CHAPTER IIANGELA
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 thelow-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 swearingat 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 motherwhen 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. “Itis 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 thatnight 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 highso 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 niggardlinesstoward 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 gracefulas 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 childrenNeville, 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 beensaid 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 gotout 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 ofnothing 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 withpride, 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 ofthe 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.”