On Sunday the whole plantation went to Church. The negroes sat in the
gallery and listened with rapt attention to the service. They joined its
ritual and its songs with their white folks in equal sincerity and more
profound emotion.
At the crossroads the stream of carriages, carts and buggies and
horseback riders parted. To the right, the way led to the Episcopal
Church, the old English establishment of the State, long since
separated from secular authority, yet still bearing the seal of county
aristocracy. Colonel Lee was a devout member of this church. Mrs. Lee
was the inspiration of its charities and the soul of its activities.
A few of the negroes of the estate attended it with the master and
mistress of Arlington. By far the larger number turned to the left at
the cross roads and found their way to the Antioch Baptist Church. The
simplicity of its service, the fervor of its singing, and above all
the emotional call of its revivals which swept the country each summer
appealed to the warm-hearted Africans. They took to the Baptist and
Methodist churches as ducks to water. The master made no objection to
the exercise of their right to worship God as their consciences called.
He encouraged their own preachers to hold weekly prayer meetings and
exhort his people in the assembling places of the servants.
Nor did he object to the dance which Sam, who was an Episcopalian,
invariably organized on the nights following prayer and exhortation.
This last Sunday was one of tender farewells to friends and neighbors.
They crowded about the Colonel after the services. They wished him
health and happiness and success in his new work.
The last greeting he got from an old bent neighbor of ninety years. It
brought a cloud to his brow. All day and into the night the thought
persisted and its shadow chilled the hours of his departure. James
Nelson was his name, of the ancient family of the Nelsons of Yorktown.
He held Lee's hand a long time and blinked at him with a pair of keen,
piercing eyes--keen from a spiritual light that burned within. He spoke
in painful deliberation as if he were translating a message.
"I am glad you are going to West Point, Colonel Lee. You will have time
for thinking. You will have time to study the art of war as great minds
must study it alone if they lead armies to victory. Generals are not
developed in the saddle on our plains fighting savages. Our country is
going to need a leader of supreme genius. I saw him in a vision, the
night I read in the _Richmond Enquirer_ that you had been called to West
Point. I shall not see you again. I am walking now into the sunset.
Soon the shadows will enfold me and I shall sleep the long sleep. I am
content. I have lived. I have loved. I have succeeded and failed. I have
swept the gamut of human passion and human emotion. I have no right to
more. Yet I envy you the glory of manhood in the crisis that is coming.
May the God of our fathers keep you and teach you and bless you is my
prayer."
Lee was too deeply moved for words to reply. He pressed his old friend's
hand, held it in silence and turned away.
The young people rode horseback. Never in his life had Phil seen
anything to equal the easy grace with which these Southern girls sat
their horses. Their mothers before them had been born in the saddle.
Their ease, their grace was not an acquirement of the teacher. It was
bred in the bone.
When a boy challenged a girl for a race, the challenge was instantly
accepted. Their saddles were made of the finest leather which the best
saddle makers of England and America could find. Their girths were set
with double silver buckles. A saddle never turned.
When the long procession reached the gates of Arlington, it seemed to
Phil that half the congregation were going to stop for dinner. A large
part of them did. Every friend and neighbor who pressed Colonel Lee's
hand, or the hand of his wife, had been invited.
When they reached the Hall and Library to talk, their conversation
covered a wide range of interest. The one topic tabooed was scandal.
It might be whispered behind closed doors. It was never the subject of
conversation in an assembly of friends and neighbors in the home. They
talked of the rich harvest. They discussed the changes in the fortunes
of their mutual friends. They had begun to demand better roads. They
discussed the affairs of the County, the Church, the State. The ladies
chatted of fashions, of course. But they also discussed the latest
novels of George Eliot with keen interest and true insight into their
significance in the development of English literature. They knew their
Dickens, Thackeray and Scott almost by heart--especially Scott. They
expressed their opinions of the daring work of the new author with
enthusiasm. Some approved; others had doubts. They did not yet know that
George Eliot was a woman.
The chief topic of conversation among the men was politics, State and
National. The problems of the British Empire came in for a share of the
discussion. These men not only read Burke and Hume, Dickens and Scott,
they read the newspapers of England and they kept up with the program of
English political parties as their fathers had. And they quoted their
opinions as authority for a younger generation. On the shelves of the
library could be seen the classics in sober bindings and sprinkled with
them a few French authors of distinction.
Over all brooded the spirit of a sincere hospitality, gentle, cordial,
simple, generous. They did not merely possess homes, they loved their
homes. The two largest words in the tongue which they spoke were Duty
and Honor. They were not in a hurry. The race for wealth had never
interested them. They took time to play, to rest, to worship God, to
chat with their neighbors, to enjoy a sunset. They came of a race
of world-conquering men and they felt no necessity for hurrying or
apologizing for their birthright.
It was precisely this attitude of mind which made the savage attack of
the Abolitionists so far-reaching in its possible results.