“I CAN’T GET OUT!” SAID THE STARLING
A fortnight afterwards Madame Isabey and Adrienne returned to Harrowby.
They were received with the greatest cordiality, and were glad to be
there once more, but after a year of refugeeing they had begun to
feel the truth of the words uttered by the great Florentine in his
wanderings:
Salt is the savor of another’s bread,
And weary are the feet which climbeth up
The stairs of others.
There seemed, however, nothing else for them to do. Madame Isabey had
no more knowledge of affairs than the birds in the bushes, nor had
Adrienne. They were still in receipt of a good income from foreign
investments, and through Lyddon’s ingenuity they managed to receive it
in gold. But the idea of offering any compensation to Colonel and Mrs.
Tremaine would have shocked and offended their hosts beyond measure,
and this Madame Isabey and Adrienne knew. Other plans than a return
to Harrowby might have been devised by other women, but not by Madame
Isabey and Adrienne. No word had been written them of the departure
of all the house servants, and Angela managed by rising with the dawn
to keep from the observation of their guests the shifts to which the
Harrowby family was reduced in order to keep the house going with
the half-grown boys and girls that took the place of a trained staff
of servants. Adrienne’s maid after having spent two days at Harrowby
slipped off to the Yankees. Old Celeste managed to dress Adrienne, who
had never dressed herself in her life. Madame Isabey frankly gave up
all attempts at a toilet and restricted herself to peignoirs, which she
wore morning, noon, and night. Archie was delighted to see her back,
and she was charmed with the account she heard of his behavior on the
night of the Federal visitation and called him ever afterwards “my
brave little red-headed angel.”
Lyddon set to work the very day after the visitation to prepare a new
supply of hair tonic for Colonel Tremaine, and although not a moment
was lost in the preparation, the colonel’s locks had turned a greenish
brown before the tonic was ready. The aspect of Archie’s white pointer
at first of a coal-black color and then shading into the same greenish
brown as Colonel Tremaine’s locks was harrowing to both Colonel and
Mrs. Tremaine. In vain Hector covered the unlucky pointer with soft
soap and scrubbed him in boiling water until he howled in agony.
Lyddon’s formula was too good to be easily obliterated. But by the time
the dog became white Colonel Tremaine’s locks were again of an ebony
black.
Madame Isabey received letters from Isabey at the camp fifteen miles
away, who wrote that he could not expose his friends to the risk of
another raid by coming to Harrowby. However, Colonel Gratiot, Colonel
Tremaine’s old friend of the Mexican War, seemed unterrified by
Isabey’s experience, and wrote that he promised himself the pleasure
of visiting his old friend for the night on the next Sunday but one,
arriving in the afternoon. He would come, however, in citizen’s
clothes, and it might be as well that he should be called Mr. Gratiot,
as it was perfectly well known that the negroes kept in close touch
with the Federal lines twenty miles away. Colonel Tremaine told this to
the family when the servants had all gone off for the night.
It was something new and exquisitely painful to be on guard against the
servitors who had heretofore been regarded as a part of the family, but
the expediency of it could not be disputed.
On the morning of the Sunday when Colonel Gratiot was expected to
arrive in the afternoon, Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine went to church,
the Colonel driving Mrs. Tremaine in a ramshackle buggy; the coach
horses had long since been put to the plow. Angela had begun to find
the Sunday rest very agreeable, and as her appearances at church were
invariably occasions of pain and distress to her, however proudly
borne, she determined to remain at home on that Sunday. Madame Isabey,
as usual, stayed upstairs, as she rarely appeared before the afternoon.
Lyddon and Adrienne were pacing up and down the Ladies’ Walk.
Adrienne’s graceful head was bare and she warded off the ardor of the
sun with a dainty black parasol. She always felt intensely flattered
when Lyddon talked to her, and strove to learn how to talk to a scholar
who rarely trimmed his beard and admitted that a woman’s mind was a
problem far deeper than calculus and deserved to be ranked with the
insoluble things like the squaring of a circle. She never understood
how Angela dared to laugh and chat so freely with Lyddon, and how a
single name, an obscure phrase, half a quotation, would convey a world
of meaning to them. This she felt herself powerless to achieve, but she
had a sincere admiration for Lyddon, perhaps because Isabey had. Lyddon
admired and pitied Adrienne. He realized all her charms, her softness,
her grace, but she belonged to another world than his.
He had in his life known but one woman who could enter into his world,
and that was Angela, probably because he himself had taught her;
and although he was but a scholar, pure and simple, indifferent to
money and clothes beyond his daily clean shirt, and careless of the
glittering side of life, he was as acutely sensitive as Alcibiades
himself to the beauty and charm of women. He had sometimes met women
with whom he had an intellectual companionship, but they were, with
the solitary exception of Angela, middle-aged, plain, dowdy in dress,
and had invariably lost all their illusions. The middle Victorian era
had no knowledge of women of _esprit_. He admired the Virginia type of
maid and matron; they reminded him of the lilacs and apple blossoms
which grew so luxuriantly over the fertile lowland Virginia. He had
been astonished at their capacity for affairs and by their knowledge of
politics, but their taste in literature was simple and chiefly confined
to the “Lake Poets” and to the novels of the day. Angela he regarded as
a brand saved from the burning, and he had taught and trained her to
shine at another man’s table, to decorate another man’s home. Women
as young and pretty and inconsequent as Adrienne generally avoided
Lyddon, and he could not but be as much flattered by her notice as she
was flattered by his. But as they walked up and down the broken flags
in the cool, bright July morning, Lyddon realized that Adrienne was
not greatly different mentally from the average woman. He surmised,
however, in her a disappointment silently borne and he had from the
first suspected the nature of this disappointment. Here was another
human being like Heine:
I stand before Life’s great soup pot;
But alas! I have no spoon.
Angela, sitting reading in the darkened drawing-room, wondered what
Lyddon and Adrienne were talking about so earnestly, and felt a
tinge of womanish jealousy. Lyddon was hers and Adrienne was clearly
poaching. While these thoughts were in her mind, the drawing-room door
opened, and Hector, with a great flourish, announced: “Colonel Gratiot,
Miss Angela. I knowed him in de Mexican War ’long wid Gineral Scott an’
dem wuffless Mexicans.”
Angela rose and gracefully greeted Colonel Gratiot, introducing herself
as Mrs. Neville Tremaine. And Colonel Gratiot, who knew her story, at
once recognized her and seemed prepared to meet her.
He was a small, thin, keen-eyed man, made of steel wire, and with the
catlike quietness which often marks the man of fiery action.
“That pompous old wind-bag Hector,” he said, “knew me in a moment.
I haven’t seen him since we were in Mexico more than fifteen years
ago, when he was the laughingstock of the whole regiment. It’s no use
trying to pass myself off now as Mr. Gratiot; Hector will have informed
everything on the plantation who I am.”
“My uncle and aunt will be sorry to miss any part of your visit,” said
Angela. “They’re at church, but will be home by one o’clock.”
“I shall be very well entertained meanwhile,” replied Colonel Gratiot
gallantly, and accepting Angela’s invitation to be seated and her
prompt offer of either blackberry wine or hard cider by way of
refreshment.
“I’ll take the cider,” replied Colonel Gratiot, with an air of
resignation. And then, Hector having brought the cider in and
apologizing profusely for it, Colonel Gratiot and Angela were again
left alone. The old soldier’s small figure was almost lost in the
depths of a great armchair from whence he surveyed Angela critically
and with admiration. There was a pathos concealed under her easy and
self-possessed manner, and pity for her stirred Colonel Gratiot’s
honest old heart. “She is pining for her husband,” he thought, “the
poor, pretty young thing!” He began to ask Angela questions about what
she was reading and what she was doing, and then spoke of Isabey, but
always with tact and grace. “Captain Isabey,” he said, “I reckon one of
my smartest officers. I hope, after we have licked the Yankees, that
Isabey will remain in the army. He is cut out for a soldier, and a fine
career awaits him. If he would only stick to a military life!”
The instant Isabey’s name was mentioned a flood of color poured into
Angela’s face, but she answered coolly enough: “We were very much
alarmed for him the night the Yankees came, but he escaped.”
“I don’t intend to give the Yankees the same chance,” responded Colonel
Gratiot. “I sent word to Tremaine that I should stay the night, but
this message was for the purpose of throwing anyone off the scent who
might convey news of my movements; in reality I shall leave before
bedtime to-night.”
After half an hour’s talk Colonel Gratiot, who was a connoisseur in
women, concluded that Mrs. Neville Tremaine was a very interesting, not
to say fascinating, girl, informed beyond her years in many things, and
a child in some other things. While they were talking Adrienne entered,
looking in her thin black gown like a portrait in pastel, so clear,
so soft, so dark. Colonel Gratiot congratulated himself upon having
even for a short time the society of two such charming women. Adrienne
exerted herself to please him, and Colonel Gratiot was surprised when
one o’clock arrived and with it Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine. Colonel
Tremaine was delighted to see his old chum, and they retired to the
library, where they remained shut up together for two hours, recalling
past scenes and discussing the military aspect of the present time.
Just before the three-o’clock dinner the two gentlemen came out of the
library and joined the ladies in the drawing-room, where Lyddon was
introduced to Colonel Gratiot. When dinner was served the table was
loaded down with mountains of fried chicken, ham cured in the smoke of
chestnut ashes, and every variety of sea food, fruit, and vegetables
which a prolific country could produce.
“This doesn’t look like wartime,” said Colonel Gratiot.
“My dear fellow,” replied Colonel Tremaine, impressively raising one
of the great old cut-glass decanters, “this beverage is raspberry
vinegar.” Here the Colonel gave a snort of contempt. “I can no longer
live for my country, because Dr. Carey says that I am too old to
march or fight; but I can die for her--yea, die daily, as St. Paul
said, drinking raspberry vinegar. The ladies swear it is good for the
complexion. I am glad it is good for something.”
“You know, my love,” replied Mrs. Tremaine, reproachfully, from the
head of the table, “that my raspberry wine is considered the best in
the county and is made from my great-grandmother’s recipe.”
Colonel Tremaine replied by a quotation from Horace, and Colonel
Gratiot, always gallant, declared that he believed Falernian to be
infernal stuff, not half as good as the wine of Mrs. Tremaine’s
manufacture.
Everybody called Colonel Gratiot “Mr. Gratiot” except Hector, who
pointedly called him “Kun’l” every two minutes.
After dinner, when the gentlemen retired to smoke upon the great
pillared portico facing the river, Colonel Gratiot was so enthusiastic
over the ladies of the party that he unbosomed himself to Lyddon in the
temporary absence of Colonel Tremaine.
“By Jove, sir! I’m not surprised after seeing Mrs. Tremaine and Madame
Le Noir--Lord! those two women ought always to be seen together, they
set each other off so well: Mrs. Neville Tremaine so fair, so tall,
the color coming and going in her face, and her eyes three shades in a
minute, ready to laugh or to weep, and with a heart as brave as Trojan
Hector’s; and Madame Le Noir with eyes and hair so black, and with
everything, from the crown of her head to the sole of her little foot,
finished and polished to the last degree. Nothing on earth could make
that woman weep unless she wished.”
Lyddon agreed with all of this and perceived that Colonel Gratiot was
an authority upon the fair sex.
Madame Isabey, as usual, did not appear when guests were present, as
that would necessitate a toilet beyond a peignoir.
About five o’clock in the afternoon, Adrienne having taken her siesta
and reappeared, Angela proposed that they should take a walk. Neither
was ever quite at ease when alone with the other, but, both being
gentlewomen, they maintained every outward form of extreme politeness.
“Let us walk in the garden,” said Adrienne. “I cannot, like you, take
those long tramps through the woods. You must remember that I am
town-bred.”
Angela felt a secret dislike to walking up and down the well-known
garden path with Adrienne and sitting together upon the bench under
the old brick wall. That spot she felt to be consecrated, in a way, to
her inmost thoughts and feelings, and with Adrienne she never spoke of
inward things. Nevertheless she made no objection, and the two walked
up and down in the waning summer afternoon as the shadows grew long on
the green lawn and the river changed from green and silver to red and
purple in the glowing sunset.
“This time last year,” said Adrienne, with her charming French accent,
“we were quite new to Harrowby. The life seemed so strange to me then.
You see, we usually spent our summers in France, and a few times we
went far, far up in French Canada. This day two years ago we were in
Paris, and we went, mamma and I with Philip Isabey, to the great ball
at the Tuileries. I never saw the Empress look so beautiful. She was in
a cloud of tulle, and diamonds, like dewdrops, sparkled all over her.
She never was outshone by her jewels; many women are. You, for example,
should never wear many jewels.”
“I promise you I never shall,” replied Angela, laughing. “I have none,
and Neville will not be able to give me any, for he will never have
anything except his pay as an officer.”
“How do you know that?” asked Adrienne, watching Angela.
“Neville tells me so, and, besides, if my uncle and aunt will never
speak their son’s name, or even ask me when I hear from him, do you
think they would leave him any money?”
“They are very angry with him now. They will not always be so.”
“Oh, yes, they will! It is not anger: they think Neville a traitor, and
they will never get over it.”
“So you hear from your husband often?”
“Yes.”
“And write to him often?”
“I have opportunities of communicating with him. I can’t tell you what
they are.”
“I don’t wish to know,” quickly replied Adrienne, “I never ask personal
questions. But this life you are living is as strange to you in a way
as to me.”
“Quite so. This time two years ago, when you were going to balls at
the Tuileries, I thought of nothing except of how merry we would be at
Christmas when Neville would be here, and of my new riding habit from
Baltimore, and of what music and books I should order. Now there is a
gulf between me and everybody I ever knew and loved in my life, except
Neville and Mr. Lyddon, perhaps. And at any moment a summons may come
to me to join Neville. Then I shall go away, never to come back, and
will leave behind me everything I ever knew or loved except Neville.”
Something in Angela’s tone as she said this, in the despairing
expression of her eye, told much to Adrienne.
“Yes,” she said, putting up her hand to shield her eyes from the long
lances of light from the dying sun, “you will never see Captain Isabey
again.” The words went like an arrow to its mark. Angela remained
silent with downcast gaze for a minute, and then, recovering herself,
she turned toward Adrienne and said calmly, but with eyes sparkling
with indignation: “Probably I shall not again see Captain Isabey; but
what does that matter, and why do you say that to me?”
“I do not know why I said it,” replied Adrienne, “except that no one
who ever lived and felt can be always discreet; certainly I cannot. But
from the hour you met him he has had a singular influence over you.”
Angela’s quickness of wit answered for experience in fencing, and she
replied coolly: “Neither Captain Isabey nor any other man, except my
husband, has any influence over me.”
A pause followed, and then Adrienne said, with more than her usual
gentleness: “I do not know what made me speak Philip Isabey’s name.
The truth is one leads such a retired life here. I live so constantly
upon my own thoughts and feelings that when I speak it is often merely
thinking aloud. In my former life we spoke of what happened from day
to day. There was not much time for thinking, for our life was very
gay; and now it seems to me as if I were becoming acquainted with
an Adrienne Le Noir whom I never knew before. You, who have lived a
life of reflection, with many hours of solitude each day, really know
yourself much better than I know myself, and you are better governed in
your speech and even in your thoughts.”
Angela remained silent. She saw that jealousy, the most ignoble of
passions, had seized upon Adrienne, making her hover near a subject of
conversation dangerous in the extreme--Philip Isabey. She, however,
with some skill, turned into a safer path of conversation.
“This life we are leading all over the South is very strange. We are
cut off completely from the outside world. Those we love best may be
imprisoned, may suffer agonies, may be killed in battle or die of
wounds, and it might be weeks before we would know it. All around us a
fearful turmoil is going on and we sit still and helpless. We are like
people on a raft in mid-ocean--we may be ingulfed at any moment; and
meanwhile we watch the sun from hour to hour, not knowing what the day
brings forth to anyone on earth except ourselves. Come, it is growing
chilly and we must go in.”
After supper and family prayers the Harrowby family bade good-by to
Colonel Gratiot, whose saddled horse was standing at the door. He,
however, remained with Colonel Tremaine until eleven o’clock, when
the moon would have gone down. The house speedily grew still and dark
except in the library, where the two men sat with maps spread out which
they examined by the light of a couple of tallow candles. As Colonel
Gratiot was following a certain route with his finger, his quick ear
caught a sound, and he said to Colonel Tremaine:
“Something has fallen on the ground outside.”
He went to one of the great windows and, opening the shutter softly,
looked out. At the same moment a light appeared in the window of one of
the negro houses, Mammy Tulip’s house, some distance off, toward the
lane. “Come here,” said Colonel Gratiot to Colonel Tremaine coolly,
“some one is signaling from that house over yonder.”
“Nonsense!” replied Colonel Tremaine. “They are probably sitting up
roasting apples.”
Just then the window overhead was softly lowered and Colonel Gratiot,
peering out, saw a letter lying on the grass. “Some one will come to
get that letter,” he whispered to Colonel Tremaine.
Colonel Tremaine looked with incredulity and defiance in his eyes
at Colonel Gratiot, who managed to banish all expression from his
countenance. Colonel Tremaine, who had been standing, sat down heavily
on a chair. Colonel Gratiot, with the shutter still ajar, watched, and
in five minutes a dark figure moved across the lawn, picked up the
letter, and ran off. And then, as if by magic, there were a hundred
dark figures, men in blue uniforms, surrounding the house. Colonel
Gratiot ran, as if he were sixteen instead of sixty, across the room,
into the hall beyond. When he reached the front door, men were pounding
on it, and their blows resounded through the house. The Colonel turned
and sped toward the dining room, with its glass doors opening upon the
long portico facing the river. The house was dark, but he made his way
without difficulty. He opened the glass door, and there, lying out in
the black river, his quick eye caught the outline of a small gunboat.
Not a light was seen on her and no sound was heard except the swish of
her wheels as she backed water to keep from drifting down the river.
As the Colonel stepped out on the porch he was caught in the arms of a
big sergeant, who handled him with one hand as if he were a baby, while
with the other he fired a pistol in the air. Instantly rockets went up
from the gunboat. Colonel Gratiot knew he was a prisoner and submitted
with perfect composure.
“Look here, my man,” he said pleasantly, “I have rheumatism in that
left arm of mine. I can’t run away--there are too many of you; so
loosen your grip, if you please.”
“Excuse me, sir,” answered the sergeant, respectfully. “I know all
about you, sir; and I know that you are hard to catch, and harder to
keep.”
“You flatter me,” said the Colonel, smiling; “you forget that I am
sixty years old.”
“No, I don’t, sir,” remarked the sergeant, with a grin, “but I don’t
let you go until I hand you over to the lieutenant. Here he is now,
sir, coming round the corner of the house. We thought you’d jumped out
of the window on the stable side.”
A young lieutenant came running around the corner of the house, and,
springing up the steps of the portico two at a time, saluted and said:
“Colonel Gratiot, I believe. You are my prisoner.”
“I certainly am,” replied the Colonel, grimly, as the sergeant released
him and saluted; then, looking round in the half-darkness over the
numbers of dark soldiers in blue uniforms surrounding the house, and
the gunboat puffing and grinding away in the river, he continued:
“You took an immense deal of trouble to catch an old fellow like me.”
“You are worth it, sir,” replied the lieutenant, smiling delightedly.
“And we were out for big game this time.”
By now the whole house was roused. Lights were moving about in the
upper part, and the negroes, excited and with a strange mixture of
triumph and timidity, had begun to collect in and about the house. In
five minutes every one of the Harrowby house except Angela was down in
the great hall, which was full of soldiers, with a few officers among
them.
The commanding officer made an apology to Mrs. Tremaine and the ladies
for disturbing them, but pleaded the exigencies of war. He permitted
Mrs. Tremaine to make up, out of Colonel Tremaine’s scanty wardrobe, a
parcel of clothing for Colonel Gratiot, who was a head shorter and even
narrower than Colonel Tremaine. Colonel Gratiot’s horse, saddled and
bridled, was found and carried on board the gunboat, as the sergeant
facetiously remarked, for the Colonel to ride. The game being bagged,
Colonel Gratiot was marched on board, and in a few minutes not a
Federal soldier remained at Harrowby as the gunboat churned its way
down the river in the darkness.
Up to that moment, so great had been the excitement and so quick had
been the movements of the Federals that no one had asked or even
thought of Angela’s whereabouts. But suddenly Lyddon spoke: “Where is
Angela?”
No one could answer, so Lyddon, taking a candle in his hand, went
quietly upstairs and along the corridor until he reached her door, when
he knocked loudly on it. Angela’s voice from within replied like the
starling: “I can’t get out! The key is broken in the lock.”
Lyddon took out his penknife and in half a minute had unlocked the
door. Angela came out of the room, her rich fair hair falling loose
about her shoulders. She had huddled on a skirt and concealed the
deficiencies of her toilet with her red mantle.
“What has happened?” she asked excitedly and seizing Lyddon’s arm. “I
heard the most terrible noise, and looked out of the window, and saw
that the place was full of soldiers, and then I slipped on my clothes
and tried to get out and couldn’t. You can’t imagine how terrible it
was to be shut up there and know that something dreadful was happening
outside.”
“Nothing particularly dreadful has happened,” replied Lyddon, calmly.
“Colonel Gratiot has been bagged, that is all. A gunboat with a lot of
soldiers was sent after him.”
By that time they were at the stairs, and Angela, running lightly down,
joined the group in the hall. As soon as she reached the hall, which
was dimly lighted by a couple of candles on the mantelpiece, everybody
began to talk to her at once except Adrienne, who remained, as always,
beautifully composed. Even Mrs. Tremaine became excited, while Madame
Isabey poured out her feelings in English, French, and Spanish. Archie
interjected his account, while Hector bawled above them all:
“All de derangements was mos’ unmilitary. Miss Angela. Dey didn’ have
no scouts, no aide-de-camps, no ban’ ob music, no nuttin’ ’tall.
When me an’ Marse, we stormed de heights at Chapultepec, de ban’ was
a-playin’ ‘I wants to be a angel,’ an’, I tell you, me an’ Marse made a
heap ob Mexican angels dat day.”
“I think, ladies,” said Colonel Tremaine calmly, “that you had better
try and get your beauty sleep, which has been so rudely disturbed. If
you will excuse me, I will retire. Come, boy,” to Hector, “and get
my boots off.” Hector followed the Colonel, still mumbling about the
glories of Chapultepec and Buena Vista. All soon took the Colonel’s
advice, except Angela and Lyddon, who lingered after the others had
departed.
Angela, with her newly developed instinct of thrift, blew out one of
the candles on the hall mantelpiece. The remaining candle cast a faint
light upon the dingy Penelope, who had waited in that spot during a
century for her Ulysses. All the events of the night had passed so
swiftly that there was not really much to tell, but Angela wanted to
hear it all over again and in connected fashion.
“Wasn’t it strange,” she said, “that the last time a Confederate
officer was here, Captain Isabey, the Federals came after him, although
they didn’t get him, and now they have caught Colonel Gratiot?”
“No, I don’t think it was at all strange. You may depend upon it, the
Federals know all they want to know from the negroes.”
“Do you mean to say that these servants of ours, who are our very own,
are betraying us?”
“Oh, no, that is not the word to use. They wouldn’t betray Richard, but
they wouldn’t mind giving a tip about Isabey or Colonel Gratiot. None
of you Southern people seems to realize what a stupendous stake the
negroes have in this conflict.”
“I realize it,” answered Angela, “when we have to depend upon Uncle
Hector and Aunt Tulip and half a dozen half-grown black boys and girls
to do the work of this house, and you are put to the churn.” Then,
suddenly becoming conscious of her unbound hair, she seized it in both
hands and with rapid and graceful dexterity wound the shining coils
around her head, and fled up the dark stairway.