THE BROTHER AT THE SOUTH
Even five months before, when the Bellevite had sailed on her cruise,
the rumble of coming events had been heard in the United States; and it
had been an open question whether or not war would grow out of the
complications between the North and the South.
Only a few letters, and fewer newspapers, had reached the owner of
the yacht; and he and his family on board had been very indifferently
informed in regard to the progress of political events at home. Captain
Passford was one of those who confidently believed that no very serious
difficulty would result from the entanglements into which the country
had been plunged by the secession of the most of the Southern States.
He would not admit even to himself that war was possible; and before his
departure he had scouted the idea of a conflict with arms between the
brothers of the North and the brothers of the South, as he styled them.
Captain Passford had been the master of a ship in former times, though
he had accumulated his vast fortune after he abandoned the sea. His
father was an Englishman, who had come to the United States as a young
man, had married, raised his two sons, and died in the city of New York.
These two sons, Horatio and Homer, were respectively forty-five and
forty years of age. Both of them were married, and each of them had only
a son and a daughter. While Horatio had been remarkably successful in
his pursuit of wealth in the metropolis, he had kept himself clean and
honest, like so many of the wealthy men of the great city. When he
retired from active business, he settled at Bonnydale on the Hudson.
His brother had been less successful as a business-man, and soon
after his marriage to a Northern lady he had purchased a plantation in
Alabama, where both of his children had been born, and where he was a
man of high standing, with wealth enough to maintain his position in
luxury, though his fortune was insignificant compared with that of his
brother.
Between the two brothers and their families the most kindly relations
had always existed; and each made occasional visits to the other, though
the distance which separated them was too great to permit of very
frequent exchanges personally of brotherly love and kindness.
Possibly the fraternal feeling which subsisted between the two brothers
had some influence upon the opinions of Horatio, for to him hostilities
meant making war upon his only brother, whom he cherished as warmly as
if they had not been separated by a distance of over a thousand miles.
He measured the feelings of others by his own; and if all had felt as
he felt, war would have been an impossibility, however critical and
momentous the relations between the two sections.
Though his father had been born and bred in England, Horatio was more
intensely American than thousands who came out of Plymouth Rock stock;
and he believed in the union of the States, unable to believe that any
true citizen could tolerate the idea of a separation of any kind.
The first paper which Captain Passford read on the deck of the Bellevite
contained the details of the bombardment and capture of Fort Sumter; and
the others, a record of the events which had transpired in the few
succeeding days after the news of actual war reached the North.
This terrible intelligence was unexpected to the owner of the yacht,
believing, as he had, in the impossibility of war; and it seemed to him
just as though he and his cherished brother were already arrayed against
each other on the battle-field.
The commotion between the two sections had begun before his departure
from home on the yacht cruise, but his brother, perhaps because he was
fully instructed in regard to the Union sentiment of Horatio, was
strangely reticent, and expressed no opinions of his own.
But Captain Passford, measuring his brother according to his own
standard, was fully persuaded that Homer was as sound on the great
question as he was himself, though the excitement and violence around
him might have caused him to maintain a neutral position.
Certainly if the Northern brother had anticipated that a terrible
war was impending, he would not have permitted his daughter Florence,
a beautiful young lady of seventeen, to reside during the winter in a
hot-bed of secession and disunion. The papers informed him what had been
done at the North and at the South to initiate the war; and the thought
that Florry was now in the midst of the enemies of her country was
agonizing to him.
Though he felt that his country demanded his best energies, and though
he was ready and willing to give himself and his son to her in her hour
of need, he felt that his first duty was to his own family, within
reasonable limits; and his earliest thoughts were directed to the safety
of his daughter, and then to the welfare of his brother and his family.
"War!" exclaimed Mrs. Passford, when her husband had announced so
briefly the situation which had caused such intense agitation in his
soul. "What do you mean by war, Horatio?"
"I mean all that terrible word can convey of destruction and death, and,
worse yet, of hate and revenge between brothers of the same household!"
replied the husband impressively. "Both the North and the South are
sounding the notes of preparation. Men are gathering by thousands on
both sides, soon to meet on fields which must be drenched in the gore of
brothers."
"But don't you think the trouble will be settled in some way, Horatio?"
asked the anxious wife and mother; and her thoughts, like those of her
husband, reverted to the loving daughter then in the enemy's camp.
"I do not think so; that is impossible now. I did not believe that war
was possible: now I do not believe it will be over till one side or the
other shall be exhausted," replied Captain Passford, wiping from his
brow the perspiration which the intensity of his emotion produced.
"A civil war is the most bitter and terrible of all wars."
"I cannot understand it," added the lady.
"Is it really war, sir?" asked Christy, who had been an interested
listener to all that had been said.
"It is really war, my son," replied the father earnestly. "It will be
a war which cannot be carried to a conclusion by hirelings; but father,
son, and brother must take part in it, against father, son, and
brother."
"It is terrible to think of," added Mrs. Passford with something like
a shudder, though she was a strong-minded woman in the highest sense of
the words.
Captain Passford then proceeded to inform his wife and son in regard to
all the events which had transpired since he had received his latest
papers at Bermuda. They listened with the most intense interest, and the
trio were as solemn as though they had met to consider the dangerous
illness of the absent member of the family.
The owner did not look upon the impending war as a sort of frolic, as
did many of the people at the North and the South, and he could not
regard it as a trivial conflict which would be ended in a few weeks
or a few months. To him it was the most terrible reality which his
imagination could picture; and more clearly than many eminent statesmen,
he foresaw that it would be a long and fierce encounter.
"From what you say, Horatio, I judge that the South is already arming
for the conflict," said Mrs. Passford, after she had heard her husband's
account of what had occurred on shore.
"The South has been preparing for war for months, and the North began to
make serious preparation for coming events as soon as Fort Sumter fell.
Doubtless the South is better prepared for the event to-day than the
North, though the greater population and vast resources of the latter
will soon make up for lost time," replied the captain.
"And Florry is right in the midst of the gathering armies of the South,"
added the fond mother, wiping a tear from her eyes.
"She is; and, unless something is done at once to restore her to her
home, she may have to remain in the enemy's country for months, if not
for years," answered the father, with a slight trembling of the lips.
"But what can be done?" asked the mother anxiously.
"The answer to that question has agitated me more than any thing else
which has come to my mind for years, for I cannot endure the thought of
leaving her even a single month at any point which is as likely as any
other to become a battle-field in a few days or a few weeks," continued
Captain Passford, with some return of the agitation which had before
shaken him so terribly.
"Of course your brother Homer will take care of her," said the terrified
mother, as she gazed earnestly into the expressive face of the
stout-hearted man before her.
"Certainly he will do all for Florry that he would do for his own
children, but he may not long be able to save his own family from the
horrors of war."
"Do you think she will be in any actual danger, Horatio?"
"I have no doubt she will be as safe at Glenfield, if the conflict were
raging there, as she would be at Bonnydale under the same circumstances.
From the nature of the case, the burden of the fighting, the havoc and
desolation, will be within the Southern States, and few, if any, of the
battle-fields will be on Northern soil, or at least as far north as our
home."
"From what I have seen of the people near the residence of your brother,
they are neither brutes nor savages," added the lady.
"No more than the people of the North; but war rouses the brute nature
of most men, and there will be brutes and savages on both sides, from
the very nature of the case."
"In his recent letters, I mean those that came before we sailed from
home, Homer did not seem to take part with either side in the political
conflict; and in those which came to us at the Azores and Bermuda, he
did not say a single word to indicate whether he is a secessionist, or
in favor of the Union. Do you know how he stands, Horatio?"
"My means of knowing are the same as yours, and I can be no wiser than
you are on this point, though I have my opinion," replied Captain
Passford.
"What is your opinion?"
"That he is as truly a Union man as I am."
"I am glad that he is."
"I do not say that he is a Union man; but judging from his silence, and
what I know of him, I think he is. And it is as much a part of my desire
and intention to bring him and his family out of the enemy's country as
it is to recover Florry."
"Then we shall have them all at Bonnydale this summer?" suggested Mrs.
Passford. "Nothing could suit me better."
"Though I am fully persuaded in my own mind that Homer will be true to
his country in this emergency, I may be mistaken. He has lived for many
years at the South, and has been identified with the institutions of
that locality, as I have been with those of the North. Though we both
love the land of our fathers on the other side of the ocean, we have
both been strongly American. As he always believed in the whole country
as a unit, I shall expect him to be more than willing to stand by his
country as it was, and as it should be."
"I hope you will find him so, but I am grievously sorry that Florry is
not with us."
"Tug-boat alongside, Captain Passford," said the commander.
The owner of the Bellevite wished the tug to wait his orders.