
As the case often is, Isabey’s recollection of her had gone back to
their first meeting, four years before, and he expected to see her
still a girl, with a girl’s eyes. She had retained her maiden slimness,
but otherwise the great change had come from childhood to womanhood.
The delicately haughty poise of her head, the laughing defiance of her
upward glance were gone forever. Instead of these was an air soft and
appealing, a movement gentle in contrast with the quick grace, like
the swallow’s flight, which Isabey had often noted and admired in days
gone by. In holding her mantle around her she crossed her hands upon
her breast, and it gave her a nunlike sweetness and meekness which
Isabey had never seen in her before. As she reached the end of the walk
she paused for a moment, and, looking upward at the opaline sky of the
west in which great clouds of green and amber were changing to violet,
turned and walked again to the end of the garden path. She was quite
near the old bench under the lilac bushes before she heard a footstep
behind her.
Isabey put out his hand, and, taking hers, said: “Let us sit once again
where we parted.”
Without a word he led her to the old bench, where they sat. They were
as much alone as if they had been in the green heart of the forest.
Isabey continued in silence to hold her hand, which lay without a
flutter in his. Manlike, he found it difficult to speak when stirred by
a great emotion, but was unable to take his eyes from her face.
As he studied Angela, so Angela studied him. In four years he had grown
ten years older, his trim, black mustache was streaked with gray, and
under his officer’s cap she could see the gray threads also in his
black hair. His face was bronzed and beaten by the weather. His eyes
and his figure had the indescribable but unmistakable mark of the man
who had been long fighting and marching. Both were changed and yet
unchanged.
After a moment or two Isabey spoke, the plain, simple words of a
soldier:
“I have thought of you every day and hour since we parted.”
His words met a sweet, like response in Angela’s eyes. Together they
sat until the dusky twilight fell upon the odorous old garden and the
stars came out softly in the darkening heavens. A night bird close to
them uttered a few notes, soft and low, which waked them from a dream
of paradise.
“Come,” said Angela, “I think we must have been here a long time. See,
the windows are lighted. To-morrow we can come again into the garden.”
“Every day of our lives, after this, we can walk together in a garden,”
replied Isabey, smiling. “Our flowering time has come.”
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.
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