LOVE IN A MIST
It was broad daylight before the entire household at Harrowby was
asleep, but Angela, in the great four-posted bed with curtains and
valance, had fallen asleep--young, healthy being that she was--the
instant her head touched the pillow. The day came dull and quiet, and
no light penetrated the closed shutters and drawn curtains of the large
room in which Angela slept. It was twelve o’clock before she opened
her eyes and then closed them again. She felt a delicious sense of
languor after her hours of dancing and gay excitement, and the large,
soft bed invited continued repose. She could not, however, go to
sleep again. Wandering thoughts of what had happened the night before
stole upon her, and then all at once Neville’s image, his looks, the
pressure of his hand, so different from anything she had ever known,
flashed upon her. She tried to put the thought away and, closing her
eyes resolutely, lay still as a statue with that determination to go
to sleep which always defeats its object. Presently, she sighed and
turned restlessly; there was no more sweet repose for her, she had come
face to face with that insistent passion which questions and demands an
answer.
For the first time in her life the thought of meeting Neville made
her feel shy. She loved him, oh, yes! Better than Richard, better
than Archie! Neville had always been her champion who stood between
her and disappointment, who warded off justice, who always approved
of her, but Neville as a lover, as a husband--for Angela’s vivid mind
traveled quickly--ah! that was different. If she married Neville it
would be like the continuation of a story of which she already knew
the best part. She yearned for life, movement, knowledge, a view of
the great outside world, which to her in imagination appeared far more
fascinating than any world could be, and yet on the threshold she was
to be handed back to settle in the same groove, to see the same faces,
do the same things as she had done all her life. She loved Harrowby
with all her soul, but longed to try her wings in flight. It seemed
as if the great book of life lay open before her, but she could not
be permitted to read any part which she had not already read. Prince
Charming, that other half of her heart and soul, that unknown being
about whom it was so delicious to wonder, would never come to her.
Suddenly it came to her that Prince Charming was an entity and had a
name--he was Philip Isabey. That straight-featured, black-eyed man of
whom she had heard so much, whose wit, courage, daring, grace, and
accomplishments Richard proudly recounted. In the still, abstracted
life Angela led, with its narrow round of small duties, its larger but
tamer pleasures, Angela’s imagination had felt the need of some object
around which to weave its spell. Philip Isabey had become that object.
Angela’s imagination was already in love with him and Angela and her
imagination were one. She had never seen him, but that only made her
long the more to see him. He had dominated her girlish dreams as far
back as she could remember. She recalled slipping into Richard’s room
and looking with a delicious sense, half rapture, half guilt, at the
daguerreotype of Isabey and the sketches of him which were pinned to
the walls. This apotheosis of Philip Isabey was her only secret, and
being watched and tended, it grew fast and was cherished. When the
recollection of this dream idyl came to Angela, she sat up in bed and
clasped her hands with dismay. It must now come to an end, for Neville
loved her--Neville, the best and truest man on earth, but not Prince
Charming.
Just then the door opened quietly and Mirandy entered with a breakfast
tray. On it lay a note--a few lines from Neville wishing her good
morning. Angela’s first impulse was to smile, then to scowl. She
told Mirandy sharply that it was not yet time for rising and after
making the fire to go out and leave her. Soon the blaze lighted up the
great darkened room, and Angela tried to persuade herself that it was
midnight and not day as she lay in the great white bed watching the
firelight dancing on the ceiling. She thrust the note under her pillow,
but she could not forget that it was there and it disturbed her. It was
four o’clock in the afternoon before she came downstairs. The house
was still, Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine having gone out for a drive,
Lyddon, Richard, and Archie being off on different expeditions and
the servants, more asleep than awake, in a general state of collapse.
Angela went into the study and there sitting by the window was Neville
with a book in his hand. He rose at once as she entered and closed the
door after her.
“I have been waiting to see you, Angela,” he said, taking her hand
and leading her to the old leather-covered sofa; and then briefly
and simply as a man who is a man speaks his love, he asked Angela to
marry him. She had never said “no” to Neville in her life and it was
clearly impossible now. Her shyness, her coldness, neither surprised
nor disconcerted Neville. She was in many respects younger than her
nineteen years, and this was her first acquaintance with love. But
Neville knew or thought he knew that Angela’s intimacy with him was
so great, her dependence on him so absolute, her affection for him of
such long standing that she could not only be happy with him, but that
she could not be happy with another man--for Neville Tremaine thought
first of the woman he loved and secondly of himself. And in this belief
he had a little time of rapture. But his dream was broken when he
mentioned marriage to Angela.
“I shouldn’t have spoken so soon, Angela, but for the time in which we
live. You know I am leaving day after to-morrow, and God knows when, if
ever, I shall return.”
“You will come back when the State secedes,” said Angela positively.
They were sitting on the sofa with Angela’s bright head close to
Neville’s dark one.
“Ah, my dearest,” he said, “I don’t know whether I shall ever come
back. I haven’t yet said whether I would resign from the army or not,
and if I feel as I do now I shan’t.” Angela drew away from him and
looked at him with wide, startled eyes.
“I--I don’t understand,” she said. “Of course you will resign;
everybody expects that you will.”
“I know it. It would be a great deal easier for me if I could. But a
soldier, Angela, has not the same attitude of conscience that any other
man has. You know honor should come first with every man, but military
honor takes possession of a man and disposes of him; so it will dispose
of me.”
Angela gazed at him with dark and troubled eyes. She did not fully
understand all that Neville’s words implied, but they gave her pain and
amazement and Neville seeing this gently explained to her. “What I mean
is if the choice were given me on the one hand of having you, beloved,
of fulfilling my father’s and mother’s wishes, of inheriting Harrowby
as my father and mother have always told me, and on the other hand
of giving up you and all whom I love and my inheritance, I should be
compelled to do it if I felt that my duty as a soldier required me to
remain in the United States Army, and at this moment it so appears to
me.”
Angela fell back and withdrew her hand from Neville’s, and he made no
effort to detain it. “You have promised to marry me, Angela,” he said
quietly, “but if you are frightened at what you have done, I am the
last man in the world to hold you to your word.”
The profoundest art could not have hit upon an idea more likely to
influence Angela than the one which Neville had used without any art
whatever. Angela, like all young creatures of high and untried courage,
spurned the faintest suggestion of fear. “I am not afraid of anything,”
she said. “I never was afraid to keep my word.”
“Child, you were never called upon to keep such a promise as this, and
what I may do may mean that I shall never again be recognized by any
whom I love unless it be yourself; it may mean the same to you.”
“If it does, I hope I should not be less brave than you.” Angela put
her hand again into Neville’s, and he saw that he was victor. They had
one hour together sitting in the dusk of the old study where they spent
so many hours in the past when Angela was a little girl in a white
frock and Neville was already a young man. The one fascination which
Neville had for Angela was in his courage, that quality most adorable,
most compelling to all women. She had not asked herself whether she
were in love with him or not; it seemed so impossible to go against
Neville or to desert him, and yet it was not to her what she had
dreamed first love to be. Neville was not Isabey. When at last in the
twilight they heard the servants moving about in the other part of the
house and the carriage with Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine drive up to the
door, Angela rose hurriedly, confused for the first time in her life at
being found alone with Neville. As they reached the door she caught his
arm and said hurriedly: “Shouldn’t we keep this a secret?”
“Perhaps it would be better for you,” answered Neville after a moment.
“You see the test is yet to come.” They passed into the hall and
Neville went out to assist his mother from the carriage. As the great
hall door opened a gust of icy air came in; the evening had grown
bitterly cold. Mrs. Tremaine came up the steps with Neville’s arm
around her, who, with the other arm, offered to assist the colonel, who
repulsed him indignantly, meanwhile putting his arm around Neville’s
neck.
“A pretty pass, sir, it is when you imply that I am too old to get up
the steps alone. I defy you, sir, or any fellow of your age to dance
the Virginia reel as long as I can. I observed you youngsters last
night. None of you had the life and spirit in you of your elders. Upon
my soul, the youngsters of to-day are the most solemn, old-maidish,
milk-and-watery set I ever knew. You should have been with us in
Mexico. Ah, my dearest Sophie, the dark eyes of those Mexican Señoritas
haunt me still!” And the colonel slapped himself upon the heart, and
ogled Mrs. Tremaine as if she were sixteen and he were twenty.
That night there was to be a party at Greenhill and, as early hours
were the fashion, the Harrowby carriage was to start at seven o’clock
to make the five miles to Greenhill. In a little while Lyddon with
Richard and Archie appeared, and they all sat round the hall fire
discussing the ball of the night before. Colonel Tremaine was charmed
with Angela and Archie’s delightful surprise of playing “Dixie” for the
first time and insisted that Archie should take his violin to Greenhill
that night and repeat the performance.
Angela had a very good excuse for not appearing at supper, saying that
she was obliged to dress. But this was something new on her part,
because usually when Neville was at home she had to be dragged away
from him in order to make her toilet if they were going to a party.
Colonel Tremaine, who was an arrant sentimentalist, had noticed one
or two things between Angela and Neville, and when Mrs. Tremaine was
putting on her lace headdress in her bedroom, the colonel tapped at
the door and asked her to step into his dressing room. Then, closing
the door, he remarked: “My dearest Sophie, have you noticed anything
of a suspicious nature, I mean an agreeably suspicious nature, between
Angela and Neville?”
Mrs. Tremaine, gorgeous in blue satin, and adding a white feather to
her headdress, stopped for a moment as if she had been shot, and put
her hand to her heart. No woman ever hears with composure that she has
been deposed from the throne in the heart of her favorite son. She
remained silent for half a minute trying to collect her wits, for no
such idea as that suggested by Colonel Tremaine had ever occurred to
her before.
“No,” she said presently in a low voice. “I haven’t noticed anything.
What have you observed, my dear?”
“Oh, only trifles, but they mark the beginning of love! Who should know
them better than you and I?” The delicious flattery, the distinction of
being made love to by a husband after more than thirty years of married
life, was not lost on Mrs. Tremaine. When Colonel Tremaine added:
“Should we not wish, my dearest Sophie, that our children should have
the same happy married life that we have had?” Mrs. Tremaine smiled a
faint, tremulous smile, and then Colonel Tremaine added: “Is it not
much better that Neville’s future wife should already be a daughter
to us? We have agreed that Neville shall inherit Harrowby, and how
agreeable is the thought that there will be neither break nor intrusion
between the present _régime_ and those who are to inherit after us.”
There had ever been in Mrs. Tremaine’s mind a little haunting fear of
the future unknown daughter-in-law, and at Colonel Tremaine’s words a
deep feeling of relief and satisfaction came to her. Yes, if she were
to yield her dominion, it was best to yield it to Angela, the child
loved almost as her own, and who would carry out the traditions of
Harrowby and make mango pickle by the same recipe which had been in
Mrs. Tremaine’s family for more than a hundred years.
Although Angela had begun dressing before six o’clock, the whole family
were assembled in the hall ready to start before she came downstairs.
She wore a white gown and had a little pearl necklace around her
milk-white throat. The dress set off her girlish beauty or rather
promise of beauty, and the thought of being under Neville’s eye brought
a wild-rose bloom to her usually pale cheeks.
“Why, Angela,” cried Archie, “you are really getting good-looking,
and not half as ugly as you promised to be.” He was rewarded with a
sisterly slap.
Lyddon, who usually had to be dragged to evening parties, went
willingly enough now. He was immensely interested in the psychologic
developments of the time and lost no opportunity of seeing these people
together and studying how they were to meet the great convulsion ahead
of them, but that it would be a great convulsion, they seemed totally
unaware. Usually when the Harrowby family went to parties the carriage
was reserved for Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine and Angela. Richard and
Neville preferred a trap of their own, and Lyddon always elected to go
with them. For some inscrutable reason whenever the Harrowby carriage
went out at night Hector occupied the box instead of the regular
coachman, Colonel Tremaine protesting that he would rather be driven by
Hector drunk than any other man sober. The result was, however, that
on the return journey, Colonel Tremaine invariably had to sit on the
box beside Hector, who to Lyddon’s mind by no means deserved Colonel
Tremaine’s good opinion of his driving when tipsy, and who had upset
the carriage more than once. But the custom had been by no means upset,
and Lyddon, not caring to risk his neck in such circumstances, always
elected to go with the young men of the family. When Colonel and Mrs.
Tremaine and Angela stood before the old-fashioned coach, new when Mrs.
Tremaine was married, Neville helped his mother and Angela in; then
Colonel Tremaine got in and Neville to everybody’s surprise took the
fourth seat. “The fact is,” he said coolly, “I don’t mean to lose one
minute of being with you, mother and father, and Angela.”
Angela sat back mute in her corner of the carriage while Colonel
Tremaine observed with equal coolness: “It is most gratifying, my son,
that you should be with us; perhaps the society of our charming Angela
may have something to do with it.”
“It has a great deal to do with it,” replied Neville boldly. That was
enough for Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine to understand all. No word was
spoken, but Mrs. Tremaine put her arm around Angela and then Neville
leaned over and kissed his mother. Their hearts were full of love and
peace, except Angela’s. She felt a secret dissatisfaction; the pain
of a coming disappointment and with it a sharp self-reproach, and all
were so affectionate to her, so full of tenderness, it flashed upon
her that she was a penniless orphan and that she was being welcomed in
her new relation as if she had brought with her a royal dowry. This
thought only made her feel like an ingrate. Her silence was attributed
to bashfulness, and Colonel Tremaine, meaning to relieve her, began to
talk with Neville of the coming national struggle. Neville listened
attentively and responded with animation. Only Angela noticed that he
made no promise of resigning from the army when the crisis should come.
The party at Greenhill was a replica of the one at Harrowby. The
Greenhill house was almost as spacious, and held the same people who
had assembled the night before; the supper, the fiddlers, and all were
exactly the same. Angela was a great belle, as she excelled in dancing,
and her little feet twinkled the night through. Neville danced with her
twice, whispering to her, “Don’t you remember the story my father tells
about having danced ten consecutive quadrilles with my mother at a ball
at Greenhill, and being very much surprised when the report got around
that they were engaged?”
Angela smiled. She knew all of these old family jokes quite as well as
Neville did. There could be no revelations between them.
Again was the coming war the absorbing topic of conversation among the
older people, while the young men whispered sentimentally to the girls
concerning the coming separation when all of these gallants expected
to return covered with glory. No one asked any direct question of
Neville, as it was understood that he was in honor bound to remain
in the United States Army until the secession of Virginia, and after
that his resignation was supposed to be as voluntary on his part as it
was inevitable. Again the dance broke up while the pallid moon was
struggling with the ghostly dawn. Colonel Tremaine, as usual, mounted
the box on starting for home, as Hector was in his customary state of
exhilaration after a party, and saw four horses before him where there
were only two. Not, however, until the carriage had been driven into a
ditch did Colonel Tremaine take the reins from Hector, who with folded
arms and profound indignation declared according to his invariable
formula: “’Fo’ Gord, I ain’t teched a drap.”
That day there was a hunting party and a dinner afterwards at Barn
Elms, an estate half across the county. Angela rode with Neville, but
there was little time for lovers’ colloquy in the midst of a screeching
run after the hounds, an uproarious country dinner, and the return
afterwards by the light of the stars. The last evening of Neville’s
stay was spent at Harrowby, and the tenderness of his parents toward
him seemed redoubled. Angela, Richard, and Lyddon all knew that might
be the last night which Neville would ever spend under that roof, but
Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine were blindly unsuspecting. At half past nine,
when the family assembled for prayers in the library as usual and Mrs.
Tremaine asked God’s blessing upon “our son now departing from us,”
her voice broke a little, and Angela, glancing toward Neville, saw
that he was pale, and his eyes, the resolute eyes of a soldier, were
wet with tears. He went upstairs with his father and mother and sat by
his mother’s dressing table while Mammy Tulip, according to immemorial
custom, brushed and plaited Mrs. Tremaine’s hair, still abundant
although streaked with silver. Neville was to leave at daylight and
mother and son would meet again, but this was their last chance for
that soft intercourse which Mrs. Tremaine had ever maintained with her
sons as with her husband. Mrs. Tremaine felt the delicate homage which
Neville paid her in giving her this last hour, and when Mammy Tulip had
left the room, held out her hand to Neville and said sweetly: “My son,
we see how it is between you and Angela, and your father and I will
take care of her for you.”
Neville drew his chair up to his mother’s, and the mother and son
talked together as they had done when Neville was a little bright-eyed
boy and Mrs. Tremaine was almost as slender as Angela. Neville’s heart
was in his mouth. He dreaded every moment that Mrs. Tremaine would ask
him the direct question of what he meant to do when the State seceded
and he knew that no kind of evasion would serve him then. But Mrs.
Tremaine, like Colonel Tremaine, took everything for granted. While
they were still sitting together Colonel Tremaine came in from his
dressing room. In the old days that had been the signal that the boys
should leave, and Neville, remembering this, rose to go.
“Never mind, my son,” said the colonel. “You may remain a while longer.”
“I thought it was contrary to regulations,” answered Neville, placing a
chair for his father.
“Oh, the regulations are suspended on this, your last night at home. I
will say, however, if it hadn’t been for my discipline, you and your
brothers would long since have worn your mother to a thread with your
demonstrative affection.” The colonel’s discipline had always consisted
in letting his sons do exactly as they had pleased, and their
demonstrative affection was directly inherited from him. All this Mrs.
Tremaine knew perfectly well and smiled, but, like a discreet wife,
permitted the colonel to think that it was his iron hand which had kept
everything in order at Harrowby. In the study below, Lyddon and Richard
Tremaine sat smoking while Archie in a corner by the fireplace dreamily
played his fiddle. Angela, whose bedtime was supposed to be when Mrs.
Tremaine went upstairs, flitted in and out of the room. She felt it
due to Neville that she should give him a little time before that
last hurried parting at dawn the next morning. Presently the sound of
Neville’s step in the hall was heard. Archie stopped his fiddling and
cried: “There’s Neville! I want to see him again to-night. I’m going to
ask him to send me a new bird gun like the one he had here last year.”
“Stay where you are, you little whipper-snapper,” said Richard with
authority.
“What for?” asked Archie, wondering. Richard looked at Lyddon and then
answered Archie.
“Because Neville is with Angela, you little idiot.”
“Well, suppose he is,” answered the unsuspecting Archie. “Angela’s
always with Neville for that matter.” And Richard, rising and taking
him by the back of his neck, plumped him down in a chair and told him
to stay there until his brother should come in. In a little while
Neville entered, and Archie began on the subject of the bird gun, which
Neville promised to send to him, and then the boy went off to bed.
The three men, left together with cigars and whisky and a good fire,
settled themselves for a symposium such as they had enjoyed a thousand
times before. As Lyddon looked at the two young men before him, a sense
of impending disaster suddenly overwhelmed him. The thought of a break
in this family, so passionately attached to each other, so much in
sympathy, was poignant to him. Strangely enough he felt and saw that in
this case the tie of brotherhood would stand a greater strain than that
even of fatherhood or motherhood. Richard Tremaine had a largeness of
mind which was totally unknown to Colonel Tremaine, and Mrs. Tremaine
never pretended to think; she only felt. The talk inevitably drifted
toward the state of public affairs. Richard Tremaine was the only man
in the whole county so far as Lyddon knew who had any just appreciation
of the magnitude of the coming conflict. Richard coolly reckoned upon
the war lasting until one side or the other was exhausted--the North in
money, the South in men. Neville naturally looked at it with the eye of
a military man. There all was chaos. Neville was too good a student of
military history to underrate the strength of five million homogeneous
people fighting upon their own ground. He had observed that the North
had the same undervaluation of the fighting strength of the South which
the South unquestionably had of the North. He spoke of this. “Those
dangerous delusions,” he said, “will soon pass away on both sides, then
will come a struggle the like of which has not often been seen. If the
United States had a trained army of two or three hundred thousand men
to start with, the result could be better predicated. As it is, great
multitudes of men on both sides will have to be trained to be soldiers
and the real fighting won’t begin until that is done.” This was
controverted by Richard, who believed that the Southern armies would
need far less training than the Northern, and that the first successes
of the South would be so brilliant as to stagger the North and incline
it for peace. Lyddon listened, occasionally interjecting a word. The
discussion, earnest but not bitter, lasted until near midnight, when
Richard, rising, said to Neville:
“Come along, old boy, you must have some sleep before starting.” The
two went off, their arms around each other’s necks as Lyddon had often
seen them in their boyhood, and passed into their little low-ceiled
rooms next the study. As Lyddon followed them to his own room, he
heard Neville rousing Peter, who lay asleep on the hearth rug before
Richard’s fire. One of the continuing marvels to Lyddon was this
universal practice of the negroes making the fire at night in the
bedrooms and then lying down and going to sleep on the hearth rug. None
of them so far as Lyddon knew had yet been burnt up, but why any of
them had escaped, he never could understand.
Next morning in the ghostly dawning hour, Neville Tremaine left his
father’s roof. His farewell to his mother and her last blessing had
been given him in her bedroom. Angela met him on the landing of the
stair and gave him a shy parting kiss. They went down together into
the hall where Colonel Tremaine, Lyddon, Richard, and Archie and a
crowd of servants waited to tell him good-by. The farewells were
hurried, as there was no time to spare. Neville said little, but
under his self-control he was inwardly agitated. When he was in the
act of stepping into the trap, Richard holding in two impatient
horses, Neville turned back to grasp his father’s hand once more. At
the same moment an old, blind hound came up to Neville and putting a
humble, deprecating paw upon Neville’s knee, licked his hand, whining
mournfully meanwhile. It seemed to Neville a sad portent.
“Good-by, father,” he said. “If you should never shake hands with me
again, remember if I haven’t been as good a son as I should be, no son
ever loved a father and mother better than I loved you and my mother.”
Colonel Tremaine, holding Neville’s hand, grew a little pale; some
premonition of Neville’s meaning flashed upon him. He could only say
brokenly: “You have ever been the best of sons to us.” And the next
moment Neville was gone.