THE HEGIRA
It is possible in remote country houses, especially when snowbound,
for one day to be exactly like the other for a long period. Such was
the case at Harrowby during the month after Isabey’s arrival. Each day
repeated itself; it was the worst winter known for thirty years in
eastern Virginia, and one snowstorm succeeded another. The river was
frozen, cutting off communication by water. George Charteris managed
to plunge on mule-back daily through the snow to Harrowby, but no such
mode of progression was possible for Mrs. Charteris. Angela, fired by
George Charteris’s example, had her side-saddle put on a sure-footed
mule and so ventured out a few times, but found riding rather more
difficult than walking. She had not since her marriage paid visits
anywhere except to Greenhill, and the mutual attitude of herself and
the county people was such that she had no visitors. The mails were
interrupted, and, although Mrs. Tremaine wrote daily, her letters were
long in coming and generally arrived in a batch. Richard was recovering
slowly, but Mrs. Tremaine could not think of leaving him, and Archie
would remain with them until his mother could return to Harrowby.
Madame Isabey and Adrienne were established at a Richmond hotel, and
the elder lady from her letters seemed perfectly happy. There was much
going on in the Confederate capital, and, to add zest to events, was
the continual prospect of siege and battle. She wrote that Adrienne was
much admired. At the first levee the ladies attended at the Confederate
White House, Adrienne had attracted universal admiration. The fame of
her charming voice having reached the President, he had asked her on
the occasion of her first formal visit to the executive mansion to sing
and play for him. His grave and anxious face had lightened under the
spell of her little French songs so full of grace and sentiment and
so exquisitely rendered. Great attention was shown her by everyone,
and they were asked to “refugee” for the war in several distinguished
families, but Madame Isabey declared she preferred Harrowby, and had
not seen any boy so sweet as “Monsieur Archie” with his rose-red hair.
Refugeeing was exactly like the life her grandfather lived when he was
an _émigré_ in England in 1789. She often thought what a delightful
supply of stories she would have to tell of her days as an _émigré_ in
Virginia.
Adrienne, too, wrote, and her letters were more interesting though
less expansive than Madame Isabey’s. These first letters had been
written in ignorance of Isabey’s arrival at Harrowby, but when that was
known Madame Isabey expressed the greatest solicitude, and would have
come back instantly except for the impassability of the roads between
Richmond and Harrowby.
Adrienne received in a letter from Angela the news of Isabey’s presence
at Harrowby one night just as she was dressing to go to a levee at the
White House, where she was certain to be courted and admired by all,
from the grave-faced President down to the boy lieutenants, who rode
from camp into Richmond for an evening’s pleasuring. It was, perhaps,
the knowledge that Isabey and Angela were together which brought the
color to Adrienne’s lips and cheeks and the light to her eyes. She
realized, as women do, the marked admiration she excited, the way in
which the eyes of the Confederate officers followed her slight figure
in her pale-blue draperies with diamonds in her hair and on her breast.
If only her vanity had been wounded by Isabey’s coldness to her charms
it would have been soothed by the flattering attentions lavished upon
her. But Adrienne’s wound was deeper than that. While she was receiving
with soft and smiling grace the compliments and gallant speeches of
young officers and the more insidious flattery of older men, she was
like that Spanish lover whose body was at Cordova, but whose soul was
at Seville.
Angela’s letter had described quite naturally and prettily how each day
passed at Harrowby, and Adrienne had no difficulty in calling up the
scene. At that time in the evening they were all sitting in the study
in order to keep Isabey company. Lyddon was probably reading to him
while Angela did needlework and--and Colonel Tremaine dozed during the
reading and waked up to compliment Lyddon upon his “instructive and
entertaining performance.”
Adrienne by some psychic force felt as if this scene were passing
before her in the midst of the crowded levee with the hubbub around
her, the voices high-pitched as men’s voices grow in time of war, and
with the deep and only half-concealed excitement of soldiers who turn
from looking into women’s eyes to meet the face of death in a thousand
different forms, and of women who laugh tremulously to-night because
after to-morrow they might never laugh again. The crowd, the laughter,
the voices, the glances, bold, or shy, or meditative, seemed wholly
unreal to Adrienne, and what was tangible was the scene in the quiet
study, with Lyddon’s calm voice, as Angela had described--Isabey’s
eyes fixed upon Angela with that expression of profound interest and
tenderness which Adrienne had observed more than once. When the levee
was over and she was back in her room at the hotel, she sat for a long
time before her mirror, surveying herself in her laces and diamonds.
She pitied Isabey quite as much as herself, for Adrienne was not
incapable of generosity. Isabey was only a few days too late when he
reached the gate of paradise; it was closing, and nothing can arrest
the closing of those immortal gates. One thing, however, Adrienne
divined with the prescience of love, that Isabey would have a month
of happiness, a little time of radiance when Angela’s image, already
strongly impressed upon him, would become a part of himself. The
thought of this was poignant to her and kept her awake as she lay in
her bed.
Angela had written that Isabey’s improvement was wonderful even in the
three or four days he had been at Harrowby. It continued so, and in a
week he was another man. The thinness about his temples disappeared,
and his face was no longer pinched and wan, nor did his uniform hang
so pitifully loose upon his figure. In a fortnight he was well except
for his arm and leg. He could, with the assistance of a stick, limp
about the ground floor, but his arm was still in a sling. Nevertheless,
he would abate none of his invalid privileges as far as Angela was
concerned. He made the same silent appeal to her for her gentle
ministrations, and it never occurred to Angela to withhold them. Life
went on, dreamlike, in the isolated country house, and was sweeter for
being so dreamlike. Little news of any sort reached them either from
the Confederate camp fifteen miles in one direction or the Federal
camp twenty miles the other way. The outside world seemed so distant
to Angela that what she heard of the crouching dogs of war so close at
hand made little impression upon her. However, it was brought home to
her through the most unlikely of mediums--Mammy Tulip.
One night the old woman followed Angela to her room at bedtime, and,
after shutting the door, came up to her and whispered mysteriously:
“Miss Angela, ef you will wrote a letter to Marse Neville, and watch
outen de window to’des my house ’bout twelve o’clock, an’ ef you see me
come to de door an’ wave a candle an’ you drap de letter on de groun’,
somebody will pick it up, an’ Marse Neville will git it sho’.”
“What do you mean, Mammy Tulip?” asked Angela in amazement.
“Chile, doan’ you neber ax me what I mean; you jes wrote dat letter an’
gib my lub an’ ’spects to Marse Neville, an’ tell him to say he pra’ers
jes’ as reg’lar as he change he shirts. I know he ain’ neber gwine
to fergit to change he shirt, wartime or no wartime; an’ you drap de
letter outen de window----”
She caught Angela by the arm, and continued in an agitated whisper:
“Fur Gord’s sake, doan’ tole nobody ’bout drapping de letter on de
groun’.”
Angela was astonished, but could get no explanation out of Mammy Tulip,
except pleadings that she write the letter, and then the old woman
waddled off.
Angela wrote Neville a long letter, telling him what was happening at
Harrowby, the news of Richard and of his mother, of Isabey’s presence
there, and lastly assuring him of her love and constant remembrance and
desire to join him as soon as possible.
It was eleven o’clock before the letter was finished. Formerly Angela
could dash off letters to Neville as fast as she could write, but now
she wrote carefully weighing every word. She sat on the floor before
her fire, looking into the dying embers and puzzling over many things.
She could not form the least conjecture how her letter would reach
Neville, but a little before twelve o’clock she looked out of her
window and saw a candle waving at the door of Mammy Tulip’s house. Then
Angela softly raised the sash, and the letter, sealed and addressed,
fluttered out into the darkness and dropped upon the snow-covered
ground. Angela, after a glance at the black sky and the white earth,
put down her window and went to bed, where she soon fell into the deep,
sweet sleep, that glorious heritage of youth and health of which she
had not yet been robbed.
Next morning, however, the explanation of Mammy Tulip’s action became
apparent, and the nearness of the Federals was brought home to everyone
at Harrowby. Tasso, Jim Henry, Mirandy, Lucy Ann, and more than twenty
of the younger negroes failed to report to Hector’s bugle call.
When Angela came downstairs to breakfast she saw the unwonted spectacle
of Hector laying the breakfast table.
“Dem worthless black niggers is done gone to de Yankees,” Hector
explained, sententiously, “wid some o’ de likeliest young niggers on
dis heah place.”
Angela was astounded.
“Gone to the Yankees! Gone to the Yankees!” she repeated.
“Yes, Miss Angela.”
Colonel Tremaine and Lyddon came in and Hector told his story.
“Las’ night,” he said, “’bout twelve o’clock, a’ter all de lights in
de house was out, dey started afoot wid dey bundles. De walkin’ in de
snow is mighty bad, but dey thought ’twould keep ole Marse from girtin’
a’ter ’em an’ bringin’ dem back.”
“I have no desire whatever to bring them back,” replied Colonel
Tremaine with dignity, “and when the war is over we shall exact full
compensation from the North for every negro enticed away from his
master or mistress. Angela, my dear,” he continued, turning to her, “we
must bring in two of the field hands in place of Tasso and Jim Henry,
and I will endeavor to recruit for you three or four maids from the
spinning and weaving rooms.”
Here Mammy Tulip bounced in wrathfully, apologetic, and yet with a
species of shamefaced triumph. It was her first view of freedom for her
race. Mirandy was her granddaughter, and Mammy Tulip tried to explain
Mirandy’s defection.
“Tasso an’ Jim Henry an’ de rest on ’em kep’ on arter Mirandy to go wid
’em, an’ things is mighty nice wid dem Yankees now. De colored folks
wid dem dance ebery night, and dey can git a fiddler any time fur a
quarter, an’ quarters is plentiful wid de Yankees. An’ sech funerals!
De music a-playin’ an’ hollerin’ wid pleasure an’ sometimes two or
three gret big funerals a day!”
Angela was too stunned at Mirandy’s levanting to appreciate this view,
but Mammy Tulip, seeing this, assumed a still more apologetic attitude.
“Mirandy, she hol’ out long time. She say she cyarn’ lave Miss Angela,
an’ ef it hadn’t been for dem funerals, I doan’ believe Mirandy ever
would a gone ’way. An’ de larst thing she say was: ‘Please ax Miss
Angela to ’scuse me.’ Den she cry an’ say, ‘O granmammy, what Miss
Angela gwine do widout me?’” And then Mammy Tulip suddenly whisked
herself out of the room so as to avoid being questioned.
Hector perforce had gone out to bring in breakfast, a labor which he
had long since foregone.
As soon as Mammy Tulip and he were out of the room, Lyddon said to
Colonel Tremaine: “Hector, as well as the old woman, knows all about
it, as you see. No doubt the plans of these young negroes were made
long ago, and probably every other negro on the plantation knows it.”
Colonel Tremaine looked pained and mystified.
“It seems incredible to me,” he said, “that Hector, who has been my
boy for nearly sixty years, should know of any such design without
informing me. When I took him to Baltimore in ’52, he carried all the
money for the journey in a belt around his waist, and when a negro
abolitionist would have beguiled him into escaping to Philadelphia,
Hector remarked that he had money enough in his belt to buy the
abolition negro and all his family. It is impossible that he should
change in his attitude toward me.”
“The attitude of every negro toward every white person is changed,”
coolly replied Lyddon. “Why should it not be?” Just then Hector came
in with the tray from the kitchen, carrying mountains of muffins and
batter cakes. Colonel Tremaine sought his eye, but Hector, for the
first time in his life, evaded the look.
“Very well,” cried Angela, with spirit, “if all the negroes go away we
can do as Marie Antoinette and her ladies did at the Little Trianon.
I can make the butter, uncle, if you will milk the cows.” At which
Colonel Tremaine smiled grimly, and remarked that during the Mexican
War he had acquired the accomplishment of being able to milk a cow into
a bottle and generally without the knowledge of the cow’s owner.
This flight of the negroes from Harrowby was paralleled by what
occurred within a few days at numerous estates in the county. The young
negroes went off in droves, taking advantage of the snow to avoid
pursuit.
George Charteris had a harrowing tale to tell of every house servant
at Greenhill disappearing in a single night, and this with a family of
refugees, including five small children, in the house. Mrs. Charteris
had been forced to import a plowman into the dining room as butler, who
put his fingers in the glasses at dinner and called sauce for the suet
pudding “slush for de tallow roll.”
Angela’s experiences were not unlike these. A couple of raw ebony
youths, Tom and Israel, otherwise known as Izzle, occupied but did not
fill the places of the well-trained Tasso and Jim Henry. They were
frightened half out of their lives at “Unc’ Hector” and fled from his
face when he was endeavoring to teach them their business. They fell
over each other in their desire to oblige “Miss Angela,” whom they
adored, and collided with each other at frequent intervals during every
meal.
“I ’clare to Gord, Miss Angela,” groaned Hector, “dem black niggers
gwine lose me my ’ligion. At pra’r time ’stid o’ praying I jes goes
down on my knees and cusses dem niggers same like Abraham cussed Isaac
and Rebekah. If Job had had black Torm an’ Izzle, he would have cussed
the Gord an’ died, an’ I ain’ no better’n than Job. Lord A’mighty! I
wonder what General Zachary Taylor, ole Ruff an’ Ready, as dey called
him, would a’ done wid Torm an’ Izzle.”
“The best he could, I suppose, Uncle Hector,” responded Angela promptly
and with the positiveness of youth.
But housekeeping with Hector, who knew not the name of work, and Torm
and Izzle became a complicated matter. Hector’s sole real employment
for many decades had been to shave Colonel Tremaine every morning, and
to this he laboriously added blacking the Colonel’s shoes and brushing
his suit of homespun.
Mammy Tulip, however, came nobly to the front and did the work of
butler and valet, cuffed Torm and Izzle when they were idle, and in
general kept the whole Harrowby establishment from falling into chaos.
She maintained a strange reserve toward Angela, whom she had cradled
in her arms, but at the end of a few days came to her with the same
mysterious suggestion that a letter be written to Neville. Angela wrote
again and dropped her letter out of the window as before. Next morning
George Charteris brought over the news that the plowman butler at
Greenhill had disappeared in the night for the Federal lines and half a
dozen of the few remaining able-bodied negro men at Greenhill.
Angela’s mind was illuminated. Mammy Tulip knew of these impending
flights and was shrewd enough to see in them a means of communicating
with Neville. That the scheme worked was soon shown by Angela’s
receiving a fortnight later a reply from Neville, who was still in
the West. It was given to her privately by Mammy Tulip. It bore the
receiving postmark of the military post office at Yorktown and from
there had been sent to its destination through hands unknown by Angela,
but perfectly well known to Mammy Tulip.
This secret communication with the outside world had in it something
painful and disquieting to Angela. These servitors of another race,
these feudal dependents whom she had been bred to believe absolutely
devoted to the white family and to have no independent life of thought
and action, had reversed all these beliefs. They had abandoned their
masters, but not their own kith and kin, with whom they kept in
touch secretly and silently. Angela spoke of this next day to Isabey
when they sat as usual in the study, Angela reading to him. She had
discovered in herself a strange inability to keep anything from Isabey.
Her nature was frank and open, and she could reason well enough on what
she should tell or withhold from Neville, but Isabey’s presence was a
magic spell which seemed to unlock her heart and mind, and she could
not keep from him her most secret thoughts.
Isabey had learned to know the signs of Angela’s coming confidences,
the way in which she would timidly approach a subject, and then as
if by some uncontrollable impulse tell him all. He had been speaking
of this departure of the negroes and of the dangers which would
await them, in their ignorance and helplessness, exposed to the
demoralization which infests all camps. In a moment Isabey saw that he
had touched a sensitive chord. Angela laid down her book and going to
the window looked out upon the dull wintry landscape. Isabey watched
her with that sense of inward triumph which every human being feels who
controls the will of another. In a minute or two she came back, and,
standing before Isabey’s couch, said in a whisper:
“Last night I had a letter from Neville. It came to me so mysteriously,
not through Mr. Lyddon.” And then she poured out the story about Mammy
Tulip.
“I didn’t promise her not to tell,” Angela said breathlessly at the
end, “for I must open my heart sometimes and I have no one--no one----”
“Except me,” added Isabey quietly, and then could have struck himself
for saying it. But he was only human after all, and he loved Angela
with a strength and passion which amazed even himself.
Angela, as the case always was when Isabey made betrayal of himself,
flushed deeply and lowered her eyes, and then after a moment recovered
herself and said coldly:
“And Mr. Lyddon. I have always told Mr. Lyddon everything since I was a
little child.”
“Yes, and Mr. Lyddon,” Isabey said, composedly.
Angela’s involuntary readiness to pour out her heart to him always
touched him as nothing else on earth had ever done, but she likewise
commanded his admiration and respect by the steadiness with which she
upheld the letter of the law. Isabey often thought that no woman of
forty could have maintained the attitude of loyalty to her husband with
more tenacity and dignity than this girl of barely twenty. The garrison
might be weak, but the citadel was strong.
Just then Lyddon entered unexpectedly, and Angela, as if to prove she
had no separate confidences with Isabey, told Lyddon the story. Lyddon
expressed no surprise.
“You blessed Southerners,” he said, “have all along expected water
to run uphill. You may make a human being a chattel legally, but you
cannot make him so actually.”
“Then would you make them citizens?” asked Angela, tartly; and Lyddon
good-humoredly taking up the cudgels, a warm discussion followed on the
question of slavery. Angela, like many Southern women, was familiar
with the dialectics of the question and was able to make a clever
defense of a doubtful position.
Isabey listened in amused silence, watching Angela’s usually soft
manner growing more excited, her eyes becoming brilliant, and the
quickness of her intelligence in meeting Lyddon’s arguments. The
discussion was ended by Lyddon’s saying, laughing: “Come now, little
girl, you’ve said all you know on the subject and have done better than
a good many orators on the hustings. However, I only discuss it with
you because I can’t talk about it to anyone else in the county except
with Captain Isabey here. The ribbon around your neck is all awry, and
your hair is tumbling down just as it always does when you get warm in
argument. What a nice arguing wife Neville will have!”
“I shan’t argue with Neville,” replied Angela in her sweetest voice,
and looking straight at Isabey. “Neville knows more than anyone in the
world. He’s always right and always has been. I thought so from the
time I could first remember, and I haven’t changed my opinion.”
“That’s the way I shall wish my wife to talk when I have one,” was
Lyddon’s rejoinder, a possibility so preposterous that both Isabey and
Angela laughed at the mere suggestion.
In writing to Mrs. Tremaine that day Angela could not forbear telling
her of the letter she had received from Neville and that he was well
and hoping from week to week he and Angela might be united. Nor could
she refrain from telling the same thing to Colonel Tremaine, who
listened to it in cold silence, which presently changed to agitation.
However fierce his resentment against that once loved, eldest son, he
could not pretend indifference; love cannot be strangled.
After that once or twice a week Mammy Tulip would come to Angela with
suggestions that she write to Neville, following the same method as at
first, and Angela invariably did so. The steady march of negroes to the
Federal lines revealed easily to Angela what became of her letters.
The month which Isabey had given himself had passed quickly, and at
the end of that time he was ready, as far as his health was concerned,
to take the road. But broken and lacerated limbs are not mended in a
month, and Colonel Tremaine put an absolute veto upon Isabey’s leaving
Harrowby.
“My dear sir,” he said, authoritatively, “I am an old campaigner and I
can assure you that a soldier who is practically legless and armless is
no help to an army, and merely serves to eat up the provender. You are
absolutely useless in any capacity until you are able to walk and use
your right arm freely, and until then it is your duty--your duty, sir,
to our country--to remain at Harrowby and recuperate.”
“It’s rather hard,” remarked Isabey, “to sit here in idleness and
comfort, eating and sleeping and reading and dozing when every man who
can carry a musket is needed at the front.”
“How do you think,” asked Colonel Tremaine, calmly, “you would get on
riding a horse? It would be necessary to help you up and help you off
again, and as for arms, you would have to manage your horse, and fire
your pistol at the same time with your left hand. And if all went well,
the best that you could expect would be to be in a hospital at the end
of a week. No, sir, you will remain at Harrowby.”
Colonel Tremaine’s logic was unanswerable, and Isabey remained.
Nevertheless, he had waked from the soft dream in which he spent the
first few weeks of his return. It was now February and the land still
lay in an icy grasp, but spring would soon be at hand, and Isabey felt
a soldier’s impatience to be at his post. Angela’s society was not less
delicious to him; rather had he become more absolutely enchained. But
being a man he put fetters upon his will, his inclination, his voice,
and, taking his passion by the throat, mastered it. Only his eyes
remained uncontrolled, and sometimes in unguarded moments were eloquent
in a language which Angela perfectly understood.
Only Lyddon saw this; Colonel Tremaine never saw anything.