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_MACMILLAN'S STANDARD LIBRARY_
[Illustration: "Miss Fanny Glen detested a masterful man."]
A Little Traitor to the South
A WAR-TIME COMEDY
With a
TRAGIC INTERLUDE
By
Cyrus Townsend Brady
The Illustrations are by A. D. Rahn
Decorations by C. E. Hooper.
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1903,
By CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY.
Copyright, 1904,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1904. Reprinted
August, 1904; March, September, 1907; April, 1908; April, 1909.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
_To "Patty"_
_Most Faithful and Efficient of Coadjutors_
PREFACE
"The tragic interlude" in this little war-time comedy of the affections
really happened as I have described it. The men who went to their death
beside the _Housatonic_ in Charleston harbor were Lieutenant George F.
Dixon of the Twenty-first Alabama Infantry, in command; Captain J. F.
Carlson of Wagoner's Battery; and Seamen Becker, Simpkins, Wicks,
Collins, and Ridgway of the Confederate Navy, all volunteers. These
names should be written in letters of gold on the roll of heroes. No
more gallant exploit was ever performed. The qualities and characteristics
of that death trap, the _David_, were well known to everybody. The
history of former attempts to work her is accurately set down in the
text of the story. Dixon and his men should be remembered with Decatur,
Cushing, Nields, and Hobson.
The torpedo boat was found after the war lying on the bottom of the
harbor, about one hundred feet from the wreck of the _Housatonic_,
with her bow pointing toward the sloop of war and with every man of her
crew dead at his post,--just as they all expected.
I shall be happy if this novel serves to call renewed attention to this
splendid exhibition of American heroism. Had they not fought for a
cause which was lost they would still be remembered, as, in any event,
they ought to be.
For the rest, here is a love story in which the beautiful Southern girl
does not espouse the brave Union soldier, or the beautiful Northern
girl the brave Southern soldier. They were all Southern, all true to
the South, and they all stayed so except Admiral Vernon, and he does
not count.
CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY.
BROOKLYN, N.Y.,
February, 1904.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Hero _versus_ Gentleman 15
II. She Hates them Both 33
III. A Strife in Magnanimity 51
IV. Opportunities Embraced 65
V. What happened in the Strong Room 81
VI. An Engine of Destruction 103
VII. The Hour and the Man 115
VIII. Death out of the Deep 125
IX. Miserable Pair and Miserable Night 141
X. A Stubborn Proposition 157
XI. The Confession that Cleared 171
XII. The Culprit is Arrested 185
XIII. Companions in Misery 199
XIV. The Woman Explains 223
XV. The General's Little Comedy 241
ILLUSTRATIONS
"Miss Fanny Glen detested a masterful man" _Frontispiece_
PAGE
"'Ah, Sempland, have you told your little tale?'" 43
"The door was suddenly flung open" 95
"Poor little Fanny Glen ... she had lost on every hand" 153
"'You were a traitor to the South!' said General
Beauregard, coldly" 191
"'Would they shoot me?' she inquired" 219
A Little Traitor to the South
CHAPTER I
HERO VERSUS GENTLEMAN
Miss Fanny Glen's especial detestation was an assumption of authority
on the part of the other sex. If there was a being on earth to whom she
would not submit, it was to a masterful man; such a man as, if
appearances were a criterion, Rhett Sempland at that moment assumed to
be.
The contrast between the two was amusing, or would have been had not
the atmosphere been so surcharged with passionate feeling, for Rhett
Sempland was six feet high if he was an inch, while Fanny Glen by a
Procrustean extension of herself could just manage to cover the
five-foot mark; yet such was the spirit permeating the smaller figure
that there seemed to be no great disparity, from the standpoint of
combatants, between them after all.
Rhett Sempland was deeply in love with Miss Fanny Glen. His full
consciousness of that fact shaded his attempted mastery by ever so
little.
He was sure of the state of his affections and by that knowledge the
weaker, for Fanny Glen was not at all sure that she was in love with
Rhett Sempland. That is to say, she had not yet realized it; perhaps
better, she had not yet admitted the existence of a reciprocal passion
in her own breast to that she had long since learned had sprung up in
his. By just that lack of admission she was stronger than he for the
moment.
When she discovered the undoubted fact that she did love Rhett Sempland
her views on the mastery of man would probably alter--at least for a
time! Love, in its freshness, would make her a willing slave; for how
long, events only could determine. For some women a lifetime, for
others but an hour, can elapse before the chains turn from adornments
to shackles.
The anger that Miss Fanny Glen felt at this particular moment gave her
a temporary reassurance as to some questions which had agitated
her--how much she cared, after all, for Lieutenant Rhett Sempland, and
did she like him better than Major Harry Lacy? Both questions were
instantly decided in the negative--for the time being. She hated Rhett
Sempland; _per contra_, at that moment, she loved Harry Lacy. For
Harry Lacy was he about whom the difference began. Rhett Sempland,
confident of his own affection and hopeful as to hers, had attempted,
with masculine futility and obtuseness, to prohibit the further
attentions of Harry Lacy.
Just as good blood, _au fond_, ran in Harry Lacy's veins as in Rhett
Sempland's, but Lacy, following in the footsteps of his ancestors, had
mixed his with the water that is not water because it is fire.
He "crooked the pregnant hinges" of the elbow without cessation, many a
time and oft, and all the vices--as they usually do--followed _en
train_. One of the oldest names in the Carolinas had been dragged in
the dust by this latest and most degenerate scion thereof. Nay, in that
dust Lacy had wallowed--shameless, persistent, beast-like.
To Lacy, therefore, the Civil War came as a godsend, as it had to many
another man in like circumstances, for it afforded another and more
congenial outlet for the wild passion beating out from his heart. The
war sang to him of arms and men--ay, as war has sung since Troia's day,
of women, too.
He did not give over the habits of a lifetime, which, though short, had
been hard, but he leavened them, temporarily obliterated them even, by
splendid feats of arms. Fortune was kind to him. Opportunity smiled
upon him. Was it running the blockade off Charleston, or passing
through the enemy's lines with despatches in Virginia, or heading a
desperate attack on Little Round Top in Pennsylvania, he always won the
plaudits of men, often the love of women. And in it all he seemed to
bear a charmed life.
When the people saw him intoxicated on the streets of Charleston that
winter of '63 they remembered that he was a hero. When some of his more
flagrant transgressions came to light, they recalled some splendid feat
of arms, and condoned what before they had censured.
He happened to be in Charleston because he had been shot to pieces at
Gettysburg and had been sent down there to die. But die he would not,
at least not then. Ordinarily he would not have cared much about
living, for he realized that, when the war was over, he would speedily
sink back to that level to which he habitually descended when there was
nothing to engage his energies; but his acquaintance with Miss Fanny
Glen had altered him.
Lacy met her in the hospital and there he loved her. Rhett Sempland met
her in a hospital, also. Poor Sempland had been captured in an obscure
skirmish late in 1861. Through some hitch in the matter he had been
held prisoner in the North until the close of 1863, when he had been
exchanged and, wretchedly ill, he had come back to Charleston, like
Lacy, to die.
He had found no opportunity for distinction of any sort. There was no
glory about his situation, but prison life and fretting had made him
show what he had suffered. At the hospital, then, like Lacy, he too had
fallen in love with Miss Fanny Glen.
By rights the hero--not of this story, perhaps, but the real hero--was
much the handsomer of the two. It is always so in romances; and
romances--good ones, that is--are the reflex of life. Such a
combination of manly beauty with unshakable courage and reckless
audacity was not often seen as Lacy exhibited. Sempland was homely.
Lacy had French and Irish blood in him, and he showed it. Sempland was
a mixture of sturdy Dutch and English stock.
Yet if women found Lacy charming they instinctively depended upon
Sempland. There was something thoroughly attractive in Sempland, and
Fanny Glen unconsciously fell under the spell of his strong
personality. The lasting impression which the gayety and passionate
abandon of Lacy could not make, Sempland had effected, and the girl was
already powerfully under his influence--stubbornly resistant
nevertheless.
She was fond of both men. She loved Lacy for the dangers he had passed,
and Sempland because she could not help it; which marks the relative
quality of her affections. Which one she loved the better until the
moment at which the story opens she could not have told.
Nobody knew anything about Fanny Glen. At least there were only two
facts concerning her in possession of the general public. These,
however, were sufficient. One was that she was good. The men in the
hospital called her an angel. The other was that she was beautiful. The
women of the city could not exactly see why the men thought so, which
was confirmation strong as proofs of Holy Writ!
She had come to Charleston at the outbreak of the war accompanied by an
elderly woman of unexceptional manner and appearance who called herself
Miss Lucy Glen, and described herself as Miss Fanny Glen's aunt. They
had taken a house in the fashionable quarter of the city--they were not
poor at any rate--and had installed themselves therein with their
slaves.
They made no attempt to enter into the social life of the town and only
became prominent when Charleston began to feel acutely the hardships of
the war which it had done more to promote than any other place in the
land.
Then Fanny Glen showed her quality. A vast hospital was established,
and the young women of the city volunteered their services.
The corps of nurses was in a state of constant fluxion. Individuals
came and went. Some of them married patients, some of them died with
them, but Fanny Glen neither married nor died--she abided!
Not merely because she stayed while others did not, but perhaps on
account of her innate capacity, as well as her tactful tenderness, she
became the chief of the women attached to the hospital. Many a sick
soldier lived to love her. Many another, more sorely stricken, died
blessing her.
In Charleston she was regarded as next in importance to the general who
commanded the troops and who, with his ships, his forts, his guns, and
his men, had been for two years fighting off the tremendous assaults
that were hurled upon the city from the Union ironclads and ships far
out to sea. It was a point of honor to take, or to hold, Charleston,
and the Confederates held it till 1865!
Fanny Glen was a privileged character, therefore, and could go anywhere
and do anything, within the lines.
Under other circumstances there would have been a thorough inquiry by
the careful inhabitants of the proud, strict Southern city into her
family relationships; but the war was a great leveller, people were
taken at their real value when trouble demonstrated it, and few
questions were asked. Those that were asked about Fanny Glen were not
answered. It made little difference, then.
Toward the close of 1863, however, there was an eclipse in the general
hospital, for Fanny Glen fell ill.
She was not completely recovered, early in 1864, when she had the
famous interview with Rhett Sempland, but there was not the slightest
evidence of invalidism about her as she confronted him that afternoon
in February.
Wounded pride, outraged dignity, burning indignation, supplied strength
and spirit enough for a regiment of convalescents.
The difference between the two culminated in a disturbance which might
aptly be called cyclonic, for Sempland on nearly the first occasion
that he had been permitted to leave the hospital had repaired to Fanny
Glen's house and there had repeated, standing erect and looking down
upon her bended head, what he had said so often with his eyes and once
at least with his lips, from his bed in the ward: that he loved her and
wanted her for his wife.
Pleasant thing it was for her to hear, too, she could not but admit.
Yet if Fanny Glen had not rejected him, neither had she accepted him.
She had pleaded for time, she had hesitated, and would have been lost,
had Sempland been as wise as he was brave. Perhaps he wasn't quite
master of himself on account of his experience in war, and his lack of
it in women, for he instantly conceived that her hesitation was due to
some other cause than maidenly incertitude, and that Harry Lacy, of
whom he had grown mightily jealous, was at the bottom of it.
He hated and envied Lacy. More, he despised him for his weaknesses and
their consequences. The two had been great friends once, but a year or
two before the outbreak of the war they had drifted apart.
Sempland did not envy Lacy any talents that he might possess, for he
was quite confident that the only thing he himself lacked had been
opportunity--Fate had not been kind to him, but the war was not yet
over. Consequently when he jumped to the conclusion that Fanny Glen
preferred Lacy, he fell into further error, and made the frightful
mistake of depreciating his rival.
Assuming with masculine inconsistency that the half acceptance she had
given him entitled him to decide her future, he actually referred to
Lacy's well-known habits and bade her have nothing to do with him.