E-text prepared by Al Haines
American Authors' Series, No. 17.
PRINCESS
by
M. G. McCLELLAND
Author of "Oblivion," "Jean Monteith," "Eleanor Gwynn," Etc.
New York:
United States Book Company
Successors to
John W. Lovell Company
150 Worth St., Cor Mission Place
Copyright, 1886,
by
Henry Holt & Co.
With love and admiration,
I dedicate this book to the memory of my friend,
THOMAS ALEXANDER SEDDON.
PRINCESS.
CHAPTER I.
When the idea of a removal to Virginia was first mooted in the family
of General Percival Smith, ex-Brigadier in the United States service,
it was received with consternation and a perfect storm of disapproval.
The young ladies, Norma and Blanche, rose as one woman--loud in
denunciation, vehement in protest--fell upon the scheme, and verbally
sought to annihilate it. The country! A farm!! The South!!! The
idea was untenable, monstrous. Before their outraged vision floated
pictures whereof the foreground was hideous with cows, and snakes, and
beetles; the middle distance lurid with discomfort, corn-bread, and
tri-weekly mails; the background lowering with solitude, ennui, and
colored servants.
Rusticity, nature, sylvan solitudes, and all that, were exquisite bound
in Russia, with gold lettering and tinted leaves; wonderfully alluring
viewed at leisure with the gallery to one's self, and the light at the
proper angle, charmingly attractive behind the footlights, but in
reality!--to the feeling of these young ladies it could be best
appreciated by those who had been born to it. In their opinion, they,
themselves, had been born to something vastly superior, so they
rebelled and made themselves disagreeable; hoping to mitigate the gloom
of the future by intensifying that of the present.
Their mother, whose heart yearned over her offspring, essayed to
comfort them, casting daily and hourly the bread of suggestion and
anticipation on the unthankful waters, whence it invariably returned to
her sodden with repinings. The young ladies set their grievances up on
high and bowed the knee; they were not going to be comforted, nor
pleased, nor hopeful, not they. The scheme was abominable, and no
aspect in which it could be presented rendered its abomination less;
they were hopeless, and helpless, and oppressed, and there was the end
of it.
Poor Mrs. Smith wished it might be the end, or anywhere near the end;
for the soul within her was "vexed with strife and broken in pieces
with words." The general could--and did--escape the rhetorical
consequences of his unpopular measure, but his wife could not: no club
afforded her its welcome refuge, no "down town" offered her sanctuary.
She was obliged to stay at home and endure it all. Norma's sulks,
Blanche's tears, the rapture of the boys--hungering for novelty as boys
only can hunger--the useless and trivial suggestions of friends, the
minor arrangements for the move, the decision on domestic questions
present and to come, the questions, answers, futile conjectures, all
formed a murk through which she labored, striving to please her husband
and her children, to uphold authority, quell mutiny, soothe murmurs,
and sympathize with enthusiasm; with a tact which shamed diplomacy, and
a patience worthy of an evangelist.
After the indulgent American custom, she earnestly desired to please
_all_ of her children. In her own thoughts she existed only for them,
to minister to their happiness; even her husband was, unconsciously to
her, quite of secondary importance, his strongest present claim to
consideration lying in his paternity. Had it been possible, she would
have raised her tent, and planted her fig tree in the spot preferred by
each one of her children, but as that was out of the question, in the
mother's mind of course her sons came first. And this preference must
be indulged the more particularly that Warner--the elder of her two
boys, her idol and her grief--was slowly, well-nigh imperceptibly, but
none the less surely, drifting away from her. A boyish imprudence, a
cold, over-exertion, the old story which is so familiar, so hopeless,
so endless in its repetition and its pathos. When interests were
diverse, the healthy, blooming daughters could hope to make little
headway against the invalid son. _They_ had all the sunny hours of
many long years before them; he perhaps only the hurrying moments of
one.
For Warner a change was imperative--so imperative that even the
rebellious girls were fain to admit its necessity. His condition
required a gentler, kindlier atmosphere than that of New York. The
poor diseased lungs craved the elixir of pure air; panted for the
invigoration of breezes freshly oxygenized by field and forest, and
labored exhaustedly in the languid devitalized breath of a city. The
medical fraternity copiously consulted, recognized their impotence, but
refrained from stating it; and availed themselves of their power of
reference to the loftier physician--the boy must be healed, if he was
to be healed, by nature. The country, pure air, pure milk, tender
care; these were his only hope.
General Smith was a man trained by military discipline to be instant in
decision and prompt in action. As soon as the doctors informed him
that his son's case required--not wanderings--but a steady residence in
a climate bracing, as well as mild, where the comforts of home could
supplement the healing of nature, he set himself at once to discover a
place which would fill all the requirements. To the old soldier, New
England born and Michigan bred, Virginia appeared a land of sun and
flowers, a country well-nigh tropical in the softness of its climate,
and the fervor of its heat. The doctors recommended Florida, or South
Carolina, as in duty bound, and to the suggestion of Virginia yielded
only a dubious consent; it was very far _north_, they said, but still
it might do. To the general, it seemed very far _south_, and he was
certain it would do.
In the old time, he remembered, when he was in lower Virginia with
McClellan, he had reveled in the softness, the delight of that, to him,
marvelous climate. He had found the nights so sweet; the air,
vitalized with the breath of old ocean, so invigorating, the heat at
noonday so dry, and the coolness at evening so refreshing. There were
pines, too; old fields of low scrub, and some forests of the nobler
sort; that would be the thing for Warner. He remembered how, as he sat
in the tent door, the breeze scented with resinous odors used to come
to him, and how, strong man though he was, he had felt as he drew it
into his lungs that it did him good.
In those old campaigning days, the fancy had been born in him that some
time in the future he would like to return and make his home here,
where "amorous ocean wooed a gracious land"--that when his fighting
days were over, and the retired list lengthened by his name, it would
be a pleasant thing to have his final bivouac among the gallant foes
who had won his admiration by their dauntless manner of giving and
taking blows.
The exigencies and absorptions of military life, in time, dimmed the
fancy, but it never altogether vanished. Out on the plains with
Custer, away in the mountains and the Indian country, vegetating in the
dullness of frontier posts, amid the bustle, the luxury and excitement
of city life, the fancy would return; the memory of those soft starlit
Virginia evenings would infold him with a subtle spell. In thought he
would again sit smoking in the tent door, the gray shadows stealing out
from their covert in the woods, reconnoitering all the country ere they
swept down and took possession, in the name of their queen--the night.
The air would grow cool with the fragrant breath of the ocean and the
pines; whip-poor-wills would chant in the tree tops, and partridges
sound their blithe note away in the fields. It was not wonderful that
when the necessity of securing a country home arose, the fancy should
resume its sway, and that a meditated flitting southward should suggest
Virginia as its goal.
The idea that any portion of his family would be displeased by the
realization of his fancy, or feel themselves aggrieved by his
arrangements, never entered into the veteran's calculations; he
returned from the South with his purchase made, and his mind filled
with anticipations of the joy the unlading of this precious honey would
occasion in the domestic hive, and when he was met by the angry buzz of
discontent instead of the gentle hum of applause, his surprise was
great, and his indignation unbounded.
"What the devil are they grumbling about?" he demanded of his wife.
"Shirley's a fine plantation. The water is good, the air superb; there
are excellent gardens and first-rate oyster beds. The house is
old-fashioned, but it's comfortable, and a little money will make it
more so. What's the matter with them?"
"The girls are young, Percival," explained the mother, putting in a
plea for her rebels. "They are used to society and admiration. They
don't take interest in gardens and oyster beds yet; they like variety
and excitement. The country is very dull."
"Not at all dull," contradicted the general. "You talk as if I were
requiring you all to Selkirk on a ten acre island, instead of going to
one of the pleasantest and most populous counties in the oldest state
in the Union. Mr. Byrd, the former owner of Shirley, told me that the
neighborhood was very thickly settled and sociable. I counted five
gentlemen's houses in sight myself. Southerners, as a rule, are great
visitors, and if the girls are lonely it will be their own fault.
They'll have as much boating and dancing and tom-foolery as is good for
them."
"Are there any young men?" demanded Mrs. Smith, who recognized the
necessity of an infusion of the stronger element to impart to social
joys body and flavor.
"Yes, I guess so," replied her husband indifferently, masculinity from
over-association having palled on him; "there's always men about
everywhere, except back in the home villages in Maine--they're scarce
enough _there_, the Lord knows! I saw a good many about in the little
village near Shirley--Wintergreen, they call it. One young fellow
attracted my attention particularly; he was sitting on a tobacco
hogshead, down on the wharf, superintending some negroes load a wagon,
and I couldn't get it out of my head that I'd seen his face before. He
was tall, and fair, and had lost an arm. I must have met him during
the war, I think, although I'll be hanged if I can place him."
Mrs. Smith looked interested. "Perhaps you formerly knew him," she
remarked, cheerfully; "it's a pity your memory is so bad. Why didn't
you inquire his name of some one, that might have helped you to place
him?"
"My memory is excellent," retorted the general, shortly; for a man must
resent such an insinuation even from the wife of his bosom. "I've
always been remarkable for an unusually strong and retentive memory, as
you know very well--but it isn't superhuman. At the lowest
computation, I guess I've seen about a million men's faces in the
course of my life, and it's ridiculous to expect me to have 'em all
sorted out, and ticketed in my mind like a picture catalogue. My
memory is very fine."
Mrs. Smith recanted pleasantly. Her husband's memory _was_ good, for
his age, she was willing to admit, but it was not flawless. About this
young man, now, it seemed to her that if she could remember him at all,
she could remember all about him. These hitches in recollection were
provoking. It would have been nice for the girls to find a young man
ready to their hands, bound to courtesy by previous acquaintance with
their father.
She regretted that her husband should fail to recall, and had neglected
to inquire, the name of this interesting person; but the knowledge that
he was _there_, and others besides him, ameliorated the rigor of the
situation.
Mrs. Smith did not care for the south or southern people; their
thoughts were not her thoughts, nor their ways, her ways. In her
ignorance, she classed them low in the scale of civilization, deeming
them an unprofitable race, whose days were given over to sloth, and
their nights to armed and malignant prowling. For the colored people
of the censured states, she had a profound and far-off sympathy,
viewing them from an unreal and romantic standpoint. This tender
attitude was mental; physically she shrank from them with disgust, and
it was not the least of the crosses entailed by a residence in the
south that she would be obliged to endure colored servants.
But all this was trifling and unimportant in comparison with the main
issue, Warner's health. To secure the shadow of hope for her boy, Mrs.
Smith decided that any thing short of cannibalism in her future
surroundings would be endurable.
The information gleaned from her husband was faithfully repeated by
Mrs. Smith to her daughters, with some innocent exaggeration and
unconscious embellishment. She always wanted to make things pleasant
for the children.
Blanche looked up from her crewel sun-flowers with reviving interest,
but Norma walked over to the window, and stood drumming on the panes,
and regarding the passers with a lowering brow.
"I wonder what Nesbit Thorne will think of it all?" she remarked, after
an interval of silence, giving voice to the inwardness of her
discontent.
"He'll _hate_ it!" spoke Blanche, with conviction; "he'll abhor it,
just as we do. I know he will." Blanche always followed her sister's
lead, and when Norma was cross considered it her duty to be tearful.
She was only disagreeable now because Norma was.
Percival, the youngest of the family, a spoiled and lively lad of
twelve, to whom the prospect of change was rapture, took up the last
remark indignantly.
"Nesbit won't do anything of the kind," quoth he. "Nesbit isn't a
spoiled, airified idiot of a girl. He's got sense enough to appreciate
hunting and fishing and the things that are of importance to _men_. I
guess he'll want to come to Shirley this autumn for his shooting,
instead of going down to North Carolina." Norma stopped her tattoo and
turned her head slightly; the boy, observing that he had scored a
point, proceeded: "Just the minute he gets back from Montana, I'm going
to tell him all about Shirley and beg him to come. And if he does, I'm
going gunning with him every day, and make him teach me how to
shoot--see if I don't," regarding his mother from under his tawny brows
threateningly. Percival's nature was adventurous and unruly: he had
red hair.
"Nesbit got back last night," announced Warner from his sofa beside the
other window. "I saw him pass the house this morning. There he is
now, coming up the street. If his opinion is a matter of such
importance, you can call him over and get it. I don't see that it
makes any difference what he thinks, myself." The latter part of the
sentence was muttered in an unheeded undertone.
Norma tapped sharply on the glass, and beckoned to a gentleman on the
opposite pavement, her brow clearing. He nodded gayly in response, and
crossing, in obedience to her summons, entered the house familiarly
without ringing the bell.