CHAPTER IVLOVE 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! Betterthan 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 seehim. 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 apromise 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, closingthe 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 presentrégimeand 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 yieldher 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. Theresult 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 royaldowry. 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 moonwas 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 thiswas 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 suchas 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 wascontroverted 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 twoimpatient 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.