THE VICTORY
[Illustration: “Took her little hand in his and raised it to his lips.”
[Page 43]]
_The_
VICTORY
BY
MOLLY ELLIOTT SEAWELL
_Author of_
“The Sprightly Romance of Marsac,”
“The Chateau of Montplasir,” etc.
[Illustration]
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK
1906
COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
_Published October, 1906_
To the Dear Memory of
Henrietta
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--HARROWBY 1
II.--ANGELA 21
III.--THE POINT OF HONOR 39
IV.--LOVE IS A MIST 57
V.--THE HOUR OF FATE 74
VI.--THE QUAKING OF THE EARTH 88
VII.--THE PARTING 102
VIII.--THE MEETING 117
IX.--SPARTANS ALL! 132
X.--THE ARRIVAL OF THE STRANGERS 155
XI.--HOW THE DAYS WENT ON AT HARROWBY 173
XII.--THE IRON HAND OF WAR AND CIRCUMSTANCE 188
XIII.--WARP AND WOOF 210
XIV.--SNOWBOUND 232
XV.--THE HEGIRA 248
XVI.--THE TONGUE OF CALUMNY 264
XVII.--LIKE THE LITTLE TRIANON 282
XVIII.--THE VISITATIONS OF WAR 295
XIX.--“I CAN’T GET OUT!” SAID THE STARLING 309
XX.--A SOLDIER’S ERRAND 327
XXI.--DUST AND ASHES 349
XXII.--LOVE AND LIFE 367
XXIII.--THE AFTERMATH 398
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
PAGE
“Took her little hand in his and raised it to his lips”
_Frontispiece_
“And so Angela Vaughn became Neville Tremaine’s wife” 114
“He lay watching Angela with her quick-changing expression” 236
“‘Missis, I done brought Marse Richard back to you’” 350
THE VICTORY
CHAPTER I
HARROWBY
Bright was the Christmas of 1860 at the old manor house of Harrowby
in lowland Virginia. It lay upon the broad, bright river which ran
laughing into the arms of the great bay, and from there bay and river
rushed together to the windy floors of the wide Atlantic. Nearly two
hundred years before, the first Tremaine, a discontented gentleman, who
found life very uncomfortable in England after Monmouth’s rebellion,
had made the beginning of the Harrowby mansion. It was built quite flat
to the ground, with the low ceilings and steep, narrow stairs of the
seventeenth-century country house.
This first Harrowby house, with a room clapped on here and there,
as each successive inheritor fancied, answered well enough for the
Tremaines until the end of the eighteenth century. Then Mr. Jefferson
having brought back with him from France some noble architectural
conceptions, these became embodied in many Virginia country houses,
including Harrowby. There, a new and commodious house was built,
with a vast entrance hall, lofty ceilings, spacious rooms, and wide
staircases. It was connected by a narrow corridor with the original
house, and although frankly swearing at the first incumbent of the
ground, yet conformed to it enough to make the whole both picturesque
and comfortable. The modern part of the house was reserved for the
master and mistress, for guests, and for those Virginia dinner parties
which lasted from noon until midnight, the Virginia balls where the
dancers’ feet beat the floor from the first rising of the stars until
the rosy dawn, and the Virginia weddings which took three weeks’
frolicking to carry through in style. There were always sons in the
Tremaine family, and these sons required tutors and dogs, so that the
old part of the house, with its shabby Colonial furniture, was always
in possession of men and boys and dogs. The newer part, with its
furniture all curves, its Empire mirrors, its elaborate cornices, and
decorative fireplaces, was reserved for more ceremonious uses.
The house sat upon a great, smooth lawn, which sloped down to the
river, now a dull, steel blue in the red and waning Christmas eve. A
short, rude wharf lay a little way in the river, which softly lapped
the wooden piles. A little distance from the house, to the left, lay a
spacious, old, brick-walled garden, now all russet brown and gold and
purple in ragged splendor like a beggar princess. Great bare clumps
of crape-myrtle and syringas and ancient rose trees bordered the wide
walk which led from the rusty iron garden gate down to the end of the
garden. Here a long line of gnarled and twisted lilac bushes clung to
the brick wall; lilacs and crumbling wall had held each other in a
strong embrace for more than a hundred years. Outside the garden, the
wide lawn was encircled by what had once been a shapely yew hedge,
which had grown into a ragged rampart of ancient trees, black and squat
and melancholy as yew trees always grow. A great gap in this hedge
opened upon a long, straight lane leading to the highroad and beyond
that lay the primeval woods. On each side of the lane were cedar trees
which had once stood young and straight like soldiers, but were now, as
the yew trees, old and bent like a line of veterans tottering in broken
ranks.
Under the somber branches of the yew hedge was a walk of cracked
flagstones, known, since Harrowby was first built, as the “Ladies’
Walk.” For when the paths and lanes about the place were too wet for
the dainty feet of ladies, this flagged path was their exercise ground.
The negroes, of course, peopled it with the dead and gone ladies of
Harrowby, who generally took, upon those broken stones, their last
walk upon earth, and who found it haunted, not by the ghosts of their
predecessors but by the joys, the griefs, the hopes, the fears, the
perplexities, the loves, and the hates which had walked with them
there, in cool summer eves, in red autumn afternoons, in bitter winter
twilights, and in the soft and dewy mornings of the springtime.
Far off in the open field beyond the garden lay the family burying
ground, where, according to the Virginia custom, the dead were laid
near the homestead instead of the church. The brick wall around the
burying ground was decaying, and the tombstones, never properly set
up, were beaten all manner of ways by storm and wind, and trained into
strange positions by the soft insistence of the roots of huge weeping
willows, those melancholy trees which give a touch of poetic beauty to
the most commonplace landscape. Yet the aspect of Harrowby was usually
far from melancholy. On the other side of the house from the garden,
still farther off, were the negro quarters, slovenly but comfortable,
and the stables, which were partly hidden by the straggling yew hedge
that extended all around the lawn. In these quarters were housed the
two hundred negroes on the plantation, and as twenty-five of them were
occupied about the house and garden and stables there was always life
and movement around the place.
Especially was this true at Christmas time, and on the Christmas eve of
1860, never was there more merriment, gayety, color, and loud laughter
known at Harrowby. Lyddon, the English tutor there for ten years was
struck by this, when returning from his afternoon’s tramp through the
wintry woods, he passed across the lawn to the house. The air was
sharp, like a saber, and the stars were already shining gloriously in
the deep blue field of heaven. He watched a half dozen negro men who,
with guttural laughter and shouts and merry gibes, carried into the
house the great back log for the Christmas fire. From the time that
this back log was placed upon the iron fire dogs of the yawning hall
fireplace until it was entirely consumed, the negroes had holiday.
According to the privileged practical joke of long custom, the log was
of black gum, a wood hard to burn at any time. It had lain soaking
for weeks in the inky mud of the salt marsh on the inward bend of
the river, where the cows stood knee-deep in water at high tide, and
hoof-deep in black ooze at low tide. The union of marsh mud and black
gum was certain to insure at least a week’s holiday, when no work was
required of the negroes, except the waiting on the house full of guests
which always made the roof of Harrowby ring during the Christmas time.
Great pyramids of wood towered at the woodpile to the left of the
house, where the joyous sound of the ax was heard for a week before
Christmas, that there should be oak and hickory logs to feed the great
fireplaces, and lightwood knots to make the ruddy flames leap high into
the wide-throated chimneys.
Lyddon, a gaunt, brown, keen-eyed man, who had watched this backlog
business with great interest for ten successive Christmases, studied
it anew as a type of the singular and unpractical relations existing
between the master and the slave. All of these relations were singular
and unpractical, and were a perpetual puzzle to Lyddon. One of the
strangest things to him was that the word slave was absolutely tabooed
and all sorts of euphemisms were used, such as “the servants,” “the
black people,” in order to avoid this uncomely word.
Another typical puzzle was taking place on the side porch. There stood
Hector, Colonel Tremaine’s body servant, and general factotum of
Harrowby, engaged in his usual occupation of inciting the other negroes
to work, while carefully abstaining therefrom himself. He was tall, and
had by far the most imposing air and manner of any person at Harrowby.
Having accompanied his master several times to the White Sulphur
Springs, to say nothing of two trips to Richmond and one to Baltimore,
where he saw a panorama of the city of New York; and most wonderful of
all, having attended Colonel Tremaine through a campaign in the Mexican
War, Hector held a position of undisputed superiority among all the
negroes in five counties. He classified himself as a perfect man of the
world, a profound expounder of the Gospels, an accomplished soldier,
and military critic.
As regards Hector’s heroic services during the Mexican War, he
represented that he was always at General Scott’s right hand except
when his presence was imperatively demanded by General Zachary
Taylor. According to Hector’s further account he led the stormers at
Chapultepec, supported Jefferson Davis when he made his celebrated
stand at Buena Vista, and handed the sword of General Santa Anna to
General Scott when the former surrendered. Colonel Tremaine, on the
contrary, declared that Hector never got within five miles of the
firing line during the Mexican War, and that whenever there was the
remotest sign of an attack, Hector always took refuge under the nearest
pile of camp furniture and had to be dragged out by the heels when the
danger was overpast. He modeled his toilet upon Colonel Tremaine’s,
whose cast-off wardrobe he inherited. The colonel claimed to be the
last gentleman in Virginia who wore a ruffled shirt, and Hector shared
this distinction. Great billows of cotton lace poured out of the
breast of his blue coat, decorated with brass buttons, which was too
short in the waist and too long in the tails for Hector, and for whom
the colonel’s trousers were distinctly too small, and were kept from
crawling up to his knees by straps under the heels of his boots.
What Hector’s business in life was, beyond shaving Colonel Tremaine
once a day, Lyddon had never been able to discover. Colonel Tremaine
always said, “my boy Hector,” although, like the colonel himself,
he had passed the line of seventy; but having become the colonel’s
personal attendant when both were in their boyhood, he remained “my
boy, sir,” until Time should hand him over, a graybeard, to Death.
Another anomaly, scarcely stranger to Lyddon than Hector’s eternal
boyhood, was that, having an incurable propensity to look upon the wine
when it is red, he had entire charge of the cellar at Harrowby, and
when upon occasions of ceremony his services might have been of some
slight use, he was tolerably sure to be a little more than half-seas
over. He made up for this by an Argus-eyed vigilance over his two
postulates, Jim Henry and Tasso, gingerbread-colored youths, who did
the work of the dining room under Hector’s iron rule. So careful was he
of their morals that he made a point of himself drinking the wine left
in the glasses at dinner, “jes’ to keep dem wuffless black niggers f’um
turnin’ deyselves into drunkards, like Joshua did arter he got outen de
ark.”
Now, from Hector’s unctuous voice and unsteady gait, it was perfectly
obvious to Lyddon that Hector had not escaped the pitfall into which
he alleged Joshua had fallen. Lyddon passed along and entered the
great hall, where the work of putting up the Christmas decorations was
not yet finished. A noble fire roared upon the broad hearth and the
rose-red light danced upon the darkened, polished leaves of the holly
wreaths, which hung on the walls and the family portraits that seemed
still to live and speak. Before the fireplace stood Colonel and Mrs.
Tremaine, with Archie, the sixteen-year-old son, who, with exception of
Angela Vaughn, a slip of a girl older than Archie, was the best pupil
Lyddon had ever known. Lyddon himself, with the abstracted eyes of a
scholar and an observer of men, walked up to the fireplace and listened
with patient amusement to the perplexities of Mrs. Tremaine.
She was of a type of woman which he had never seen until he came
to Virginia--delicate, soft-voiced, pious, the chief and only hard
worker on the estate, carrying easily the burden of thought and care
for her family, her unbroken stream of guests, and army of servants.
Lyddon, who looked deep into souls, knew the extraordinary courage,
the singular tenacity, the silent, passionate loves and hates of women
like Mrs. Tremaine. One of the ever strange problems to him was that
this type of woman was remarkably pleasant to live with, and was ever
full of the small, sweet courtesies of life. He reckoned these women,
however, dangerous when they were roused. Mrs. Tremaine, nearly sixty,
when sixty was considered old, had a faded rose beauty around which the
fragrance of the summer ever lingered. She gave the impression of a
woman who had lived a life of luxury and seclusion when, as a matter
of fact, she had, ever since her marriage, carried the burden of a
general who organizes and directs an army. She had, however, that which
gives to women perpetual youth, the adoration of her husband, of her
three sons, and of all who lived in daily contact with her.
Colonel Tremaine, tall, thin, and somewhat angular, with a face
clear-cut like a cameo, had been reckoned the handsomest man of his day
and the most superb dandy in the State of Virginia. He adhered rigidly
to the fashions of forty years before, when he had been in the zenith
of his beauty. He wore his hair plastered down in pigeon wings on each
side of his forehead and these pigeon wings were of a beautiful dark
brown in spite of Colonel Tremaine’s seventy-two years. The secret of
the colonel’s lustrous locks was known only to himself and to Hector,
and even Mrs. Tremaine maintained a delicate reserve concerning it.
Colonel Tremaine also held tenaciously to a high collar with a black
silk stock, and his shirt front was a delicate mass of thread cambric
ruffles, hemstitched by Mrs. Tremaine’s own hands. His manners were as
affected as his dress and he was given to genuflections, gyrations, and
courtly wavings of his hands in addressing persons from Mrs. Tremaine
down to the smallest black child on the estate. But under his air of an
elderly Lovelace lay sense, courage, honor, and the tenderest heart in
the world.
Both Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine bore all the marks of race, and Lyddon
had often wondered where Archie, the youngest child by ten years of
the sons of the house, could have inherited his merry, inconsequential
snub nose, his round face like a young English squireling, and his
frankly red hair. He had neither the beauty nor the intellect of his
older brothers, Neville, the young army officer, and Richard, who
after taking high honors at the university was just graduated in law;
but for sweetness, courage, and an odd sort of humor, Lyddon reckoned
Archie not inferior to any boy he had ever taught. He was his parents’
Benjamin, the afterclap which had come to them almost in their old
age, and was in some sort different to them from their older sons. He
was to be classed rather with Angela Vaughn, the baby girl whom, in
her infancy, Mrs. Tremaine had taken because the child was an orphan
and the stepchild of a remote cousin. Angela and Archie had grown up
together, a second crop, as the colonel explained, and they would ever
be but children to both Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine.
At that moment, Archie, with Jim Henry and Tasso to assist, mounted
on a table, to finish the hanging of the Christmas wreaths, that the
old hall might look its best when Neville, his mother’s darling, and
Richard, her pride, should arrive for the Christmas time. Neville had
succeeded in getting a few days’ leave from his regiment, and Richard,
the most intimate of brothers, had himself driven to the river landing
to meet Neville. They might arrive at any moment and would be certain
to be chilled with the ten miles’ drive in the winter afternoon, and
there was not a drop of liquor of any sort to give them, according to
the universal custom of the time. Hector, having helped himself to
a little fine old brandy left in Colonel Tremaine’s private liquor
case, was quite oblivious of what he had done with the keys both of the
cellar and sideboard, and was struggling to explain this to Colonel and
Mrs. Tremaine.
“I ’clare ’fore Gord, Mist’iss--” he protested with solemn emphasis as
Lyddon came up to the fireplace.
“Come, Hector,” answered Mrs. Tremaine, in a voice of quiet authority,
“don’t take the name of the Almighty in that trifling manner. What have
you done with the cellar keys?”
“Mist’iss, I ’clare ’fore Gord----”
“My love,” interrupted Colonel Tremaine anxiously, addressing Mrs.
Tremaine, “perhaps a little persuasion might discover the truth.”
The colonel, although he swore liberally at Hector himself, never
relished any fault-finding with him by anyone else, even Mrs. Tremaine.
Hector, knowing by an experience of more than sixty years that he had
a devoted ally in Colonel Tremaine, announced with easy confidence: “I
recommember now what I done wid dem keys. I give dem cellar keys to old
Marse, an’ I give him dem sidebo’d keys----”
“You did nothing of the sort,” replied Mrs. Tremaine, in her soft, even
voice, but with a ring of displeasure and authority in it which was
disquieting to both Hector and Colonel Tremaine. “And besides, Hector,
you’ve been drinking, it is perfectly plain.”
“Mist’iss, I ’clare I ain’t tech’ one single drap o’ liquor sence I had
de rheumatiz week ’fore lars’.”
Mrs. Tremaine cut him short by appealing to Colonel Tremaine. Usually
she addressed him as “My dear,” and he replied with “My dearest
Sophie”; but when discussions concerning Hector came about Mrs.
Tremaine addressed the colonel as “Colonel” and he responded by calling
her “Sophia.”
“Colonel, have you seen those keys?”
“Really, Sophia, I have not,” replied the colonel, with as much
tartness as he ever used toward Mrs. Tremaine. The discussion grew
warm, and Hector gave various accounts of what he had done with the
keys, but no one thought of the practical solution of looking for them
until Archie, having hung the last wreath, came up, and diving into
Hector’s coat pockets, the first place which should have been searched,
fished out two bunches of keys.
“I tole you, Missis,” began Hector, still very unsteady upon his legs,
“I had done put dese yere keys somewar. I jes’ disrecollected whar it
was.”
“Very well. Go at once and bring the decanter with brandy in it here,
with sugar and glasses, for your young masters.” Hector walked toward
the dining room, the picture of injured innocence, protesting under
his breath--“I ain’t never teched a drap of liquor sence I had de
rheumatiz.”
Lyddon, standing with his arm on the mantelpiece, smiled and wondered.
This sort of thing had been going on, he felt sure, ever since Colonel
Tremaine had been able to grow hair on his face, and would continue
to the end of the chapter, and Hector, having already had more liquor
than was good for him, was in a position to help himself still further.
Lyddon marveled if such a state of things could exist anywhere on
earth outside of Virginia, and tried to fancy a similar case of the
butler in an English family, but his imagination was not equal to such
a flight. When Hector appeared, however, in a minute or two with the
brandy and the glasses and put them on the polished mahogany table near
the fire, both Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine relaxed their air of being
slightly offended with each other. Colonel Tremaine, looking at his
watch, remarked, with a courtly bow:
“I think, my dearest Sophie, that our sons may be expected within half
an hour, that is, if the boat was punctual.”
“A half hour, my dear, is long to wait for those we love,” answered
Mrs. Tremaine, laying her small white hand affectionately on Colonel
Tremaine’s sleeve, at which the colonel took the hand and kissed it
gallantly.
“You will understand, Mr. Lyddon,” said he, turning to the tutor, who
was still leaning on the mantelpiece, “the very great interest and
importance of our army son’s visit to us at this juncture. The time
will shortly be at hand when every son of Virginia must determine
whether he will stand for or against his State, and it is not necessary
for us to say that we feel certain the services of our son, Neville,
are at the disposition of his State the instant they are required.”
Yes, Lyddon knew the whole story. He had heard it talked about ever
since the news had come a week ago that South Carolina having seceded
from the Union, the day must shortly come when Virginia must cast her
lot either for or against the Union. One of the sources of strength
most counted upon was the resignation of every Southern officer from
the army and the navy, and Colonel Tremaine, having some knowledge of
military life, was proud to think that he had in Neville a trained
artillerist to offer to the new cause.
“The position of a Southern officer in the United States army at
present is a very difficult one,” remarked Lyddon; “there is a question
of honor and conscience involved which each man must settle for
himself.”
“By God!” exclaiming Colonel Tremaine, and then fell silent. The mere
notion of discussing such a thing was to him like discussing the
morality of the Ten Commandments.
“The question is already settled,” added Mrs. Tremaine coldly, and
Lyddon knew there was nothing more to be said. He had realised long
before that there was really no liberty of conscience, much less of
speech, concerning the separation of the South from the North, or
the future of slavery. The minds of these people were made up and
compromise was impossible. They scarcely tolerated what Lyddon had to
say, even though he were an Englishman and an outsider, considering
his doctrine of liberty of conscience concerning slavery and States’
rights to be so dangerous and pernicious that it could not be freely
spoken for fear it might corrupt, as it certainly offended; and Lyddon,
recognizing the adamantine prejudices around him, kept his sentiments
chiefly to himself; only with Richard Tremaine, whose mind was too
comprehensive to be wholly dominated by prejudice, could Lyddon speak
freely. He smiled a little at Colonel Tremaine’s exclamation, but,
being the last man on earth to engage in controversy, let the subject
drop. And Tasso beginning vigorous operations with the broom to sweep
up the remnants of the now complete decorations, Lyddon fled to his
city of refuge, the old, shabby, low-ceiled study across the corridor.
In this old part of the house reigned comfort, quiet, and shabbiness,
sometimes an excellent combination. This was the one room forever
sacred to men, boys, dogs, books, and Angela Vaughn. There, with the
door shut, all was silent, still, and serene--the serenity of books and
bachelorhood. Lyddon drew up a great worn leather chair to the fire,
which glowed ruddily and steadily, and, placing his feet on the fender,
reflected upon the stupendous changes which he knew were at hand, and
which the whole community seemed to comprehend as little as did the
Harrowby family. War and revolution and evolution were imminent, the
upsetting of the whole economic and social order, the leap in the dark
which Lyddon felt sure meant the fall into an abyss; yet the people
talked about it lightly and sentimentally, and seemed to think it
would be a mere holiday parade. But if it should be otherwise, Lyddon
knew enough of the character and temper of the people around him to
understand that they were by nature the most furious and indomitable of
fighters; that the women, if softer, were, if anything, fiercer than
the men.
His thoughts then turned to Angela Vaughn. He often, in his own mind,
compared himself to a gardener who has taken a ragged seedling and has
nurtured it until, grown tall and fair, it is ready to burst into all
the glory of its blooming and then be gathered by other hands than
those which trained and watered it and gave it the fresh air and the
blessed sun. He remembered her when he had first come to Harrowby to
prepare Neville Tremaine for West Point, and Richard for the University
of Virginia. Angela was then a nine-year-old, in pinafores, and had
reminded Lyddon of a Skye terrier, being all eyes and hair. She was as
light as a feather, and Lyddon, accustomed to the heavier proportions
of English children, thought that this wisp of a child, with her tangle
of chestnut hair hanging down her back, and her laughing, black-lashed
eyes of no color and all colors, must be indeed a delicate blossom; but
she led the life of the most robust boy, and had never known a day’s
illness in all those ten years. Lyddon recalled her, pattering about
in the snow, her red hood and mantle making her look like a redbird.
He could see her swinging on the branches of the cherry trees in the
orchard in the springtime, her laughing face and her little white
ruffled sunbonnet making her look like a cherry blossom herself. He
had often watched her scrambling, with the agility of a boy rather
than a girl, on and off her pony, or merrily dancing the schottische
with Archie in the big hall, their music being their own childish
singing; or dashing down the garden path to a little nook on a wooden
bench under the lilac trees, at the end, and always full of a strange
activity. But tucked away under her arm or in her pocket was pretty
sure to be found a book from her own special library, which consisted
of four volumes--a book of good old fairy tales, “The Arabian Nights,”
“Robinson Crusoe,” and an odd volume of the “Odyssey,” telling of
Penelope and the suitors, which she frankly confessed to Lyddon she
could not understand, and read because she liked to be puzzled by it.
Lyddon, who had never before in his life taught a girl, and hated the
thought of it, at first turned his back resolutely upon the child, but
she had a way of stealing up to him and putting her little hand in
his, and saying: “Please, Mr. Lyddon, won’t you read me out of this
book?” The book was generally the “Odyssey,” for Angela found out by
some occult means that at the mention of this book, the eyes of the
grave and somewhat curt tutor would be certain to soften, and Lyddon
relenting would ask the child sternly: “How do you pronounce the name
of this book?”
“I don’t know,” Angela would reply, casting down her eyes and toying
with her little white apron. “I can spell it, but I can’t say it, and I
don’t know what it means, either, unless you read it to me.” The way in
which she said those last words, accompanied with a shy, sidelong look,
always captivated Lyddon, and he had begun with reading the sonorous
lines to her, Angela leaning on his knee and listening with her head
turned a little to one side like a watchful bird. After reading awhile,
Lyddon would again ask: “Now, do you understand it?”
“No,” Angela would reply, shaking her mass of chestnut hair, “but I
like it. Please go on, Mr. Lyddon.” In course of time, to Lyddon’s
amazement, he found himself regularly teaching the child her lessons.
There was a pretense that she was taught with Archie, but as a matter
of fact, not only was she nearly four years older than Archie, but her
capacity for books was so much greater that there was no classifying
her with the boy or, indeed, with any pupil whom Lyddon had ever taught.
Not that Angela was universally teachable; she could not, or at least
would not, learn arithmetic or mathematics in any form, and Lyddon,
whose soul abhorred a mathematical woman, was not sorry for this. He
loved Latin, however, as a cat loves cream, and Angela, finding this
out, learned her Latin lessons with amazing facility. Lyddon had some
notion of teaching her Greek, but forebore from conscientious scruples.
He had no mind to make her a woman like Pallas of the green eyes,
“that dreadful and indomitable virgin,” as Pantagruel says, but would
rather that Angela should grow up to resemble the enchanting maid,
the silver-footed Thetis. He imparted French, too, however, which she
picked up readily; history she learned of herself, and the piano was
taught her by Mrs. Tremaine, who played neatly in the old-fashioned
style. Angela’s gift for music was considerable, and she sang and
played with much natural expression and loved to accompany Archie,
who fiddled prettily. There was always more or less talk of getting
a governess for Angela, and Mrs. Tremaine actually proposed sending
her to a finishing school, but Angela managed to evade both of these
nefarious plans. All the education which was required of the women in
her day consisted of graceful and housewifely accomplishments. These
Angela easily mastered and under Lyddon’s instructions carefully
concealed exactly how much Latin she knew, although a little boastful
of knowing French.
From the first, Lyddon had been forced to yield to the soft seduction
of the child’s nature. He early recognized the difference of sex in
mind, the scintillant feminine intelligence, unlike that of any boy he
had ever taught, sharper in some respects, far duller in others, quick
of apprehension but difficult of comprehension in the large sense. All
this was delightfully obvious to Lyddon as he watched the unfolding
of Angela’s mind. The absence of the creative faculty in women had
been borne in upon Lyddon in his general view of human achievement. He
studied the convolutions in the budding mind of his pupil and it gave
him insight concerning the immense interest far greater than its value
which the intellectual performance of a woman arouses. He recalled that
much had been written about Sappho, but the lady’s poems not having
the germ of eternal life had gone to the limbo of forgotten things,
all except about forty lines. He reckoned that a woman’s personality
and reputation was all of her which could really survive; her work
invariably perished, and Madame de Staël, as a writer, was as dead as
Sappho. Nevertheless, he found himself more interested in Angela’s
divination of books and things than in Neville’s keen and analytical
mind, in the fine and comprehensive intellect of Richard Tremaine or
Archie’s sturdy good sense. Lyddon laughed at himself for the interest
with which he watched Angela’s mental growth, in preference to that of
any boy whom he had ever taught, just as one watches the dancing light
of a firefly with greater interest than a candle’s steady glow. Nor was
Angela’s nature less interesting to him than her mind. He had been
used to the simple nature of boys, but here was a creature not only of
another sex, but, it seemed to Lyddon, of another order, who was not
always merry when she laughed nor sad when she wept nor angry when she
scowled. Angela had moreover a spirit of pure adventure stronger than
he had ever known in any boy. She longed to see the outside world and
was strangely conscious from the beginning of the narrowness of the
life lived by her own people. Their horizon was bounded by the State
of Virginia. Not so Angela’s. She was always teasing Lyddon to tell
her stories of across the seas and planned with him triumphal journeys
to the glorious cities of the Old World, marvelous explorations in the
heart of India and to the very extremities of the earth. Lyddon humored
her in these childish imaginings as he did in everything else. Angela
was now nineteen years old. Like all women she was wise and simple,
frank and sly, brave and timid, and consistently contradictory. When
Lyddon thought of her he recalled the words of another maiden of a
far-off country and a bygone time:
“Take care of thyself if thou lovest me.”
And as he sat thinking, the study door opened and Angela quietly
entered.