CHAPTER VITHE QUAKING OF THE EARTH
WITH the opening of the books of enlistment the whole county caught fire. When the people met at the old Petworth Church on Sundays there was nothing but talk of the coming war. The sermons of Mr. Brand, the rector, were one long war cry against the Yankees and exhortations to go forth and fight to the death in the great cause of States’ Rights. The clergyman was remorselessly badgered by Mrs. Charteris, who had extorted from him the secret of his age, which was considerably over forty-five. Dr. Yelverton, who, in spite of his sixty-five years, thought Mrs. Charteris, who was not yet forty years old, none too young for him, immediately grew in favor with the lady. Mrs. Charteris had played them off one against the other with consummate skill for fifteen years. But when the trumpet of war resounded and Mr. Brand elected to stay at home, while Dr. Yelverton, examining himself as a surgeon, pronounced himself entirely fit for duty in the army, he at once gained a tremendous lead in the lady’s favor.
George Charteris, the only son of his mother, was at school near Baltimore, but by command of Mrs. Charteris he was to make straight for Greenhill as soon as Virginia should secede.
All the boys in the county of Archie Tremaine’s and George Charteris’s age were burning to enlist and formed companies of their own, studying and drilling with the utmost ardor. The interest in events was not confined to the white people. The negroes, knowing that the whole future of their race depended upon the issue of the coming struggle, took a feverish, furtive interest in the unfolding of each day’s happenings and listened slyly to all that was said by the white people. At night they collected at their quarters and, sitting around in a ring, listened to what the house servants had to tell them of the talk that went on at the “gret house.” They were no longer permitted to visit the different estates freely at night, but were kept as far as possible from communicating with each other. Lyddon saw this and trembled for the fate of the women and children to be left defenseless in the power of the black race, and thought the white people madly optimistic when they expressed no fear whatever of the negroes in case of war—a confidence which was nobly sustained when the hour came.
The outward peace was not broken; Lyddon had ever thought lowland Virginia the most entirely peaceful spot he had ever known in his life, but the earthquake was at hand. He said this to Angela, who in Richard’s absence in Richmond attending the convention had come to be the only person to whom Lyddon could speak his mind freely.
“You have always been restless and yearning for something to happen,” he said to her one day in the garden as she was snipping dead twigs off a rose bush.“But you won’t be able to complain of that any more; stupendous things will happen and that very shortly.”
Angela’s eyes flashed with pleasure. “I don’t mind things happening,” she said. “I have red blood in me; I don’t like stagnation.” Lyddon, looking at her, felt pity welling up in his heart; the pity which maturity, having already suffered, feels for youth—pathetic youth, which has still to suffer. Whether Angela went with Neville or against him it would be hard for her. The idea of turning against Neville would be to her as if the sun rose in the west or water ran uphill. She had for him a sublimated friendship which was like love and yet was not love.
The mail came only three times a week and every mail brought long letters from Richard in Richmond. He told precisely the progress of events in the convention, the efforts of the Peace Commission, the calm hearing given to the men who wished Virginia to stay in the Union; but he never changed his opinion that the State would secede and that the day of blood was at hand.
Neville’s letters began to be irregular; only two were received from him in March and one in April. He spoke of others which he had written, but which had never been received. When Mrs. Tremaine opened these letters her face always grew pale, and it was paler still when she had finished reading them and passed them over to Colonel Tremaine. Angela read hers, too, in silence; she could not be expected to show them to anyone, but she spoke no word indicating any knowledge of what Neville meant to do.
Neville’s last letter came the middle of April. Lyddon, who had ridden to the post office, handed it to Angela in the study. She was sitting at the window reading, and Lyddon as he came in thought her a charming picture of youth and happiness. She wore a gown the color of the iris which was blooming in the box upon the window sill, for Angela claimed the right to put her flowerpots in the study windows. The April day was warm and bright, and the sunny air which was wafted in at the window had in it the intoxication of the spring. Angela’s book evidently amused her, for she was laughing as she raised her eyes to Lyddon’s when he held out the letter. Instantly her face clouded. She broke the seal and read her letter rapidly. But more rapid was the change which came over her. She sat quite still for a long time looking at the letter lying in her lap, and then, pale and quiet, rose and passed out of the room.
Meanwhile the April sky had suddenly clouded, and a few heavy drops of rain like tears had begun to fall. Lyddon’s heart ached for the girl. She was different to him from any human being he had ever known. The simile which so often occurred to him came back with strange force—that he was a gardener cultivating an exquisite flower for some one else. He had cultivated already two sturdy trees in Richard and Neville and a beautiful hardy sapling in Archie, but never before had he trained a flower in the person of a young girl. Her acquirements, which would have been nothing in a man, were extraordinary for a woman, and Lyddon in view of this would have been alarmed for her except thatshe understood and practiced housewifery well, was devotedly fond of music, loved to dance, and like the normal woman made dress a species of religion. Thus were the sweet femininities maintained.
Lyddon realized one price which Angela had to pay for the training he had given her—she had no intimate girl friends. She had plenty of girl companions—Dr. Yelverton’s granddaughters, Colonel Carey’s daughters; but there was no real community of soul between these young creatures and Angela. These other girls were satisfied with the quiet country life in which they dwelt as their mothers and grandmothers had dwelt, but their ideas of splendor were confined to a larger house and more servants than they possessed at present and to an annual trip to the White Sulphur Springs. Not so Angela Vaughn. She longed for palaces and parks and for the mysterious joys and splendors which she imagined therein could be found. The Greeks were her soul ancestors, and she had an adoration for beauty in form, color, and sound. She made Lyddon, who was quite insensible to music, repeat to her all the details of the few operas to which he had been dragged and which had bored him to excess during his European life. Richard’s years in Paris and Neville’s visits to New York and Saratoga had filled Angela’s girlish heart with longing, a longing which Mrs. Tremaine thought positively wicked and the girls of Angela’s acquaintance considered eminently foolish.
Lyddon, in his profession as a trainer of youth, had always reckoned as a positive detriment any education which segregated a human being from his fellows. Hehad reckoned all education which is totally derived from books as light without warmth. He had good reason for this belief, his own passion for books having separated him from men in general and having quenched in him most of the living and vivifying emotions. He had not been able to quench love, although he had hid it in a sepulcher and closed the door with a great stone. It was his fate, not having children of his own, to love the children of others and when he had grown to love them, they slipped easily from his grasp, except Richard and Neville Tremaine. But Lyddon believed that he should still hold to Archie and to that charming child Angela, for he could never reckon Angela as wholly grown up. There was an eternal simplicity about her, the frankness of a child in which Lyddon had never perceived any change from the time she wore pinafores.
Lyddon, thinking these thoughts, stood before the study window watching the changing April day, alternately fair and stormy. He felt convinced from Angela’s face on reading her letter that she was struggling with the great problem of whether she should stand by Neville or abandon him. Lyddon, whose knowledge of her was acute, and who knew the generous impulses of her nature, believed she would stand by Neville. But would she be happy in so doing? Ah, of that he was very far from certain! No one but Angela and himself knew that she had received a letter from Neville and the silence maintained about it proved that the letter contained something painful. At dinner that day Angela sat silent and constrained until rallied by Archie; she then assumed her usual air of gayety. In the afternoonshe went for a long walk alone and coming back at twilight paced up and down the garden until Mrs. Tremaine sent a message out to her that she must come in because the night was damp and chilly. The long walk at the end of the garden, where the old wooden bench sat against the wall and the gnarled and twisted lilacs flourished in green old age, was as much Angela’s beat as the Ladies’ Walk was Mrs. Tremaine’s. She passed Lyddon on the stairs as she went up to her room to make ready for supper, and her face was so wan and woe-begone that Lyddon felt sorry for her. At supper, however, she appeared in her usual spirits. She had brought back from her walk in the woods some sprays of the trailing arbutus and wore them in her shining hair.
The talk as usual was about the coming war. The Richmond newspapers had been received that day, and Lyddon had got his English newspapers. Colonel Tremaine inquired about the state of opinion in England concerning the outbreak of civil war in America, and although Lyddon was guarded in his replies Colonel Tremaine became irritated by them. While the brief discussion lasted Lyddon was confirmed in a suspicion concerning the negroes. They were intently listening and watching all that went on, and the white family was never left alone. Formerly at meal times with Hector, Tasso, and Jim Henry to wait it was sometimes difficult to get any one of them in the room. Tasso and Jim Henry would be engaged in transporting from the kitchen hot batter cakes, hot muffins, and all the other varieties of hot bread of which the formula invariablywas, “Take two and butter them while they are hot.” Meanwhile, Hector would be in the pantry resting himself from the arduous labors of directing Tasso and Jim Henry. But now one or the other of the subordinates was always at hand. Lyddon was convinced that they were the purveyors of news to all the negroes on the plantation. There was a bell on the back porch, and every one of the twenty-five servants engaged in the house, the garden, and the stables had a number. Sometimes Lyddon had known the whole gamut of this bell to be rung before a single servant appeared on the spot, but now they were always at hand.
Usually in these discussions of the coming war Angela took a prominent part. She wished to be like the maidens of Sparta and thought she could have done the act of Charlotte Corday, and talked enthusiastically of nursing, like a Sister of Mercy, soldiers in the hospitals. To-night, however, she seemed not interested in that subject, but willing to talk on any other. After supper Archie got out his violin and the two played together as usual. They generally wound up their performances with “Dixie,” but to-night Angela omitted it. No one noticed this except Lyddon.
As she took her candle from the hall table she went to the fireplace and, holding the candle above her head, studied the picture of Penelope and the Suitors. Seeing Lyddon coming out of the study she turned quickly and went upstairs. Lyddon, who was a bad sleeper, waked in the middle of the night and, going to the window to look at the night sky, saw that candles were still burning in Angela’s room. He lighted the lampat his bedside and read an hour and then went again to the window. Angela’s light was still burning. Lyddon’s heart ached for her.
It was then the middle of April. Two days afterwards when the Richmond newspapers arrived it was proclaimed that the Federal Government had called on Virginia for her quota of troops to subdue the seceding States. This at once forced the issue. The convention then went into secret session, and the beginning of the crisis was at hand. The tension of men’s minds grew fiercely acute. Colonel Tremaine no longer sent to the post office for the letters, but went himself, riding hard both ways. At any moment now Virginia might be riven from the Union. Every mail brought a long letter from Richard Tremaine. Any day, any hour, might bring the great news; but as fate generally wills it the unexpected happened.
One evening, just as the soft spring night had closed in and the Harrowby family were assembled in the hall waiting for the announcement of supper, a sudden wild commotion was heard at the hall door. Archie ran and opened it. Outside a crowd of negroes were delightedly welcoming and “howdying” Richard Tremaine. He flung himself off his horse, ran up the steps, burst into the hall, and waving his hat in the air cried out in a ringing voice, “Hurrah for States’ Rights! Yesterday afternoon the deed was done. Virginia is out of the Union forever.” He clasped his mother with his left arm while he seized his father’s hand, who said solemnly:
“God save the Commonwealth.”
As soon as the first greetings were over an account was demanded of the portentous event of the day before, all hanging on Richard’s words. As he spoke in his clear resonant voice, his countenance full of animation, Lyddon who stood on the edge of the group fell in love with his pupil over again. Richard Tremaine had the best sort of masculine beauty—the beauty of grace, strength and skill. His eyes, a light penetrating blue, had a lambent fire in them and seemed to illuminate his speech.
“It was the most solemn scene that could be imagined,” he said. “After four days of secret session, in which we wrestled together like gladiators, the striking of the clock told us that the hour had come. When the presiding officer’s gavel fell and he asked, ‘Shall this ordinance pass?’ there was not a dry eye in the assemblage. I felt the tears warm upon my face and was ashamed of my weakness, thinking that I was acting the boy after all among those graybeards. Then suddenly I looked up; the presiding officer was in tears and made no secret of it. The clerk who called the roll, an old man with long white hair, could not control the trembling of his voice. As each name was spoken I saw a strange sight, a man unable to give his vote without tears upon his face. It was the most moving, the most extraordinary sight ever witnessed in the legislative body. Not a sound was heard except the calling of the roll and the ‘aye’ or the ‘no’ which answered. There were fifty-five ‘noes.’ When my name was reached I meant to shout out the ‘aye’ but I couldn’t; all was too deathlike, too solemn. At last the final vote was recordedand then it was as if a cable had snapped; it was like the change from the funeral dirge to the quick step of a march past. A great shout went up—I found my voice then. I couldn’t think as wisely as some of those old men, but I could cheer louder than any of them. I wish I could make you see and feel the solemnity, the strangeness, the intoxication of that hour. Our vote didn’t take us into the Confederacy, although it severed us from the Union. We stood midway between them ready, like Quintus Curtius, to leap into the abyss. Oh, how great a thing it is to live in this time!”
Lyddon’s eye left for a moment Richard’s eloquent face and traveled round the hall. At the doors dark faces were peering in. The negroes were listening breathlessly to that which meant as much to them as to the race which mastered them.
“As soon as an adjournment was reached,” Richard continued, “I asked for a week’s leave and got it. I wanted to be the first man in Virginia to enlist in the army and I believe I can make it. By the way, I hear from Philip Isabey that he was the first man to enlist in Louisiana and has been elected captain of the first battery of artillery raised in the State.”
So far not one word had been spoken of Neville. Richard, looking about him, suddenly realized this and then in a cool voice asked, “What news is there from my brother?”
There was a silence for a moment or two and then Colonel Tremaine said tremulously, “There is no news from your brother.”
At the same moment all became conscious of the peering and listening negroes. Richard at once said carelessly, “We shall probably see Neville in a few days. He can easily sail up from Fort Monroe where he was last week when I had a short note from him brought by private hand.” Richard took the note out and handed it to his mother. Her hands trembled a little as she read it. It was brief, merely saying he was well and had heard good news from home and expecting to be at Harrowby within the week. Then they trooped into supper. Richard’s story was not yet half told and he had to answer innumerable questions from Colonel Tremaine. Mrs. Tremaine sat strangely silent, her brooding eyes turning toward her right, where at table was Neville’s place. Through it all Angela, too, remained singularly silent. The reins of discipline which Mrs. Tremaine had held strictly enough over Neville and Richard had been relaxed in the case of the Benjamin of her flock and Angela, the child of her adoption, and they were generally audible as well as visible. Not so Angela to-night. She sat quiet and Lyddon thought stunned by what was happening around her.
Archie then brought forth his tale of injuries in not being allowed to enlist. Richard good-naturedly cuffed him and reminded him that he was but a baby in years.
After supper was served, Colonel Tremaine called for champagne. A bottle was fetched by Hector, who took occasion to remark, “Dis heah is outen de las’ basket. I speck you hav’ to order sum mo’, old Marse.”
“I do not expect to order any more champagne at present,” remarked Colonel Tremaine grimly.
“And the few bottles which are left,” added Mrs. Tremaine, “must be saved for the hospitals.”
Colonel Tremaine then rose and all at the table followed his example. “Let us drink,” he said, “to the cause of the South.” A ringing cheer which the listening negroes heard burst from Archie as they all drank.
Richard had so much to tell that the family sat up unusually late listening to him, and it was near midnight before he and Lyddon went to the old study for their usual smoke and talk. Richard’s enthusiasm had by no means expended itself. “I know what you are thinking, Mr. Lyddon,” he said, standing in his familiar argumentative attitude, his back to the fireplace and his arms folded.
“Yes,” replied Lyddon, lighting his pipe. “Yesterday you performed a great act. You sounded the death knell of slavery, you have emancipated yourselves and your children forever from that curse.”
“So we may have done. The fathers of the Republic sought to emancipate us and when we can act freely and without fear of Northern coercion we shall perhaps follow the council of the patriarchs, but never under threats, by God!” The two talked animatedly for a couple of hours. Lyddon had feared that Richard, beguiled by the glamour of a soldier’s life, would choose the army as a permanent career while in truth his greater gifts lay in the domain of statecraft. But Lyddon’s mind was relieved by Richard’s saying that he felt no inclination to adopt a military life permanently.
Then as the case always was with Lyddon, their talk fell upon books. Richard took down a battered volume and was reading aloud to Lyddon what both knew by heart, the story of that Athenian night when Agatho returned with the prize of Tragedy from the Olympian games and the symposium was held at the house of Phædrus, and when the night was far spent Alcibiades coming in with the tipsy crowd of Greek boys swore that Socrates should drink two measures of wine to every other man’s one; and Socrates, accepting this challenge, drank them all under the table except Aristodemus, the old physician, and when day broke Socrates after taking a bath went and taught philosophy in the groves while the dew was still wet upon the grass.
As Lyddon and Richard Tremaine laughed over this old tale time went backward. They forgot the storm and stress of to-day, the rise and fall of empires, the fierce combat of body and soul in which the human race had struggled for almost three thousand years since that Hellenic night. Again they lived the life of those undying Greeks, and Richard, who drew cleverly, was making a pen-and-ink sketch of the beautiful tipsy Alcibiades when he suddenly laid down his pen and said after listening for a moment, “There’s Neville. I hear a boat grating against the wharf.”