THE TONGUE OF CALUMNY
One Sunday morning a week or two after this, Angela announced that
she intended to ride to church. The roads were still impassable for
carriages, but a sure-footed horse could make his way along. Colonel
Tremaine at once said that he, too, would join the enterprise. When
Angela, in her riding habit, came downstairs about ten o’clock she
found the horse at the door and a third one, upon which Hector was
assisting Isabey. The horse was a retired cob of Colonel Tremaine’s and
had passed his fifteenth birthday and being well gaited was admirably
suited as a charger for a wounded officer. Just as Isabey had settled
himself in the saddle and gathered the reins in his uninjured left
hand, Colonel Tremaine came out.
“My dear sir,” he protested to Isabey, “this is extremely rash. You are
not able to manage a horse.”
“I think I can manage this one,” answered Isabey, smiling, “and I
mean to risk it. It makes me feel like a soldier once more to be on
horseback.”
Colonel Tremaine swung Angela into her saddle, a privilege which Isabey
envied from the bottom of his heart, and the three started off.
It was a shining winter morning, and the snow-covered earth glittered
in the crystalline light. In many places the roads had thawed, and
progress was difficult, but Isabey showed himself able with one hand
to manage his steed. Angela, who rode like a bird, looked well on
horseback, and Isabey began to believe, as Lyddon did, that some day
her girlish charms would develop into real beauty.
When they reached Petworth Church a fair-sized congregation had already
assembled. There were among them a few old men and some schoolboys.
Of these not one advanced to assist Angela from her horse, but this
Colonel Tremaine did with old-fashioned grace. Isabey, meanwhile,
managed to swing himself off his horse without much difficulty and limp
up the flagged path on the one side of Angela, while Colonel Tremaine
was on the other. The coldness toward Angela had in no wise abated
since the May Sunday, nine months before, when her marriage to Neville
Tremaine had become known, but no one until now had actually refused to
speak to her. On this day, however, every eye was averted from her, and
even Colonel Tremaine was avoided.
Mrs. Charteris was not at church, but George Charteris was there. He
dared not refuse to speak to Angela, but the whole Harrowby party
observed him skulking behind the churchyard wall, and keeping out of
sight when Angela went into the church and when she passed out so that
he might escape speaking to her.
Angela said no word nor did Colonel Tremaine, but both, as well as
Isabey, surmised that something had gone abroad concerning her which
incensed the people still more against her. She was very far from
insensible to the treatment she received and was silent all the way
riding home. In the afternoon when, according to her custom, she went
into the study to read to Isabey, he saw that she had been weeping,
and guessed the cause of it. When he gently alluded to it, Angela
burst into a passion of tears and left the room. Isabey clenched his
one sound fist and longed to take vengeance upon the people who, as he
thought, so cruelly ill-treated this innocent girl. He revolved in his
mind the increase of hostility toward Angela and at last determined to
go to see Mrs. Charteris and ask her if she could account for it.
Next day, having proved his ability to mount a horse, he asked for his
charger of the day before and rode over to Greenhill. He was careful
to time his visit so that George Charteris would be studying with Mr.
Lyddon; Isabey felt that he could not answer for himself if he should
catch sight of the boy that day. When he reached Greenhill he was shown
into the old-fashioned drawing-room, and presently Mrs. Charteris
sailed in. She sat down on a huge horsehair sofa and made Isabey
sit beside her, who, not yet wholly familiar with Virginia manners,
wondered whether Mrs. Charteris expected him to make love to her after
such a familiarity.
“I have been very busy all day,” she said. “As you have heard, perhaps,
all of my house servants have decamped, and with a family of refugee
children under ten years of age there is much to be done.”
“I have no house in Virginia in which to entertain refugees,” murmured
Isabey. “God be thanked for it!”
“Oh, you wicked, inhospitable creature!” cried Mrs. Charteris. “Do you
mean to say that if you had a house and your fellow countrywomen were
running away from the Yankees you wouldn’t throw open your house and
heart to them?”
“Oh, yes, I would throw open my house and heart to them, but,
meanwhile, I should go and camp out in the forest! Five children under
ten years of age! It is sweet to die for one’s country in preference to
living in the house with five children.”
Mrs. Charteris was much disgusted with him for these sentiments,
and so expressed herself. She then inquired after Madame Isabey and
Adrienne in Richmond, and how the family at Harrowby were doing in Mrs.
Tremaine’s absence, and especially after the hegira of most of the
house servants.
“We are doing remarkably well,” answered Isabey. “Mrs. Neville Tremaine
is, you know, a very accomplished housekeeper and manages admirably the
raw hands imported into the house,” Isabey continued, speaking easily
and naturally of Angela, meaning to lead up to the object of his visit:
but Mrs. Charteris suddenly forced his hand. She paused a moment, and
then said with a sad and perplexed air:
“Captain Isabey, may I give you a caution?”
“Certainly,” replied Isabey, smiling. “I am the most cautious man
alive, and have more cautions than enterprises, but I should not mind a
few more.”
“It is a serious business upon which I wish to warn you,” replied Mrs.
Charteris, gravely. And then, leaning toward him, she continued in a
low voice: “Be very careful what you say before Angela Tremaine!”
Isabey looked at her in astonishment, and made no reply, and Mrs.
Charteris spoke again quietly:
“You know the suspicion about her which has gone all over the county.”
“I do not know of the slightest suspicion which attaches to Mrs.
Neville Tremaine,” replied Isabey, in a tone which startled Mrs.
Charteris. She looked at him narrowly. He had perfect command over his
temper, his tongue, and his features, but the blood had suddenly poured
into his dark face, and Mrs. Charteris’s eagle eye saw it and promptly
grasped that Angela Tremaine possessed great interest for Isabey. It
only made her more keen to put him on his guard.
“What I mean,” she said, “is that Angela Tremaine is in constant
communication with Neville Tremaine, and it is believed that she sends
Neville news of the Confederates which, of course, is meant to injure
us.”
“In short,” said Isabey, rising and standing very erect, “that Mrs.
Neville Tremaine is thought to be a spy. Excuse me, but such a
suspicion never entered my mind before, nor do I feel able to entertain
it now. Who is responsible for this rumor?”
“Everybody,” replied Mrs. Charteris, rising and throwing her hands
wide. “It is all over the county. At church yesterday I hear that no
one spoke to Angela.”
“That is true, for I was present. And this on a suspicion merely. She
a young girl, grown up in this community, known to all of you since her
babyhood!”
“My dear Captain Isabey, you seem unacquainted with the tricks of love.
Angela probably adores Neville and may consider it her duty to tell him
all she knows concerning the movements of the Confederates.”
“Never! Mrs. Neville Tremaine has too nice a sense of honor for that.
I hardly think you can realize the seriousness of the charge which is
made against her.”
“It is serious enough,” answered Mrs. Charteris in a grave voice.
“And what could she possibly know,” asked Isabey, “that would be of the
slightest consequence? How strange are women, after all! Nothing is too
gross for them to believe.”
Mrs. Charteris took this slur upon her sex with perfect calmness. She
saw that, despite Isabey’s outward composure, he was shaken to the
center of his soul. He was the most courteous of men, and his attitude
toward women was one of delicate compliment, and these last unguarded
words which had escaped from him, and that, too, in the presence of
a woman, were significant. Isabey walked up and down the room. Mrs.
Charteris remained standing, with one hand on the back of her chair,
and, picking up a fan, fanned herself with some agitation. Isabey,
after a few turns up and down the room, came back and scrutinized her
as closely as she had examined him a few moments before.
“I think,” said Isabey, coolly changing the subject, “that the
psychology of this war time is profoundly interesting. Not only
everything is changed, but everybody. Two years ago you Virginia
people were the quietest provincials that ever lived. I know you
well. I have visited in Virginia, and I have seen hundreds of you at
your baths and springs, and all of you are alike in some respects. I,
who know the great round world well, was always impressed by these
Virginia people as having been drugged. You didn’t seem to realize that
the world was closing in round you, around the whole South, for that
matter, and that some day a convulsion must come. I myself own three
hundred negroes. My father owned nearly a thousand, but I have been
preparing for a change ever since I grew a mustache. I have not gone on
investing in land and negroes quite unconscious that any other values
existed. If the North should succeed and the negroes should be free, I
should not be penniless, but for most of the people of the South all
values would be destroyed.”
Mrs. Charteris suspected that this digression was really meant by
Isabey to lead away from the subject of Angela, which apparently was
of such acute interest to him. But she answered promptly enough and
according to her lights:
“You are not one of these crazy abolitionists, I hope. What would we do
with the negroes if we freed them? Look at my place. I have a hundred
of them here, happy, well-fed, well cared for, nursed in illness,
provided for in old age, decently buried when they are dead. Every
Sunday afternoon I give up my time to teaching a Sunday-school among
them. Every negro woman on this place has one of my silk dresses which
I have given her. What do you say to that?” she cried vehemently.
Isabey laughed at Mrs. Charteris’s final enumeration of the disposition
of her old silk gowns, and the tension between them was somewhat
relieved, but he went on:
“I say the psychology of this struggle is strange. I think it is
like what the old noblesse in France went through at the time of the
Revolution. They would not believe that anything was going to happen
until something had happened. Two years ago this county was like a
Garden of Eden for peace, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” replied Mrs. Charteris, “a great deal too much like the Garden
of Eden. I was the only person in the county who ever quarreled with
anybody, and nobody would ever quarrel with me with the spirit and
energy I should have liked. We talked and thought of nothing except
the best way to make mango pickle, the new fashions from Baltimore,
and our trips to the White Sulphur Springs in summer. Now we spend our
time scraping up our old linen sheets and pillowcases into lint for the
soldiers, our looms and spinning wheels are going like mad, and we make
jokes when we sweeten our potato coffee with honey instead of sugar.
Every man in the county who can handle a musket or saber has gone to
the war.”
“Except the Rev. Mr. Brand,” said Isabey, gravely, at which Mrs.
Charteris suddenly rippled into laughter.
“My son is simply watching his chance to slip away to the instruction
camp. He would be returned, of course, by the military authorities,
because his age is known, but if he can get as far as Richmond he can
pass himself off for full eighteen. Archie Tremaine is just the same,
and Mrs. Tremaine and I know what is in those boys’ hearts. When my boy
runs away he will take his mother’s blessing with him.”
Mrs. Charteris spoke with a kindling eye and the color suffused her
smooth cheek. Isabey looked at her admiringly. Her matronly beauty was
resplendent, and the high courage which made her eager to give this
darling only son to her country was worthy of the brave days of old.
Then Isabey spoke again of Angela, but evidently under restraint.
“I wish,” he said, “that you, with your determination and
high-handedness, would stand by Mrs. Neville Tremaine and help to
disprove this horrid suspicion against her. It is ridiculous, as I say.
She has nothing to tell about military matters that would be worth any
man’s listening. She knows nothing; how can she?”
“One can hear a good many things,” replied Mrs. Charteris.
“My dear madam, you can depend upon it, the military authorities at
the North know quite as much as Mrs. Neville Tremaine or any other
girl in this county can tell them. Her position is painful enough, God
knows, and this frightful suspicion makes it that much worse. Only
exercise your own sound sense for a moment, Mrs. Charteris, and see how
impossible it is that Angela--that Mrs. Neville Tremaine should be able
to communicate anything.”
But Mrs. Charteris was obstinate. She was not a military critic, and
was well convinced, as she said, that people knew a great many things.
At last, however, she heard Isabey say under his breath: “Poor, poor
Angela!” Then Mrs. Charteris’s excellent heart was touched. She put her
hand impulsively into Isabey’s and said:
“After all, it may not be true, and I will stand Angela’s friend.”
Isabey pressed her plump hand softly and said in his musical,
insinuating voice:
“I knew you would be intelligent enough to see the absurdity of the
story, and kind enough not to hound that poor girl with the rest. I
feel for her very deeply. My strong attachment to Richard Tremaine
since our university days and the kindness of the Tremaines to my
stepmother and her daughter has touched me deeply. The thought of the
grief and mortification this story might bring to them is very painful
to me.”
Mrs. Charteris, being a woman, suspected that there were other reasons
than the attachment to Richard Tremaine and Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine’s
kindness which accounted for Isabey’s interest in Angela. The novel
thought pierced her mind that it was possible for a man to feel a deep
personal and secret interest in a married woman, but he must be a very
peculiar man, thought Mrs. Charteris, for she had never known such a
thing to be in Virginia. She looked at Isabey, therefore, with new
interest, and concluded that the French Creoles were very different
from the Virginians.
“Now,” she said triumphantly, “you must have snack.”
Isabey gracefully submitted, and drank a couple of glasses of
blackberry wine, and ate some cakes with coriander seeds in them and
sweetened with molasses, handed by the successor of the ex-plowman.
When Isabey was leaving, Mrs. Charteris went with him out upon the
porch and pointed to a great snow-covered field which the year before
had been down in clover and which another season would grow cotton. She
uttered at the same time the axiom of the whole South:
“As long as we can raise cotton we can whip the North. Cotton is king!”
Isabey returned to Harrowby uncertain whether or not Angela had an ally
in Mrs. Charteris.
After a month of storm and snow and sleet, Nature smiled once more.
The days grew long, the sun shone with the ardor of spring, and under
the melting snow the first tender shoots of grass made a bold stand.
Isabey watched for the first time the drama of the development of the
garden--a drama interpreted by Angela.
On a still, sunny March day he limped up and down the garden path with
Angela, who talked with lips and eyes to him. She examined the tracks
her little feet made along the path and laughed at them.
“You see,” she said, “I am wearing a pair of new shoes made by Uncle
Mat, the shoemaker who makes for the servants. I haven’t had any new
shoes for more than a year, not since the war began. So I had Uncle Mat
make me a pair in order to save my best shoes for the time when I shall
go to Neville. Uncle Mat can’t sew shoes--he only pegs them; and see
what funny marks the pegs leave in the damp ground.”
Isabey looked at the tracks of the clumsy little shoes, but not even
Uncle Mat could wholly disguise the high-bred beauty of Angela’s feet.
“Last night,” she continued, “I forgot all about the shoes being
pegged, and after I went upstairs sat for a long time with my feet to
the fire. The heat drew every blessed peg out of the soles, and this
morning Uncle Mat had to drive them back again, to stay until I put my
feet to the fire again. Oh, I don’t mind this; it is just like Marie
Antoinette and the Princess Elizabeth in the Temple!”
Pacing slowly up and down the broad, bright walk, she told with a grave
and serious air the story of the garden.
“Now,” she said, “in the springtime the overture begins. I have never
been to an opera, but I know exactly how it all goes; Mr. Lyddon and
Richard and Neville have told me. First the flutes and violins begin
softly, you know, and their odor is delicate. Then presently the other
flowers join in this silent music; the snowballs and the syringas are
added to the orchestra. I always think the big lilac bushes and the
calycanthus, that delicious sweet-smelling shrub which grows all over
the place, are like the bass viol and the violoncello in the orchestra,
they are so strong and overpowering. And the great pink crape-myrtle
is like the big drum; it blooms so loudly. The little flowers, like
the lilies of the valley and the violets and the hyacinths, are like
the new prima donnas, who are young and timid and afraid to sing out
loud. But then come the roses. They are the great prima donnas, who
are confident of themselves and know they will be applauded and come
out smiling and sing as loud as ever they please. And the whole opera
begins: June, July, August, September, October, and November, when the
curtain comes down and the music stops until the next performance,
which begins again in March.”
Isabey smiled. After all, in many ways she was only a poetic and
fanciful child. Her imagination, stimulated by the reading of many
books, was vigorous, but she had in her the spirit of daring and
adventure, and her eyes and cheeks quickly kindled into flame at
the mere mention of action. He wondered what was to be the path her
delicate feet were to tread through life. If only he might walk beside
her forever!
The snow was all gone from the garden and the lane, but lingered in
patches in the woods, and in the old graveyard in the field there were
still white drifts upon the graves.
“In a week or two,” said Angela, “I will take you into the woods and
you can see the pink buds of the chestnut trees. They have the most
delicious fragrance of all the trees.”
“I shan’t be here by that time,” replied Isabey quietly. “When I am
able to walk as far as the woods I shall be able to return to duty.”
He watched her as he spoke, knowing well that at the mention of
separation the blood would drop out of her cheeks and her eyes would
become dark and troubled, like a pool over which a cloud is passing.
Nevertheless, Angela spoke quickly the thought in her heart:
“Of course. A soldier can’t shirk his duty--you least of all. I could
just as soon imagine Neville or Richard seeking inglorious ease as
you. Though Neville is with the North, it makes me proud to feel that
no Southern man skulks at home.”
“That is true,” remarked Isabey. “Most of them want to go, and the
others dare not remain behind; the ladies won’t let them.”
“Do you mean to say,” indignantly asked Angela, “that any Southern man
would stay at home now?”
“A few would,” coolly replied Isabey. “But they are more afraid of
their womenkind than they are of Northern bullets. I know several men
of my own age in New Orleans who would have been very glad to find
business in Paris until this little zephyr blows over, but not one of
them ever dared to mention as much to his wife or mother or sisters.”
“How long will the war last?” asked Angela.
“Until there is not enough lead in the Confederacy to fire another
round. We are not only fighting for our independence but for our whole
social and economic structure. No people ever had so great a stake in
war. How do we know what will happen if the war goes against us? A
military despotism may be established; we may be reduced to a position
like Carthage!”
Angela paused awhile and then asked:
“When will you go away from Harrowby?”
“Next week, I think. You see, although I am not able to go out on the
firing line just yet, I can do a great many things in camp. I have
written, therefore, to General Farrington at the camp of instruction,
offering my services for ordinary regimental duties and saying I can
report next week. And I have written my servant, whom I left with
a brother officer in my battery, to report at the instruction camp
as soon as possible; so you see I am preparing to break up my winter
quarters.”
“Then,” said Angela, “we must do everything we can to get you in good
condition and supply you with some comforts as soon as you are in camp.
I shall give you some tallow candles and blackberry wine and everything
else a soldier can use.”
How well fitted she was, thought Isabey, to be a soldier’s wife!
No idle repining, no tears to make the parting harder, no timid
apprehensions to be combated, were in this girl, but calm courage,
hope, cheerfulness, and faith.
That day a letter was received from Mrs. Tremaine. Richard was well
recovered and able to join his battery. His mother and Archie were then
in Richmond, staying at the hotel with Madame Isabey and Adrienne.
Adrienne was a great belle, and their little drawing-room was full of
officers every evening, riding in from the surrounding country for an
hour or two, to listen to Adrienne’s pretty French songs and delightful
conversation.
Mrs. Tremaine fully expected Adrienne and Madame Isabey to return
with her, but they had received a pressing invitation from some
friends above Richmond to spend a month or two, and had accepted it.
They promised, however, to return to Harrowby in the early summer
and to remain during the war. Archie was much disappointed because
Madame Isabey would not return to Harrowby with them, and declared he
admired her more than any of the pretty girls he had seen so far in
his career. Mrs. Tremaine hoped that Captain Isabey was improving and
that Angela had omitted nothing to make him comfortable. Hard as the
parting had been with Richard, Mrs. Tremaine wrote she could no longer
be satisfied away from Colonel Tremaine, and hoped, as this was the
longest separation of their married life, that they would never be
apart again.
Colonel Tremaine was like a lover expecting his mistress, and Angela
busied herself more than ever in training the green hands about the
house, so that Mrs. Tremaine should not miss the familiar servants who
had gone to the Yankees. There were no longer twenty-five of them to be
called by the bell on the back porch. Ten only answered to the call,
and most of these were half-grown boys and girls.
A few days before Mrs. Tremaine arrived Isabey left Harrowby. On the
morning of his departure he lingered for a moment in the old study,
recalling the exquisite hours he had spent there listening to Angela’s
voice, watching her slight and supple figure and delicate hands as she
ministered to him. The sweetness and pain of it was so sharp that he
could not linger, and, going out, he began his farewells.
The servants were all sorry to part with him. Mammy Tulip, who had
“nursed him like a baby,” as she expressed it, called down blessings on
his head and warned him to keep well away from Yankee bullets, which
Isabey gravely promised her he would do.
Hector declared that the parting reminded him of when he bade a last
farewell to General Scott at the end of the Mexican War.
“De gineral when he shook my han’ say: ‘Hector, dis heah partin’ is
de hardest I ever see, but, thank Gord, I had you while I need you
most--when we was fightin’ dem damn, infernal, low-lived Mexicans. An’
as fur dat scoundrel, Gineral Santa Anna, I never would ha’ cotch him
ef it hadn’t been fur you.’”
Out on the porch in the spring morning stood Angela, Colonel Tremaine,
and Lyddon. Nothing could exceed the kindness of their parting words.
Colonel Tremaine urged Isabey to come to see them whenever the pressure
of his military duties relaxed, and especially if he fell ill to
remember that Harrowby was his home. Lyddon said with truth that
Isabey’s presence during the stormy winter had brightened Harrowby.
When Angela bade him farewell, Isabey thanked her with French ceremony
for her kindness to him and said truly it had helped more than anything
else toward his recovery.
“I hope it did,” replied Angela. “You were a very good patient, and I
liked to attend upon you.”
“Pray when you write to Neville give him my warm regards,” said Isabey
boldly, “and tell him that I respect his course while I lament it.”
“Thank you,” answered Angela with dignity. “I shall have pleasure in
writing this to Neville.”
Isabey still halted a little in his walk, but was able to mount and
ride gallantly away. As he cantered down the cedar lane Angela stood
watching him. All had left the porch except herself. At the end of the
lane, half a mile away, she saw Isabey stop his horse and turn in his
saddle and look long at the hospitable roof which had sheltered him.
Far in the distance though he was, she waved the corner of her scarlet
mantle to him and he took off his cap in reply. Angela turned toward
the garden with a strange feeling in her breast as if a chord had
snapped, like the breaking of the G string on a violin. No other chord
could replace it.