is an age! The tedious hours will move heavily away, and every minute
seem a lazy day.”
“Where have you learned all this?”
“You taught me.”
“Oh, love! love! love! How sweet you are! When I return, then you will
be my wife. Let me speak to your father and mother to-night. Why should
we wait?”
“Leonard, I have promised my father and mother that I will not engage
myself to any one, until the war is over.”
“But that was before this happy hour. Such a promise cannot now stand,
darling.”
“It cannot be broken. How could you ever trust me if I was false to the
dear father and mother who love me so much?”
“But we are engaged, Sappha. No mere ceremony of asking consent can ever
make us more truly one.”
“Then, my love, be content with that knowledge.”
“The war may last a lifetime.”
“It may be over in a year--or less.”
The love-light in her eyes, her tremulous smiles, her penetrative
loveliness, her confident heart’s still fervour, filled him with an
inward gladness that was unspeakable. His eyes dilated with rapture; he
felt as if he was walking on air, and breathing some diviner atmosphere.
The joy of love had gone to his head like wine.
In a little while Mrs. Bloommaert came into the room, and though she was
sleepy and distrait, she could not but notice the couple who stood up
hand-in-hand to meet her. Sappha was eighteen years old, but her radiant
face looked almost childlike in its innocent joyousness; and Leonard at
her side was the incarnation of young manhood; endowed with strength and
grace and beauty, and crowned with the glory of fortunate love.
Leonard wished her to understand, but she smiled away all explanations,
and pretended a little worry over her long sleep, and the late hour; and
there was nothing left for Leonard but to say “Good-night.” They both
went to the door with him, and when he was out of sight, the door was
shut and the mother said, “I must have been asleep! Your father will be
here soon, Sappha. You had better go to bed. I suppose Leonard is going
with the men he raised.”
“Yes, he is going.”
“He ought to be glad to go. It is good for a young man to have some
experiences. Well, dear one, the day is over; and you must be tired.”
Then Sappha perceived that her mother did not wish to know
authentically, what she understood clearly enough; and a little saddened
by this want of sympathy, she went quietly into solitude with her joy.
The three months that followed this interview were filled with incident.
New Yorkers needed no theatre; the war supplied every emotion of dismay
and triumph of which the human heart is capable. “_On to Canada!_” had
been the slogan at its commencement; and General Hull with over two
thousand fine troops quickly took peaceable possession of the little
village of Sandwich, on the Canadian shore. His first dispatches threw
New York into a tumult of excitement and delight. The American flag was
flying on both sides of the Niagara River, and from the grandiloquent
proclamation Hull had made the Canadians, and his first dispatches, it
really appeared as if Canada had fallen. But even while bells were
ringing and cannons firing jubilates for this news, Hull himself had
thrown out the white flag from his fort at Detroit, and surrendered the
stronghold and all his forces without firing a gun. The anger and
mortification of the people were in due season, however, turned into
triumph; for if General Hull surrendered on the nineteenth of August,
Captain Hull of the frigate _Constitution_ on the tenth of August took
the British man-of-war _Guerrière_ on the coast of Newfoundland; and the
news of this victory, which arrived in New York about the first of
September, roused the wildest enthusiasm.
This circumstance indicates very well the progress of the war. The army
operations on the Canadian frontier were everywhere disastrous to
America; on the ocean her ships vindicated by constant brilliant
victories the descent of her sailors from that great maritime power
whose flag had braved a thousand years the battle and the breeze. There
is not in all history a more splendid naval record than the United
States made during these ninety days of alternate dismay and triumph.
And no city felt these wonderful sea victories quite as New York did.
Her great ship-yards on the East River had sent out the armed frigates
and brigs, that were covering the nation, even in the eyes of her enemy,
with a great and unexpected glory. The _Constitution!_ the _President!_
the _Essex!_ the _United States!_ these gallant ships had a kind of
personality to New Yorkers. They had seen them grow to perfection in
Christian Bergh’s and Adam Brown’s yards. They had stood godfathers at
their christening, and they watched their valiant careers almost as a
father watches his son’s course to a glorious success.
On the fourth of September Sappha and Mrs. Bloommaert were in Greenwich
Street shopping, when they suddenly heard a wild shout of joy. “The
_Constitution!_ the _Constitution!_” From mouth to mouth the two words
flew like wild-fire. The whole city was roaring them. The bells clapped
them out. The cannon sent them thundering over land and sea. Men
meeting, though strangers, clasped hands; and women threw themselves
into each other’s arms, weeping. Was there feeling enough left for a
maid to be lovelorn or melancholy? Not in Sappha’s case. She gave her
whole heart to rejoice with her country first, and then proudly
remembered the dear youth who must at that moment be rejoicing with her.
Letters from him came more frequently than she had dared to hope. Some
one available as a messenger was frequently at the Narrows fort, and
Leonard never missed an opportunity. There was no restriction on this
correspondence by her father and mother, though at the beginning of it
the judge strongly advised restriction.
“Written words cannot be denied or rubbed out, Carlita,” he said. “I
know what young men are. Suppose Leonard should show Sappha’s letters to
some companion.”
“Suppose an impossibility, Gerardus.”
“Not so. A man in love is always a vain man, if his love is returned. He
has conquered, and he puts on all the airs of a victor. He usually wants
some one to admire and envy him, and a love letter is a visible proof of
his prowess among women. I would not allow Sappha to write.”
“Then you are in the wrong, my dear one. Nothing is better for a lover
than a course of love letters. It is the finest education for
marriage.”
“They say so many extravagant things.”
“Very well. That is good. They get used to saying fine things, then they
feel them, and ’tis no harm at all for a lover to write down his
mistress ‘an angel.’ He may treat her the better for it, all their lives
together.”
“So! so! Take thy own foolish way, wife. I do not forget thy dear little
love notes--and ever the few leaves of sweet brier in them. I can smell
it yet.”
So Sappha had her love letters, and she also wrote them. Leonard’s were
like himself, frankly outspoken, full of extravagancy, both in love and
war. “He loved her as never man loved before;” and she saw the words
shine on the paper, and believed in them with all her soul. “He longed
for those unspeakable English tyrants to come within reach of their
guns, they would be sunk twenty fathoms deep in no time--then, then,
then, oh, then he would fly to her, as a bird to its nest!” Love and
glory mingled thus, until love took entire possession; then the
conclusion was a passionate exploiting of that yearning word “_why?_”
“_Why_ could they not be married when he returned? _Why_ should they
wait? _Why_ did she not think as he did? _Why_ consider the war at all?
_Why_ let that old tyrant of a motherland called England interfere in
their happiness? _Why_ let anything? Or anybody?” There had been little
parties of visitors at the Narrows, “_Why_ had she not persuaded her
father and mother to sail so far with her? _Why_, in short, did she not
understand that life was dreadfully dull in the fort, and that a sight
of her would be heaven to him? _Why? Why? Why_ did she not love him as
wildly and fondly and eternally as he loved her?”
All this exaggeration was the most beautiful truth to Sapphira. She
adored her lover for the very prodigality of his pleas and
protestations. It was right and proper that lovers should suffer all the
pangs of separation; she was rather proud of Leonard’s wailing and
complaining; and careful not to comfort it too much, by comparing it
with her own. Indeed she rather affected the style of a sweet little
mentor, bound to remind him that he must love honour, even before
herself. And she so blended their own hopes and happiness with domestic
and public affairs as to make her letters all that a daily paper might
be to a man shut up in prison, or in a fort in a wilderness. Leonard saw
through them, the New York he loved, the busy, hopeful people, talking,
trading, singing, smoking, loving, living through every sense they had;
and he felt with the keenest delight all Sappha’s sweet
self-disparagements and compunctions for her own happiness and good
fortune in being beloved by him.
“I cannot tell you, my own dear friend,” she wrote on the sixth of
November, “how happy your assurances of affection make me. People who
are very, very happy do not know how to write down their joy. I have no
words but the old, old ones--I do so love you! If I but think of your
name, I bless it forever. When your letters come, I kiss the seal
before I open them; when I write you a letter I look love into every
word I write. My father does not speak of you--oh, there is so much else
for him to talk of! My mother looks only the sweet sympathy she will not
utter, until my father wills it--and in that she is right, I think.
Annette may suspect, but she knows nothing certainly; our secret is very
much our own yet, and the dearer for it. You would say so also, if you
could see and hear New York at the present time. In spite of our small
deprivations, we are all very happy. The militia stationed here are
having a most sociable time, and there are parades and reviews
constantly in progress. The theatre is now filled every night it is
open, and if only some gallant privateer, or some sailor from the ships
comes in, the performance has to stop until he has been cheered to the
skies. I am sorry, my dearest friend, that you did not join the navy;
for just now sailors are the idols of our city--I do not mean that--oh,
no! I could not bear to think of you at sea. I am counting the days and
the hours now. I heard mother tell Annette that the men at the Narrows
would be home for the great parade on Evacuation Day, Annette clapped
her hands and said ‘then Leonard Murray will return to us; and I shall
ask grandmother to give him a dinner. He will be so glad to see me,’ she
added, ‘and I shall be so glad to see him.’ She put me out of
calculation, and I did not mind; for if _you_ remember, what care I if
all the world forgets me? It is too bad the English ships will not give
you a chance of glory, we have almost forgot how to fear them. Every
one is in high spirits; we have no doubt of God, nor our country, nor of
our brave sailors and soldiers. And, oh, Leonard! dear, dear Leonard, I
have not one doubt of you. So then I send you my heart; for I do trust
you, Leonard, for all the joy that life shall bring me. Yes I do! I do!
Sappha.”
Such foolish words! Ah, no! Such words of delightful wisdom! And happy
indeed is the woman who in her youth hides such letters away in her Book
of Life. They will sweeten every page of it--even to the very end.
CHAPTER FOUR
_Introduces Mr. Achille St. Ange_
On the afternoon of November the twenty-fifth Annette was sitting with
her grandmother in the comfortable, large living room which the elder
woman loved. Outside the day was extraordinarily beautiful for the
season. The sky was nearly cloudless, the balmy air had just that snap
of early frost which made it exhilarating, and there was not a breath of
wind. The tall, straight Michaelmas daisies stood radiantly still in
their late purple glory; the golden marigolds glowed at their feet;
every twig, and every blade of grass might have been cut out of stone.
It was a speechless, motionless, spell-bound garden, lit up with a flood
of winter sunshine.
Madame had her knitting in her hand, but she was not busy with it; her
gaze was fixed upon Annette, who was fastening more carefully the silver
spangles on a gown of blue gauze. “Madame Duval barely catches them,”
she said plaintively, “and I suppose there will be dancing to-night.”
“I do not think there will be anything of the kind, Annette. Your aunt
will have to use the largest room for dinner, and dinner dishes are not
moved by magic. Also, I do not intend to remain there all night; so fine
is the weather we can easily return home. It has been such a tumultuous
day that I shall need sleep, and out of my own bed I never get it.”
“But the parade was splendid, grandmother; and I am sure you are glad
you saw it.”
“Oh, my child, my years it made me count. So well I remember the first
Evacuation Day parade. General Washington and the victorious army led
it. Then I wept because your grandfather was not among living
heroes--to-day I did not weep--so soon we shall meet again.” A sound of
distant music arrested speech, and they listened in silence till it died
away. Then Annette said: “There are to be so many public dinners, and
the theatre is to be brilliantly illuminated. Oh, grandmother, I wish
you would let me go with the Westervelt party to the theatre. What
excitement there will be there! What cheering and singing and fine
acting! and at uncle’s!--well, you know what uncle’s Evacuation dinners
are--ten or twelve old men who were in his company will be there; and
they will tell the same stories, and sing the same songs, and pay the
ladies the same compliments. I would like to go to the theatre.”
“To your uncle’s dinner party you will go to-night; and I think the
dress you are spangling is too light. You had better wear something
warmer.”
“Grandmother, I saw Sappha’s dress yesterday--it is a white gauze with
brilliant crimson roses scattered over it; and it is to be worn over a
rich, white satin slip. Do you want me to look a dowdy beside her?”
“Like a dowdy you could not look, not if you tried to, Annette. Of your
health I want you to take good care. Your mother had very weak lungs.”
“My lungs are strong enough, grandmother, it is my heart that is so
dangerously weak. It is always giving me sensations. Leonard Murray has
come back so handsome, I felt my heart as soon as I saw him.”
“Annette, in such a way as that a good girl should not talk, even to her
grandmother. I do not think it is respectable. I am too lenient with
you, and you are too free with me.”
“Grandmother, who is that? He is coming in here. I never saw the man
before. How handsome! how genteel! how simply noble he looks! I must
send Lucas to open the door.”
In a minute or two the stranger let the knocker fall lightly in a
rat-tat-tat, and the little negro boy who answered his summons put him
into the chill best parlour, and brought his card to madame. She read
the name on it with difficulty, and passing the card to Annette, drew
her brows together in an effort of remembrance.
“_Mr. Achille St. Ange._”
“St. Ange! St. Ange! Ah, yes, I now recollect. Gertrude Bergen married
a French gentleman called St. Ange. Gertrude and I were schoolgirls
together. I was one of her bridesmaids. This young man must be her
grandson. It seems incredible--impossible----”
“But in the meantime, grandmother, this young man is waiting in the cold
parlour.”
“I had forgotten. Let Lucas bring him here. Do you hear, Lucas?”
“Yes, madame.”
In a few moments Mr. St. Ange entered, with the air and manner of a
prince; bowing first to madame, and then, with a shade less deference,
to Annette. His slight, agile figure had the erect carriage of one born
to command; and his general appearance and aspect was suggestively
haughty, and yet when people became familiar with him, they saw only a
careless tolerance of all opinions, and a certain compatibility of
temper, which easily passed for good nature. His hair was intensely
black and soft, and lay in straight locks on his white brow; his eyes,
equally dark, were full of a sombre fire; his skin had the pallor of the
hot land from which he came.
Madame rose to welcome him and remained standing until he was seated,
then she smilingly resumed her chair, and said:
“Indeed, Mr. St. Agne, for a moment I had forgotten. Backward for more
than half a century I had to think--then I remembered your
grandmother--Gertrude Bergen. Am I right?”
“Madame is correct,” he answered; “my grandmother died ten years ago. My
mother is also no longer with the son, who needs her so much. I have
come to New York, and I have ventured to present a claim on your
kindness three generations old.”
His handsome face, his direct manner, the utter absence of anything
subtle in his air or appearance, perhaps even the grave richness of his
perfectly suitable attire prepossessed both women instantly in his
favour. Madame took out wine and cake with her own hands; Annette was
the cup-bearer, and he accepted the service with a grace far more
flattering than any challenge or deprecation of it could have been. And
as Annette handed him the glass, he incidentally--quite incidentally,
indeed--lifted his eyes to hers, and the glance seemed to rivet her to
the spot, to include not only her vision, but her very soul.
Mr. Achille St. Ange wanted a friend, that was all; and madame promised
to do her best to advise him in the new life upon which he was entering.
They talked a little of his Louisiana home, and of his future
intentions, but the visit was not prolonged at this time. “He had made
his introduction,” he said, “the future he hoped to justify it.”
The advent of this rekindled friendship was quite an event to madame.
She could do nothing but talk of it; she kept recalling her life with
Gertrude Bergen, and she wondered a little over her grandson’s
appearance. “But, then,” she continued, “Gertrude was from Belgium, and
swarthy, though fine-looking. Much darker is her grandson, more intense,
more buoyant--well, that, too, is natural; it is the French _esprit_
upon the Dutch respectability. His grandfather I remember now--the most
careless of mortals, full of fire and fight, and yet amiable--most
amiable. We all envied Gertrude a little. He took her to France--to some
little town near Paris. How did they get to Louisiana, I wonder?”
Annette was the silent one in this event. She let her grandmother talk.
She wanted to hear all about Achille. The man had made a singular
impression on her. Many lovers had been at her feet, but she had really
loved none of them. Was this strange emotion--more akin to tears than
laughter--really love? She told herself that the man was captivating,
and that she must be “on guard” whenever he was present. And withal she
kept wondering “what he thought of her,” and worrying because she was
not dressed to the best advantage.
Perhaps she would not have been quite pleased if she had been truthfully
told Mr. St. Ange’s feeling concerning her, for it was one of a perverse
admiration, oddly mingled of repulsion and fascination. He had never
before seen a woman so startlingly fair, so white--so white and
pink--eyes so blue, hair so palely yellow; her beauty struck him as
great, but almost uncanny--he wondered if so white a woman was not
equally cold. Would she ever warm to love? And then he answered his
reflections with a soft utterance: “We shall see! We shall see!”
The dinner party at the judge’s was to be at four o’clock, and the rest
of the afternoon was fully occupied in preparing for it. And in this
preparation, if Annette had been keeping “guard” over herself, she would
have noticed that even already the stranger influenced her. She laid
aside the spangled robe and put on a gown of purple cloth trimmed with
minever. And she thought, and said, that this change was in deference to
her grandmother’s desires; but in reality it came from the feeling that
Mr. St. Ange would not be at her uncle’s, and that no one else much
mattered. Even if Leonard was present, she felt now that Leonard was a
past interest; St. Ange was new and different, and his favour full of
all kinds of possibilities.
On arriving at the house on the Bowling Green they found it in a festal
state of confusion. The largest parlour had been stripped of all its
movable furniture, and the space devoted to a long table, and to chairs
for the twenty or more people that were to be seated. It already shone
with massive silver and beautiful crystal; while the odours of delicious
meats and confections inspired a sense of warmth and comfort, and of
good things to come. Blazing fires were in every grate; the numerous
silver sconces on the walls, and the scintillating crystal chandelier
above the table were all filled with wax candles, which would be lit as
soon as the daylight waned a little farther. The judge was in full
evening dress, and madame in brocaded ruby velvet, with a string of
pearls round her yet beautiful throat. And when Sapphira came into the
room Annette was deeply mortified at her own foolishness in dressing so
plainly. She felt that she had wounded and humiliated herself for a
probability. In a moment of new hope she had let slip the certainties
Sappha had embraced. For Sappha, in her rose-sprinkled gown, looked as
if she stepped out of the heart of a rose. Her brilliant colour, the
sunlike radiancy of her eyes, her glowing gown, made her, indeed, a
beauteous apparition, wonderfully sweet and noble. Annette looked at her
with an envious surprise. Something had happened to her cousin Sappha;
what it was she did not understand, but Sappha had an air of mystery and
mastery, unperceived by herself, but rousing in all who knew the girl
intimately a questioning wonder. It came from an interior sense of
settlement and completeness; Sappha had found him whom her soul loved,
and the restlessness, the unconscious seeking and craving of girlhood,
was over.
In her desire to somewhat equalise things, Annette gave her cousin a
very flowery description of her grandmother’s strange visitor. She
described him as the most beautiful, elegant, and graceful of human
creatures; and she emphasised very strongly her grandmother’s strong
claim upon his affection and attention--“‘a friendship in its third
generation,’ he called it, Sappha, and I suppose we shall see a great
deal of him. He is to call to-morrow to consult grandmother about his
money and his business.”
“Where does he come from?” Sappha asked, but in such a listless way that
Annette responded angrily, “It is easy to see you do not care where he
comes from. I thought you would feel some interest in such a romantic
affair. What are the old men and women who will be here to-night in
comparison with such an adorable young man? And how you have dressed
yourself for them! Do you imagine they will appreciate, or, perhaps,
even notice it?”
“I dressed myself in honour of the day, and for my father and mother’s
oldest friends. Here are some of them coming. I must help mother to
receive them.”
“I am afraid it is going to be an unlucky and disagreeable night,”
sighed Annette to herself, as she stood by the fire watching the rapid
arrival of cloaked and hooded guests. As she mused amid the happy sounds
of welcome, she noticed a sudden shutting and opening of Sappha’s bright
eyes, and an expression of more eager delight on her face. A quick
presentiment flashed through Annette’s mind, and she followed her
cousin’s glance to the little group advancing. Yes, it was as she
expected!--Leonard Murray’s fair head towered in youthful beauty and
animation above all the white-haired men and women entering the room
with him. Then Annette slipped sweetly past all obstructions, and with a
smile said softly to Sappha: “‘I dressed myself in honour of the day,
and for my father and mother’s oldest friends!’ Oh, Sappha! Sappha! Is
Mr. Murray among their oldest friends?”