"BARBARA,--Captain Arthur Penrose, of Maine, visits you in
pursuance of his yesterday's promise. If you have any regard
for your poor, distracted father,--if you would save me from
the deepest, the direst mortification,--exert all your
powers to conciliate Captain Penrose, and to detain him
till I return home and relieve you. I will explain all to
you hereafter. My peace of mind depends largely on your
being able to do this. Urge him to call again. In haste,
your father."
The Captain received this missive, bowed, and walked off in the
direction of Dinwiddie's house.
Nero came to the door.
"Is Mrs. Dinwiddie in?"
"No, Cap'n, but Miss Barbara is in," said the conspiring Nero, in a tone
of encouragement.
Madam, it should be remarked, was out making calls on a few leading
feminine sympathizers; but she did not notice, that, wherever she went,
a little man in black, with a postman's big pocket-book in his hands,
followed, as if busily employed in delivering letters.
Captain Penrose sent up his card, together with the missive he was
charged with. Nero returned the next minute, and ushered him into the
drawing-room, assuring him, with overflowing suavity, that Miss Barbara
would be down in a minute. It was with profound agitation that that
young lady read her father's note. What could be the matter?
She looked in the glass,--combed back her profuse flaxen hair so as to
expose her fair temples in the most approved fashion of the hour,--took
a little tea-rose from the silver vase on her bureau,--and then, with a
beating heart, stepped down the broad, low stairs into the drawing-room.
Captain Penrose was examining an exquisite painting of an iceberg, which
hung on the wall over the piano. He turned to Barbara, bowed gravely,
and said,--
"I merely came to say, Miss Dinwiddie, that there is no longer any
restraint upon your movements. You are at liberty to go where you
please. Your mother, I learn, has already anticipated the permission for
herself. You may say to her, that, in her case also, the prohibition is
removed. I will bid you a very good morning."
He bowed, and had almost reached the door before Barbara could recover
her composure sufficiently to say,--
"Sir,--Captain Penrose,--I beg you not to leave me so abruptly. Pray be
seated."
The Captain, arch-hypocrite that he was, looked at the clock as if he
were closely pushed for time, and replied,--
"My official duties, Miss Dinwiddie, are so pressing--so"----
"But I've something particular to say to you," said Barbara, grown
desperate.
"Indeed! Then I'm at your service."
Barbara pointed to an arm-chair; but the Captain wheeled it up to her,
and at the same time pushed along an ottoman for himself. As soon as the
lady was seated, he, too, sat.
There was a pause, and rather a long one.
"Now, Miss Dinwiddie, I shall be happy to hear your communication."
"Ahem! I noticed, Sir, as I came in, that you were looking at yonder
painting."
"Yes; is it not most admirable? 'T is by a Boston artist, I see,--by
Curtis."
"Indeed! 'T is a picture my father bought only last week. 'T was
recommended to him by Mr. Carver; for father does not pretend to be a
connoisseur. You think it good?"
"Good? 'T is exquisite! Look at the atmosphere over that water. You
might feel a cool exhalation from it on a hot day. The misty freshness
rolling off, and lit up by the cheery sunlight, is Nature itself. It
carries me away--far away--once more to the coast of Labrador, where I
spent a summer month in my youth. But, Miss Dinwiddie, how happens it
that you condescend, in times like these, to patronize a Yankee artist?
When Colonel Pegram comes, you must take down that picture and hide it."
Barbara started and blushed.
"What do you know, Sir, of Colonel Pegram?"
"Nothing, except that he is a fortunate man, unless Rumor belies him."
"If you refer, Sir, to that foolish report in regard to myself which was
current last winter, I beg to assure you there is no truth in it."
"Not _now_, perhaps."
"_Never_ shall it be true!" exclaimed Barbara, starting up and pacing
the floor.
"Excuse me," said the Captain, also rising,--"excuse me, if I have been
impertinent on so slight an acquaintance."
He had his hat in his hand, and walked towards the door.
"Deuse take the fellow! can't he stay patiently here five minutes?"
thought Barbara. She dropped the rose she had been holding. The Captain
picked it up and offered it.
"Keep it, Sir, if you think it worth while," said Barbara,--driven to
this incipient impropriety by the vague apprehensions excited by her
father's letter.
"Thank you," replied the Captain, so taken by surprise that he forgot
his military laurels, and showed a faint heart by a blush.
Barbara esteemed it a very charming symptom; and as the Captain, with
his one unwounded arm, tried rather awkwardly to put the flower in the
buttonhole of his waistcoat, she stepped up with a "Let me aid you";
and, taking from her own dress a pin, fastened the rose nicely as near
as she could to the beating heart of the imperilled soldier. Alas! if
his thoughts had been put into words, he would have soliloquized, "Look
here, Captain, I'm afraid you are deporting yourself very much like a
simpleton. Pluck up a spirit, man!"
"There! I'm sure 't is very becoming," quoth Barbara, mischievously.
"You see how convenient it is to have two hands," returned the Captain.
"And your having two hands, Miss Dinwiddie, reminds me that your piano
stands open, showing its teeth, as if it, smiling, wanted to say, 'Come,
play on me.'"
"What a lucky idea!" thought Barbara. "Now I have him, and will hold
him. He shall get enough of it. When will pa come, I wonder?--Are you
fond of music, Captain Penrose?"
"Yes; I used to be a performer before I was disabled."
"But your voice is not disabled. You sing?"
"A little; but I'm out of practice."
"No matter. Come! Here's a martial piece, suitable for the times: 'To
Greece we give our shining blades.'"
It was one of the Captain's favorites; and as the two voices, resonant
and penetrating, rose on the chorus in perfect accord, the singers
thought they had never sung so well before, and each attributed it to
the excellent time of the other. Nero and another person listened at the
aperture of the folding-doors: Nero, who was musical, going through a
show of vehement applause, and throwing himself about in a manner that
would have made his fortune as an Ethiopian minstrel.
Other songs followed in rapid succession; and when the Captain sang
"Annie Lawrie," _con espressione_, accompanying himself on the piano
with one hand, Barbara exclaimed, with a frank burst of genuine
admiration,--
"Oh, but you sang that superbly!"
She had quite forgotten her anxiety about her father's return.
Then they talked of the popular composers; and from music their
conversation glanced on literature; and from literature the Captain
ventured on the dangerous ground of politics.
"Are you incorrigibly a Rebel?" he asked.
Barbara looked down. She feared that any confession of change in her
notions would seem too much like insincerity.
"Now I'm going to lecture you," he continued. "Are you not rejoiced that
Maryland is a Free State? that no longer on this soil a man has power to
rob a fellow-man of his labor, and to shoot him down, if he lifts a hand
in opposition to brutal oppression? Does not your generous heart tell
you that the system under which such injustice is organized is wrong,
unchristian, devilish? Are we not well rid of the curse?"
Barbara looked up, and responded in a hearty, emphatic _Yes_.
"But," she added, "my conversion is recent. And who do you suppose
converted me?"
"I cannot imagine."
Here a door was thrown open, and Mr. Dinwiddie entered. The perfidious
man had been listening. Captain Penrose glanced guiltily at the clock,
and saw, to his consternation, that two hours had somehow unaccountably
slipped away.
"I have been a loiterer, you see, Mr. Dinwiddie," he said; "but the
fault is your daughter's. I will now take my leave."
"We shall be happy to see you again," said Barbara, glancing assent to a
nod from her father.
"Yes, Captain Penrose," said Dinwiddie, "I hope you'll not drop our
acquaintance, notwithstanding the circumstances under which it was
made."
"I shall esteem any circumstances fortunate," replied the Captain, "that
have given me so agreeable a visit"; and, bowing, he left the room, and
Barbara rang the bell for Nero to open the outer door.
"Saved! saved!" cried Dinwiddie, sinking into a chair, and covering his
face with his handkerchief.
"Saved? How saved?" asked Barbara, alarmed.
"But no," exclaimed Dinwiddie, starting up with a very tragic
expression. "Perhaps it was but a transient pow--pow--power you exerted
over him. Barbara, should you meet again, put forth all your attractions
to--to--to bind him as with a sp--sp--spell to keep my fatal secret."
"What secret, father?"
"Hush--sh--sh!" said Dinwiddie, stepping on tiptoe to one door and then
to another, and then looking with a cautious air under the sofa. He
beckoned to his daughter. She drew near. Once more he looked anxiously
around the room, and then whispered, in a hoarse, low tone, in her ear,
these words, "You shall know all in due time."
Little Barbara drew a long breath, and resolved that it should not be
her fault, if the Captain was not captivated. At that moment there was a
ring at the door-bell; and Mrs. Dinwiddie came in from high conference
with a select conclave of fashionable ladies, who yet clung with
pathetic tenacity to the declining fortunes of Slavery and Secession.