The Shadow of the AttacoaBy Thornwell JacobsSYNOPSIS OF PRECEDING CHAPTERSCommenced in the April number.
The Shadow of the AttacoaBy Thornwell Jacobs
By Thornwell Jacobs
Commenced in the April number.
Ervin McArthur, bearing the nickname of “Satan” on account of his ungovernable temper, learns printing at the office of theDunvegan(N. C.)Democratand loves Colonel Preston’s daughter. The colonel, objecting to a love affair between his aristocratic daughter and a son of “poor whites,” shifts the youth to a place on theCharleston Chronicle. Here, the Civil War coming on, he distinguishes himself by his journalistic ability and by his inventions of war-engines. In these last he is ably assisted by Helen Brooks, a Boston girl visiting Charleston relatives. She learns to love the inventor and his cause, and he struggles between his allegiance to Helen Preston and his newly awakened love. He returns to Dunvegan on furlough and in an altercation with his old time chum, Henry Bailey, the latter meets his death. Ervin escapes, and another friend, Ernest Lavender, is tried and convicted. Ervin confesses and is tried, but cleared on proof discovered by Helen Preston that the crime was committed by Mack Lonovan, who, wishing to marry Helen Brooks, destroys the only living witness to his secret marriage with half-witted Nance West.
Ervin returns to Charleston and invents the ironclad torpedo, destined, when copied by the Federals, to destroy the Confederate Navy. He also constructs a submarine torpedo boat, and while preparing for his initial trip has an interview with Helen Brooks.
He decides to attack theHousatonicinstead of theNew Ironsides, as Helen has confessed that one whom she loves is on the latter. TheHousatonicis sunk, also the torpedo, Ervin alone being rescued and captured. Sent to the stockade on Morris’ Island, he finds Tait Preston, who is about to be exchanged on account of a wound. Ervin determines to escape.
After some weeks he does so, being wounded in the flight. At this time his dragoon pigeon being accidentally loosened by Mrs. Adams, returns to Dunvegan and Helen Preston leaves her father, who is at home on sick leave, to nurse her lover. Arriving at Charleston, she learns that his friends there suppose him to have been destroyed in the sinking of theHousatonic, but the faithful girl continues her search until she finds him on James’ Island and nurses him back to health. In the meantime Mrs. Corbin and her family have fled to Columbia, on the news of the approach of General Sherman.
For the second time in his life, Ervin McArthur was nursed back to health by the gentle hands of the maid of Sunahlee. By day her slim fingers wrought incessantly for his comfort, by night she rested in a rudely made arm chair by his cot.
To Captain Dillard and the surgeon the air of order, of complete sufficiency in the rough cabin was a miracle, daily enacted. Was a bandage necessary? Helen produced it. Barley water? Broth? They had merely to announce Ervin’s needs and shortly she would be found administering to them. Often he was restless at night. Tossing uneasily he would mutter—always of Helen. Now he would speak with the old-time winning raillery the girl remembered so well, now seriously of his inventions, astonishing her with references to details which were beyond her understanding.
“How little we know of the mental processes of those we love!” she mused. “While I mourned over the infrequencyof his letters, he was making me his hourly companion and confidante.”
“It is Helen, dearest. Be calm now, and sleep,” she would tenderly adjure him, bringing the burning eyes searching to hers.
“It is my little Helen,” he would breathe in relief, and drop into slumber.
There were times when his delirium became stormy. Raving, he would denounce her fickleness, her rapacious coquetry and her assumed sympathy.
At such times her loving coaxing would fail to soothe him. “False! Fickle! You merely want to add another scalp to your belt! Oh, I could turn savage, too, and bear you away by force and keep you for my own in some wild spot—ah, go away! Go away!”
Helen, smoothing back the dark locks, now dry with fever, felt a superstitious fear in the presence of such pronounced delirium.
“Ervin, your own Helen is here! You know your own little Helen!”
“Heartless girl! I know you at last! I never want to see you again.”
At last the fever abated, the wound began to heal and one lovely morning the dark eyes looked clearly into the blue ones of his devoted nurse. Repressing her tears of joy, she told him of his illness, leading his mind back to the circumstances of his escape. Then, with gentle insistence, she forced him to close his eyes and, holding her hand, he fell into rational sleep. Then the little maid might have been seen slipping to her knees and weeping, as she poured out her gratitude and joy to the Divine Physician.
In the evening she sat by his side again and told him all the news the camp knew. He lay quietly regarding her from his pillows.
“Helen,” he asked, “how long have you been here?”
“To-morrow will be six weeks,” she replied.
“You have lived in this rough camp all that time and nursed me. You have endured privation and provided me with comforts—I know no hospital in the world has snowier sheets than these. Ah, Helen, what do I not owe to your precious hands and your loving heart? If you knew, if you only knew, little girl, how you bring home to me my utter unworthiness—fill my inmost soul with burning remorse—”
“Hush, darling, do not excite yourself.” She wiped away the tears that trickled down the white cheeks and took his head on her breast as a mother takes her child to rest.
“My darling boy,” she crooned. “I know you have been in the world and have lived as a man lives, while I have been sheltered in my little nook, loving as a woman loves, and trusting as a woman must. I have fretted sometimes, Ervin—I would not have you believe me more patient than I deserve. But, dearest, I have seen more of your heart and mind since I have been here than I ever knew before. In your delirium—”
“My delirium?” he interrupted. “What did I rave about?”
“About me, you precious silly, and about your work. You told me more about your inventions than my poor little head could ever understand, but it showed me your feeling, dear. Sometimes,” she went on, chidingly, “you were harsh to your poor Helen and denounced her as a heartless coquette, and you wouldn’t be soothed. But of course it was only delirium—I had found the portrait in your pocket, and Iknew, dear.”
The sick man groaned and Helen hastened to lay him back upon his pillow. She bade him be quiet and close his eyes.
“Helen,” he persisted, “how did you know I was sick?”
“The dragoon came home—do you remember our compact? I don’t know what happy chance freed it, but I took its return as a message from you and sought until I found you.”
“You have always been my guardian angel, haven’t you, dear? Even when we were little you always shielded me from the consequences of my own follyand loved me through all my meanness. And then that trial—oh, I can never, never make it up to you! My love and devotion the rest of my life is yours, sweetheart, but it can never repay you.”
“I am repaid now, Ervin,” she responded, the quick tears dropping on his forehead, as his thin hand drew her face to his own.
The next morning Ervin woke to find a twisted note in the rude arm chair which had formerly held the slim figure.
“Dear Ervin,” it ran. “Doctor Gray says you are out of danger now, and I must go back to my father. I have just had a note from your mother and she says he grows feebler every day. Your mother will be in Charleston by the time you can be moved, and so I know my dear boy’s recovery is assured.
“I am slipping away to spare you the pain of parting, but I shall carry away the memory of our sweet talk of last night and my prayers for you will go up night and day. Always your loving
Helen.”
It was well that she hurried home swiftly, for an enemy more fearful than minie balls had attacked her. Ere she left the city by the sea, her lips were parched, and her tongue in the glass looked like brick dust. Feverish and dizzy, she left the little train at the Dunvegan station and tried to make her way as best she could through the village. None knew she was coming, and none met her. Some girls saw her in the distance and wondered if that reeling figure could be Helen Preston returned to Dunvegan. Out and over the old road she struggled until the long hill must be climbed that led up to Sunahlee. She remembered vaguely how, in her childhood days, she used to run up its steepness with Ervin—she would be brave and try it now. At the first step, she stumbled and fell in the rhododendron bushes by the wayside. “O God—” she murmured, “I think I—am—going—to—faint—. Keep—Ervin—well—for Jesus’—”
Uncle Ben had seen her fall, and found her there unconscious. Faithful in all things, he bore her to the great house, his dogs pulling loyally at their traces.
The physician came in due time, and looked grave. Doctor Allerton was there also. When he saw Doctor McIntyre’s lips quiver he went to the window and looked out past the ivy-covered cabin, past the blue-peaked Wahaws, past the gate of Heaven.
Each day found the blazing fever stronger and its victim weaker.
One day she begged piteously for water, and whispered, excitedly:
“He loves me; he told me he loved no one else! He is coming back—”
The delirium that had once befriended had now come to murder.
When another week had passed, the Death-wind blew softly. From the tomb of Tawiskara he came, and each violet in the Silver Creek Valley knelt humbly before him. The honeysuckle nodded reverently as he passed, and the soughing pine murmured a requiem.
He stopped at the wistaria that clung round the porch and trembled at his touch, and then passed onward through the open window, and played with the fair curls he had come to claim. She seemed to hear his call and to follow.
Down the great, wide steps she went, in a snowy gown with sprays of gentian that made it all the whiter, down through the door to welcome him, and on out into the moonlight. By the wistaria she stood and smiled at him.
He looked down into her face, and his words were sweet. How love had witched his features in answer to a woman’s prayer!
He reached forth his hands to her, and his summons seemed compelling. With lissome grace she moved toward his arms. His hand touched her breast, his dark eyes enraptured her, the burning passion of his soul thrilled each cord of her responsive heart into ecstasy.
Then the watchers at the bedside, who did not know that she had gone down to meet her lover again under the moonlit wistaria, saw the smile on her face, watched the pale lips purse winsomely and heard her whisper softly:
“Dare you!”
For four long years the unconquerable Sumter had battled with the powerful Federal navy, and for two hundred and eighty days the iron had hailed steadily upon her. Her defense during the Great Rebellion of 1776-1783 had been glorious, but these tired men in gray had far excelled that record of bravery. In the first war the heaviest cannon used was a twenty-four pounder; in this, the lightest was a twenty-four pounder, and the heaviest went far into the hundreds. When her walls were battered down her garrison burrowed in the sand, and they kept back the great ironclads that would have done harm to the cradle of secession.
But at last the day came when men saw that the end was near, and General Beauregard issued orders for the evacuation of the city.
Grant and Thomas and Sherman had each in his own way saved the Union. General Lee, whom Europe was comparing with Napoleon for generalship, and Gustavus Adolphus for religion, could not with a few thousands any longer beat back the multitude of his enemies. So Charleston knew that she had striven and lost.
Colonel Masters, sitting in his office on the evening of that fateful seventeenth of February, 1865, was taking up the foundations of his soul and repairing each worn and battered stone. His eyes were fixed with a look of infinite sadness on the battle flag of the Confederacy, and his thoughts were on the Great Cause. It was not the question of surrender or not surrender that had made his eyes fade so during the last two years of woe just passed; nor was it any sharp animosity against the Federal government or the Stars and Stripes. These were both parts of him, the first and greater part, and only because they symbolized the things he loved had he dethroned them in his heart. Neither had he forgotten how, beneath the great eagle, he had led the Palmetto boys at Churubusco, nor how long men had called him the beloved president of the New England Society. Nor had he been turned aside by any love for slavery, which he had considered, since first he left fair Sudbury and looked last upon the Wayside Inn, as both morally and economically injurious. Nevertheless he loved the Great Cause.
Men’s hearts had grown bitter in that struggle, but with it all he had been calm, and he had been one of the few who had seen beneath the waves the deep current of the ocean that was bearing both North and South to a common danger. He knew how the hearts of men had been changed, and how soldiers who had come South at first, being reproached, would reply: “We came to save the Union; damn the niggers!” But the government and some of the people, grown bitter from suffering loss, would not array black against white, and back the African with Union bayonets. Long ago, led by the foresight of the departed Petigru, he had seen the danger to the white race of a Union victory. Ah, Petigru! On whose grave was written the words: “Unawed by opinion; unseduced by flattery; undismayed by disaster!” He could see him now, swinging his green bag full of books, on his way to the courtroom. And now, just as clearly, he knew that above all things else the North and South must be one; that the bickering jars of discord must be stopped forever; that white, hand in hand with white, might look upon the impending danger without malice and without reproach. So he asked himself that night: “What is a man’s part?”
He had loved the Union and he had loved the Confederacy, and he had loved them both because they had both loved liberty, for the basal passions of each soul are made as distinct asthe shades of the blackjack leaves when the autumn of their lives has come, and in some hearts, as often as may be seen on one gum tree, the colors vary widely—half the leaves are of a bright, yellow color, and half a dark purple—but the branch that bears the yellow and the limb that lifts the purple are but parts of the trunk of life.
But more than either Confederacy or Union, he loved his race; and as he sat there looking into the shadowy faces of the coming years, he saw a new thing in history; as he saw it he shuddered, and the cold sweat stood out in beads on his brow.
A mulatto people! Good God, it must not be so! “They have saved the Union; now they must help us save the race.”
Then, as though there were a ring in the words that might mean something to coming generations, he repeated softly: “We saved the Union, now save the race.”
So, his heart still bursting with bitter sadness, he walked out in the cool air toward the Battery. It was the night Fort Sumter was to be evacuated, and he could see the lights of the transports bearing the heavy-hearted garrison to the mainland. Surely the end had come at last. Then he looked toward the west. Was the sun rising again as though he would come back to watch what men would do that night? Then why was that glow, deep, red, sullen in the land of the sunset, and this full ten o’clock in the night? Then suddenly, as if a poisoned arrow had pierced his bosom, his heart quivered with pain.
“Camellia!”
The great flames were leaping upward toward the sky. The marble Artemis would lift her snowy white arms to hide her face from the sight. The little wet violets at her feet would droop in prayer. The olive tree by the window, the little orange grove of which Mrs. Corbin was so proud, the well appointed premises filled with slaves and buildings, all of these were gone forever. And the black faces of slaves were peering in terror from the darkness. Camellia-on-the-Ashley had perished as the horse of the Indian is slain when his master dies.
Then to the right and west there was another glow, but that he knew well. It was the bridge of the Charleston and Savannah Railway over the Ashley.
And lo, in the very harbor itself a bright light began to glow! The gunboats were burning!
Then he turned, sick at heart, and walked back through the deserted city, back to the office; this sad-hearted man whose dearest friend had perished in the blowing up of theHousatonic.
“Ah, McArthur, I loved you,” the old man said, as the tears sprang to his eyes.
Then, ringing weirdly through the streets, he heard a cry:
“We slew them, we conquered them! Brave men! Five hundred thousand men died in five minutes. Hurrah!”
The voice was familiar and the man who spoke was coming toward him, his long hair streaming in the wind. He came nearer.
“Ah! friend, have you heard the news? They have killed every man in the South. We showed them how to cut off their necks, a million at a time. Then said I, ‘Behold victory on a white horse, and his rider is black!’”
It was Sam Tillett, who had borne the flag when General Anderson surrendered Sumter.
“Poor fellow,” said the colonel sadly, passing him by. “A raving lunatic.” And in the darkness the man ran on, shouting:
“Victory! Victory! We have slain! We have slain! Behold victory on a white horse, and his rider is black—black—black!”
“And yet,” the colonel added, “it is as he says.”
Then the editor went back to the office and sat long and lonely in the darkness. Automatically, he took a sheet of writing paper and wrote the heading for to-morrow’s editorial:
A MAN’S PART.
And all night long he sat and thought, only somehow the charge at Churubusco would come back, and the violets of Sudbury, and a face that he had long ago told himself that he must never think of again, but which had a way of coming in moments like this, like the scent of roses from some far-off garden of joy. Once he was on the point of laying down the pen and giving all up forever, but when he saw the headlines of his editorial he began again to ponder. The face came back, the face he loved, and smiled at him from behind the Stars and Bars.
And somehow he could not think of her, or her home, but his heart went back to the old days and the Union he loved. After all, was it not one land, one race, one history, one hope? So his eyes brightened and he wrote a line beneath the caption:
WE MUST BE ONE.
Then the faces of five million slaves, dark, passionate, yet humble; five million black men and women who loved their masters and constituted a laboring class free from crime, penury and jealousy. “They have served us well,” he said. “New England brought them here, we bought them here, and God sought them here.”
He wrote a second sentence:
WE MUST BE FAIR.
Then the faces of the men at Bunker Hill and Lexington and Yorktown and King’s Mountain; those who wrote the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, and those who, two years later, wrote the declaration of the American nation, the faces of the myriads of the men of the great white race, and with them, one whom he knew had loved him once by the golden rice fields of Ashley, and he wrote another line:
WE MUST BE WHITE.
“These three things,” said he, “constitute what I want to say to my people.”
His heart was full, and his pen moved swiftly over the paper. He told the people of how they had once loved the Union, how there was not one who would read his words but whose father would have died for the Stars and Stripes. Then he spoke in tender words of their long struggle for independence, and how it could be won only in the Union. He led them gently to the Stars and Bars, and let them kiss it as they laid it away forever, and bade them try in the future as they had in the past to play a masterful part in the greater nation. Then he broached the Great Cause, and closed, saying:
“They are here and we are here and God is here. Only one thing is clear, and that is that we must love mercy and do justice and walk humbly before our God. The darker the clouds grow, the more we are persuaded that the two races must separate, that the negro may grow to complete manhood, that the white may be saved from mulattodom. This is the great war. In the unity of the white race is our hope.”
There were many men and women, worn with care and gray with sorrow, who would read those words to-morrow, and then, with closed eyes, bow their heads in thought; and there were many men and women with the weight of the great defeat upon their shoulders, who, in stubborn courage and infinite pain, would restore the long-lowered symbol of the Union to their hearts and homes. Then the colonel took the Stars and Bars that hung above his desk and kissed it and threw it into the fire, and from a drawer underneath a mass of rubbish drew forth the great eagle over whose breast was the American eagis, and over whose young waved the Stars and Stripes. The snows of the North were upon her neck, and the fire of the South flashed in her eye, and he hung it again above his desk and said:
“My country—my flag—my all!”
There was a hurried trampling of feet on the stairway, and looking up he saw a squad of men in blue entering his office.
“Hello, here he is!” said the leader, advancing. “Is this here where the damned rebel sheet is bein’ published?” He held in his hand a copy of theChronicle.
“This is the office of theCharleston Chronicle, sir.” The colonel’s control was complete.
“Well, who are you?”
“I am Charles W. Masters, the editor.”
“Editor of the worst sheet of infamy and rebellion in the cradle of it all. Damn you, we have come in here to publish a Union paper! Here, read this.”
The editorial the colonel had written had fallen to the floor and floated to the fire, where one corner began to crumple in the heat.
The colonel read the order:
Office Provost Marshal, General D. S.,Charleston, S. C., Feb. 20, 1865.Special Order No. 1.TheCharleston Chronicleoffice is hereby taken possession of by the military authority of the United States. All materials and property of said newspaper of every kind will be turned over immediately to Messrs. Gen. Whipple and J. W. Jackson, who are hereby authorized to issue a loyal Union paper. They will report to Lieut.-Col. Woodford, Provost Marshal Gen. D. S., for all property taken possession of by them under this order. They will keep possession of this building now used for the paper.By command of Maj. Gen. Q. A. Gilmore,Lieut.-Col. 127th N. Y. Volunteers,Provost Marshal, Gen. D. S.
Office Provost Marshal, General D. S.,Charleston, S. C., Feb. 20, 1865.
Special Order No. 1.
TheCharleston Chronicleoffice is hereby taken possession of by the military authority of the United States. All materials and property of said newspaper of every kind will be turned over immediately to Messrs. Gen. Whipple and J. W. Jackson, who are hereby authorized to issue a loyal Union paper. They will report to Lieut.-Col. Woodford, Provost Marshal Gen. D. S., for all property taken possession of by them under this order. They will keep possession of this building now used for the paper.
By command of Maj. Gen. Q. A. Gilmore,
Lieut.-Col. 127th N. Y. Volunteers,Provost Marshal, Gen. D. S.
“Get out, old man! You may thank your stars we don’t set the niggers on you.”
And as the lonely man walked down the long-trodden steps he seemed to see below him on the stairway one who had welcomed him at Camellia long years ago. Her eyes looked up to his as of yore, and the same sweet smile parted her lips. But now her arms were outstretched to him, and she seemed to be trying to tell him something that made her bosom heave and her eyes fill with tears.
The women and old men left in the city, and the entire Union army of occupation, read with avidity the first issue of theChronicleunder its new management.
Things in the office were necessarily in a jumble, so there was no original editorial work to do. The news columns told how thePalmetto State, the ironclad Ervin had devised, had been blown up, and how the dense volumes of smoke had risen emblematically and by some weird chance had formed themselves into a symmetrical palmetto tree, its leaves and branches perfectly distinct; some had even seen the rattlesnake coiled about the body. There were tidings, too, of the great fire at the Northeastern railway depot, and of the explosions of gunpowder there, killing more than a hundred men, women and children. But most readers looked eagerly for the editorial page and found there a clipping from theNew York Independent.
“BABYLON IS FALLEN.”So at last Charleston has fallen, plucked like the golden apple of the fable that turned to ashes in the grasp. The great news is like wine to the pulse. The early telegrams were thought too good to be true. What a picture was that which theTribune’scorrespondents presented to us on Tuesday morning, of the flag hoisted once again upon Fort Sumter, even though waving from an oar blade for lack of a flagstaff. The rebellion is humbled in the city of its first haughtiness. Boastful, braggart Charleston skulks away from itself, and surrenders without firing one shot in its own defense. The only heroism of the retiring traitor was in exploding powder for the horrible burning of their old women, children and old men. Having lately robbed both the cradle and the grave, they make a strange variety in their barbarous custom by now heaping the cradles into the graves.What a hideous sight saluted the eyes of the Union troops as they entered the city—helpless human beings, scalded, burned, mutilated by those who ought to have been their protectors; a city set on fire by its own garrison when not a flame could touch its enemy’s head, but only singe and roast its own inhabitants. Terrible is the self-inflicting retribution which an all-wise Providence has decreed against this cockatrice’sden. Except for Charleston, the rebellion would never have been, and except Charleston had been terribly scourged by the war, poetic justice would have failed. But “vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.” No battle and praises—worthy defeat! No stout defense and honorable capitulation! Nothing but the hanging of a hound’s tail between his swiftly running legs! Oh, shame, where is thy blush? Was there any city in the South that specially boasted its chivalry? That city was Charleston! Oh, fallen Babylon! Oh, elegant city of splendid lies! Rear now a monument to thy shame and inscribe the obelisk with the wisdom of Solomon: “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall!” Now comes the question, will it ever be worth while to rebuild Charleston? Is her name worth saving? Is her site worth a memory on the maps? Is her sin less guilty than Sodom’s and her punishment to be less heavy than Gomorrah’s?
“BABYLON IS FALLEN.”
So at last Charleston has fallen, plucked like the golden apple of the fable that turned to ashes in the grasp. The great news is like wine to the pulse. The early telegrams were thought too good to be true. What a picture was that which theTribune’scorrespondents presented to us on Tuesday morning, of the flag hoisted once again upon Fort Sumter, even though waving from an oar blade for lack of a flagstaff. The rebellion is humbled in the city of its first haughtiness. Boastful, braggart Charleston skulks away from itself, and surrenders without firing one shot in its own defense. The only heroism of the retiring traitor was in exploding powder for the horrible burning of their old women, children and old men. Having lately robbed both the cradle and the grave, they make a strange variety in their barbarous custom by now heaping the cradles into the graves.
What a hideous sight saluted the eyes of the Union troops as they entered the city—helpless human beings, scalded, burned, mutilated by those who ought to have been their protectors; a city set on fire by its own garrison when not a flame could touch its enemy’s head, but only singe and roast its own inhabitants. Terrible is the self-inflicting retribution which an all-wise Providence has decreed against this cockatrice’sden. Except for Charleston, the rebellion would never have been, and except Charleston had been terribly scourged by the war, poetic justice would have failed. But “vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.” No battle and praises—worthy defeat! No stout defense and honorable capitulation! Nothing but the hanging of a hound’s tail between his swiftly running legs! Oh, shame, where is thy blush? Was there any city in the South that specially boasted its chivalry? That city was Charleston! Oh, fallen Babylon! Oh, elegant city of splendid lies! Rear now a monument to thy shame and inscribe the obelisk with the wisdom of Solomon: “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall!” Now comes the question, will it ever be worth while to rebuild Charleston? Is her name worth saving? Is her site worth a memory on the maps? Is her sin less guilty than Sodom’s and her punishment to be less heavy than Gomorrah’s?
And underneath it his many friends read with some surprise a note from Bob Dingley, whom the new management styled “a distinguished Union citizen who is now free to express his sentiments.”
The rebellion is at an end, and now why not discard old, worn-out theories? Let every good citizen take the oath of allegiance. These good Union men are our best friends. See how they supply bread to our citizens. What more is there to hope from the flying rebels? Let every true man acknowledge allegiance to the best government that ever was.Yours for Liberty and Union,Bob Dingley.
The rebellion is at an end, and now why not discard old, worn-out theories? Let every good citizen take the oath of allegiance. These good Union men are our best friends. See how they supply bread to our citizens. What more is there to hope from the flying rebels? Let every true man acknowledge allegiance to the best government that ever was.
Yours for Liberty and Union,
Bob Dingley.
There was a great gathering of abolitionists in the fallen Babylon, and William Lloyd Garrison came to see how abolition prospered, and Colonel Charles Anderson, brother of Major Anderson, arm in arm with Dr. Theodore Tilton, editor of theNew York Independent. Two ministers were recorded as being present. Dr. Henry Ward Beecher and Dr. R. S. Storrs, Jr., and many others were in the company. They said brave things over Sumter and raised the flag in triumph.
In those days, too, St. Michael’s saw strange things done within her holy walls. One morning at eight o’clock John Beesley, the sexton, who loved the church as the colonel loved a face of the long ago, came through the north door and found a gathering of men, women and children doing things the like of which had never been done before in those aisles. The old wrought iron hinges that were brought from England in the eighteenth century, were being knocked off the doors of the pews, and the handsome carved work of the pews themselves broken off as souvenirs. Upon the breast of the high and holy pulpit, where men had preached in the days of the Lord Proprietors of the colonies, there was an ancient I. H. N. monogram done in choice inlays of rare woods. The sexton saw with horror that it had been knocked out of its place by someone who had ascended the pulpit of God to do it. These men and women carried away their plunder.
Nor would it be permissible, save to one who would make his story whole, to leap in a sentence the two years of horror and add that the I. H. N. panel was returned to the rector of St. Michael’s some years afterwards by a clergyman whose name is not to be told, with the remarkable statement that he returned the monogram, as there was no place in his church for it.
There were two men who walked in sadness through the deserted city and came at nightfall to the old graveyard of St. Michael’s and entered. It was the hour when the worshippers gathered, a little family band in their home, for the weekly prayer meetings, and the shadows would fall around the old church and rest upon the graves of the departed. Then, while they lingered there with their God and their dead, sometimes the spirits of their fathers would come and join in the service and sprinkle incense upon the fire of their hearts; and the sunbeams would linger a little longer to bear the messages with them before they sped away to their homes beyond the mountains. Thus at the gloaming, when lovers used to meet, would the bridegroom of the Heavens come to prepare the church as a bride adorned for her husband.
It was an old burying ground and many men whom the South loved were buried there. The deepest passion of the ancient city’s soul was her lovefor her dead. One of the men led the other to where lay the eloquent Hayne, whose silver tongue had brought the great Webster up to his greatest effort. The other was Senator Wilson, Webster’s successor in the Senate. They looked at the graves grown over with weeds, for men had gone rabbit hunting in the shelled districts, and owls filled the offices. The two men were silent, nor could they find words fit for the scene. Their thought was of the great statesman, loved of all men, yet whose doctrines had brought such woe and destruction upon his city. And now the weeds were covering the grave of the apostle of secession and the owls and the bats inhabited the city of his love. With bared heads, in silence they paused while the tears welled into their eyes, then the senator said to his companion, in a broken voice:
“There is a way that seemeth right unto man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”
The other answered: “If I had the power of a great painter, I would paint this scene—this ruined city under the heel of the conqueror, this temple defiled by vandals, and I would inscribe it: ‘The successor of Webster at the tomb of Robert Y. Hayne.’”
There was a band of soldiers that heard the ringing words of Henry Ward Beecher when the old flag was raised again on the walls of Fort Sumter, and shouted with the rest when he charged the war upon a proud and impatient aristocracy. These remembered that one was buried in St. Phillips graveyard, the proudest, most dashing of them all. So when there was a respite from duty they turned into the Western Cemetery and were seen by the simple grave of Carolina’s hero. Not a tuft of grass seemed misplaced about it.
“The arch-enemy!” one cried. “Damn—” but he stopped suddenly, like the boys of Dunvegan who must needs go over the hill out of sight of the moss-covered manse and the little red church in under the oaks before they could have heart to swear.
“John Caldwell Calhoun,” another read. “It’s a wonder some of the boys haven’t torn him out of there.”
“The old snook was a slick talker, but he had more sentiment than sense. None of those crazy loons down in here could see that it was too late in the day for slaves.”
It was heartlessly said, yet he, too, had omitted his usual profane word, like the little boy who drops the stolen apple when he sees his mother’s grave.
“Some night someone is going to mistake his grave for hidden treasure and open things up a bit, don’t you think?” the second remarked, with a glance they all understood.
But it had already been done, and by those who had long mistaken John C. Calhoun for hidden treasure. In the deepest quiet of the night, before the heel of the conqueror should tread on hallowed ground, they had come, loosing the sandals from their feet as though God were in every bush in the Western Cemetery; and fearful lest an enemy should touch his holy dust for desecration—tenderly, reverently, they had lifted their hero’s ashes and borne them away in secret till the storm should be overpast.
Early in February of ’sixty-five, at the home of Mrs. Liddell, in Columbia, Jack Corbin and his wife and Helen Brooks were sitting round the open fire in the living room. The glow of the firelight on the hearth threw fantastic shadows over the rich furnishings and lit up the forms of the three who sat almost mournfully by his side. The darkness of the evening was made more dreary by the falling rain, through which, in a few minutes, the young captain must go to join his command. His suit of gray was worn and faded, and his felt hat that hung outside was full of holes.
“I am glad,” he was saying, “that old Joe is here. It was good of the colonel to send him. I saw him as I came, dressed up in a suit of Colonel Masters’, and new shoes and hat—”
“Yes, Jack, and I am so glad that Major Goodwin has said he will get us a guard for this house if Sherman comes.”
“He is coming, Bessie.”
“And you think there is no danger, Jack, dear?”
“I should certainly think not, with the examples the other generals on both sides are setting. Grant would not harm women, nor Thomas, nor Meade, nor Lee. Why, Bessie, my darling, Lee would hang a man who insulted a woman or destroyed private property. You remember when General Gordon captured the city of York just before the Battle of Gettysburg, and the inhabitants were scared lest he should burn the town, he said: ‘I beg you to rest assured that the troops behind me, though ill-clad and travel-stained, are good men and brave—that beneath their rough exteriors are hearts as loyal to women as ever beat in the breasts of honorable men; that their own experience and the experience of their mothers, wives and sisters at home have taught them how painful must be the sight of a hostile army in their town; that under the order of General Lee, non-combatants and private property are safe; that the spirit of lust and rapine has no place in the spirits of those dust-covered men.’ He pledged the head of any soldier under his command who destroyed private property, disturbed the peace of a single home, or insulted a woman. And not a person was harmed, nor a dollar’s worth of private property destroyed. Surely, if a half-starved Confederate force could be so knightly, the great army of Sherman, backed by unlimited supplies, will be as honorable.”
“I hear General Sherman says the Emancipation Proclamation was only a war act, and that he expects to own a hundred slaves after the war is over,” said Bessie, reassured.
“I met him over at Camellia before the war,” Helen remembered; “he was a polished gentleman, remarkably impressed, with Southern hospitality. Surely he will not forget the many times he has broken bread with the Carolinians. Barbarians do not forget that, and if he cannot be as chivalrous as Gordon he can at least be as honorable as Morgan.”
They sat for a moment in silence.
“Jack, come up stairs with me before you go,” Bessie murmured at last. They went out together, and Helen sat and looked into the firelight and dreamed of fires that never fail.
The brave wife, leaning upon her strong husband’s shoulder, led him to a little room and stood with him by a bed all covered with little garments. She lit a candle, and its glow showed him more of his wife’s heart than he had ever before seen.
There, each in its place on the white spread, were more than a full score of little prophecies of a woman’s love and joy and hope—a dainty cap intertwined with pink ribbons and another with blue; a tiny dress all stitched and sewn with silk, and others just as beautiful by it; some little coats of softest flannel and silken braidings, and a pair of tiny socks all crocheted in pink and white, so small that Bessie looked quaintly into her husband’s face and said:
“Jack, dear, do you think anything could be so tiny as to get into those?”
“Where did you get them, Bessie, in this poor land of fire and poverty?”
“From Helen, the sweet girl. I told her about it at the first, and she had her brother smuggle them to her. Oh, she is so lovely! And see the little basket all covered with dotted swiss and little ribbons intertwined in it; and the soft little brush with ivory handle, as soft as the silken hair it will touch; and the tiny comb. And do you see the little gold pins and the silver powder box and the puff? And she put in a dozen of the softest little undervests. Jack, I love Helen.”
“And I do too.” The strong man’s eyes looked suspiciously moist.
“Poor girl! When she gave them to me last night she looked at them so long and wistfully, and I knew she was thinking about Ervin.”
“Sad, sad, Bessie; but his death was the death of a hero.”
“I know it, darling, but—a woman—atrue woman—wants—a—a son of her love—and life is a mockery without it.”
Then they were silent for a moment, and each deep in thought, until Bessie said slowly, looking at the tiny garments before her:
“Jack, do you think that is what Jesus meant when He said He would go and prepare a place for us?”
He kissed her then, and said a soldier’s farewell, leaving her standing at the bedroom door. When he had descended the steps, Helen was still looking into the fire.
“Helen,” he said, “we owe you much already, but I want to ask another favor.”
“What is it, Jack?”
“Sherman is coming, and I am afraid he will burn Columbia. They say he is going to throw the Fifteenth Corps into the city—the corps that fills its tracks with blood and covers them with ashes. The prisoners we have taken all say so. Bessie is here alone. Will you protect her? Here,” he said, drawing from his pocket a small, ivory-handled pistol, “take this and promise me to do all to protect her, if she needs it. You may need it, too.” Then he walked out into the night and looked up to the window of the little room; Bessie was still standing with the candle in her left hand, looking lovingly down at the tiny garments spread out on the bed, and Helen was sitting in the room below, recalling the face of the past, letting the memories trip with light steps over her soul, and listening to the vibrating of the chords that had lain sore and silent for so long.
It was a cozy little living room, and the wind and the rain outside only made it the cozier. Belated travelers were still hurrying home on the streets below, in the mud and rain. Every now and then one of them looked in at the window whence came the cheery rays of light and thought as he saw it of his own home and loved ones.
So Helen sat, and sitting, mused.
That fire, how brightly it glowed! What a world of poetry and beauty there was in it, from the deep, velvety coals to the dark, gray ashes. And that tiny, blue flame, how young it looked! That was youth. The coals in the full glow were impetuous manhood, and the dark, somber ashes told her of a life buried away, and reminded her that dust shall return to the earth as it was, and the spirit—the bright, pure, flaming spirit, had it not already vanished into the presence of the God who gave it?
Then, too, the long, dark shadows cast fitfully across the room by the irregular bursts of flames, and the occasional crackling of the good natured logs, and, yes, there surely was a cricket on the hearth. There are many Helens, and readers will see the one who sat by the fire that winter’s night in the fated city, but each looks upon his own Helen and the fire glows upon his own hearthstone. One looks at her and she at the fire, and the light falling over her is bathing her beautiful face till every feature is radiant with its divine glow, and the most fascinating tints seem to tinge each ringlet of her hair, and to sleep and dream in those dark, brown eyes. She, too, was dreaming—though none gazed at her there—of life and love, memories which only they could bring, filling her soul and steadying her nerves for life’s actions.
Gazing, she dreamed of the glowing embers, and they told her of life’s struggle, fierce, hot and fiery, and their crackling spoke of sharp surprises, and every falling coal of losses and separations. She watched the leaden ashes gather over the bright embers, and thought how she, too, would some day return to the dust, after her forehead was wrinkled with age, as the fires of youth slowly burned out, just as every seamed log before her was seamed and scarred by the flames. But these thoughts were only for a moment, for the fire had just been kindled in her heart, and she would have to sit and watch it glow and flicker and flame for a long time yet. Oh, that the kind Father of all spirits had granted that the leaden ashes should have gathered at the same time on her life-hearth as on his,and that their fires might have died out together! It was so hard to outlive those she loved!
During the days that followed, wild rumors came of fires and murder and pillage; and the women and children who would be left in Columbia after Hampton’s cavalry had evacuated the city trembled as they saw the nightly glow in the southeast growing brighter and the smoke growing daily denser. Till at last on the memorable fifteenth of February the men in blue appeared on the Lexington side of the Congaree and fiery shells fell without warning into the city.
Helen, standing by the white pillars of the old colonial porch, saw Major Goodwin riding rapidly down the street. He noticed her, too, and called, “I will get you a guard—am going now to see General Sherman.”
Then the bluecoats appeared here and there in the outskirts of the city, and Hampton’s cavalry hovered on the north to see that all was well before the evacuation. Soon the mayor returned and brought with him four Union soldiers.
“The general readily granted me the guard for you, Miss Brooks,” he said. “In fact, a regiment is to be marched into the city to be used for guards by those who want them. I surrendered the city unconditionally, and I do not fear much danger, as he promised me that all would be as safe in his hands as if I myself were in command.”
“And they will not fire it? Oh, how good of them!”
“He asked me about our waterworks and I told him they were in good condition. He was pleased at that, and said that he would be obliged to burn the public buildings, but not to-night, as it was too windy.”
“And there is no danger?”
“I don’t know—I don’t know. The soldiers all say—that is, some of them have told me that they would burn Columbia; that it has been the common talk around the camp fires for a long time. Somehow, one of them said, they had taken the idea that Columbia accidentally fired would be a particularly pleasant sight to General Sherman. The Fifteenth Corps is in the city; but you are safe. Your guard will protect you, and I am glad, for Bessie’s sake.
“And there is one other good thing about it, Miss Brooks,” he continued. “General Hampton very sensibly ordered that no cotton be fired on the streets and so far there is not a flame in the city except the railway station a mile away from town.”
So Helen went quietly back to Bessie’s bedside and told her what the Major had said, and the girl was glad that her first-born could be born in peace. The afternoon wore slowly on, and the night began to cover the city.
Helen was sitting in the doorway and the four guards were near. Knowing the critical condition of her friend, she ventured again to remark as to the safety of the city.
“I wish I was as sure of getting home safe as this house is to-night,” said one of the soldiers, whose face Helen could not like.
Then, as they looked toward the northeastern part of the city, a blue rocket shot high into the air. A moment, and then a white one, followed by a red. Helen turned and looked at one of the guards, a gentlemanly fellow, whom she had heard the others call “Old Secesh.”
“My God!” he exclaimed, “they are going to do it!”
The other three men rose and went up stairs, taking lighted candles.
“Madam,” said “Old Secesh,” “that signal you saw means that Columbia is to be fired immediately. If you want to save anything you had best do it. It is a hellish outrage, but the men want it, and they believe General Sherman won’t mind it. I will help you all I can.”
Even as he spoke a bright light shot up in the northeast and down the streets Helen could see men lighting camphene balls and throwing them at houses. She arose quickly to go to Bessie’s bedside, and as she reached the landing Mrs. Liddell suddenly appeared, crying:
“Fire, fire! The guards are setting fire to the lace curtains in their rooms!”
“God save Sherman the record of this outrage!” said the guard, who had followed her. “Madam, may I help you take the sick lady out? There is no use in our trying to put the fire out—the city is doomed.”
“What’s that, ‘Old Secesh?’ Can’t you keep your mouth shet once?”
“Shame on you, men—you are not worthy of the blue!”
But the men only laughed and stood on the steps while the fire burned above them.
“If Thomas or Grant only commanded us, madam!” old Secesh said, “this black chapter would not be written this night.”
So he helped Helen and Mrs. Corbin and Mrs. Liddell lift the fainting woman in a blanket from the burning house, and they bore her as gently as they might down the street. As they reached the gate, the flames burst from the windows of the house, and the street below was crowded with men and women and children. Everywhere balls saturated with turpentine were being hurled at the houses. As they went on they saw some firemen trying to put out the flames, but the soldiers, with their bayonets, punched holes in the hose and slashed it with sword and axe.
[To be continued.]