THE HOUR OF FATE
The beginning of the fateful year of 1861 was full of events as
dramatic as they were stupendous. State after State left the Union, her
representatives withdrawing from the floors of Congress and her naval
and military officers promptly resigning from the service of the United
States. While these extraordinary and momentous changes were taking
place all eyes were fixed upon the great State of Virginia, standing
sentinel at the gateway between the North and the South. In case of
Civil War all the world knew that she would be the battle ground. Her
fields, rich and peaceful, where the harvesters had gleaned for two
hundred years, would be drenched with blood and be swept by hurricanes
of fire; the primeval woods over which an eternal peace had brooded
would be torn by shot and riven by shell. The quiet towns would be
starved and beleaguered and the placid country harried by fire and
sword. Her people, who in the nineteenth century still lived in the
calm and isolation of the eighteenth century and who had fallen into
a happy lethargy, were to be suddenly transformed into an army of
fighting men, and her women were to work and pray by night and day. Out
of their placidity, which often degenerated into slothfulness, was to
be evolved an almost superhuman energy. Her resources for war and siege
would have been insignificant except that she held in reserve, ready to
sacrifice at a moment’s notice, all the blood, all the powers, and all
the possessions of a race justly described as a strong, resolute, and
ofttimes violent people.
By the opening of the year 1861 there was no longer doubt of what these
people meant to do; but they thought and acted slowly, and they were
long in doing what they had resolved from the beginning to do. Early in
February a call had been issued for a convention to meet at Richmond
to determine the destiny of Virginia. Richard Tremaine announced his
candidacy for the honor of representing his county in this convention.
He was so young, being barely twenty-seven years of age, that if he
should get the suffrages of the people he would certainly be the
youngest man in the whole assembly to which he aspired. His claims,
however, put forward as they were with modesty and dignity, were
received with favor.
Richard Tremaine, himself, with the self-command of a well-balanced
mind, was able to disguise the gratification he felt at the prospect
before him. Not so his womenkind or Colonel Tremaine, who was never
tired of quoting the triumphs of William Pitt and Henry Clay at
Richard’s age and confidently predicted these triumphs would be
paralleled in Richard’s case. Lyddon would not have been surprised at
any great thing which Richard Tremaine might achieve either in public
life or in war. Richard had fully made up his mind, even if he should
be elected to the convention, he would resign as soon as decisive
action was taken and enter the military service of the Confederacy. He
had already begun the study of strategy and tactics and especially of
artillery. Lyddon, helping and admiring, could only compare Richard’s
mind to a beacon light moving upon a pivot which illuminated every
object upon which it was concentrated. Never had Lyddon in all his life
before lived so strenuous an intellectual life as from the Christmas of
1860 until the February day when he rode with Richard Tremaine from one
polling place to another in the county only to feel assured long before
the votes were counted that Richard Tremaine had triumphed over men of
twice his age and twenty times his actual experience. Lyddon, however,
had no distrust of young men and particularly in the great coming
crisis when the theory of the government of the people was to be put
upon trial. He thought it the time for men in the full flush of energy
and with the splendid philosophy of youth to come to the front.
In those weeks since Christmas, life had gone on in outward quiet
at Harrowby. Immediately after the Christmas time all dancing and
frolicking in the county had suddenly come to an end. In one psychic
moment the people realized that they had great business in hand. The
women became more thoughtful and yet more enthusiastic than the men,
and patriotism with them speedily assumed the form of a religion. This
was singularly marked in the ladies of Harrowby. No human beings can
live in the closeness of intimacy of the Harrowby family without a
prescience concerning each other. A dreadful doubt had begun to haunt
Mrs. Tremaine concerning Neville, her best beloved--he might give his
sword not to his State, but to her enemies. Mrs. Tremaine dared not put
this fear in words even to Colonel Tremaine. The same grim suspicion
was likewise haunting him. He avoided Mrs. Tremaine’s eyes when they
spoke together of Neville, each striving to hide from the other this
specter which walked with them and sat at meat with them and was always
within touch of them by day and by night. In the wintry afternoons when
Mrs. Tremaine paced up and down the Ladies’ Walk a certain number of
times, according to her daily habit for more than thirty years, those
who approached her saw a strange expression on her face--an expression
of fear and anxiety. Colonel Tremaine, watching her from his library
window, forebore to go out and join her as he usually did, but instead
strode restlessly like a caged lion up and down the library. Mrs.
Tremaine, observing his figure as he passed the window, knew that the
same fear was gnawing at his heart as at hers--the fear that their
eldest-born should prove a renegade and a traitor, for so both parents
considered the question of Neville’s remaining in the army.
As the weeks wore on the tension of minds grew more acute, and it
soon came to the point that Lyddon could no longer openly express
his political views, which were totally opposed to slavery; the
Southern people allowed no man freedom of conscience in the matter.
Slavery, which for the first thirty years of the century had been
frankly condemned and anxiously sought to be abolished by Washington,
Jefferson, and all thinking men in the State, had in the next thirty
years fastened itself, in all its monstrosity, upon the body politic
and had stifled remonstrance. As John Randolph said: “The South had a
wolf by the ears and was afraid to let go and afraid to hold on”; but
as their fear of letting go was greater than their fear of holding on,
they held on until they were half-devoured by this wolf called Slavery.
Lyddon, watching and observing, could not speak his mind on the past
and future of slavery even to Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine. Until then
Lyddon’s views had been accepted with good-humored tolerance and
looked upon as the cranky notions of a stranger from beyond the ocean
seas. Now, however, the matter had become too acute, too exquisitely
painful, and after one or two fierce contradictions from the usually
mild-mannered Colonel Tremaine, followed by profuse apologies, Lyddon
sat silent whenever the subject of the coming war was under discussion.
But he could still talk with Richard Tremaine and to Lyddon’s sardonic
amusement with Angela. She was, of course, red-hot for the South,
but condescended to exchange views with Lyddon sometimes on the
subject when they sat together on winter evenings in the study. The
Harrowby family had long ago instinctively formed itself into three
groups--Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine, whose habitat was the colonel’s big
library full of unread books, Lyddon with Richard and Neville, when he
was at home, in the study, and Angela and Archie, who were graduated
from the nursery, also in the study as the schoolroom.
The habit still kept up, and while in the big, handsome library Mrs.
Tremaine in the evenings stitched thread cambric ruffles for the
colonel’s shirt fronts and Colonel Tremaine read aloud to her from the
“Lake Poets,” a practice that he had formed during their courtship days
when between compliments and lovemaking, he had read to her the whole
of Wordsworth’s “Excursion.” At the same hour in the evening Angela
and Archie were supposed to be learning their lessons in the study,
which after they went to bed was given over to smoking and the talk
of grown-ups like Lyddon and Richard. Archie had always depended upon
Angela to help him with his lessons and although she no longer studied
regularly herself, she was always there to encourage Archie. While the
boy with his fingers in his ears was struggling with his Latin and
Greek, Angela would listen to Lyddon and flash back at him those quick
intuitive truths which women acquire without knowing how they do it. As
Lyddon often quoted to Angela:
“A man with much labor and difficulty climbs to the top of a high
mountain; when he arrives he finds a woman there already, but she could
not tell to save her life how she got there.”
“But she is there all the same, Mr. Lyddon,” Angela would reply with
demure eyes and a saucy smile.
Neville’s letters, as affectionate as ever, came regularly, for
the mails with the North were not yet interrupted. These letters
were brief. Neville had not Richard’s powers of language; he was
distinctively a man of action, but he expressed himself with simplicity
and vigor which is the embodiment of the best eloquence. Once a week
Angela received from him a letter full of affection. It was a model
love letter, quite beyond the power of the professedly accomplished
letter writer. Angela read it with a blush not of pleasure but of that
secret discomfort of which she was ashamed and actually afraid, and at
this thought the discomfort increased. “Did ever any girl before feel
as she did when receiving her lover’s letters?” she asked herself.
On the assembling of the convention Richard Tremaine left Harrowby
for Richmond. As soon as the body assembled, the result of its
deliberations were easily foreseen and from that day the whole of
Virginia became a great camp of instruction. The initial steps were
taken toward the organization of regiments. The women were not a whit
behind in their eagerness to begin the work of equipping hospitals,
of furnishing the soldiers with stockings and other comforts, and of
raising funds for the presentation of flags to the different companies.
Mrs. Tremaine, the soul of modesty and retirement, was the chief mover
in all these plans and was ably seconded by Mrs. Charteris. The men
were fiercely determined; the women were more fiercely indomitable.
Colonel Tremaine at seventy-two and much troubled with rheumatism was
full of military ardor, and proposed to take the field with Hector as
soon as Virginia seceded. Hector did not receive this proposition with
unalloyed delight, and argued with Colonel Tremaine.
“Ole Marse, you got de rheumatiz an’ I got de ager an’ we cyarn’ do
much fightin’ when you is cussin’ de rheumatiz an’ my teef is rattlin’
wid de ager.”
“With cowardice, you mean, you black scoundrel,” answered Colonel
Tremaine, who spoke his mind freely to Hector, although by no means
allowing anyone else so great a liberty. “When I had you in Mexico, by
gad, you had the ague every time you got within ten miles of a Mexican
and you would run like a rabbit at the sight of a green uniform.”
“Good Gord A’might’, Marse! You done forgot----”
“No, I haven’t, sirrah, but when we go to fight the Yankees, I shall
make it a point to keep you within ten feet of me whenever we are under
fire.” As Colonel Tremaine was utterly insensible to fear, as Hector
knew by sad experience, and bowed and scraped and flourished exactly
the same when bullets were whistling around his head as when asking a
lady to dance the Virginia reel, Hector was appalled at the prospect.
On a March day the lists for volunteers in the event of war were opened
at the courthouse. Colonel Tremaine in high feather, mounted his horse
and rode off to offer, as he magniloquently expressed it, “his sword to
his State.” He was a fine rider and wore a handsome plum-colored riding
dress with top-boots such as had been the fashion in 1830. About the
same hour Archie mysteriously disappeared and when lesson time came
could not be found high or low.
Lyddon was in the study standing with his back to the fire and
wondering what had become of Archie when Angela entered. One look at
her eloquent and speaking face revealed what no woman can conceal--that
she had a secret. “I believe you know where the boy is,” said Lyddon.
“Yes,” replied Angela, coming up to him and laughing. “He is off to
the courthouse to put his name down. Of course, he is not eighteen, but
he means to swear he is.”
“Unluckily for him there are too many people in the county who know
just how old he is.”
“Mrs. Charteris is quite inconsolable because George Charteris is only
seventeen. She says she almost wishes the State would not secede until
next year so that she would be able to contribute her only son to the
Cause.”
“The women haven’t been like this since the Peloponnesian War, when
the ladies of Sparta encouraged their sons to go forth to meet the
Athenians and to return either with their shields or upon them. One
would think that these Virginians were like those old Spartans who
fashioned their doors with the sword and their ceilings with the ax.”
“I suppose,” said Angela, “it is in our blood. You see, we came to
Virginia most of us after fighting in England; then, you see, we had to
fight the Indians, and we had to fight the British twice, you know----”
“Oh, yes, I know, you Americans have regular Berserker outbreaks when
nothing can keep you from fighting! This time, however, you will be
obliged to fight. Nothing but a blood bath can rid you of slavery now.”
“And would you have us turn all these negroes out upon the cold world,”
cried Angela, arguing as she had been taught. “What would become of
Mammy Tulip! Who would give Uncle Hector his bread? Because neither one
of them could earn it.”
“Quite true, my little girl. But you will see Peter and Mirandy and
Lucy Ann and Sally and Jim Henry and Tasso and the rest of them all
developing into Aunt Tulips and Uncle Hectors and eating up the
substance of their masters.”
“Well, we won’t say anything more on that subject.”
“But you should be cautious in expressing your opinion in these
dangerous times if things are as they appear to be between you and
Neville.” It was the first time that Lyddon had ever alluded to the
secret tie between Angela and Neville. Angela’s face grew pale when she
should have blushed. She drew back and scrutinized Lyddon closely under
her narrow lids with their long, dark lashes.
“Of course, Neville will go with his State,” she said after a pause.
But there was no note of conviction in her voice.
“Don’t be sure of that; Neville will do what he thinks right, but his
ideas may not be yours nor even those of his father and mother, and
you must make up your mind in advance what to do when the hour of fate
strikes. It will be asking more courage of you than even a courageous
woman possesses, to take sides with Neville in case he remains in the
United States Army.”
Lyddon, like Neville, had unwittingly touched the responsive cord in
Angela’s heart. The idea that if she refused to stand by Neville she
would be reckoned a coward was the strongest motive in the world to
incline her to go with Neville.
Toward twelve o’clock Colonel Tremaine, accompanied by Archie, was
seen coming down the lane and presently dismounted disconsolately. He
was anxiously awaited by Hector, who had not the slightest desire to
keep within ten feet of Colonel Tremaine in case the colonel’s military
services should be accepted. Mrs. Tremaine and Angela were in the
garden superintending the trimming up of the shrubbery and hastened to
the gate to meet the returning absentees. Lyddon, who was sauntering
about with a book in his pocket, came up to hear the history of the
morning’s adventures. Peter was on hand to take the horses and as he
had aspirations to “go wif Marse Richard to de war,” took the liberty
after the negro fashion of listening to what his superiors had to say.
But Peter’s interest was not a patch on Hector’s, whose black face had
taken on a queer shade of ash color at the prospect of accompanying
Colonel Tremaine upon a campaign.
“Well, my dearest Sophie,” said the colonel petulantly, as soon as
Mrs. Tremaine had got through the garden gate, “I have been most
unhandsomely treated this day, most unhandsomely, and by two men whom
I regarded as lifelong friends and between whose ancestors and mine an
intimacy of generations has subsisted. I allude to Dr. Yelverton and
Colonel Carey.”
“They treated me as mean as dirt,” growled Archie.
“They did, my son?” asked Mrs. Tremaine.
“Yes, they treated this boy very ill. Colonel Carey, you know, aspires
to the colonelcy of the regiment to be raised in the county and has got
himself elected the head of the committee in charge of enlistments.
Carey knows my record in the Mexican War perfectly well when I was
his superior in rank. This morning when I reached the room in the
clerk’s office where Carey was presiding over what he calls a board
of enlistment or something of the sort, there I found this boy. All
they had to do was to look at him to know that he is fully capable of
bearing arms and accustomed to an outdoor life, but because he was not
eighteen they simply refused to listen to him and told him to go back
to his Latin grammar. This was most humiliating to the boy’s feelings.”
“It made me so mad I wanted to knock ’em both down,” cried Archie
angrily.
“And were you going to enlist, my little boy?” said Mrs. Tremaine, the
light of proud motherhood coming into her eyes. She put her arm around
the boy’s neck and kissed him on his forehead.
“Yes, I was, mother, and I can shoot as straight as either Richard or
Neville.”
Here Lyddon, who had come up, spoke. “That is true, my lad, but all
experience proves that although boys like you can fight as well as men,
they can’t march as well and they only fill up the hospitals.”
“But,” continued Colonel Tremaine, his wrath rising, “the language
and conduct of Carey and Yelverton to me was far more exasperating. I
did not attempt to disguise my age, seventy-two next September, but
as hardy as any one of my sons. I took a high tone with Carey and I
think he would have accepted my services. But then Yelverton, whom I
have known as boy and man for nearly sixty-five years, who was born
and brought up within four miles of Harrowby, took it upon himself to
inform Carey that I had rheumatism, sciatica, lumbago, and half a dozen
other diseases that I never heard of before, and absolutely laughed at
the notion of my doing military duty; laughed in my face.”
“My hero,” said Mrs. Tremaine softly, as if she were sixteen and the
colonel were twenty, while Angela, slipping her hand into Colonel
Tremaine’s, kissed him on the cheek and said, “What a brave old warrior
you are! If I were a Yankee I should certainly run when I saw you
coming at me.”
The colonel’s list of injuries was not yet exhausted and he continued
wrathfully: “But then what do you suppose I discovered? Yelverton,
whose age I know as well as mine--he will be sixty-four this very
month--I find had already enlisted as surgeon and proposes to accompany
the troops to the front. I am as robust a man as Yelverton, more so,
in fact, and told him so to his face when I found out his unhandsome
conduct. Anthony Yelverton is young enough to serve in the Southern
Army, but _I_ am not.” The colonel struck himself dramatically in the
breast with his left hand, while his right arm, stiffly extended, held
his riding crop as if it were a sword. Mrs. Tremaine duly condoled with
the colonel upon Dr. Yelverton’s reprehensible conduct.
One of those present, however, heard with unmixed satisfaction of the
result of the colonel’s expedition. This was Hector, who, as soon as he
found there was no chance of the colonel’s going to war, professed the
most reckless valor and assumed the air of a military daredevil. “Never
you min’, ole Marse,” he said, confidentially, “me’be you an’ me kin
run ’way an’ jine de army. Doan’ you ’member de song dey used to sing
in de Mex’can War, ‘Ef you wants to have a good time, jine de cava’ry!’”
“Yes, you black rascal, I do, and I also remember that I had to drag
you by the hair of your head from Harrowby to the City of Mexico, but
nobody made better time than you coming back.”
This was deeply mortifying to Hector repeated in the presence of Peter,
who thrust his tongue in his cheek and winked disrespectfully at
Hector, which caused the latter to say viciously: “You teck dem ho’ses
to de stables right ’way, you black nigger. When Marse Richard gwine to
de war I lay he teck me stid you.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” said Angela, putting her arm through
Archie’s, “if you and Uncle Tremaine didn’t both run away together some
day, but anyhow Harrowby has two men to give the State, Richard and
Neville.”
A short silence followed. Mrs. Tremaine looked down upon the ground,
and Colonel Tremaine’s troubled eyes turned from the frank and
questioning looks of Archie and Angela and Lyddon’s inscrutable gaze.
Nobody knew whether Harrowby had two men to defend Virginia or whether
there was but one, while the other should draw his sword to shed the
blood of his brethren.