top of the bluff while the boys fell over each other trying to get on
the boat. Yes, sir, he sat there, disgusted, on his horse, smoking a
cigar, with the Rebs raising pandemonium all around him. And then, sir,”
cried the General, excitedly, “what do you think he did? Hanged if he
didn't force his horse right on to his haunches, slide down the whole
length of the bank and ride him across a teetering plank on to the
steamer. And the Rebs just stood on the bank and stared. They were so
astonished they didn't even shoot the man. You watch Grant,” said the
General. “And now, Stephen,” he added, “just you run off and take hold
of the prettiest girl you can find. If any of my boys object, say I sent
you.”
The next Monday Stephen had a caller. It was little Tiefel, now a first
lieutenant with a bristly beard and tanned face, come to town on a few
days' furlough. He had been with Lyon at Wilson's Creek, and he had
a sad story to tell of how he found poor Richter, lying stark on that
bloody field, with a smile of peace upon his face. Strange that he
should at length have been killed by a sabre!
It was a sad meeting for those two, since each reminded the other of
a dear friend they would see no more on earth. They went out to sup
together in the German style; and gradually, over his beer, Tiefel
forgot his sorrow. Stephen listened with an ache to the little man's
tales of the campaigns he had been through. So that presently Tiefel
cried out:
“Why, my friend, you are melancholy as an owl. I will tell you a funny
story. Did you ever hear of one General Sherman? He that they say is
crazy?”
“He is no more crazy than I am,” said Stephen, warmly--
“Is he not?” answered Tiefel, “then I will show you a mistake. You
recall last November he was out to Sedalia to inspect the camp there,
and he sleeps in a little country store where I am quartered. Now up
gets your General Sherman in the middle of the night,--midnight,--and
marches up and down between the counters, and waves his arms. So, says
he, 'land so,' says he, 'Sterling Price will be here, and Steele here,
and this column will take that road, and so-and-so's a damned fool. Is
not that crazy? So he walks up and down for three eternal hours. Says
he, 'Pope has no business to be at Osterville, and Steele here at
Sedalia with his regiments all over the place. They must both go into
camp at La Mine River, and form brigades and divisions, that the troops
may be handled.'”
“If that's insanity,” cried Stephen so strongly as to surprise the
little man; “then I wish we had more insane generals. It just shows
how a malicious rumor will spread. What Sherman said about Pope's and
Steele's forces is true as Gospel, and if you ever took the trouble to
look into that situation, Tiefel, you would see it.” And Stephen brought
down his mug on the table with a crash that made the bystanders jump.
“Himmel!” exclaimed little Tiefel. But he spoke in admiration.
It was not a month after that that Sherman's prophecy of the quiet
general who had slid down the bluff at Belmont came true. The whole
country bummed with Grant's praises. Moving with great swiftness and
secrecy up the Tennessee, in company with the gunboats of Commodore
Foote, he had pierced the Confederate line at the very point Sherman
had indicated. Fort Henry had fallen, and Grant was even then moving to
besiege Donelson.
Mr. Brinsmade prepared to leave at once for the battlefield, taking with
him too Paducah physicians and nurses. All day long the boat was loading
with sanitary stores and boxes of dainties for the wounded. It was muggy
and wet--characteristic of that winter--as Stephen pushed through the
drays on the slippery levee to the landing.
He had with him a basket his mother had put up. He also bore a message
to Mr. Brinsmade from the Judge It was while he was picking his way
along the crowded decks that he ran into General Sherman. The General
seized him unceremoniously by the shoulder.
“Good-by, Stephen,” he said.
“Good-by, General,” said Stephen, shifting his basket to shake hands.
“Are you going away?”
“Ordered to Paducah,” said the General. He pulled Stephen off the guards
into an empty cabin. “Brice,” said he, earnestly, “I haven't forgotten
how you saved young Brinsmade at Camp Jackson. They tell me that you are
useful here. I say, don't go in unless you have to. I don't mean force,
you understand. But when you feel that you can go in, come to me or
write me a letter. That is,” he added, seemingly inspecting Stephen's
white teeth with approbation, “if you're not afraid to serve under a
crazy man.”
It has been said that the General liked the lack of effusiveness of
Stephen's reply.
CHAPTER VI. ELIPHALET PLAYS HIS TRUMPS
Summer was come again. Through interminable days, the sun beat down upon
the city; and at night the tortured bricks flung back angrily the heat
with which he had filled them. Great battles had been fought, and vast
armies were drawing breath for greater ones to come.
“Jinny,” said the Colonel one day, “as we don't seem to be much use in
town, I reckon we may as well go to Glencoe.”
Virginia, threw her arms around her father's neck. For many months
she had seen what the Colonel himself was slow to comprehend--that his
usefulness was gone. The days melted into weeks, and Sterling Price and
his army of liberation failed to come. The vigilant Union general and
his aides had long since closed all avenues to the South. For, one fine
morning toward the end of the previous summer, when the Colonel was
contemplating a journey, he had read that none might leave the city
without a pass, whereupon he went hurriedly to the office of the Provost
Marshal. There he had found a number of gentlemen in the same plight,
each waving a pass made out by the Provost Marshal's clerks, and waiting
for that officer's signature. The Colonel also procured one of these,
and fell into line. The Marshal gazed at the crowd, pulled off his coat,
and readily put his name to the passes of several gentlemen going east.
Next came Mr. Bub Ballington, whom the Colonel knew, but pretended not
to.
“Going to Springfield?” asked the Marshal, genially.
“Yes,” said Bub.
“Not very profitable to be a minute-man, eh?” in the same tone.
The Marshal signs his name, Mr. Ballington trying not to look indignant
as he makes for the door. A small silver bell rings on the Marshal's
desk, the one word: “Spot!” breaks the intense silence, which is one way
of saying that Mr. Ballington is detained, and will probably be lodged
that night at Government expense.
“Well, Colonel Carvel, what can I do for you this morning?” asked the
Marshal, genially.
The Colonel pushed back his hat and wiped his brow. “I reckon I'll wait
till next week, Captain,” said Mr. Carvel. “It's pretty hot to travel
just now.”
The Provost Marshal smiled sweetly. There were many in the office who
would have liked to laugh, but it did not pay to laugh at some people.
Colonel Carvel was one of them.
In the proclamation of martial law was much to make life less endurable
than ever. All who were convicted by a court-martial of being rebels
were to have property confiscated, and slaves set free. Then there was
a certain oath to be taken by all citizens who did not wish to have
guardians appointed over their actions. There were many who swallowed
this oath and never felt any ill effects. Mr. Jacob Cluyme was one, and
came away feeling very virtuous. It was not unusual for Mr. Cluyme to
feel virtuous. Mr. Hopper did not have indigestion after taking it, but
Colonel Carvel would sooner have eaten, gooseberry pie, which he had
never tasted but once.
That summer had worn away, like a monster which turns and gives hot
gasps when you think it has expired. It took the Arkansan just a month,
under Virginia's care, to become well enough to be sent to a Northern
prison He was not precisely a Southern gentleman, and he went to sleep
over the “Idylls of the King.” But he was admiring, and grateful, and
wept when he went off to the boat with the provost's guard, destined
for a Northern prison. Virginia wept too. He had taken her away from
her aunt (who would have nothing to do with him), and had given her
occupation. She nor her father never tired of hearing his rough tales of
Price's rough army.
His departure was about the time when suspicions were growing set. The
favor had caused comment and trouble, hence there was no hope of giving
another sufferer the same comfort. The cordon was drawn tighter. One of
the mysterious gentlemen who had been seen in the vicinity of Colonel
Carvel's house was arrested on the ferry, but he had contrived to be rid
of the carpet-sack in which certain precious letters were carried.
Throughout the winter, Mr. Hopper's visits to Locust Street had
continued at intervals of painful regularity. It is not necessary to
dwell upon his brilliant powers of conversation, nor to repeat the
platitudes which he repeated, for there was no significance in Mr.
Hopper's tales, not a particle. The Colonel had found that out, and was
thankful. His manners were better; his English decidedly better.
It was for her father's sake, of course, that Virginia bore with
him. Such is the appointed lot of women. She tried to be just, and it
occurred to her that she had never before been just. Again and again she
repeated to herself that Eliphalet's devotion to the Colonel at this
low ebb of his fortunes had something in it of which she did not suspect
him. She had a class contempt for Mr. Hopper as an uneducated Yankee
and a person of commercial ideals. But now he was showing virtues,--if
virtues they were,--and she tried to give him the benefit of the doubt.
With his great shrewdness and business ability, why did he not take
advantage of the many opportunities the war gave to make a fortune?
For Virginia had of late been going to the store with the Colonel,--who
spent his mornings turning over piles of dusty papers, and Mr. Hopper
had always been at his desk.
After this, Virginia even strove to be kind to him, but it was uphill
work. The front door never closed after one of his visits that suspicion
was not left behind. Antipathy would assert itself. Could it be that
there was a motive under all this plotting? He struck her inevitably as
the kind who would be content to mine underground to attain an end. The
worst she could think of him was that he wished to ingratiate himself
now, in the hope that, when the war was ended, he might become a partner
in Mr. Carvel's business. She had put even this away as unworthy of her.
Once she had felt compelled to speak to her father on the subject.
“I believe I did him an injustice, Pa,” she said. “Not that I like him
any better now. I must be honest about that. I simply can't like him.
But I do think that if he had been as unscrupulous as I thought, he
would have deserted you long ago for something more profitable. He would
not be sitting in the office day after day making plans for the business
when the war is over.”
She remembered how sadly he had smiled at her over the top of his paper.
“You are a good girl, Jinny,” he said.
Toward the end of July of that second summer riots broke out in the
city, and simultaneously a bright spot appeared on Virginia's horizon.
This took the form, for Northerners, of a guerilla scare, and an order
was promptly issued for the enrollment of all the able-bodied men in the
ten wards as militia, subject to service in the state, to exterminate
the roving bands. Whereupon her Britannic Majesty became extremely
popular,--even with some who claimed for a birthplace the Emerald Isle.
Hundreds who heretofore had valued but lightly their British citizenship
made haste to renew their allegiance; and many sought the office of the
English Consul whose claims on her Majesty's protection were vague, to
say the least. Broken heads and scandal followed. For the first time,
when Virginia walked to the store with her father, Eliphalet was not
there. It was strange indeed that Virginia defended him.
“I don't blame him for not wanting to fight for the Yankees,” she said.
The Colonel could not resist a retort.
“Then why doesn't he fight for the South he asked”
“Fight for the South!” cried the young lady, scornfully. “Mr. Hopper
fight? I reckon the South wouldn't have him.”
“I reckon not, too,” said the Colonel, dryly.
For the following week curiosity prompted Virginia to take that walk
with the Colonel. Mr. Hopper being still absent, she helped him to sort
the papers--those grimy reminders of a more prosperous time gone
by. Often Mr. Carvel would run across one which seemed to bring some
incident to his mind; for he would drop it absently on his desk, his
hand seeking his chin, and remain for half an hour lost in thought.
Virginia would not disturb him.
Meanwhile there had been inquiries for Mr. Hopper. The Colonel answered
them all truthfully--generally with that dangerous suavity for which he
was noted. Twice a seedy man with a gnawed yellow mustache had come in
to ask Eliphalet's whereabouts. On the second occasion this individual
became importunate.
“You don't know nothin' about him, you say?” he demanded.
“No,” said the Colonel.
The man took a shuffle forward.
“My name's Ford,” he said. “I 'low I kin 'lighten you a little.”
“Good day, sir,” said the Colonel.
“I guess you'll like to hear what I've got to say.”
“Ephum,” said Mr. Carvel in his natural voice, “show this man out.”
Mr. Ford slunk out without Ephum's assistance. But he half turned at the
door, and shot back a look that frightened Virginia.
“Oh, Pa,” she cried, in alarm, “what did he mean?”
“I couldn't tell you, Jinny,” he answered. But she noticed that he was
very thoughtful as they walked home. The next morning Eliphalet had not
returned, but a corporal and guard were waiting to search the store for
him. The Colonel read the order, and invited them in with hospitality.
He even showed them the way upstairs, and presently Virginia heard them
all tramping overhead among the bales. Her eye fell upon the paper they
had brought, which lay unfolded on her father's desk. It was signed
Stephen A. Brice, Enrolling Officer.
That very afternoon they moved to Glencoe, and Ephum was left in sole
charge of the store. At Glencoe, far from the hot city and the cruel
war, began a routine of peace. Virginia was a child again, romping
in the woods and fields beside her father. The color came back to her
cheeks once more, and the laughter into her voice. The two of them, and
Ned and Mammy, spent a rollicking hour in the pasture the freedom
of which Dick had known so long, before the old horse was caught and
brought back into bondage. After that Virginia took long drives with her
father, and coming home, they would sit in the summer house high above
the Merimec, listening to the crickets' chirp, and watching the day fade
upon the water. The Colonel, who had always detested pipes, learned to
smoke a corncob. He would sit by the hour, with his feet on the rail of
the porch and his hat tilted back, while Virginia read to him. Poe
and Wordsworth and Scott he liked, but Tennyson was his favorite. Such
happiness could not last.
One afternoon when Virginia was sitting in the summer house alone, her
thoughts wandering back, as they sometimes did, to another afternoon
she had spent there,--it seemed so long ago,--when she saw Mammy Easter
coming toward her.
“Honey, dey's comp'ny up to de house. Mister Hopper's done arrived. He's
on de porch, talkin' to your Pa. Lawsey, look wha he come!”
In truth, the solid figure of Eliphalet himself was on the path some
twenty yards behind her. His hat was in his hand; his hair was plastered
down more neatly than ever, and his coat was a faultless and sober
creation of a Franklin Avenue tailor. He carried a cane, which was
unheard of. Virginia sat upright, and patted her skirts with a gesture
of annoyance--what she felt was anger, resentment. Suddenly she rose,
swept past Mammy, and met him ten paces from the summer house.
“How-dy-do, Miss Virginia,” he cried pleasantly. “Your father had a
notion you might be here.” He said fayther.
Virginia gave him her hand limply. Her greeting would have frozen a man
of ardent temperament. But it was not precisely ardor that Eliphalet
showed. The girl paused and examined him swiftly. There was something in
the man's air to-day.
“So you were not caught?” she said.
Her words seemed to relieve some tension in him. He laughed noiselessly.
“I just guess I wahn't.”
“How did you escape?” she asked, looking at him curiously.
“Well, I did, first of all. You're considerable smart, Miss Jinny, but
I'll bet you can't tell me where I was, now.”
“I do not care to know. The place might save you again.”
He showed his disappointment. “I cal'lated it might interest you to know
how I dodged the Sovereign State of Missouri. General Halleck made an
order that released a man from enrolling on payment of ten dollars.
I paid. Then I was drafted into the Abe Lincoln Volunteers; I paid a
substitute. And so here I be, exercising life, and liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness.”
“So you bought yourself free?” said Virginia. “If your substitute gets
killed, I suppose you will have cause for congratulation.”
Eliphalet laughed, and pulled down his cuffs. “That's his lookout,
I cal'late,” said he. He glanced at the girl in a way that made her
vaguely uneasy. She turned from him, back toward the summer house.
Eliphalet's eyes smouldered as they rested upon her figure. He took a
step forward.
“Miss Jinny?” he said.
“Yes?”
“I've heard considerable about the beauties of this place. Would you
mind showing me 'round a bit?” Virginia started. It was his tone now.
Not since that first evening in Locust Street had it taken on such
assurance, And yet she could not be impolite to a guest.
“Certainly not,” she replied, but without looking up. Eliphalet led
the way. He came to the summer house, glanced around it with apparent
satisfaction, and put his foot on the moss-grown step. Virginia did a
surprising thing. She leaped quickly into the doorway before him, and
stood facing him, framed in the climbing roses.
“Oh, Mr. Hopper!” she cried. “Please, not in here.” He drew back,
staring in astonishment at the crimson in her face.
“Why not?” he asked suspiciously--almost brutally. She had been groping
wildly for excuses, and found none.
“Because,” she said, “because I ask you not to.” With dignity: “That
should be sufficient.”
“Well,” replied Eliphalet, with an abortive laugh, “that's funny, now.
Womenkind get queer notions, which I cal'late we've got to respect and
put up with all our lives--eh?”
Her anger flared at his leer and at his broad way of gratifying her
whim. And she was more incensed than ever at his air of being at
home--it was nothing less.
The man's whole manner was an insult. She strove still to hide her
resentment.
“There is a walk along the bluff,” she said, coldly, “where the view is
just as good.”
But she purposely drew him into the right-hand path, which led, after
a little, back to the house. Despite her pace he pressed forward to her
side.
“Miss Jinny,” said he, precipitately, “did I ever strike you as a
marrying man?”
Virginia stopped, and put her handkerchief to her face, the impulse
strong upon her to laugh. Eliphalet was suddenly transformed again into
the common commercial Yankee. He was in love, and had come to ask her
advice. She might have known it.
“I never thought of you as of the marrying kind, Mr. Hopper,” she
answered, her voice quivering.
Indeed, he was irresistibly funny as he stood hot and ill at ease. The
Sunday coat bore witness to his increasing portliness by creasing across
from the buttons; his face, fleshy and perspiring, showed purple veins,
and the little eyes receded comically, like a pig's.
“Well, I've been thinking serious of late about getting married,” he
continued, slashing the rose bushes with his stick. “I don't cal'late
to be a sentimental critter. I'm not much on high-sounding phrases, and
such things, but I'd give you my word I'd make a good husband.”
“Please be careful of those roses, Mr. Hopper.”
“Beg pardon,” said Eliphalet. He began to lose track of his tenses--that
was the only sign he gave of perturbation. “When I come to St. Louis
without a cent, Miss Jinny, I made up my mind I'd be a rich man before
I left it. If I was to die now, I'd have kept that promise. I'm not
thirty-four, and I cal'late I've got as much money in a safe place as a
good many men you call rich. I'm not saying what I've got, mind you. All
in proper time.
“I'm a pretty steady kind. I've stopped chewing--there was a time when I
done that. And I don't drink nor smoke.”
“That is all very commendable, Mr. Hopper,” Virginia said, stifling a
rebellious titter. “But,--but why did you give up chewing?”
“I am informed that the ladies are against it,” said Eliphalet,--“dead
against it. You wouldn't like it in a husband, now, would you?”
This time the laugh was not to be put down. “I confess I shouldn't,” she
said.
“Thought so,” he replied, as one versed. His tones took on a nasal
twang. “Well, as I was saying, I've about got ready to settle down, and
I've had my eye on the lady this seven years.”
“Marvel of constancy!” said Virginia. “And the lady?”
“The lady,” said Eliphalet, bluntly, “is you.” He glanced at her
bewildered face and went on rapidly: “You pleased me the first day I set
eyes on you in the store I said to myself, 'Hopper, there's the one for
you to marry.' I'm plain, but my folks was good people. I set to work
right then to make a fortune for you, Miss Jinny. You've just what I
need. I'm a plain business man with no frills. You'll do the frills.
You're the kind that was raised in the lap of luxury. You'll need a man
with a fortune, and a big one; you're the sort to show it off. I've got
the foundations of that fortune, and the proof of it right here. And I
tell you,”--his jaw was set,--“I tell you that some day Eliphalet Hopper
will be one of the richest men in the West.”
He had stopped, facing her in the middle of the way, his voice strong,
his confidence supreme. At first she had stared at him in dumb wonder.
Then, as she began to grasp the meaning of his harangue, astonishment
was still dominant,--sheer astonishment. She scarcely listened. But,
as he finished, the thatch of the summer house caught her eye. A vision
arose of a man beside whom Eliphalet was not worthy to crawl. She
thought of Stephen as he had stood that evening in the sunset, and this
proposal seemed a degradation. This brute dared to tempt her with money.
Scalding words rose to her lips. But she caught the look on Eliphalet's
face, and she knew that he would not understand. This was one who
rose and fell, who lived and loved and hated and died and was buried
by--money.
For a second she looked into his face as one who escapes a pit gazes
over the precipice, and shuddered. As for Eliphalet, let it not be
thought that he had no passion. This was the moment for which he had
lived since the day he had first seen her and been scorned in the store.
That type of face, that air,--these were the priceless things he would
buy with his money. Crazed with the very violence of his long-pent
desire, he seized her hand. She wrung it free again.
“How--how dare you!” she cried.
He staggered back, and stood for a moment motionless, as though stunned.
Then, slowly, a light crept into his little eyes which haunted her for
many a day.
“You--won't--marry me?” he said.
“Oh, how dare you ask me!” exclaimed Virginia, her face burning with
the shame of it. She was standing with her hands behind her, her back
against a great walnut trunk, the crusted branches of which hung over
the bluff. Even as he looked at her, Eliphalet lost his head, and
indiscretion entered his soul.
“You must!” he said hoarsely. “You must! You've got no notion of my
money, I say.”
“Oh!” she cried, “can't you understand? If you owned the whole of
California, I would not marry you.” Suddenly he became very cool. He
slipped his hand into a pocket, as one used to such a motion, and drew
out some papers.
“I cal'late you ain't got much idea of the situation, Miss Carvel,” he
said; “the wheels have been a-turning lately. You're poor, but I guess
you don't know how poor you are,--eh? The Colonel's a man of honor,
ain't he?”
For her life she could not have answered,--nor did she even know why she
stayed to listen.
“Well,” he said, “after all, there ain't much use in your lookin' over
them papers. A woman wouldn't know. I'll tell you what they say: they
say that if I choose, I am Carvel & Company.”
The little eyes receded, and he waited a moment, seemingly to prolong a
physical delight in the excitement and suffering of a splendid creature.
The girl was breathing fast and deep.
“I cal'late you despise me, don't you?” he went on, as if that, too,
gave him pleasure. “But I tell you the Colonel's a beggar but for me.
Go and ask him if I'm lying. All you've got to do is to say you'll be my
wife, and I tear these notes in two. They go over the bluff.” (He
made the motion with his hands.) “Carvel & Company's an old firm,--a
respected firm. You wouldn't care to see it go out of the family, I
cal'late.”
He paused again, triumphant. But she did none of the things he expected.
She said, simply:--“Will you please follow me, Mr. Hopper.”
And he followed her,--his shrewdness gone, for once.
Save for the rise and fall of her shoulders she seemed calm. The path
wound through a jungle of waving sunflowers and led into the shade in
front of the house. There was the Colonel sitting on the porch. His
pipe lay with its scattered ashes on the boards, and his head was bent
forward, as though listening. When he saw the two, he rose expectantly,
and went forward to meet them. Virginia stopped before him.
“Pa,” she said, “is it true that you have borrowed money from this man?”
Eliphalet had seen Mr. Carvel angry once, and his soul had quivered.
Terror, abject terror, seized him now, so that his knees smote together.
As well stare into the sun as into the Colonel's face. In one stride
he had a hand in the collar of Eliphalet's new coat, the other pointing
down the path.
“It takes just a minute to walk to that fence, sir,” he said sternly.
“If you are any longer about it, I reckon you'll never get past it.
You're a cowardly hound, sir!” Mr. Hopper's gait down the flagstones was
an invention of his own. It was neither a walk, nor a trot, nor a run,
but a sort of sliding amble, such as is executed in nightmares. Singing
in his head was the famous example of the eviction of Babcock from the
store,--the only time that the Colonel's bullet had gone wide. And down
in the small of his back Eliphalet listened for the crack of a pistol,
and feared that a clean hole might be bored there any minute. Once
outside, he took to the white road, leaving a trail of dust behind him
that a wagon might have raised. Fear lent him wings, but neglected to
lift his feet.
The Colonel passed his arm around his daughter, and pulled his goatee
thoughtfully. And Virginia, glancing shyly upward, saw a smile in the
creases about his mouth: She smiled, too, and then the tears hid him
from her.
Strange that the face which in anger withered cowards and made men look
grave, was capable of such infinite tenderness,--tenderness and sorrow.
The Colonel took Virginia in his arms, and she sobbed against his
shoulder, as of old.
“Jinny, did he--?”
“Yes--”
“Lige was right, and--and you, Jinny--I should never have trusted him.
The sneak!”
Virginia raised her head. The sun was slanting in yellow bars through
the branches of the great trees, and a robin's note rose above the bass
chorus of the frogs. In the pauses, as she listened, it seemed as if she
could hear the silver sound of the river over the pebbles far below.
“Honey,” said the Colonel,--“I reckon we're just as poor as white
trash.”
Virginia smiled through her tears.
“Honey,” he said again, after a pause, “I must keep my word and let him
have the business.”
She did not reproach him.
“There is a little left, a very little,” he continued slowly, painfully.
“I thank God that it is yours. It was left you by Becky--by your mother.
It is in a railroad company in New York, and safe, Jinny.”
“Oh, Pa, you know that I do not care,” she cried. “It shall be yours and
mine together. And we shall live out here and be happy.”
But she glanced anxiously at him nevertheless. He was in his familiar
posture of thought, his legs slightly apart, his felt hat pushed back,
stroking his goatee. But his clear gray eyes were troubled as they
sought hers, and she put her hand to her breast.
“Virginia,” he said, “I fought for my country once, and I reckon I'm
some use yet awhile. It isn't right that I should idle here, while
the South needs me, Your Uncle Daniel is fifty-eight, and Colonel of a
Pennsylvania regiment.--Jinny, I have to go.”
Virginia said nothing. It was in her blood as well as his. The Colonel
had left his young wife, to fight in Mexico; he had come home to lay
flowers on her grave. She knew that he thought of this; and, too, that
his heart was rent at leaving her. She put her hands on his shoulders,
and he stooped to kiss her trembling lips.
They walked out together to the summer-house, and stood watching the
glory of the light on the western hills. “Jinn,” said the Colonel, “I
reckon you will have to go to your Aunt Lillian. It--it will be hard.
But I know that my girl can take care of herself. In case--in case I do
not come back, or occasion should arise, find Lige. Let him take you to
your Uncle Daniel. He is fond of you, and will be all alone in Calvert
House when the war is over. And I reckon that is all I have to say. I
won't pry into your heart, honey. If you love Clarence, marry him. I
like the boy, and I believe he will quiet down into a good man.”
Virginia did not answer, but reached out for her father's hand and held
its fingers locked tight in her own. From the kitchen the sound of Ned's
voice rose in the still evening air.
“Sposin' I was to go to N' Orleans an' take sick and die,
Laik a bird into de country ma spirit would fly.”
And after a while down the path the red and yellow of Mammy Easter's
bandanna was seen.
“Supper, Miss Jinny. Laws, if I ain't ramshacked de premises fo' you
bof. De co'n bread's gittin' cold.”
That evening the Colonel and Virginia thrust a few things into her
little leather bag they had chosen together in London. Virginia had
found a cigar, which she hid until they went down to the porch, and
there she gave it to him; when he lighted the match she saw that his
hand shook.
Half an hour later he held her in his arms at the gate, and she heard
his firm tread die in the dust of the road. The South had claimed him at
last.
Volume 7.
CHAPTER VII. WITH THE ARMIES OF THE WEST
We are at Memphis,--for a while,--and the Christmas season is
approaching once more. And yet we must remember that war recognizes no
Christmas, nor Sunday, nor holiday. The brown river, excited by rains,
whirled seaward between his banks of yellow clay. Now the weather was
crisp and cold, now hazy and depressing, and again a downpour. Memphis
had never seen such activity. A spirit possessed the place, a restless
spirit called William T. Sherman. He prodded Memphis and laid violent
hold of her. She groaned, protested, turned over, and woke up, peopled
by a new people. When these walked, they ran, and they wore a blue
uniform. They spoke rapidly and were impatient. Rain nor heat nor
tempest kept them in. And yet they joked, and Memphis laughed (what was
left of her), and recognized a bond of fellowship. The General joked,
and the Colonels and the Commissary and the doctors, down to the sutlers
and teamsters and the salt tars under Porter, who cursed the dishwater
Mississippi, and also a man named Eads, who had built the new-fangled
iron boxes officially known as gunboats. The like of these had
never before been seen in the waters under the earth. The loyal
citizens--loyal to the South--had been given permission to leave the
city. The General told the assistant quartermaster to hire their houses
and slaves for the benefit of the Federal Government. Likewise he laid
down certain laws to the Memphis papers defining treason. He gave
out his mind freely to that other army of occupation, the army of
speculation, that flocked thither with permits to trade in cotton. The
speculators gave the Confederates gold, which they needed most, for the
bales, which they could not use at all.
The forefathers of some of these gentlemen were in old Egypt under
Pharaoh--for whom they could have had no greater respect and fear than
their descendants had in New Egypt for Grant or Sherman. Yankees
were there likewise in abundance. And a certain acquaintance of ours
materially added to his fortune by selling in Boston the cotton which
cost him fourteen cents, at thirty cents.
One day the shouting and the swearing and the running to and fro came
to a climax. Those floating freaks which were all top and drew nothing,
were loaded down to the guards with army stores and animals and wood and
men,--men who came from every walk in life.
Whistles bellowed, horses neighed. The gunboats chased hither and
thither, and at length the vast processions paddled down the stream with
naval precision, under the watchful eyes of a real admiral.
Residents of Memphis from the river's bank watched the pillar of smoke
fade to the southward and ruminated on the fate of Vicksburg. The
General paced the deck in thought. A little later he wrote to the
Commander-in-Chief at Washington, “The valley of the Mississippi is
America.”
Vicksburg taken, this vast Confederacy would be chopped in two.
Night fell to the music of the paddles, to the scent of the officers'
cigars, to the blood-red vomit of the tall stacks and the smoky flame of
the torches. Then Christmas Day dawned, and there was Vicksburg lifted
two hundred feet above the fever swamps, her court-house shining in
the morning sun. Vicksburg, the well-nigh impregnable key to America's
highway. When old Vick made his plantation on the Walnut Hills, he chose
a site for a fortress of the future Confederacy that Vauban would have
delighted in.
Yes, there were the Walnut Hills, high bluffs separated from the
Mississippi by tangled streams and bayous, and on their crests the
Parrotts scowled. It was a queer Christmas Day indeed, bright and warm;
no snow, no turkeys nor mince pies, no wine, but just hardtack and bacon
and foaming brown water.
On the morrow the ill-assorted fleet struggled up the sluggish Yazoo,
past impenetrable forests where the cypress clutched at the keels, past
long-deserted cotton fields, until it came at last to the black ruins of
a home. In due time the great army was landed. It spread out by brigade
and division and regiment and company, the men splashing and paddling
through the Chickasaw and the swamps toward the bluffs. The Parrotts
began to roar. A certain regiment, boldly led, crossed the bayou at a
narrow place and swept resistless across the sodden fields to where the
bank was steepest. The fire from the battery scorched the hair of their
heads. But there they stayed, scooping out the yellow clay with torn
hands, while the Parrotts, with lowered muzzles, ploughed the slope with
shells. There they stayed, while the blue lines quivered and fell back
through the forests on that short winter's afternoon, dragging their
wounded from the stagnant waters. But many were left to die in agony in
the solitude.
Like a tall emblem of energy, General Sherman stood watching the attack
and repulse, his eyes ever alert. He paid no heed to the shells which
tore the limbs from the trees about him, or sent the swamp water in
thick spray over his staff. Now and again a sharp word broke from his
lips, a forceful home thrust at one of the leaders of his columns.
“What regiment stayed under the bank?”
“Sixth Missouri, General,” said an aide, promptly.
The General sat late in the Admiral's gunboat that night, but when
he returned to his cabin in the Forest Queen, he called for a list of
officers of the Sixth Missouri. His finger slipping down the roll paused
at a name among the new second lieutenants.
“Did the boys get back?” he asked. “Yes, General, when it fell dark.”
“Let me see the casualties,--quick.”
That night a fog rolled up from the swamps, and in the morning
jack-staff was hid from pilot-house. Before the attack could be renewed,
a political general came down the river with a letter in his pocket
from Washington, by virtue of which he took possession of the three army
core, and their chief, subpoenaed the fleet and the Admiral, and went
off to capture Arkansas Post.
Vicksburg had a breathing spell.
Three weeks later, when the army was resting at Napoleon, Arkansas, a
self-contained man, with a brown beard arrived from Memphis, and took
command. This way General U. S. Grant. He smoked incessantly in his
cabin. He listened. He spoke but seldom. He had look in his face that
boded ill to any that might oppose him. Time and labor be counted
as nothing, compared with the accomplishment of an object. Back to
Vicksburg paddled the fleet and transports. Across the river from the
city, on the pasty mud behind the levee's bank were dumped Sherman's
regiments, condemned to week of ditch-digging, that the gunboats might
arrive at the bend of the Mississippi below by a canal, out of reach of
the batteries. Day in and day out they labored, officer and men. Sawing
off stumps under the water, knocking poisonous snakes by scores from the
branches, while the river rose and rose and rose, and the rain crept
by inches under their tent flies, and the enemy walked the parapet of
Vicksburg and laughed. Two gunboats accomplished the feat of running the
batteries, that their smiles might be sobered.
To the young officers who were soiling their uniform with the grease of
saws, whose only fighting was against fever and water snakes, the news
of an expedition into the Vicksburg side of the river was hailed with
caps in the air. To be sure, the saw and axe, and likewise the levee and
the snakes, were to be there, too. But there was likely to be a little
fighting. The rest of the corps that was to stay watched grimly as the
detachment put off in the little 'Diligence' and 'Silver Wave'.
All the night the smoke-pipes were batting against the boughs of oak and
cottonwood, and snapping the trailing vines. Some other regiments
went by another route. The ironclads, followed in hot haste by General
Sherman in a navy tug, had gone ahead, and were even then shoving with
their noses great trunks of trees in their eagerness to get behind the
Rebels. The Missouri regiment spread out along the waters, and were soon
waist deep, hewing a path for the heavier transports to come. Presently
the General came back to a plantation half under water, where Black
Bayou joins Deer Creek, to hurry the work in cleaning out that Bayou.
The light transports meanwhile were bringing up more troops from a
second detachment. All through the Friday the navy great guns were
heard booming in the distance, growing quicker and quicker, until
the quivering air shook the hanging things in that vast jungle. Saws
stopped, and axes were poised over shoulders, and many times that day
the General lifted his head anxiously. As he sat down in the evening in
a slave cabin redolent with corn pone and bacon, the sound still hovered
among the trees and rolled along the still waters.
The General slept lightly. It was three o'clock Saturday morning when
the sharp challenge of a sentry broke the silence. A negro, white eyed,
bedraggled, and muddy, stood in the candle light under the charge of a
young lieutenant. The officer saluted, and handed the General a roll of
tobacco.
“I found this man in the swamp, sir. He has a message from the
Admiral--”
The General tore open the roll and took from it a piece of tissue paper
which he spread out and held under the candle. He turned to a staff
officer who had jumped from his bed and was hurrying into his coat.
“Porter's surrounded,” he said. The order came in a flash. “Kilby Smith
and all men here across creek to relief at once. I'll take canoe through
bayou to Hill's and hurry reenforcements.”
The staff officer paused, his hand on the latch of the door.
“But your escort, General. You're not going through that sewer in a
canoe without an escort!”
“I guess they won't look for a needle in that haystack,” the General
answered. For a brief second he eyed the lieutenant. “Get back to your
regiment, Brice, if you want to go,” he said.
Stephen saluted and went out. All through the painful march that
followed, though soaked in swamp water and bruised by cypress knees, he
thought of Sherman in his canoe, winding unprotected through the black
labyrinth, risking his life that more men might be brought to the rescue
of the gunboats.
The story of that rescue has been told most graphically by Sherman
himself. How he picked up the men at work on the bayou and marched them
on a coal barge; how he hitched the barge to a navy tug; how he met the
little transport with a fresh load of troops, and Captain Elijah Brent's
reply when the General asked if he would follow him. “As long as the
boat holds together, General.” And he kept his word. The boughs hammered
at the smoke-pipes until they went by the board, and the pilothouse fell
like a pack of cards on the deck before they had gone three miles and a
half. Then the indomitable Sherman disembarked, a lighted candle in his
hand, and led a stiff march through thicket and swamp and breast-deep
backwater, where the little drummer boys carried their drums on their
heads. At length, when they were come to some Indian mounds, they found
a picket of three, companies of the force which had reached the flat the
day before, and had been sent down to prevent the enemy from obstructing
further the stream below the fleet.
“The Admiral's in a bad way, sir,” said the Colonel who rode up to meet
the General. “He's landlocked. Those clumsy ironclads of his can't move
backward or forward, and the Rebs have been peppering him for two days.”
Just then a fusillade broke from the thickets, nipping the branches from
the cottonwoods about them.
“Form your line,” said the General. “Drive 'em out.”
The force swept forward, with the three picket companies in the swamp on
the right. And presently they came in sight of the shapeless ironclads
with their funnels belching smoke, a most remarkable spectacle. How
Porter had pushed them there was one of the miracles of the war.
Then followed one of a thousand memorable incidents in the life of a
memorable man. General Sherman, jumping on the bare back of a scrawny
horse, cantered through the fields. And the bluejackets, at sight of
that familiar figure, roared out a cheer that might have shaken the
drops from the wet boughs. The Admiral and the General stood together on
the deck, their hands clasped. And the Colonel astutely remarked, as he
rode up in answer to a summons, that if Porter was the only man whose
daring could have pushed a fleet to that position, Sherman was certainly
the only man who could have got him out of it.
“Colonel,” said the General, “that move was well executed, sir. Admiral,
did the Rebs put a bullet through your rum casks? We're just a little
tired. And now,” he added, wheeling on the Colonel when each had a glass
in his hand, “who was in command of that company on the right, in the
swamp? He handled them like a regular.”
“He's a second lieutenant, General, in the Sixth Missouri. Captain
wounded at Hindman, and first lieutenant fell out down below. His name
is Brice, I believe.”
“I thought so,” said the General.
Some few days afterward, when the troops were slopping around again at
Young's Point, opposite Vicksburg, a gentleman arrived on a boat
from St. Louis. He paused on the levee to survey with concern and
astonishment the flood of waters behind it, and then asked an officer
the way to General Sherman's headquarters. The officer, who was greatly
impressed by the gentleman's looks, led him at once to a trestle bridge
which spanned the distance from the levee bank over the flood to a house
up to its first floor in the backwaters. The orderly saluted.
“Who shall I say, sir?”
The officer looked inquiringly at the gentleman, who gave his name.
The officer could not repress a smile at the next thing that happened.
Out hurried the General himself, with both hands outstretched.
“Bless my soul!” he cried, “if it isn't Brinsmade. Come right in, come
right in and take dinner. The boys will be glad to see you. I'll send
and tell Grant you're here. Brinsmade, if it wasn't for you and your
friends on the Western Sanitary Commission, we'd all have been dead of
fever and bad food long ago.” The General sobered abruptly. “I guess a
good many of the boys are laid up now,” he added.
“I've come down to do what I can, General,” responded Mr. Brinsmade,
gravely. “I want to go through all the hospitals to see that our nurses
are doing their duty and that the stores are properly distributed.”
“You shall, sir, this minute,” said the General. He dropped instantly
the affairs which he had on hand, and without waiting for dinner the
two gentlemen went together through the wards where the fever raged. The
General surprised his visitor by recognizing private after private in
the cots, and he always had a brief word of cheer to brighten their
faces, to make them follow him with wistful eyes as he passed beyond
them. “That's poor Craig,” he would say, “corporal, Third Michigan. They
tell me he can't live,” and “That's Olcott, Eleventh Indiana. Good God!”
cried the General, when they were out in the air again, “how I wish
some of these cotton traders could get a taste of this fever. They keep
well--the vultures--And by the way, Brinsmade, the man who gave me no
peace at all at Memphis was from your city. Why, I had to keep a whole
corps on duty to watch him.”
“What was his name, sir?” Mr. Brinsmade asked.
“Hopper!” cried the General, with feeling. “Eliphalet Hopper. As long as
I live I shall never forget it. How the devil did he get a permit? What
are they about at Washington?”
“You surprise me,” said Mr. Brinsmade. “He has always seemed
inoffensive, and I believe he is a prominent member of one of our
churches.”
“I guess that's so,” answered the General, dryly. “I ever I set eyes on
him again, he's clapped into the guardhouse. He knows it, too.”
“Speaking of St. Louis, General,” said Mr. Brinsmade, presently, “have
you ever heard of Stephen Brice? joined your army last autumn. You may
remember talking to him one evening at my house.”
“He's one of my boys!” cried the General. “Remember him? Guess I do!” He
paused on the very brink of relating again the incident at Camp Jackson,
when Stephen had saved the life of Mr. Brinsmade's own son. “Brinsmade,
for three days I've had it on my mind to send for that boy. I'll have
him at headquarters now. I like him,” cried General Sherman, with tone
and gesture there was no mistaking. And good Mr. Brinsmade, who liked
Stephen, too, rejoiced at the story he would have to tell the widow. “He
has spirit, Brinsmade. I told him to let me know when he was ready to go
to war. No such thing. He never came near me. The first thing I hear of
him is that he's digging holes in the clay of Chickasaw Bluff, and his
cap is fanned off by the blast of a Parrott six feet above his head.
Next thing he turns up on that little expedition we took to get Porter
to sea again. When we got to the gunboats, there was Brice's company
on the flank. He handled those men surprisingly, sir--surprisingly. I
shouldn't have blamed the boy if one or two Rebs got by him. But no, he
swept the place clean.” By this time they had come back to the bridge
leading to headquarters, and the General beckoned quickly to an orderly.
“My compliments to Lieutenant Stephen Brice, Sixth Missouri, and ask him
to report here at once. At once, you understand!”
“Yes, General.”
It so happened that Mr. Brice's company were swinging axes when the
orderly arrived, and Mr. Brice had an axe himself, and was up to his
boot tops in yellow mud.
The orderly, who had once been an Iowa farmer, was near grinning when he
gave the General's message and saw the lieutenant gazing ruefully at his
clothes.
Entering headquarters, Stephen paused at the doorway of the big room
where the officers of the different staffs were scattered about,
smoking, while the negro servants were removing the dishes from the
table. The sunlight, reflected from the rippling water outside, danced
on the ceiling. At the end of the room sat General Sherman, his uniform,
as always, a trifle awry. His soft felt hat with the gold braid was
tilted forward, and his feet, booted and spurred, were crossed. Small
wonder that the Englishman who sought the typical American found him in
Sherman.
The sound that had caught Stephen's attention was the General's voice,
somewhat high-pitched, in the key that he used in telling a story. These
were his closing words.
“Sin gives you a pretty square deal, boys, after all. Generally a man
says, 'Well, I can resist, but I'll have my fun just this once.' That's
the way it happens. They tell you that temptation comes irresistibly.
Don't believe it. Do you, Mr. Brice? Come over here, sir. Here's a
friend of yours.”
Stephen made his way to the General, whose bright eyes wandered rapidly
over him as he added:
“This is the condition my officers report in, Brinsmade,--mud from head
to heel.”
Stephen had sense enough to say nothing, but the staff officers laughed,
and Mr. Brinsmade smiled as he rose and took Stephen's hand.
“I am delighted to see that you are well, sir,” said he, with that
formal kindliness which endeared him to all. “Your mother will be
rejoiced at my news of you. You will be glad to hear that I left her
well, Stephen.”
Stephen inquired for Mrs. Brinsmade and Anne.
“They are well, sir, and took pleasure in adding to a little box which
your mother sent. Judge Whipple put in a box of fine cigars, although he
deplores the use of tobacco.”
“And the Judge, Mr. Brinsmade--how is he?”
The good gentleman's face fell.
“He is ailing, sir, it grieves me to say. He is in bed, sir. But he is
ably looked after. Your mother desired to have him moved to her house,
but he is difficult to stir from his ways, and he would not leave his
little room. He is ably nursed. We have got old Nancy, Hester's mother,
to stay with him at night, and Mrs. Brice divides the day with Miss
Jinny Carvel, who comes in from Bellegarde every afternoon.”
“Miss Carvel?” exclaimed Stephen, wondering if he heard aright. And at
the mention of her name he tingled.
“None other, sir,” answered Mr. Brinsmade. “She has been much honored
for it. You may remember that the Judge was a close friend of her
father's before the war. And--well, they quarrelled, sir. The Colonel
went South, you know.”
“When--when was the Judge taken ill, Mr. Brinsmade?” Stephen asked. The
thought of Virginia and his mother caring for him together was strangely
sweet.
“Two days before I left, sir, Dr. Polk had warned him not to do so much.
But the Doctor tells me that he can see no dangerous symptoms.”
Stephen inquired now of Mr. Brinsmade how long he was to be with them.
“I am going on to the other camps this afternoon,” said he. “But I
should like a glimpse of your quarters, Stephen, if you will invite
me. Your mother would like a careful account of you, and Mr. Whipple,
and--your many friends in St. Louis.”
“You will find my tent a little wet, air,” replied Stephen, touched.
Here the General, who had been sitting by watching them with a very
curious expression, spoke up.
“That's hospitality for you, Brinsmade!”
Stephen and Mr. Brinsmade made their way across plank and bridge to
Stephen's tent, and his mess servant arrived in due time with the
package from home. But presently, while they sat talking of many things,
the canvas of the fly was thrust back with a quick movement, and who
should come stooping in but General Sherman himself. He sat down on a
cracker box. Stephen rose confusedly.
“Well, well, Brice,” said the General, winking at Mr. Brinsmade, “I
think you might have invited me to the feast. Where are those cigars Mr.
Brinsmade was talking about?”
Stephen opened the box with alacrity. The General chose one and lighted
it.
“Don't smoke, eh?” he inquired. “Why, yes, sir, when I can.”
“Then light up, sir,” said the General, “and sit down, I've been
thinking lately of court-martialing you, but I decided to come 'round
and talk it over with you first. That isn't strictly according to
the rules of the service. Look here, Mr. Brice, why did you leave St.
Louis?”
“They began to draft, sir, and I couldn't stand it any longer.”
“But you wouldn't have been drafted. You were in the Home Guards, if I
remember right. And Mr. Brinsmade tells me you were useful in many ways
What was your rank in the Home Guards?”
“Lieutenant colonel, sir.”
“And what are you here?”
“A second lieutenant in temporary command, General.” “You have commanded
men?”
“Not in action, sir. I felt that that was different.”
“Couldn't they do better for you than a second-lieutenancy?”
Stephen did not reply at once, Mr. Brinsmade spoke up, “They offered him
a lieutenant-colonelcy.”
The General was silent a moment: Then he said “Do you remember meeting
me on the boat when I was leaving St. Louis, after the capture of Fort
Henry?”
Stephen smiled. “Very well, General,” he replied, General Sherman leaned
forward.
“And do you remember I said to you, 'Brice, when you get ready to come
into this war, let me know.' Why didn't you do it?”
Stephen thought a minute. Then he said gravely, but with just a
suspicion of humor about his mouth:-- “General, if I had done that, you
wouldn't be here in my tent to-day.”
Like lightning the General was on his feet, his hand on Stephen's
shoulder.
“By gad, sir,” he cried, delighted, “so I wouldn't.”
CHAPTER VIII. A STRANGE MEETING
The story of the capture of Vicksburg is the old, old story of failure
turned into success, by which man is made immortal. It involves the
history of a general who never retraced his steps, who cared neither
for mugwump murmurs nor political cabals, who took both blame and praise
with equanimity. Through month after month of discouragement, and work
gone for naught, and fever and death, his eyes never left his goal. And
by grace of the wisdom of that President who himself knew sorrow and
suffering and defeat and unjust censure, General Grant won.
Boldness did it. The canal abandoned, one red night fleet and transports
swept around the bend and passed the city's heights, on a red river.
The Parrotts and the Dahlgrens roared, and the high bluffs flung out the
sound over the empty swamp land.
Then there came the landing below, and the cutting loose from a
base--unheard of. Corps behind cursed corps ahead for sweeping the
country clear of forage. Battles were fought. Confederate generals in
Mississippi were bewildered.
One night, while crossing with his regiment a pontoon bridge, Stephen
Brice heard a shout raised on the farther shore. Sitting together on
a log under a torch, two men in slouch hats were silhouetted. That one
talking with rapid gestures was General Sherman. The impassive profile
of the other, the close-cropped beard and the firmly held cigar that
seemed to go with it,--Stephen recognized as that of the strange Captain
Grant who had stood beside him in the street by the Arsenal He had not
changed a whit. Motionless, he watched corps after corps splash by,
artillery, cavalry, and infantry, nor gave any sign that he heard their
plaudits.
At length the army came up behind the city to a place primeval, where
the face of the earth was sore and tortured, worn into deep gorges by
the rains, and flung up in great mounds. Stripped of the green magnolias
and the cane, the banks of clay stood forth in hideous yellow nakedness,
save for a lonely stunted growth, or a bare trunk that still stood
tottering on the edge of a banks its pitiful withered roots reaching out
below. The May weather was already sickly hot.
First of all there was a murderous assault, and a still more murderous
repulse. Three times the besiegers charged, sank their color staffs
into the redoubts, and three times were driven back. Then the blue army
settled into the earth and folded into the ravines. Three days in that
narrow space between the lines lay the dead and wounded suffering untold
agonies in the moist heat. Then came a truce to bury the dead, to bring
back what was left of the living.
The doomed city had no rest. Like clockwork from the Mississippi's banks
beyond came the boom and shriek of the coehorns on the barges. The big
shells hung for an instant in the air like birds of prey, and then could
be seen swooping down here and there, while now and anon a shaft of
smoke rose straight to the sky, the black monument of a home.
Here was work in the trenches, digging the flying sap by night and
deepening it by day, for officers and men alike. From heaven a host of
blue ants could be seen toiling in zigzags forward, ever forward, along
the rude water-cuts and through the hills. A waiting carrion from her
vantage point on high marked one spot then another where the blue ants
disappeared, and again one by one came out of the burrow to hurry down
the trench,--each with his ball of clay.
In due time the ring of metal and sepulchred voices rumbled in the
ground beneath the besieged. Counter mines were started, and through the
narrow walls of earth commands and curses came. Above ground the saps
were so near that a strange converse became the rule. It was “Hello,
Reb!” “Howdy, Yank!” Both sides were starving, the one for tobacco and
the other for hardtack and bacon. These necessities were tossed across,
sometimes wrapped in the Vicksburg news-sheet printed on the white
side of a homely green wall paper. At other times other amenities were
indulged in. Hand-grenades were thrown and shells with lighted fuses
rolled down on the heads of acquaintances of the night before, who
replied from wooden coehorns hooped with iron.
The Union generals learned (common item in a siege) that the citizens
of Vicksburg were eating mule meat. Not an officer or private in the
Vicksburg armies who does not remember the 25th of June, and the hour
of three in an afternoon of pitiless heat. Silently the long blue files
wound into position behind the earth barriers which hid them from the
enemy, coiled and ready to strike when the towering redoubt on the
Jackson road should rise heavenwards. By common consent the rifle
crack of day and night was hushed, and even the Parrotts were silent.
Stillness closed around the white house of Shirley once more, but not
the stillness it had known in its peaceful homestead days. This was
the stillness of the death prayer. Eyes staring at the big redoubt were
dimmed. At last, to those near, a little wisp of blue smoke crept out.
Then the earth opened with a quake. The sun was darkened, and a hot
blast fanned the upturned faces. In the sky, through the film of
shattered clay, little black dots scurried, poised, and fell again as
arms and legs and head less trunks and shapeless bits of wood and iron.
Scarcely had the dust settled when the sun caught the light of fifty
thousand bayonets, and a hundred shells were shrieking across the
crater's edge. Earth to earth, alas, and dust to dust! Men who ran
across that rim of a summer's after-noon died in torture under tier upon
tier of their comrades,--and so the hole was filled.
An upright cannon marks the spot where a scrawny oak once stood on
a scarred and baked hillside, outside of the Confederate lines at
Vicksburg. Under the scanty shade of that tree, on the eve of the
Nation's birthday, stood two men who typified the future and the past.
As at Donelson, a trick of Fortune's had delivered one comrade of old
into the hands of another. Now she chose to kiss the one upon whom she
had heaped obscurity and poverty and contumely. He had ceased to think
or care about Fortune. And hence, being born a woman, she favored him.
The two armies watched and were still. They noted the friendly greeting
of old comrades, and after that they saw the self-contained Northerner
biting his cigar, as one to whom the pleasantries of life were past and
gone. The South saw her General turn on his heel. The bitterness of his
life was come. Both sides honored him for the fight he had made. But war
does not reward a man according to his deserts.
The next day--the day our sundered nation was born Vicksburg
surrendered: the obstinate man with the mighty force had conquered. See
the gray regiments marching silently in the tropic heat into the folds
of that blue army whose grip has choked them at last. Silently, too, the
blue coats stand, pity and admiration on the brick-red faces. The arms
are stacked and surrendered, officers and men are to be parolled when
the counting is finished. The formations melt away, and those who for
months have sought each other's lives are grouped in friendly talk. The
coarse army bread is drawn eagerly from the knapsacks of the blue, smoke
quivers above a hundred fires, and the smell of frying bacon brings a
wistful look into the gaunt faces. Tears stand in the eyes of many a man
as he eats the food his Yankee brothers have given him on the birthday
of their country.
Within the city it is the same. Stephen Brice, now a captain in General
Lauman's brigade, sees with thanksgiving the stars and stripes flutter
from the dome of that court-house which he had so long watched from
afar.
Later on, down a side street, he pauses before a house with its
face blown away. On the verge of one of its jagged floors is an old
four-posted bed, and beside it a child's cot is standing pitifully,--the
tiny pillow still at the head and the little sheets thrown across the
foot. So much for one of the navy's shells.
While he was thinking of the sadness of it all, a little scene was
acted: the side door of the house opened, a weeping woman came out, and
with her was a tall Confederate Colonel of cavalry. Gallantly giving her
his arm, he escorted her as far as the little gate, where she bade him
good by with much feeling. With an impulsive movement he drew some money
from his pocket, thrust it upon her, and started hurriedly away that
he might not listen to her thanks. Such was his preoccupation that
he actually brushed into Stephen, who was standing beside a tree. He
stopped and bowed.
“Excuse me, seh,” he said contritely. “I beg your pardon, seh.”
“Certainly,” said Stephen, smiling; “it was my fault for getting in your
way.”
“Not at all, seh,” said the cavalry Colonel; “my clumsiness, seh.”
He did not pass on, but stood pulling with some violence a very long
mustache. “Damn you Yankees,” he continued, in the same amiable tone,
“you've brought us a heap of misfortune. Why, seh, in another week we'd
been fo'ced to eat niggers.”
The Colonel made such a wry face that Stephen laughed in spite of
himself. He had marked the man's charitable action, and admired his
attempt to cover it. The Colonel seemed to be all breadth, like a card.
His shoulders were incredible. The face was scant, perchance from lack
of food, the nose large, with a curved rim, and the eyes blue gray. He
wore clay-flecked cavalry boots, and was six feet five if an inch, so
that Stephen's six seemed insignificant beside him.
“Captain,” he said, taking in Stephen's rank, “so we won't qua'l as to
who's host heah. One thing's suah,” he added, with a twinkle, “I've been
heah longest. Seems like ten yeahs since I saw the wife and children
down in the Palmetto State. I can't offer you a dinner, seh. We've
eaten all the mules and rats and sugar cane in town.” (His eye seemed to
interpolate that Stephen wouldn't be there otherwise.) “But I can offer
you something choicer than you have in the No'th.”
Whereupon he drew from his hip a dented silver flask. The Colonel
remarked that Stephen's eyes fell on the coat of arms.
“Prope'ty of my grandfather, seh, of Washington's Army. My name is
Jennison,--Catesby Jennison, at your service, seh,” he said. “You have
the advantage of me, Captain.”
“My name is Brice,” said Stephen.
The big Colonel bowed decorously, held out a great, wide hand, and
thereupon unscrewed the flask. Now Stephen had never learned to like
straight whiskey, but he took down his share without a face. The exploit
seemed to please the Colonel, who, after he likewise had done the liquor
justice, screwed on the lid with ceremony, offered Stephen his arm with
still greater ceremony, and they walked off down the street together.
Stephen drew from his pocket several of Judge Whipple's cigars, to which
his new friend gave unqualified praise.
On every hand Vicksburg showed signs of hard usage. Houses with gaping
chasms in their sides, others mere heaps of black ruins; great trees
felled, cabins demolished, and here and there the sidewalk ploughed
across from curb to fence.
“Lordy,” exclaimed the Colonel. “Lordy I how my ears ache since your
damned coehorns have stopped. The noise got to be silence with us, seh,
and yesterday I reckoned a hundred volcanoes had bust. Tell me,” said he
“when the redoubt over the Jackson road was blown up, they said a nigger
came down in your lines alive. Is that so?”
“Yes,” said Stephen, smiling; “he struck near the place where my company
was stationed. His head ached a mite. That seemed to be all.”
“I reckon he fell on it,” said Colonel Catesby Jennison, as if it were a
matter of no special note.
“And now tell me something,” said Stephen. “How did you burn our
sap-rollers?”
This time the Colonel stopped, and gave himself up to hearty laughter.
“Why, that was a Yankee trick, sure enough,” he cried. “Some ingenious
cuss soaked port fire in turpentine, and shot the wad in a large-bore
musket.”
“We thought you used explosive bullets.”
The Colonel laughed again, still more heartily. “Explosive
bullets!--Good Lord, it was all we could do to get percussion caps.
Do you know how we got percussion caps, seh? Three of our
officers--dare-devils, seh--floated down the Mississippi on logs. One
fellow made his way back with two hundred thousand. He's the pride of
our Vicksburg army. Not afraid of hell. A chivalrous man, a forlorn-hope
man. The night you ran the batteries he and some others went across to
your side in skiffs--in skiffs, seh, I say--and set fire to the houses
in De Soto, that we might see to shoot. And then he came back in the
face of our own batteries and your guns. That man was wounded by a trick
of fate, by a cussed bit of shell from your coehorns while eating his
dinner in Vicksburg. He's pretty low, now, poor fellow,” added the
Colonel, sadly.
“Where is he?” demanded Stephen, fired with a desire to see the man.
“Well, he ain't a great ways from here,” said the Colonel. “Perhaps you
might be able to do something for him,” he continued thoughtfully. “I'd
hate to see him die. The doctor says he'll pull through if he can get
care and good air and good food.” He seized Stephen's arm in a fierce
grip. “You ain't fooling?” he said.
“Indeed I am not,” said Stephen.
“No,” said the Colonel, thoughtfully, as to himself, “you don't look
like the man to fool.”
Whereupon he set out with great strides, in marked contrast to his
former languorous gait, and after a while they came to a sort of gorge,
where the street ran between high banks of clay. There Stephen saw the
magazines which the Confederates had dug out, and of which he had heard.
But he saw something, too, of which he had not heard, Colonel Catesby
Jennison stopped before an open doorway in the yellow bank and knocked.
A woman's voice called softly to him to enter.
They went into a room hewn out of the solid clay. Carpet was stretched
on the floor, paper was on the walls, and even a picture. There was
a little window cut like a port in a prison cell, and under it a bed,
beside which a middle-aged lady was seated. She had a kindly face which
seemed to Stephen a little pinched as she turned to them with a gesture
of restraint. She pointed to the bed, where a sheet lay limply over the
angles of a wasted frame. The face was to the wall.
“Hush!” said the lady,--“it is the first time in two days that he has
slept.”
But the sleeper stirred wearily, and woke with a start. He turned over.
The face, so yellow and peaked, was of the type that grows even more
handsome in sickness, and in the great fever-stricken eyes a high spirit
burned. For an instant only the man stared at Stephen, and then he
dragged himself to the wall.
The eyes of the other two were both fixed on the young Union Captain.
“My God!” cried Jennison, seizing Stephen's rigid arm, “does he look as
bad as that? We've seen him every day.”
“I--I know him,” answered Stephen. He stepped quickly to the bedside,
and bent over it. “Colfax!” he said. “Colfax!”
“This is too much, Jennison,” came from the bed a voice that was
pitifully weak; “why do you bring Yankees in here?”
“Captain Brice is a friend of yours, Colfax,” said the Colonel, tugging
at his mustache.
“Brice?” repeated Clarence, “Brice? Does he come from St. Louis?”
“Do you come from St. Louis, sir?”
“Yes. I have met Captain Colfax--”
“Colonel, sir.”
“Colonel Colfax, before the war! And if he would like to go to St.
Louis, I think I can have it arranged at once.”
In silence they waited for Clarence's answer Stephen well knew what was
passing in his mind, and guessed at his repugnance to accept a favor
from a Yankee. He wondered whether there was in this case a special
detestation. And so his mind was carried far to the northward to the
memory of that day in the summer-house on the Meramee heights. Virginia
had not loved her cousin then--of that Stephen was sure. But now,--now
that the Vicksburg army was ringing with his praise, now that he was
unfortunate--Stephen sighed. His comfort was that he would be the
instrument.
The lady in her uneasiness smoothed the single sheen that covered the
sick man. From afar came the sound of cheering, and it was this that
seemed to rouse him. He faced them again, impatiently.
“I have reason to remember Mr. Brice,” he said steadily. And then, with
some vehemence, “What is he doing in Vicksburg?”
Stephen looked at Jennison, who winced.
“The city has surrendered,” said that officer.
They counted on a burst of anger. Colfax only groaned.
“Then you can afford to be generous,” he said, with a bitter laugh.
“But you haven't whipped us yet, by a good deal. Jennison,” he cried,
“Jennison, why in hell did you give up?”
“Colfax,” said Stephen, coming forward, “you're too sick a man to talk.
I'll look up the General. It may be that I can have you sent North
to-day.”
“You can do as you please,” said Clarence, coldly, “with a--prisoner.”
The blood rushed to Stephen's face. Bowing to the lady, he strode out of
the room. Colonel Jennison, running after him, caught him in the street.
“You're not offended, Brice?” he said. “He's sick--and God Almighty,
he's proud--I reckon,” he added with a touch of humility that went
straight to Stephen's heart. “I reckon that some of us are too derned
proud--But we ain't cold.”
Stephen grasped his hand.
“Offended!” he said. “I admire the man. I'll go to the General directly.
But just let me thank you. And I hope, Colonel, that we may meet
again--as friends.” “Hold on, seh,” said Colonel Catesby Jennison; “we
may as well drink to that.”
Fortunately, as Stephen drew near the Court House, he caught sight of
a group of officers seated on its steps, and among them he was quick to
recognize General Sherman.
“Brice,” said the General, returning his salute, “been celebrating this
glorious Fourth with some of our Rebel friends?”
“Yes, sir,” answered Stephen, “and I came to ask a favor for one of
them.” Seeing that the General's genial, interested expression did not
change, he was emboldened to go on. “This is one of their colonels, sir.
You may have heard of him. He is the man who floated down the river on a
log and brought back two hundred thousand percussion caps--”
“Good Lord,” interrupted the General, “I guess we all heard of him after
that. What else has he done to endear himself?” he asked, with a smile.
“Well, General, he rowed across the river in a skiff the night we ran
these batteries, and set fire to De Soto to make targets for their
gunners.”
“I'd like to see that man,” said the General, in his eager way. “Where
is he?”
“What I was going to tell you, sir. After he went through all this, he
was hit by a piece of mortar shell, while sitting at his dinner. He's
rather far gone now, General, and they say he can't live unless he can
be sent North. I--I know who he is in St. Louis. And I thought that as
long as the officers are to be paroled I might get your permission to
send him up to-day.”
“What's his name?”
“Colfax, sir.”
The General laughed. “I know the breed,” said he, “I'll bet he didn't
thank you.”
“No, sir, he didn't.”
“I like his grit,” said the General, emphatically, “These young bloods
are the backbone of this rebellion, Brice. They were made for war. They
never did anything except horse-racing and cock-fighting. They ride like
the devil, fight like the devil, but don't care a picayune for anything.
Walker had some of 'em. Crittenden had some. And, good Lord, how
they hate a Yankee! I know this Colfax, too. He's a cousin of that
fine-looking girl Brinsmade spoke of. They say he's engaged to her. Be a
pity to disappoint her--eh?”
“Yes, General.”
“Why, Captain, I believe you would like to marry her yourself! Take my
advice, sir, and don't try to tame any wildcats.”
“I'm glad to do a favor for that young man,” said the General, when
Stephen had gone off with the slip of paper he had given him. “I like to
do that kind of a favor for any officer, when I can. Did you notice how
he flared up when I mentioned the girl?”
This is why Clarence Colfax found himself that evening on a hospital
steamer of the Sanitary Commission, bound north for St. Louis.
CHAPTER XI. BELLEGARDE ONCE MORE
Supper at Bellegarde was not the simple meal it had been for a year past
at Colonel Carvel's house in town. Mrs. Colfax was proud of her table,
proud of her fried chickens and corn fritters and her desserts. How
Virginia chafed at those suppers, and how she despised the guests whom
her aunt was in the habit of inviting to some of them! And when none
was present, she was forced to listen to Mrs. Colfax's prattle about the
fashions, her tirades against the Yankees.
“I'm sure he must be dead,” said that lady, one sultry evening in July.
Her tone, however, was not one of conviction. A lazy wind from the river
stirred the lawn of Virginia's gown. The girl, with her hand on the
wicker back of the chair, was watching a storm gather to the eastward,
across the Illinois prairie.
“I don't see why you say that, Aunt Lillian,” she replied. “Bad news
travels faster than good.”
“And not a word from Comyn. It is cruel of him not to send us a line,
telling us where his regiment is.”
Virginia did not reply. She had long since learned that the wisdom of
silence was the best for her aunt's unreasonableness. Certainly, if
Clarence's letters could not pass the close lines of the Federal troops,
news of her father's Texas regiment could not come from Red River.
“How was Judge Whipple to-day?” asked Mrs. Colfax presently.
“Very weak. He doesn't seem to improve much.”
“I can't see why Mrs. Brice,--isn't that her name?--doesn't take him to
her house. Yankee women are such prudes.”
Virginia began to rock slowly, and her foot tapped the porch.
“Mrs. Brice has begged the Judge to come to her. But he says he has
lived in those rooms, and that he will die there,--when the time comes.”
“How you worship that woman, Virginia! You have become quite a Yankee
yourself, I believe, spending whole days with her, nursing that old
man.”
“The Judge is an old friend of my father's; I think he would wish it,”
replied the girl, in a lifeless voice.
Her speech did not reveal all the pain and resentment she felt. She
thought of the old man racked with pain and suffering in the heat, lying
patient on his narrow bed, the only light of life remaining the presence
of the two women. They came day by day, and often Margaret Brice had
taken the place of the old negress who sat with him at night. Worship
Margaret Brice! Yes, it was worship; it had been worship since the
day she and her father had gone to the little whitewashed hospital.
Providence had brought them together at the Judge's bedside. The
marvellous quiet power of the older woman had laid hold of the girl in
spite of all barriers.
Often when the Judge's pain was eased sufficiently for him to talk, he
would speak of Stephen. The mother never spoke of her son, but a light
would come into her eyes at this praise of him which thrilled Virginia
to see. And when the good lady was gone, and the Judge had fallen into
slumber, it would still haunt her.
Was it out of consideration for her that Mrs. Brice would turn the Judge
from this topic which he seemed to love best? Virginia could not admit
to herself that she resented this. She had heard Stephen's letters to
the Judge. They came every week. Strong and manly they were, with plenty
of praises for the Southern defenders of Vicksburg. Only yesterday
Virginia had read one of these to Mr. Whipple, her face burning. Well
that his face was turned to the window, and that Stephen's mother was
not there!
“He says very little about himself,” Mr. Whipple complained. “Had it
not been for Brinsmade, we should never know that Sherman had his eye on
him, and had promoted him. We should never have known of that exploit
at Chickasaw Bluff. But what a glorious victory was Grant's capture of
Vicksburg, on the Fourth of July! I guess we'll make short work of the
Rebels now.”
No, the Judge had not changed much, even in illness. He would never
change. Virginia laid the letter down, and tears started to her eyes as
she repressed a retort. It was not the first time this had happened.
At every Union victory Mr. Whipple would loose his tongue. How strange
that, with all his thought of others, he should fall short here!
One day, after unusual forbearance, Mrs. Brice had overtaken Virginia
on the stairway. Well she knew the girl's nature, and how difficult she
must have found repression. Margaret Brice had taken her hand.
“My dear,” she had said, “you are a wonderful woman.” That was all. But
Virginia had driven back to Bellegarde with a strange elation in her
heart.
Some things the Judge had forborne to mention, and for this Virginia was
thankful. One was the piano. But she had overheard Shadrach telling old
Nancy how Mrs. Brice had pleaded with him to move it, that he might have
more room and air. He had been obdurate. And Colonel Carvel's name had
never once passed his lips.
Many a night the girl had lain awake listening to the steamboats as they
toiled against the river's current, while horror held her. Horror lest
her father at that moment be in mortal agony amongst the heaps left by
the battle's surges; heaps in which, like mounds of ashes, the fire was
not yet dead. Fearful tales she had heard in the prison hospitals of
wounded men lying for days in the Southern sun between the trenches at
Vicksburg, or freezing amidst the snow and sleet at Donelson.
Was her bitterness against the North not just? What a life had been
Colonel Carvel's! It had dawned brightly. One war had cost him his wife.
Another, and he had lost his fortune, his home, his friends, all that
was dear to him. And that daughter, whom he loved best in all the world,
he was perchance to see no more.
Mrs. Colfax, yawning, had taken a book and gone to bed. Still Virginia
sat on the porch, while the frogs sang of rain, and the lightning
quivered across the eastern sky. She heard the crunch of wheels in the
gravel.
A bar of light, peopled by moths, slanted out of the doorway and fell
on a closed carriage. A gentleman slowly ascended the steps. Virginia
recognized him as Mr. Brinsmade.
“Your cousin Clarence has come home, my dear,” he said. “He was among
the captured at Vicksburg, and is paroled by General Grant.”
Virginia gave a little cry and started forward. But he held her hands.
“He has been wounded!”
“Yes,” she exclaimed, “yes. Oh, tell me, Mr. Brinsmade, tell me--all--”
“No, he is not dead, but he is very low. Mr. Russell has been kind
enough to come with me.”
She hurried to call the servants. But they were all there in the light,
in African postures of terror,--Alfred, and Sambo, and Mammy Easter, and
Ned. They lifted the limp figure in gray, and carried it into the hall
chamber, his eyes closed, his face waxen under a beard brown and shaggy.
Heavily, Virginia climbed the stairs to break the news to her aunt.
There is little need to dwell on the dark days which followed--Clarence
hanging between life and death. That his life was saved was due to
Virginia and to Mammy Easter, and in no particle to his mother. Mrs.
Colfax flew in the face of all the known laws of nursing, until Virginia
was driven to desperation, and held a council of war with Dr. Polk. Then
her aunt grew jealous, talked of a conspiracy, and threatened to send
for Dr. Brown--which Dr. Polk implored her to do. By spells she wept,
when they quietly pushed her from the room and locked the door. She
would creep in to him in the night during Mammy Easter's watches and
talk him into a raging fever. But Virginia slept lightly and took the
alarm. More than one scene these two had in the small hours, while Ned
was riding post haste over the black road to town for the Doctor.
By the same trusty messenger did Virginia contrive to send a note to
Mrs. Brice, begging her to explain her absence to Judge Whipple. By day
or night Virginia did not leave Bellegarde. And once Dr. Polk, while
walking in the garden, found the girl fast asleep on a bench, her sewing
on her lap. Would that a master had painted his face as he looked down
at her!
'Twas he who brought Virginia daily news of Judge Whipple. Bad news,
alas! for he seemed to miss her greatly. He had become more querulous
and exacting with patient Mrs. Brice, and inquired for her continually.
She would not go. But often, when he got into his buggy the Doctor found
the seat filled with roses and fresh fruit. Well he knew where to carry
them.
What Virginia's feelings were at this time no one will ever know. God
had mercifully given her occupation, first with the Judge, and later,
when she needed it more, with Clarence. It was she whom he recognized
first of all, whose name was on his lips in his waking moments. With
the petulance of returning reason, he pushed his mother away. Unless
Virginia was at his bedside when he awoke, his fever rose. He put his
hot hand into her cool one, and it rested there sometimes for hours.
Then, and only then, did he seem contented.
The wonder was that her health did not fail. People who saw her during
that fearful summer, fresh and with color in her cheeks, marvelled.
Great-hearted Puss Russell, who came frequently to inquire, was quieted
before her friend, and the frank and jesting tongue was silent in that
presence. Anne Brinsmade came with her father and wondered. A miracle
had changed Virginia. Her poise, her gentleness, her dignity, were the
effects which people saw. Her force people felt. And this is why
we cannot of ourselves add one cubit to our stature. It is God who
changes,--who cleanses us of our levity with the fire of trial. Happy,
thrice happy, those whom He chasteneth. And yet how many are there who
could not bear the fire--who would cry out at the flame.
Little by little Clarence mended, until he came to sit out on the porch
in the cool of the afternoon. Then he would watch for hours the tassels
stirring over the green fields of corn and the river running beyond,
while the two women sat by. At times, when Mrs. Colfax's headaches came
on, and Virginia was alone with him, he would talk of the war; sometimes
of their childhood, of the mad pranks they played here at Bellegarde,
of their friends. Only when Virginia read to him the Northern account of
the battles would he emerge from a calm sadness into excitement; and
he clenched his fists and tried to rise when he heard of the capture of
Jackson and the fall of Port Hudson. Of love he spoke not a word, and
now that he was better he ceased to hold her hand. But often when she
looked up from her book, she would surprise his dark eyes fixed upon
her, and a look in them of but one interpretation. She was troubled.
The Doctor came but every other day now, in the afternoon. It was his
custom to sit for a while on the porch chatting cheerily with Virginia,
his stout frame filling the rocking-chair. Dr. Polk's indulgence was
gossip--though always of a harmless nature: how Mr. Cluyme always
managed to squirm over to the side which was in favor, and how Maude
Catherwood's love-letter to a certain dashing officer of the Confederate
army had been captured and ruthlessly published in the hateful Democrat.
It was the Doctor who gave Virginia news of the Judge, and sometimes he
would mention Mrs. Brice. Then Clarence would raise his head; and once
(she saw with trepidation) he had opened his lips to speak.
One day the Doctor came, and Virginia looked into his face and divined
that he had something to tell her. He sat but a few moments, and when he
arose to go he took her hand.
“I have a favor to beg of you, Jinny,” he said, “Judge has lost his
nurse. Do you think Clarence could spare you for a little while every
day? I shouldn't ask it,” Dr. Polk continued, somewhat hurriedly for
him, “but the Judge cannot bear a stranger near him, and I am afraid to
have him excited while in this condition.”
“Mrs. Brice is ill?” she cried. And Clarence, watching, saw her color
go.
“No,” replied Dr. Polk, “but her son Stephen has come home from the
army. He was transferred to Lauman's brigade, and then he was wounded.”
He jangled the keys in his pocket and continued “It seems that he had no
business in the battle. Johnston in his retreat had driven animals into
all the ponds and shot them, and in the hot weather the water was soon
poisoned. Mr. Brice was scarcely well enough to stand when they made
the charge, and he is now in a dreadful condition He is a fine fellow,”
added the Doctor, with a sigh, “General Sherman sent a special physician
to the boat with him. He is--” Subconsciously the Doctor's arm sought
Virginia's back, as though he felt her swaying. But he was looking at
Clarence, who had jerked himself forward in his chair, his thin hands
convulsively clutching at the arms of it. He did not appear to see
Virginia.
“Stephen Brice, did you say?” he cried, “will he die?”
In his astonishment the Doctor passed his palm across his brow, and for
a moment he did not answer. Virginia had taken a step from him, and was
standing motionless, almost rigid, her eyes on his face.
“Die?” he said, repeating the word mechanically; “my God, I hope not.
The danger is over, and he is resting easily. If he were not,” he said
quickly and forcibly, “I should not be here.”
The Doctor's mare passed more than one fleet--footed trotter on the
road to town that day. And the Doctor's black servant heard his master
utter the word “fool” twice, and with great emphasis.
For a long time Virginia stood on the end of the porch, until the
heaving of the buggy harness died on the soft road, She felt Clarence
gaze upon her before she turned to face him.
“Virginia!” He had called her so of late. “Yes, dear.”
“Virginia, sit here a moment; I have something to tell you.”
She came and took the chair beside him, her heart beating, her breast
rising and falling. She looked into his eyes, and her own lashes fell
before the hopelessness there But he put out his fingers wasted by
illness, and she took them in her own.
He began slowly, as if every word cost him pain.
“Virginia, we were children together here. I cannot remember the time
when I did not love you, when I did not think of you as my wife. All I
did when we played together was to try to win your applause. That was my
nature I could not help it. Do you remember the day I climbed out on the
rotten branch of the big pear tree yonder to get you that pear--when
I fell on the roof of Alfred's cabin? I did not feel the pain. It was
because you kissed it and cried over me. You are crying now,” he said
tenderly. “Don't, Jinny. It isn't to make you sad that I am saying this.
“I have had a great deal of time to think lately, Jinny, I was not
brought up seriously,--to be a man. I have been thinking of that day
just before you were eighteen, when you rode out here. How well I
remember it. It was a purple day. The grapes were purple, and a purple
haze was over there across the river. You had been cruel to me. You were
grown a woman then, and I was still nothing but a boy. Do you remember
the doe coming out of the forest, and how she ran screaming when I tried
to kiss you? You told me I was good for nothing. Please don't interrupt
me. It was true what you said, that I was wild and utterly useless,
I had never served or pleased any but myself,--and you. I had never
studied or worked, You were right when you told me I must learn
something,--do something,--become of some account in the world. I am
just as useless to day.”
“Clarence, after what you have done for the South?”
He smiled with peculiar bitterness.
“What have I done for her?” he added. “Crossed the river and burned
houses. I could not build them again. Floated down the river on a log
after a few percussion caps. That did not save Vicksburg.”
“And how many had the courage to do that?” she exclaimed.
“Pooh,” he said, “courage! the whole South has it, Courage! If I did not
have that, I would send Sambo to my father's room for his ebony box and
blow my brains out. No, Jinny, I am nothing but a soldier of fortune.
I never possessed any quality but a wild spirit for adventure, to
shirk work. I wanted to go with Walker, you remember. I wanted to go to
Kansas. I wanted to distinguish myself,” he added with a gesture. “But
that is all gone now, Jinny. I wanted to distinguish myself for you. Now
I see how an earnest life might have won you. No, I have not done yet.”
She raised her head, frightened, and looked at him searchingly.
“One day,” he said, “one day a good many years ago you and I and Uncle
Comyn were walking along Market Street in front of Judge Whipple's
office, and a slave auction was going on. A girl was being sold on whom
you had set your heart. There was some one in the crowd, a Yankee, who
bid her in and set her free. Do you remember him?”
He saw her profile, her lips parted, her look far away, She inclined her
head.
“Yes,” said her cousin, “so do I remember him. He has crossed my path
many times since, Virginia. And mark what I say--it was he whom you
had in mind on that birthday when you implored me to make something of
myself, It was Stephen Brice.”
Her eyes flashed upon him quickly.
“Oh, how dare you?” she cried.
“I dare anything, Virginia,” he answered quietly. “I am not blaming you.
And I am sure that you did not realize that he was the ideal which you
had in mind.”
“The impression of him has never left it. Fate is in it. Again, that
night at the Brinsmades', when we were in fancy dress, I felt that I had
lost you when I got back. He had been there when I was away, and gone
again. And--and--you never told me.”
“It was a horrible mistake, Max,” she faltered. “I was waiting for you
down the road, and stopped his horse instead. It--it was nothing--”
“It was fate, Jinny. In that half-hour I lost you. How I hated that
man,” he cried, “how I hated him?”
“Hated!” exclaimed Virginia, involuntarily. “Oh, no!”
“Yes,” he said, “hated! I would have killed him if I could. But now--”
“But now?”
“Now he has saved my life. I have not--I could not tell you before: He
came into the place where I was lying in Vicksburg, and they told
him that my only chance was to come North, I turned my back upon him,
insulted him. Yet he went to Sherman and had me brought home--to you,
Virginia. If he loves you,--and I have long suspected that he does--”
“Oh, no,” she cried, hiding her face “No.”
“I know he loves you, Jinny,” her cousin continued calmly, inexorably.
“And you know that he does. You must feel that he does. It was a brave
thing to do, and a generous. He knew that you were engaged to me. He
thought that he was saving me for you. He was giving up the hope of
marrying you himself.”
Virginia sprang to her feet. Unless you had seen her then, you had never
known the woman in her glory.
“Marry a Yankee!” she cried. “Clarence Colfax, have you known and loved
me all my life that you might accuse me of this? Never, never, never!”
Transformed, he looked incredulous admiration.
“Jinny, do you mean it?” he cried.
In answer she bent down with all that gentleness and grace that
was hers, and pressed her lips to his forehead. Long after she had
disappeared in the door he sat staring after her.
But later, when Mammy Easter went to call her mistress for supper, she
found her with her face buried in the pillows.
CHAPTER X. IN JUDGE WHIPPLE'S OFFICE
After this Virginia went to the Judge's bedside every day, in the
morning, when Clarence took his sleep. She read his newspapers to him
when he was well enough. She read the detested Missouri Democrat, which
I think was the greatest trial Virginia ever had to put up with. To have
her beloved South abused, to have her heroes ridiculed, was more than
she could bear. Once, when the Judge was perceptibly better, she flung
the paper out of the window, and left the room. He called her back
penitently.
“My dear,” he said, smiling admiration, “forgive an old bear. A selfish
old bear, Jinny; my only excuse is my love for the Union. When you are
not here, I lie in agony, lest she has suffered some mortal blow unknown
to me, Jinny. And if God sees fit to spare our great country, the day
will come when you will go down on your knees and thank Him for the
inheritance which He saved for your children. You are a good woman, my
dear, and a strong one. I have hoped that you will see the right.
That you will marry a great citizen, one unwavering in his service and
devotion to our Republic.” The Judge's voice trembled with earnestness
as he spoke. And the gray eyes under the shaggy brows were alight with
the sacred fire of his life's purpose. Undaunted as her spirit was, she
could not answer him then.
Once, only once, he said to her: “Virginia, I loved your father better
than any man I ever knew. Please God I may see him again before I die.”
He never spoke of the piano. But sometimes at twilight his eyes would
rest on the black cloth that hid it.
Virginia herself never touched that cloth to her it seemed the shroud
upon a life of happiness that was dead and gone.
Virginia had not been with Judge Whipple during the critical week after
Stephen was brought home. But Anne had told her that his anxiety was
a pitiful thing to see, and that it had left him perceptibly weaker.
Certain it was that he was failing fast. So fast that on some days
Virginia, watching him, would send Ned or Shadrach in hot haste for Dr.
Polk.
At noon Anne would relieve Virginia,--Anne or her mother,--and
frequently Mr. Brinsmade would come likewise. For it is those who have
the most to do who find the most time for charitable deeds. As the hour
for their coming drew near, the Judge would be seeking the clock, and
scarce did Anne's figure appear in the doorway before the question had
arisen to his lips--“And how is my young Captain to-day?”
That is what he called him,--“My young Captain.” Virginia's choice of
her cousin, and her devotion to him, while seemingly natural enough,
had drawn many a sigh from Anne. She thought it strange that Virginia
herself had never once asked her about Stephen's condition and she spoke
of this one day to the Judge with as much warmth as she was capable of.
“Jinny's heart is like steel where a Yankee is concerned. If her best
friend were a Yankee--”
Judge Whipple checked her, smiling.
“She has been very good to one Yankee I know of,” he said. “And as for
Mrs. Brice, I believe she worships her.”
“But when I said that Stephen was much better to-day, she swept out of
the room as if she did not care whether he lived or died.”
“Well, Anne,” the Judge had answered, “you women are a puzzle to me. I
guess you don't understand yourselves,” he added.
That was a strange month in the life of Clarence Colfax,--the last
of his recovery, while he was waiting for the news of his exchange.
Bellegarde was never more beautiful, for Mrs. Colfax had no whim of
letting the place run down because a great war was in progress. Though
devoted to the South, she did not consecrate her fortune to it. Clarence
gave as much as he could.
Whole afternoons Virginia and he would sit in the shaded arbor seat;
or at the cool of the day descend to the bench on the lower tier of
the summer garden, to steep, as it were, in the blended perfumes of the
roses and the mignonettes and the pinks. He was soberer than of old.
Often through the night he pondered on the change in her. She, too, was
grave. But he was troubled to analyze her gravity, her dignity. Was this
merely strength of character, the natural result of the trials through
which she had passed, the habit acquired of being the Helper and
comforter instead of the helped and comforted? Long years afterward the
brightly colored portrait of her remained in his eye,--the simple linen
gown of pink or white, the brown hair shining in the sunlight, the
graceful poise of the head. And the background of flowers--flowers
everywhere, far from the field of war.
Sometimes, when she brought his breakfast on a tray in the morning,
there was laughter in her eyes. In the days gone by they had been all
laughter.
They were engaged. She was to be his wife. He said it over to himself
many, many times in the day. He would sit for a space, feasting his eyes
upon her until she lifted her look to his, and the rich color flooded
her face. He was not a lover to sit quietly by, was Clarence. And yet,
as the winged days flew on, that is what he did, It was not that she
did not respond to his advances, he did not make them. Nor could he have
told why. Was it the chivalry inherited from a long life of Colfaxes who
were gentlemen? Not wholly. Something of awe had crept into his feeling
for her.
As the month wore on, and the time drew near for him to go back to the
war, a state that was not quite estrangement, and yet something very
like it, set in. Poor Clarence. Doubts bothered him, and he dared not
give them voice. By night he would plan his speeches,--impassioned,
imploring. To see her in her marvellous severity was to strike him dumb.
Horrible thought! Whether she loved him, whether she did not love
him, she would not give him up. Through the long years of their lives
together, he would never know. He was not a weak man now, was Clarence
Colfax. He was merely a man possessed of a devil, enchained by the power
of self-repression come upon her whom he loved.
And day by day that power seemed to grow more intense,--invulnerable.
Among her friends and in the little household it had raised Virginia to
heights which she herself did not seem to realize. She was become the
mistress of Bellegarde. Mrs. Colfax was under its sway, and doubly
miserable because Clarence would listen to her tirades no more.
“When are you to be married?” she had ventured to ask him once. Nor had
she taken pains to hide the sarcasm in her voice.
His answer, bringing with it her remembrance of her husband at certain
times when it was not safe to question him, had silenced her. Addison
Colfax had not been a quiet man. When he was quiet he was dangerous.
“Whenever Virginia is ready, mother,” he had replied. Whenever Virginia
was ready! He knew in his heart that if he were to ask her permission
to send for Dr. Posthelwaite to-morrow that she would say yes. Tomorrow
came,--and with it a great envelope, an official, answer to Clarence's
report that he was fit for duty once more. He had been exchanged. He
was to proceed to Cairo, there to await the arrival of the transport
Indianapolis, which was to carry five hundred officers and men from
Sandusky Prison, who were going back to fight once more for the
Confederacy. O that they might have seen the North, all those brave men
who made that sacrifice. That they might have realized the numbers and
the resources and the wealth arrayed against them!
It was a cool day for September, a perfect day, an auspicious day, and
yet it went the way of the others before it. This was the very fulness
of the year, the earth giving out the sweetness of her maturity, the
corn in martial ranks, with golden plumes nodding. The forest still
in its glory of green. They walked in silence the familiar paths, and
Alfred, clipping the late roses for the supper table, shook his
white head as they passed him. The sun, who had begun to hurry on his
southward journey, went to bed at six. The few clothes Clarence was to
take with him had been packed by Virginia in his bag, and the two were
standing in the twilight on the steps of the house, when Ned came around
the corner. He called his young mistress by name, but she did not hear
him. He called again.
“Miss Jinny!”
She started as from a sleep, and paused.
“Yes, Mr. Johnson,” said she, and smiled. He wore that air of mystery so
dear to darkeys.
“Gemmen to see you, Miss Jinny.”
“A gentleman!” she said in surprise. “Where?”
The negro pointed to the lilac shrubbery.
“Thar!”
“What's all this nonsense, Ned?” said Clarence, sharply: “If a man is
there, bring him here at once.”
“Reckon he won't come, Marse Clarence.” said Ned, “He fearful skeered ob
de light ob day. He got suthin very pertickler fo' Miss Jinny.”
“Do you know him?” Clarence demanded.
“No sah--yessah--leastwise I'be seed 'um. Name's Robimson.”
The word was hardly out of his mouth before Virginia had leaped down the
four feet from the porch to the flower-bed and was running across the
lawn toward the shrubbery. Parting the bushes after her, Clarence found
his cousin confronting a large man, whom he recognized as the carrier
who brought messages from the South.
“What's the matter, Jinny?” he demanded.
“Pa has got through the lines,” she said breathlessly. “He--he came up
to see me. Where is he, Robinson?”
“He went to Judge Whipple's rooms, ma'am. They say the Judge is dying. I
reckoned you knew it, Miss Jinny,” Robinson added contritely.
“Clarence,” she said, “I must go at once.”
“I will go with you,” he said; “you cannot go alone.” In a twinkling Ned
and Sambo had the swift pair of horses harnessed, and the light carriage
was flying over the soft clay road toward the city. As they passed Mr.
Brinsmade's place, the moon hung like a great round lantern under
the spreading trees about the house. Clarence caught a glimpse of his
cousin's face in the light. She was leaning forward, her gaze fixed
intently on the stone posts which stood like monuments between the
bushes at the entrance. Then she drew back again into the dark corner
of the barouche. She was startled by a sharp challenge, and the carriage
stopped. Looking out, she saw the provost's guard like black card
figures on the road, and Ned fumbling for his pass.
On they drove into the city streets until the dark bulk of the Court
House loomed in front of them, and Ned drew rein at the little stairway
which led to the Judge's rooms. Virginia, leaping out of the carriage,
flew up the steps and into the outer office, and landed in the Colonel's
arms.
“Jinny!”
“Oh, Pa!” she cried. “Why do you risk your life in this way? If the
Yankees catch you--”
“They won't catch me, honey,” he answered, kissing her. Then he held her
out at arm's length and gazed earnestly into her face. Trembling, she
searched his own. “Pa, how old you look!”
“I'm not precisely young, my dear,” he said, smiling. His hair was
nearly white, and his face scared. But he was a fine erect figure of a
man, despite the shabby clothes he wore, and the mud-bespattered boots.
“Pa,” she whispered, “it was foolhardy to come here. Why did you come to
St. Louis at all?”
“I came to see you, Jinny, I reckon. And when I got home to-night and
heard Silas was dying, I just couldn't resist. He's the oldest friend
I've got in St. Louis, honey and now--now--”
“Pa, you've been in battle?”
“Yes,” he said.
“And you weren't hurt; I thank God for that,” she whispered. After a
while: “Is Uncle Silas dying?”
“Yes, Jinny; Dr. Polk is in there now, and says that he can't last
through the night. Silas has been asking for you, honey, over and over.
He says you were very good to him,--that you and Mrs. Brice gave up
everything to nurse him.”
“She did,” Virginia faltered. “She was here night and day until her son
came home. She is a noble woman--”
“Her son?” repeated the Colonel. “Stephen Brice? Silas has done nothing
the last half-hour but call his name. He says he must see the boy before
he dies. Polk says he is not strong enough to come.”
“Oh, no, he is not strong enough,” cried Virginia. The Colonel looked
down at her queerly. “Where is Clarence?” he asked.
She had not thought of Clarence. She turned hurriedly, glanced around
the room, and then peered down the dark stairway.
“Why, he came in with me. I wonder why he did not follow me up?”
“Virginia.”
“Yes, Pa.”
“Virginia, are you happy?”
“Why, yes, Pa.”
“Are you going to marry Clarence?” he asked.
“I have promised,” she said simply.
Then after a long pause, seeing her father said nothing, she added,
“Perhaps he was waiting for you to see me alone. I will go down to see
if he is in the carriage.”
The Colonel started with her, but she pulled him back in alarm.
“You will be seen, Pa,” she cried. “How can you be so reckless?”
He stayed at the top of the passage, holding open the door that she
might have light. When she reached the sidewalk, there was Ned standing
beside the horses, and the carriage empty.
“Ned!”
“Yass'm, Miss Jinny.”
“Where's Mr. Clarence?”
“He done gone, Miss Tinny.”
“Gone?”
“Yass'm. Fust I seed was a man plump out'n Willums's, Miss Jinny. He was
a-gwine shufflin' up de street when Marse Clarence put out after him,
pos' has'e. Den he run.”
She stood for a moment on the pavement in thought, and paused on the
stairs again, wondering whether it were best to tell her father. Perhaps
Clarence had seen--she caught her breath at the thought and pushed open
the door.
“Oh, Pa, do you think you are safe here?” she cried. “Why, yes, honey, I
reckon so,” he answered. “Where's Clarence?”
“Ned says he ran after a man who was hiding in an entrance. Pa, I am
afraid they are watching the place.”
“I don't think so, Jinny. I came here with Polk, in his buggy, after
dark.”
Virginia, listening, heard footsteps on the stairs, and seized her
father's sleeve.
“Think of the risk you are running, Pa,” she whispered. She would have
dragged him to the closet. But it was too late. The door opened, and Mr.
Brinsmade entered, and with him a lady veiled.
At sight of Mr. Carvel Mr. Brinsmade started back in surprise. How long
he stared at his old friend Virginia could not say. It seemed to her an
eternity. But Mrs. Brice has often told since how straight the Colonel
stood, his fine head thrown back, as he returned the glance. Then Mr.
Brinsmade came forward, with his hand outstretched.
“Comyn,” said he, his voice breaking a little, “I have known you these
many years as a man of unstained honor. You are safe with me. I ask no
questions. God will judge whether I have done my duty.”
Mr. Carvel took his friend's hand. “Thank you, Calvin,” he said. “I give
you my word of honor as a gentleman that I came into this city for no
other reason than to see my daughter. And hearing that my old friend was
dying, I could not resist the temptation, sir--”
Mr. Brinsmade finished for him. And his voice shook.
“To come to his bedside. How many men do you think would risk their
lives so, Mrs. Brice?”
“Not many, indeed, Mr. Brinsmade,” she answered. “Thank God he will now
die happy. I know it has been much on his mind.”
The Colonel bowed over her hand.
“And in his name, madam,--in the name of my oldest and best friend,--I
thank you for what you have done for him. I trust that you will allow me
to add that I have learned from my daughter to respect and admire you. I
hope that your son is doing well.”
“He is, thank you, Colonel Carvel. If he but knew that the Judge were
dying, I could not have kept him at home. Dr. Polk says that he must not
leave the house, or undergo any excitement.”
Just then the door of the inner room opened, and Dr. Polk came out. He
bowed gravely to Mrs. Brice and Mr. Brinsmade, and he patted Virginia.
“The Judge is still asleep,” he said gently. “And--he may not wake up in
this world.”
Silently, sadly, they went together into that little room where so
much of Judge Whipple's life had been spent. How little it was! And
how completely they filled it,--these five people and the big Rothfield
covered with the black cloth. Virginia pressed her father's arm as they
leaned against it, and brushed her eyes. The Doctor turned the wick of
the night-lamp.
What was that upon the sleeper's face from which they drew back? A
smile? Yes, and a light. The divine light which is shed upon those
who have lived for others, who have denied themselves the lusts of the
flesh, For a long space, perhaps an hour, they stayed, silent save for
a low word now and again from the Doctor as he felt the Judge's heart.
Tableaux from the past floated before Virginia's eyes. Of the old days,
of the happy days in Locust Street, of the Judge quarrelling with her
father, and she and Captain Lige smiling nearby. And she remembered how
sometimes when the controversy was finished the Judge would rub his nose
and say:
“It's my turn now, Lige.”
Whereupon the Captain would open the piano, and she would play the hymn
that he liked best. It was “Lead, Kindly Light.”
What was it in Silas Whipple's nature that courted the pain of memories?
What pleasure could it have been all through his illness to look upon
this silent and cruel reminder of days gone by forever? She had heard
that Stephen Brice had been with the Judge when he had bid it in. She
wondered that he had allowed it, for they said that he was the only
one who had ever been known to break the Judge's will. Virginia's
eyes rested on Margaret Brice, who was seated at the head of the bed,
smoothing the pillows The strength of Stephen's features were in hers,
but not the ruggedness. Her features were large, indeed, yet stanch and
softened. The widow, as if feeling Virginia's look upon her, glanced up
from the Judge's face and smiled at her. The girl colored with pleasure,
and again at the thought which she had had of the likeness between
mother and son.
Still the Judge slept on, while they watched. And at length the thought
of Clarence crossed Virginia's mind.
Why had he not returned? Perhaps he was in the office without.
Whispering to her father, she stole out on tiptoe. The office was empty.
Descending to the street, she was unable to gain any news of Clarence
from Ned, who was becoming alarmed likewise.
Perplexed and troubled, she climbed the stairs again. No sound came from
the Judge's room Perhaps Clarence would be back at any moment. Perhaps
her father was in danger. She sat down to think,--her elbows on the desk
in front of her, her chin in her hand, her eyes at the level of a line
of books which stood on end.--Chitty's Pleadings, Blackstone, Greenleaf
on Evidence. Absently; as a person whose mind is in trouble, she reached
out and took one of them down and opened it. Across the flyleaf, in a
high and bold hand, was written the name, Stephen Atterbury Brice.
It was his desk! She was sitting in his chair!
She dropped the book, and, rising abruptly, crossed quickly to the other
side of the room. Then she turned, hesitatingly, and went back. This was
his desk--his chair, in which he had worked so faithfully for the man
who lay dying beyond the door. For him whom they all loved--whose last
hours they were were to soothe. Wars and schisms may part our bodies,
but stronger ties unite our souls. Through Silas Whipple, through his
mother, Virginia knew that she was woven of one piece with Stephen
Brice. In a thousand ways she was reminded, lest she drive it from her
belief. She might marry another, and that would not matter.
She sank again into his chair, and gave herself over to the thoughts
crowding in her heart. How the threads of his life ran next to hers, and
crossed and recrossed them. The slave auction, her dance with him, the
Fair, the meeting at Mr. Brinsmade's gate,--she knew them all. Her love
and admiration for his mother. Her dreams of him--for she did dream
of him. And now he had saved Clarence's life that she might marry her
cousin. Was it true that she would marry Clarence? That seemed to
her only a dream. It had never seemed real. Again she glanced at the
signature in the book, as if fascinated by the very strength of it. She
turned over a few pages of the book, “Supposing the defendant's counsel
essays to prove by means of--” that was his writing again, a marginal,
note. There were marginal notes on every page--even the last was covered
with them, And then at the end, “First reading, February, 1858. Second
reading, July, 1858. Bought with some of money obtained by first article
for M. D.” That capacity for work, incomparable gift, was what she had
always coveted the most. Again she rested her elbows on the desk and her
chin on her hands, and sighed unconsciously.
She had not heard the step on the stair. She had not seen the door
open. She did not know that any one wage in the room until she heard his
voice, and then she thought that she was dreaming.
“Miss Carvel!”
“Yes?” Her head did not move. He took a step toward her.
“Miss Carvel!”
Slowly she raised her face to his, unbelief and wonder in her
eyes,--unbelief and wonder and fright. No; it could not be he. But
when she met the quality of his look, the grave tenderness of it, she
trembled, and our rendered her own to the page where his handwriting
quivered and became a blur.
He never knew the effort it cost her to rise and confront him. She
herself had not measured or fathomed the power which his very person
exhaled. It seemed to have come upon him suddenly. He needed not to have
spoken for her to have felt that. What it was she could not tell. She
knew alone that it was nigh irresistible, and she grasped the back of
the chair as though material support might sustain her.
“Is he--dead?”
She was breathing hard.
“No,” she said. “Not--not yet, They are waiting for the end.”
“And you?” he asked in grave surprise, glancing at the door of the
Judge's room.
Then she remembered Clarence.