THE CLOUD IN THE SOUTH
The summer heat passed speedily, and the major returned to his cottage
invigorated and very complacent over his daughter's prospects. Hilland
had proved himself as manly and devoted a lover as he had been an
ardent and eventually patient suitor. The bubbling, overflowing stream
of happiness in Grace's heart deepened into a wide current, bearing her
on from day to day toward a future that promised to satisfy every
longing of her woman's heart. There was, of course, natural regret that
Hilland was constrained to spend several months in the West in order to
settle up his large interests with a due regard to the rights of
others, and yet she would not have it otherwise. She was happy in his
almost unbounded devotion; she would have been less happy had this
devotion kept him at her side when his man's part in the world required
his presence elsewhere. Therefore she bade him farewell with a heart
that was not so very heavy, even though tears gemmed her eyes.
The autumn and early winter months lapsed quietly and uneventfully, and
the inmates of the two cottages ever remembered that period of their
lives as the era of letters--Graham's from over the sea abounding in
vivid descriptions of scenes that to Mrs. Mayburn's interested eyes
were like glimpses of another world, and Hilland's, even more
voluminous and infinitely more interesting to one fair reader, to whom
they were sacred except as she doled out occasional paragraphs which
related sufficiently to the general order of things to be read aloud.
Graham's letters, however, had a deep interest to Grace, who sought to
trace in them the working of his mind in regard to herself. She found
it difficult, for his letters were exceedingly impersonal, while the
men and things he saw often stood out upon his page with vivid realism.
It seemed to her that he grew more shadowy, and that he was wandering
rather than travelling, drifting whithersoever his fancy or
circumstances pointed the way. It was certain he avoided the beaten
paths, and freely indulged his taste for regions remote and
comparatively unknown. His excuse was that life was far more
picturesque and unhackneyed, with a chance for an occasional adventure,
in lands where one was not jostled by people with guide-books--that he
saw men and women as the influences of the ages had been fashioning
them, and not conventionalized by the mode of the hour. "Chief of all,"
he concluded, jestingly, "I can send to my dear aunt descriptions of
people and scenery that she will not find better set forth in half a
dozen books within her reach."
After a month in Norway, he crossed the mountains into Sweden, and as
winter approached drifted rapidly to the south and east. One of his
letters was dated at the entrance of the Himalayas in India, and
expressed his purpose to explore one of the grandest mountain systems
in the world.
Mrs. Mayburn gloated over the letters, and Grace laughingly told her
she had learned more about geography since her nephew had gone abroad
than in all her life before. The major, also, was deeply interested in
them, especially as Graham took pains in his behalf to give some
account of the military organizations with which he came in contact.
They had little of the nature of a scientific report. The soldier, his
life and weapons, were sketched with a free hand merely, and so became
even to the ladies a picturesque figure rather than a military
abstraction. From time to time a letter appeared in Mrs. Mayburn's
favorite journal signed by the initials of the traveller; and these
epistles she cut out and pasted most carefully in a book which Grace
jestingly called her "family Bible."
But as time passed, Graham occupied less and less space in the thoughts
of all except his aunt. The major's newspaper became more absorbing
than ever, for the clouds gathering in the political skies threatened
evils that seemed to him without remedy. Strongly Southern and
conservative in feeling, he was deeply incensed at what he termed
"Northern fanaticism." Only less hateful to him was a class in the
South known in the parlance of the times as "fire-eaters."
All through the winter and spring of 1860 he had his "daily growl," as
Grace termed it; and she assured him it was growing steadily deeper and
louder. Yet it was evidently a source of so much comfort to him that
she always smiled in secret over his invective--noting, also, that
while he deplored much that was said and done by the leaders of the
day, the prelude of the great drama interested him so deeply that he
half forgot his infirmities. In fact, she had more trouble with
Hilland, who had returned, and was urging an early date for their
marriage. Her lover was an ardent Republican, and hated slavery with
New England enthusiasm. The arrogance and blindness of the South had
their counterpart at the North, and Hilland had not escaped the
infection. He was much inclined to belittle the resources of the former
section, to scoff at its threats, and to demand that the North should
peremptorily and imperiously check all further aggressions of slavery.
At first it required not a little tact on the part of Grace to preserve
political harmony between father and lover; but the latter speedily
recognized that the major's age and infirmities, together with his
early associations, gave him almost unlimited privilege to think and
say what he pleased. Hilland soon came to hear with good-natured
nonchalance his Northern allies berated, and considered himself well
repaid by one mirthful, grateful glance from Grace.
After all, what was any political squabble compared with the fact that
Grace had promised to marry him in June? The settlement of the
difference between the North and South was only a question of time, and
that, too, in his belief, not far remote.
"Why should I worry about it?" he said to Grace. "When the North gets
angry enough to put its foot down, all this bluster about State-rights,
and these efforts to foist slavery on a people who are disgusted with
it, will cease."
"Take care," she replied, archly. "I'm a Southern girl. Think what
might happen if I put my foot down."
"Oh, when it comes to you," was his quick response, "I'm the Democratic
party. I will get down on my knees at any time; I'll yield anything and
stand everything."
"I hope you will be in just such a frame of mind ten years hence."
It was well that the future was hidden from her.
Hilland wrote to his friend, asking, indeed almost insisting, that he
should return in time for the wedding. Graham did not come, and
intimated that he was gathering materials which might result in a book.
He sent a letter, however, addressed to them both, and full of a spirit
of such loyal good-will that Hilland said it was like a brother's grip.
"Well, well," he concluded, "if Graham has the book-making fever upon
him, we shall have to give him up indefinitely."
Grace was at first inclined to take the same view, feeling that, even
if he had been sorely wounded, his present life and the prospects it
gave of authorship had gained so great a fascination that he would come
back eventually with only a memory of what he had suffered. Her
misgivings, however, returned when, on seeing the letter, Mrs.
Mayburn's eyes became suddenly dimmed with tears. She turned away
abruptly and seemed vexed with herself for having shown the emotion,
but only said quietly, "I once thought Alford had no heart; but that
letter was not written 'out of his head,' as we used to say when
children."
She gave Grace no reason to complain of any lack of affectionate
interest in her preparations; and when the wedding day came she assured
the blushing girl that "no one had ever looked upon a lovelier bride."
Ever mindful of her father, Grace would take no wedding journey,
although her old friend offered to come and care for him. She knew well
how essential her voice and hand were to his comfort; and she would not
permit him to entertain, even for a moment, the thought that in any
sense he had lost her. So they merely returned to his favorite haunt by
the sea, and Hilland was loyal to the only condition in their
engagement--that she should be permitted to keep her promise to her
dying mother, and never leave her father to the care of others, unless
under circumstances entirely beyond her control.
Later in the season Mrs. Mayburn joined them at the beach, for she
found her life at the cottage too lonely to be endured.
It was a summer of unalloyed happiness to Hilland and his wife, and the
major promised to renew his youth in the warm sunlight of his
prosperity. The exciting presidential canvass afforded abundant theme
for the daily discussions in his favorite corner of the piazza, where,
surrounded by some veteran cronies whom he had known in former years,
he joined them in predictions and ominous head-shakings over the
monstrous evils that would follow the election of Mr. Lincoln. Hilland,
sitting in the background with Grace, would listen and stroke his tawny
beard as he glanced humorously at his wife, who knew that he was
working, quietly out of deference to his father-in-law, but most
effectively, in the Republican campaign. Although Southern born she had
the sense to grant to men full liberty of personal opinion--a quality
that it would be well for many of her sisterhood to imitate. Indeed,
she would have despised a man who had not sufficient force to think for
himself; and she loved her husband all the more because in some of his
views he differed radically with her father and herself.
Meantime the cloud gathering in the South grew darker and more
portentous; and after the election of President Lincoln the lightning
of hate and passion began to strike from it directly at the nation's
life. The old major was both wrong and right in regard to the most
prominent leaders of the day. Many whom he deemed the worst fanatics in
the land were merely exponents of a public opinion that was rising like
an irresistible tide from causes beyond human control--from the
God-created conscience illumined by His own truth. In regard to the
instigators of the Rebellion, he was right. Instead of representing
their people, they deceived and misled them; and, with an astute
understanding of the chivalrous, hasty Southern temper, they so wrought
upon their pride of section by the false presentation of fancied and
prospective wrongs, that loyalty to the old flag, which at heart they
loved, was swept away by the madness which precedes destruction. Above
all and directing all was the God of nations; and He had decreed that
slavery, the gangrene in the body politic, must be cut out, even though
it should be with the sword. The surgery was heroic, indeed; but as its
result the slave, and especially the master and his posterity, will
grow into a large, healthful, and prosperous life; and the evidences of
such life are increasing daily.
At the time of which I am writing, however, the future was not dreamed
of by the sagacious Lincoln even, or his cabinet, much less was it
foreseen by the humbler characters of my story. Hilland after reading
his daily journal would sit silent for a long time with contracted
brow. The white heat of anger was slowly kindling in his heart and in
that of the loyal North; and the cloud in the South began to throw its
shadow over the hearth of the happy wife.
Although Hilland hated slavery it incensed him beyond measure that the
South could be made to believe that the North would break through or
infringe upon the constitutional safeguards thrown around the
institution. At the same time he knew, and it seemed to him every
intelligent man should understand, that if a sufficient majority should
decide to forbid the extension of the slave system to new territory,
that should end the question, or else the Constitution was not worth
the paper on which it was written. "Law and order," was his motto; and
"All changes and reforms under the sanction of law, and at the command
of the majority," his political creed.
The major held the Southern view. "Slaves are property," he said; "and
the government is bound to permit a man to take his property where he
pleases, and protect him in all his rights." The point where the
veteran drew the line was in disloyalty to the flag which he had sworn
to defend, and for which he had become a cripple for life. As the
Secession spirit became more rampant and open in South Carolina, the
weight of his invective fell more heavily upon the leaders there than
upon the hitherto more detested abolitionists.
When he read the address of Alexander H. Stephens, delivered to the
same people on the following evening, wherein that remarkable man said,
"My object is not to stir up strife, but to allay it; not to appeal to
your passions, but to your reason. Shall the people of the South secede
from the Union in consequence of the election of Mr. Lincoln? My
countrymen, I tell you frankly, candidly, and earnestly, that I do not
think they ought. In my judgment the election of no man,
constitutionally chosen, is sufficient cause for any State to separate
from the Union. It ought to stand by and aid still in maintaining the
Constitution of the country. We are pledged to maintain the
Constitution. Many of us are sworn to support it"--when the veteran
came to these words, he sprang to his feet without a thought of his
crutch, and cried in a tone with which he would order a charge, "There
is the man who ought to be President. Read that speech."
Hilland did read it aloud, and then said thoughtfully, "Yes; if the
leaders on both sides were of the stamp of Mr. Stephens and would stand
firm all questions at issue could be settled amicably under the
Constitution. But I fear the passion of the South, fired by the
unscrupulous misrepresentations of a few ambitious men, will carry the
Cotton States into such violent disloyalty that the North in its
indignation will give them a lesson never to be forgotten."
"Well!" shouted the major, "if they ever fire on the old flag, I'll
shoulder my crutch and march against them myself--I would, by heaven!
though my own brother fired the gun." Grace's merry laugh rang out--for
she never lost a chance to throw oil on the troubled waters--and she
cried, "Warren, if this thing goes on, you and papa will stand shoulder
to shoulder."
But the time for that had not yet come. Indeed, there would ever remain
wide differences of opinion between the two men. The major believed
that if Congress conceded promptly all that the slave power demanded,
"the demagogues of the South would soon be without occupation;" while
Hilland asserted that the whole thing originated in bluster to frighten
the North into submission, and that the danger was that the unceasing
inflammatory talk might so kindle the masses that they would believe
the lies, daily iterated, and pass beyond the control of their leaders.
When at last South Carolina seceded, and it became evident that other
States would follow, the major often said with bitter emphasis that the
North would have to pay dearly for its sentiment in regard to the
negro. In Hilland's case strong exultation became a growing element in
his anger, for he believed that slavery was destined to receive heavier
blows from the mad zeal of its friends than Northern abolitionists
could have inflicted in a century.
"If the South casts aside constitutional protection," he reasoned, "she
must take the consequences. After a certain point is passed, the North
will make sharp, quick work with anything that interferes with her
peace and prosperity."
"The work will be sharp enough, young man," replied the major testily;
"but don't be sure about its being quick. If the South once gets to
fighting, I know her people well enough to assure you that the
Republican party can reach its ends only through seas of blood, if they
are ever attained."
Hilland made no reply--he never contradicted the old gentleman--but he
wrote Graham a rather strong letter intimating that it was time for
Americans to come home.
Graham would not have come, however, had not Grace, who had just
returned from Mrs. Mayburn's cottage, caused a postscript to be added,
giving the information that his aunt was seriously ill, and that her
physician thought it might be a long time before she recovered, even if
life was spared.
This decided him at once; and as he thought he might never see his kind
old friend again, he bitterly regretted that he had remained away so
long. And yet he felt he could scarcely have done otherwise; for in
bitter disappointment he found that his passion, so far from being
conquered, had, by some uncontrollable law of his nature, simply grown
with time and become interwoven with every fibre of his nature.
Hitherto he had acted on the principle that he must and would conquer
it; but now that duty called him to the presence of the one whose love
and kindness formed an indisputable claim upon him, he began to reason
that further absence was futile, that he might as well go back, and--as
he promised his aunt--"do the best he could."
It must be admitted that Hilland's broad hint, that in the coming
emergency Americans should be at home, had little weight with him. From
natural bent he had ever been averse to politics. In accordance with
his theory of evolution, he believed the negro was better off in his
present condition than he could be in any other. He was the last man to
cherish an enthusiasm for an inferior race. Indeed, he would have much
preferred it should die out altogether and make room for better
material. The truth was that his prolonged residence abroad had made
the questions of American politics exceedingly vague and
inconsequential. He believed them to be ephemeral to the last
degree--in the main, mere struggles of parties and partisans for power
and spoils; and for their hopes, schemes, and stratagems to gain
temporary success, he cared nothing.
He had not been an idler in his prolonged absence. In the first place,
he had striven with the whole force of a powerful will to subdue a
useless passion, and had striven in vain. He had not, however, yielded
for a day to a dreamy melancholy, but, in accordance with his promise
"to do his best," had been tireless in mental and physical activity.
The tendency to wander somewhat aimlessly had ceased, and he had
adopted the plan of studying modern life at the old centres of
civilization and power.
Hilland's letter found him in Egypt, and only a few weeks had elapsed
after its reception when, with deep anxiety, he rang the bell at his
aunt's cottage door. He had not stopped to ask for letters in London,
for he had learned that by pushing right on he could catch a fast
outgoing steamer and save some days.
The servant who admitted him uttered a cry of joy; and a moment later
his aunt rose feebly from the lounge in her sitting-room, and greeted
him as her son.