CHAPTER VIIITHE MEETING
ALL Virginia had caught fire and was immediately a blazing furnace of enthusiasm. The people were of a military temper and the spirit militant had always possessed them. Their ancestors, having fought stubbornly for Charles the First, had come to Virginia rather than submit to Cromwellianism. Almost as soon as these cavaliers became Virginians, they took up arms in Bacon’s Rebellion and fought so stubbornly that fifty years afterwards families who had been in the Nathaniel Bacon cause would not walk on the same side of the street or road as those who had upheld Sir William Berkeley. They welcomed fighting during the whole of the Revolution and in 1812 they again faced the Redcoats. They were a primitive and isolated people and belonged more to the eighteenth than to the nineteenth century; their place in chronology, in truth, was of a time when fighting was loved for fighting’s sake. They knew little and cared less concerning the forces against which they were hurling themselves. Being an untraveled people, they had no conception of any better or other life than their own. They gave high-sounding names to things and places and fully believed in the illusions thus created.
No people on earth ever went more seriously into a civil war than did these Virginians, and civil war is serious business always. Every family in the county was united except the Harrowby family, that one which had been the most united, the most devoted of them all.
The news of the tragic happenings of that April night were known magically through the whole community. Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine were extolled as was Virginius, the Roman father. They were considered to have performed an act of the loftiest patriotic virtue in giving up the son whom they reckoned to have given up his honor.
Angela was generally condemned and had in the whole county only one partisan; this was Mrs. Charteris, who was scarcely less of a Spartan mother than Mrs. Tremaine, but who remembered that she had once been young herself and rashly assumed that Angela must have been too desperately in love with Neville Tremaine to refuse him anything.
Vain delusion, and wholly unshared by Angela! The entire face of existence seemed to have changed for her in that April night and nothing seemed to have its right proportions. But one sad truth made itself felt at the moment when she became Neville Tremaine’s wife—she was not in love with him. She loved him deeply and truly and would not have turned from him in any event, even though the mother that bore him did so. But mothers have a sense of responsibility in their love, and Mrs. Tremaine felt as if, through some secret wickedness on her part or Colonel Tremaine’s, she had brought into the world a traitor and that God’s judgmentwas upon Neville therefor. She could not make this intelligible to anyone except Colonel Tremaine, who himself inclined to the same dread theory.
Richard Tremaine’s broad intelligence took a more just view of Neville’s course, but Richard was powerless to move his parents. From the hour when Neville went forth an outcast from his father’s house, his name was never mentioned at family prayers, an omission which went like a sword to the hearts of all those assembled at those prayers. Also by a tacit understanding Neville’s name was no more spoken in the presence of the master and mistress of Harrowby.
Apparently there was not the smallest outward alteration in Angela herself or in her position. But in reality a stupendous change had occurred. Angela was a wife, and subject to no authority except that of her husband, and could no longer be disposed of as if she were a child. Something of this showed subtly in her air and manner from the beginning. There was a gravity and self-command which she adopted instinctively with her new name of Angela Tremaine. No one saw and felt this more than Lyddon. He read Angela’s heart like an open book, and sighed for her.
Three days after her marriage, a small parcel addressed to Lyddon reached Harrowby. It had been forwarded through the British consul at Norfolk. Within was a letter addressed to Mrs. Neville Tremaine, and the parcel consisted of a considerable sum of money in gold eagles. Lyddon handed it to Angela in the presence of Mrs. Tremaine. It was a sweet spring morning and the two were superintending the work in the oldgarden just as they had done since Angela was a child. After reading the letter she had not offered to show it to Mrs. Tremaine, but put it quietly into her pocket.
Mrs. Tremaine, knowing from whom it came, and panting for news of the outcast, still would not speak, and Angela, who was as sensitive to Neville’s honor as if she were in love with him, had the haughtiness of a wife in the presence of those who have dealt injustice to her husband. She balanced the little packet of gold in her delicate fingers, and her eyes, which had grown dark and serious, suddenly assumed the inquisitiveness of a child.
Lyddon, who was watching her, knew she had never before owned so much money as the modest sum which Neville had sent her. She glanced at Lyddon, who was smiling, and knowing the thought in his mind, she blushed deeply, and dropped the money into her pocket. Lyddon walked away and Angela went on with her work of suggesting and assisting Mrs. Tremaine in the planting of flower seeds.
Mrs. Tremaine was outwardly calm and her voice unmoved, but Angela knew that storm and tempest raged within. An impulse of divine pity, like the sun upon snow, flashed into her heart, and after a minute of struggle she said softly to Mrs. Tremaine: “He is well.”
Mrs. Tremaine averted her head as if she had not heard, but Angela knew she had, and then the next moment the mother turned quickly and kissed the daughter-in-law who had shown mercy to her.
From the day after his return from Richmond,Richard had actively canvassed the county for the raising of a battery of artillery of which he wished to be elected captain. On the evening of the day when Angela had got her first letter from Neville, Richard rode home tired with his three days of riding and working, but exultant over his prospects. The family were already at supper when he entered the dining room in his riding dress and sat down to the table.
“I think, sir,” he said to his father, “the matter is settled and I have enough votes pledged to me to secure the captaincy. We hope to raise the whole equipment by subscription so that the State shan’t be put to any expense whatever.”
“I, myself, will contribute all the wheat grown on the middle wheat field,” replied Colonel Tremaine. And then, looking toward Mrs. Tremaine, added: “We can afford to be generous now that we have but two sons whom we can in honor own.”
Angela, who was sitting at the table, turned pale and then crimson, and after a moment rose quietly and left the room. All knew what she meant by this silent protest—she was Neville Tremaine’s wife and nothing could be said against him in her presence, even by implication, without her resenting it.
After supper, when Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine were in the library, they sent for Angela and she came in promptly.
“My dear,” said Colonel Tremaine, in his most polished and elaborate manner, “I have to beg your pardon for a most unfortunate allusion which I inadvertently made at supper.”
“It was, indeed, most unfortunate,” answered Angela quietly.
Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine looked at her and felt as if the center of the universe had dropped out. Here was this child, the companion of Archie, daring to assert herself, nay, to assert the dignity of her position as Neville Tremaine’s wife.
She was, however, so clearly right that Colonel Tremaine, after a gasp or two, finished what he had begun to say.
“We understand perfectly what your attitude must be, and if by chance allusion we seem to forget this, I beg that you will excuse us, and believe that it is very far from intentional.”
Angela bowed and left the room.
It was not uncommon for Colonel Tremaine to make these elaborate apologies and to ask pardon from the Throne of Grace when he had offended, and he had been known, when the family was assembled for prayers, to offer a ceremonious explanation for having thrown his boot jack at Jim Henry’s head.
Toward Angela, however, Colonel Tremaine had ever been indulgence itself and had always treated her as a favored child.
After the little scene in the library, Angela returned to the study, where Richard and Lyddon sat, and told them what had happened. “I don’t know how it was,” she said, “but although I was not thinking of Neville at the time, the instant Uncle Tremaine said that about his sons whom he could in honor own, I felt that I must not sit quiet under it. It makes a greatdifference,” she added sagely, “when a woman is married to a man.”
“A very great difference,” answered Lyddon, who could not forbear laughing, and then growing serious he said: “You were always wanting something to happen; wonderful things have happened and will continue to happen, and the time may come when you will apply to the present the old saw, ‘Happy the country which has no history.’”
Richard then took out a letter. “I had this to-day from Isabey, who seems to have reached Richmond a few hours after I left. He is lucky enough already to have got his captaincy of artillery and has been sent to Virginia on a secret mission. He writes that he wishes to see me and is likely to arrive at any moment.”
Angela listened to this with the new sense which had come to her since the marriage ceremony between herself and Neville—the sense of analysis. She had taken such tremendous interest in Isabey and had dreamed so many idle dreams about him, decorating him with all the girlish fancies of her heart; and now Isabey, the much-talked-of, the long-expected, was nothing to her. She was still at the age when the only interest possible was a personal interest, when her own destiny she thought must be affected by every person who crossed her path.
Then she remembered that Isabey’s coming could mean nothing to her, that she could no longer steal into Richard’s room to look at Isabey’s sketches on the wall, and it gave her a slight shock. Many other things in her new position puzzled her. She did not know in theleast whether she ought to be interested in Richard’s account of the raising of troops in the county, and it suddenly occurred to her that when she should join Neville, she would still be at a loss to know which side she should take. She had been red-hot for war, but quickly and even instantly had learned to sit silent when the coming conflict was spoken of before her.
A day or two after was the time when the artillery volunteers were to meet at the courthouse and elect their officers. Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine sent Richard off with their blessing. He reached the courthouse, which was ten miles away, by ten o’clock in the morning. It was a day of brightness, and the old colonial courthouse and clerk’s office lay basking in the warm April sun.
A great crowd had assembled, chiefly men from eighteen to forty-five, but there were boys and graybeards present, and a few ladies. The election of officers was heldviva voce, and Richard was elected, almost without a dissentient vote, captain of the battery of artillery. The enrollment was large because Richard Tremaine carried men’s bodies as well as minds with him.
When the business part of the programme was over, there was a call for a speech, that invariable concomitant of every species of business transacted in Virginia. This was responded to by Colonel Carey, who had an inveterate passion for speechmaking, inherited from a long line of speechmaking ancestors.
The colonel mounted the stone steps of the old courthouse and began with his usual preliminary, which wasthe declaration that he was totally unprepared for this honor and averse to public speaking, and then promptly drew from his pocket a manuscript of the speech it took him precisely three-quarters of an hour to deliver and which had been prepared for the occasion as soon as secession had become a living issue. The exordium of the colonel’s speech was that which is invariably required of every orator on Virginia soil—a tribute to the women of Virginia.
Richard Tremaine, standing on the edge of the crowd of all sorts and conditions of men, listened gravely to the colonel’s roaring platitudes, his torrent of adjectives, his prophetic visions. The colonel was a fighting man, but Richard had no doubt would indulge his speechmaking, if allowed, when bullets were whizzing and shell tearing up the ground around him.
Colonel Tremaine had frequently complained that during the Mexican War, Randolph Carey was always making speeches when the Mexicans were doing their best work, while Colonel Carey often told of his annoyance when, in a ticklish position, Colonel Tremaine would insist upon discussing tailors and quoting long excerpts from the “Lake Poets.”
Richard, remembering this, smiled. Never were there two more determined old fire-eaters than this couple of Virginia colonels.
While these thoughts were passing through Richard’s mind, Colonel Carey was still thundering upon the courthouse steps. Like many others, he believed that a loud enunciation had all the force of reason, and wound up his speech by shouting that he saw amongthem a young man destined to lead the hosts of Virginia to victory upon many a hard-fought field and who, when the Southern Confederacy had achieved the first place among the nations of the world, would stand high upon the roll of statesmen. He referred to his young friend, young in years, but old in wisdom, courage, and understanding, Richard Tremaine, Esq., of Harrowby.
At this, Richard Tremaine bowed gracefully and recognized that the colonel had made a very good opening for the battery of artillery. Cries of “Speech! Speech!” came in deep tones of men’s voices and pretty feminine cries, and Richard Tremaine, mounting the courthouse steps in his turn, said more in three minutes than the colonel had said in his three-quarters of an hour.
Standing in the noonday light of the springtime, his figure outlined against the mass of the old brick building, Richard Tremaine looked like one of the straight vigorous young trees transplanted from the primeval woods.
When he had finished speaking he walked across the courthouse green to the clerk’s office. There was still much business to be attended to concerning the enrollment and while Richard, with a group of gentlemen, including Mr. Wynne, the gray-haired clerk of the court, were discussing details, a horseman appeared before the open door, and, flinging himself from his horse, entered the clerk’s office. A shout went up, “Here’s George Charteris!”
He was a handsome, black-browed youth with a hintof mustache, and wore a students’ cap set rakishly on the side of his head.
Cries of “Hello, George!” “How are you, George?” welcomed him. “Where did you come from?”
“From Baltimore, straight,” answered George Charteris, going up to Richard Tremaine and clapping him on the shoulder. “I heard four days ago how things had gone and I determined to make straight for home. Maryland is all right, gentlemen, she will be out of the Union in a week. Baltimore is on fire with enthusiasm, and everybody might have known what would happen as soon as Abe Lincoln tried to put his foot on the neck of Maryland.” Here he raised his slight boyish figure up, and his dark eyes flashed as he said: “I was in the fighting on the 19th of April.”
They all looked at him with new eyes. This stripling had seen blood flow and smelled powder burn. Murmurs of interest arose and Richard Tremaine cried out: “Go on, boy, tell us about it.”
“I was staying at Barnum’s Hotel,” said George, delighted with the joy of seventeen at telling his own “Iliad,” “and early in the morning I was out on the streets which were crowded. Everybody knew the Yankee troops would be passed through Baltimore that day, and the people were determined that it shouldn’t be done without a struggle. The Governor, an infernal old rapscallion, would not call the State troops out, so we could only get together a lot of fighting men with stones and brickbats in their hands and revolvers in their pockets. There were hundreds of us around thestation when the train full of bluecoats, thousands of ’em, came rolling in. I never saw so many soldiers in my life before. We began to throw stones at the train so as to force the soldiers to come out, and we did. There was a crash of breaking glass. I, myself, threw a stone at a car window out of which an officer was peering and I saw him fall back with blood upon his forehead. Then, after a fusillade, the bluecoats came pouring out of the train and met us face to face. We fired at them with our pistols and then the soldiers formed and charged up the street. Of course, we couldn’t resist them, so we scattered, but we made a stand at two or three places and did as good street fighting as was ever done in Paris. I had read how they made barricades by just upsetting a cart and tearing up paving stones. There were a lot of us youngsters and in ten minutes we had made a first-class barricade.”
George’s face was flushed and he pushed his students’ cap still more rakishly to one side. He felt himself every inch a man and gloried at coming into the heritage of manhood. While he was speaking he turned his back to the open door. Before it came a lady, dark-haired and white-skinned like himself—his mother. Mrs. Charteris raised her hand for silence among the listening group and smiled, but her eyes, which were exactly like these of her tall stripling, sparkled as did his. George continued, folding his arms and drawing himself up as he talked:
“A line of bluecoats came charging up the street. They were very steady, but so were we. They fired a volley, but we knew it was blank and didn’t mind it.Then when they got close to us we gave them our pistol fire. We didn’t use blank cartridges; three of the bluecoats fell over and then all at once the soldiers swarmed upon us. It seemed to me as if the earth and air and sky were all full of soldiers. They were on top of me and around me and then, in some way, I can’t imagine how, I tore myself loose and ran as hard as I could. I found myself down on the docks among the shipping. There was a schooner making ready to leave, and the captain was just stepping aboard. I spoke to him and as soon as he opened his mouth I knew he was a Virginian. I told him that I was a Virginia man, boy, I mean, trying to get back to tidewater Virginia, and he told me to come along with him, that he was bound for York River. We got off directly, but the wind failed almost as soon as we reached Chesapeake Bay. We lay there becalmed for three days and on the last day we got the Baltimore newspapers and one of them had a poem in it, a great poem. It’s called ‘Maryland, My Maryland.’ It’s the finest thing I ever read in my life.”
He took out of his pocket a newspaper clipping and, in a ringing voice and with all the power of feeling, read the lines of the poem.
The effect was something like that produced by the first rendering of the “Marseillaise.” As George finished, every man present sprang to his feet and followed Stonewall Jackson’s advice, to “yell like devils.”
Richard Tremaine found himself hurrahing as loud as anybody. George stood in an involuntarily heroic attitude, tasting the rapture of being a hero. In aminute or two a soft arm stole around his neck, and close to him he saw his mother’s delicate, handsome, middle-aged face, her eyes, still young and exactly like those of the boy. He caught her in his arms and kissed her rapturously. The mother and son were evidently near together. When the cheering had subsided a little, Mrs. Charteris turned to Richard Tremaine.
“Mr. Tremaine,” she said, “I have a contribution to make to your battery of artillery. Here is my son, the only son of his mother, and she a widow. You are welcome to him. I only wish I had ten more sons to give my country.”
Richard Tremaine took Mrs. Charteris’s hand and kissed it. “It was mothers like you,” he said, “who made Sparta and Rome.”
Mr. Wynne, the clerk of the court, a small, oldish man, with stiff gray hair and a prim pursed-up, thin mouth, spoke: “Wait a bit,” he said. “This Charteris boy is under age. He is too young to enlist.”
“I assure you he is not,” replied Mrs. Charteris positively. “He was eighteen years old his last birthday. I, his mother, should know.”
Everybody present doubted whether George Charteris was really eighteen or not, but Mr. Wynne settled it. He coolly took down a ledger and turning over the leaves rapidly, came to a certain entry in it.
“Here, madam,” he said, suavely, “is the record of your marriage license. It is dated fourth of June, 1843. Not quite eighteen years ago.”
There was a moment’s silence and then an involuntary burst of laughter from everyone present exceptMrs. Charteris, who blushed deeply, and the stripling, who looked thoroughly disappointed at the turn of affairs.
“Never mind, my son,” said Mrs. Charteris, smiling. “Another two years will see you old enough to serve your country.”
“Meanwhile,” said Richard Tremaine, putting his hand on the boy’s shoulder, “send him to Harrowby and let Mr. Lyddon teach him along with Archie. That boy, you know, is just about as crazy as your boy to enlist, and I shouldn’t be surprised if George and Archie and my father were all to run away together and join the army.”
“You are very kind,” answered Mrs. Charteris, “and if Colonel Tremaine will allow it, and Mr. Lyddon will be so good, I think I can’t do better with my boy.”
“I think you could do a great deal better, ma’am,” replied George, promptly. “There are plenty of schools where nobody knows my age and I can easily pass for eighteen or even twenty, and I am going to do it.”
“That’s just the way my brother Archie talks,” said Richard Tremaine. “But sixteen-year-old boys are not good for campaigning.”
“Aren’t we, though,” replied George, slyly, “wait and see.”
“Observe, gentlemen,” continued Richard Tremaine, smiling as he looked about him. “It is much to have such a spirit in our lads, but far more such a spirit in their mothers, as Mrs. Charteris has shown. That alone will make us invincible.”