Chapter 20
ONE FALLEN
I sent my letter, and waited. I got no answer. The weeks rolled on, and the months. It was palpable, that delays which had kept back one letter for a year might affect the delivery of another letter in the same way; but it is hard, the straining one's eyes into thick darkness with the vain endeavour to see something.
The months were outwardly gay; very full of society life, though not of the kind that I cared for. I went into it to please mamma; and succeeded but partially; for she insisted I was too sober and did not half take the French tone of easy, light, graceful skimming over the surface of things. But mamma could be deep and earnest too on her own subjects of interest. The news of President Lincoln's proclamation, setting free the slaves of the rebel States, roused her as much as she could be roused. There were no terms to her speech or my aunt Gary's; violent and angry against not only the President, but everything and everybody that shared Northern growth and extraction. - How bitterly they sneered at "Massachusetts codfish;" - I think nothing would have induced either of them to touch it; and whatsoever belonged to the East or the North, not only meats and drinks, but Yankee spirit and manners and courage, were all, figuratively, put under foot and well trampled on. I listened and trembled, sometimes; sometimes I listened and rejoiced. For, after all, my own affairs were not the whole world; and a thrill of inexpressible joy went through me when I remembered that my old Maria, and Pete, and the Jems, and Darry, were all, by law, freed for ever from the oppression of Mr. Edwards and any like him; and that the day of their actual emancipation would come, so soon as the rights of the Government should be established over the South. And of this issue I began to be a little hopeful, beginning to believe that it might be possible. Antietam and Corinth, and Fredricksburg and New Orleans, with varying fortune, had at least proclaimed to my ear that Yankees could fight; there was no doubt of that now; and Southern prowess could not always prevail against theirs. Papa ceased to question it, I noticed; though mamma's sneers grew more intense as the occasion for them grew less and less obvious.
The winter passed, and the spring came; and moved on with its sweet step of peace, as it does even when men's hearts are all at war. The echo of the battlefields of Virginias wept through the Boulevards with met often; and it thundered at home. Mamma had burst into new triumph at the news of Chancellorsville; and uttered with great earnestness her wish that Jefferson Davis might be able to execute the threat of his proclamation and hang General Butler. But for me, I got no letter; and these echoes began to sound in my ear like the distant outside rumblings of the storm to one whose hearthstone it has already swept and laid desolate. I was not desolate; yet I began to listen as one whose ears were dim with listening. I met Faustina St. Clair again with uneasiness. Not the torment of my former jealousy; but a stir of doubt and pain which I could not repress at the sight of her.
When the summer drew on, to my great pleasure we went to Switzerland again. We established ourselves quietly at Lucerne, which papa was very fond of. There we were much more quiet than we had been the fall before; Ransom having gone home now to take his share in the struggle, and our two Southern friends who had also gone, having no successors like them in our little home circle. We made not so many and not so long excursions. But papa and I had good time for our readings; and I had always a friend with whom I could take counsel, in the grand old Mont Pilatte. What a friend that mountain was to me, to be sure! When I was downhearted, and when anything made me glad; when I was weary and when I was most full of life; its grand head in the skies told me of truth and righteousness and strength; the light and colours that played and rested there, as it held, the sun's beams and gave them back to earth, were a sort of promise to me of beauty and life above and beyond this earth; yes, and of its substantial existence now, even when we do not see it. They were a little hint of what we do not see. I do not exactly know what was the language of the wreaths of vapour that robed and shrouded and then revealed the mountain, with the exquisite shiftings and changings of their gracefulness; I believe it was like, to me, the floating veil that hides God's purposes from us, yet now and then parting enough to let us see the eternal truth and unchangeableness behind it. I told all my moods to Mont Pilatte, and I think it told all its moods to me. After a human friend, there is nothing like a big mountain. And when the news of Gettysburg and Vicksburg came; and mamma grew furious; and I saw for the first time that success was truly looming up on the horizon of the North, and that my dear coloured people might indeed soon be free; that night Mont Pilatte and I shouted together.
There came no particular light on my own affairs all this time. Indeed mamma began to reproach me for what she called my disloyal and treacherous sentiments. And then, hints began to break out, very hard to bear, that I had indulged in traitorous alliances and was an unworthy child of my house. It rankled in mamma's mind, that I had not only refused the connection with one of the two powerful Southern families which had sought me the preceding year; but that I had also discouraged and repelled during the past winter several addresses which might have been made very profitable to my country as well as my own interests. For what had I rejected them all? mamma began to ask discontentedly. Papa shielded me a little; but I felt that the sky was growing dark around me with the coming storm.
One never knows, after all, where the first bolt will come from. Mine struck me all unawares, while I was looking in an opposite quarter. It is hard to write it. A day came, that I had a father in the morning, and at night, none.
It was very sudden. He had been feeble, to be sure, more than usual, for several days, but nobody apprehended anything. Towards evening he failed - suddenly; sent for me, and died in my arms, blessing me. Yes, we had been walking the same road together for some time. I was only left to go on awhile longer alone.
But Mont Pilatte said to me that night, "There remaineth a rest for the people of God." And while the moon went down and the stars slowly trooped over the head of the mountain, I heard that utterance, and those words of the hymn -
"God liveth ever: "Wherefore, soul, despair thou never."
I could go no farther. I could think no more. Kneeling at my window-sill, under the starry night, my soul held to those two things and did not loose its moorings. It is a great deal, to hold fast. It was all then I could do. And even in the remembrance now of the loneliness and desolate feeling that came upon me at that time, there is also a strong sense of the deep sweetness which I was conscious of, rather than able to taste, coming from those words and resting at the bottom of my heart.
I was in some measure drawn out of myself, almost immediately, by the illness of my mother. She fell into a nervous disordered condition, which it taxed all my powers to tend and soothe. I think it was mental rather than bodily, in the origin of it; but body and mind shared in the result, as usual. And when she got better and was able to sit up and even to go about again, she remained under the utmost despondency. Affairs were not looking well for the Southern struggle in America; and besides the mortification of her political affections, mamma was very sure that if the South could not succeed in establishing its independence, we should as a family be ruined.
"We are ruined now, Daisy," she said. "There can be nothing coming from our Magnolia estates - and our Virginia property is a mere battle ground, you know; and what have we to live upon?"
"Mamma, there will be some way," I said. "I have not thought about it."
"No, you do not think but of your own favourite speculations. I wish with all my heart you had never taken to fanatical ways. I have no comfort in you."
"What do you mean by fanaticism, mamma?"
"I will tell you!" replied mamma with energy. "The essence of fanaticism is to have your own way."
"I do not think, mamma, that I want to have my own way."
"Of course, when you have it. That is what such people always say. They don't want to have their own, way. I do not want to have mine, either."
"Is not Dr. Sandford attending to our affairs for us, mamma?"
"I do not know. Your father trusted him, unaccountably. I do not know what he is doing."
"He will certainly do anything that can be done for us, mamma; I am persuaded of that. And he knows how."
"Is it for your sake, Daisy?" mamma said suddenly, and with a glitter in her eye which boded confusion to the doctor.
"I do not know, mamma," I said quietly. "He was always very good and very kind to me."
"I suppose you are not quite a fool," she said, calming down a little. "And a Yankee doctor would hardly lose his senses enough to fall in love with you. Though I believe the Yankees are the most impudent nation upon the earth. I wish Butler could be hanged! I should like to know that was done before I die."
I fled from this turn of the talk always.
It was true, however brought about I do not know, that Dr. Sandford had been for some time kindly bestirring himself to look after our interests at home, which the distressed state of the country had of course greatly imperilled. I was not aware that papa had been at any time seriously concerned about them; however, it soon appeared that mamma had reason enough now for being ill at ease. In the South, war and war preparations had so far superseded the usual employments of men, that next to nothing could be looked for in place of the ordinary large crops and ample revenues. And Melbourne had been let, indeed, for a good rent; but there was some trouble about collecting the rent; and if collected, it belonged to Ransom. Ransom was in the Southern army, fighting no doubt his best, and mamma would not have scrupled to use his money; but Dr. Sandford scrupled to send it without authority. He urged mamma to come home, where he said she could be better taken care of than alone in distant Switzerland. He proposed that she should reoccupy Melbourne, and let him farm the ground for her until Ransom should be able to look after it. Mamma and Aunt Gary had many talks on the subject. I said as little as I could.
"It is almost as bad with me," said my aunt Gary, one of these times. "Only I do not want much."
"I _do_," said mamma. "And if one must live as one has not been accustomed to live, I would rather it should be where I am unknown."
"You are not unknown here, my dear sister!"
"Personally and socially. Not exactly. But I am historically unknown."
"Historically!" echoed my aunt.
"And living is cheaper here too."
"But one must have _some_ money, even here, Felicia."
"I have jewels," said mamma.
"Your jewels! - Daisy might have prevented all this," said Aunt Gary, looking at me.
"Daisy is one of those whose religion it is to please themselves."
"But, my dear, you must be married some time," my aunt went on, appealingly.
"I do not think that is certain, Aunt Gary."
"You are not waiting for Preston, are you? I hope not; for he is likely to be as poor as you are; if he gets through the battles, poor boy!" And my aunt put her handkerchief to her eyes.
"I am not waiting for Preston," I said, "any more than he is waiting for me."
"I don't know how that is," said my aunt. "Preston was very dependent on you, Daisy; but I don't know - since he has heard these stories of you" -
"Daisy is nothing to Preston!" my mother broke in with some sharpness. "Tell him so, if he ever broaches the question to you. Cut that matter short. I have other views for Daisy, when she returns to her duty. I believe in a religion of obedience - not in a religion of independent self-will. I wish Daisy had been brought up in a convent. She would, if I had had my way. These popular religions throw over all law and order. I hate them!"
"You see, Daisy my dear, how pleasant it would be, if you could see things as your mother does," my aunt remarked.
"I am indifferent whether Daisy has my eyes or not," said mamma; "what I desire is, that she should have my will."
The talks came to nothing, ended in nothing, did nothing. My aunt Gary at the beginning of winter went back to America. My mother did as she had proposed; sold some of her jewels, and so paid her way in Switzerland for some months longer. But this could not last. Dr. Sandford urged her return; she wished also to be nearer to Ransom; and in the spring we once more embarked for home.
The winter had been exceedingly sad to me. No word from America ever reached my hands to give me any comfort; and I was alone with my sorrow. Mamma's state of mind, too, which was most uncomfortable for her, was extremely trying to me; because it consisted of regrets that I could not soothe, anxieties that I was unable to allay, and reproachful wishes that I could neither meet nor promise to meet. Constant repinings, ceaseless irritations, purposeless discussions; they wearied my heart, but I could bring no salve nor remedy unless I would have agreed to make a marriage for money. I missed all that had brought so much sweetness into even my Paris life, with my talks with papa, and readings, and sympathy, and mutual confidence. It was a weary winter, my only real earthly friend being Mont Pilatte. Except Mr. Dinwiddie. I had written to him and got one or two good, strong, kind, helpful answers. Ah, what a good thing a good letter is!
So it was great relief to quit Switzerland and find myself on the deck of the steamer, with every revolution of the paddle wheels bringing me nearer home. Nearer what had been home; all was vague and blank in the distance now. I was sure of nothing. Only, "The Lord is my Shepherd," answers all that. It cannot always stop the beating of human hearts, though; and mine beat hard sometimes, on that homeward voyage. Mamma was very dismal. I sat on deck as much as I could and watched the sea. It soothed me, with its living image of God's grand government on earth; its ceaseless majestic flow, of which the successive billows that raise their heads upon its surface are not the interruption, but the continuation. So with our little affairs, so with mine. Not for nothing does any feeblest one's fortunes rise or fall; but to work somewhat of good either to himself or to others, and so to the whole. I was pretty quiet during the voyage, while I knew that no news could reach me; I expected to keep quiet; but I did not know myself.
We had hardly entered the bay of New York, and I had begun to discern familiar objects and to realise that I was in the same land with Mr. Thorold again, when a tormenting anxiety took possession of my heart. Now that I was near him, questions could be put off no longer. What tidings would greet me? and how should I get any tidings at all? A fever began to run along my veins, which I felt was not to be cured by reasoning. Yes, I was not seeking to dispose my own affairs; I was not trying to take them into my own hands; but I craved to know how they stood, and what it was to which I must submit myself. I was not willing to submit to uncertainty. Yet I remembered I must do just that.
The vessel came to her moorings, and I sat in my muse, only conscious of that devouring impatience which possessed me; and did not see Dr. Sandford till he was close by my side. Then I was glad; but the deck of that bustling steamer was no place to show how glad. I stood still, with my hand in the doctor's, and felt my face growing cold.
"Sit down!" he said, putting me back in the chair from which I had risen; and still keeping my hand. "How is Mrs. Randolph?"
"I suppose you know how she is, from her letters."
"And you?" he said, with a change of tone.
"I do not know. I shall be better, I hope."
"You will be better, to get ashore. Will you learn your mother's pleasure about it? and I will attend to the rest."
I thanked him; for the tone of genuine, manly care and protection, was in my ears for the first time in many a day. Mamma was very willing to avail herself of it too, and to my great pleasure received Dr. Sandford and treated him with perfect courtesy. Rooms were provided for us in one of the best hotels, and comforts ready. The doctor saw us established there, and asked what more he could do for us before he left us to rest. He would not stay to dinner.
"The papers, please," said mamma. "Will you send me all the papers. What is the news? We have heard nothing for weeks."
"I will send you the papers. You will see the news there," said the doctor.
"But what is it?"
"You would not rest if I began upon the subject. It would take a good while to tell it all."
"But what is the position of affairs?"
"Sherman is in Georgia. Grant is in Virginia. There has been, and there is, some stout fighting on hand."
"Sherman and Grant," said mamma. "Where are my people, doctor?"
"Opposed to them. They do not find the way exactly open," the doctor answered.
"Hard fighting, you said. How did it result?"
"Nothing is decided yet - except that the Yankees can fight," said the doctor, with a slight smile. And mamma said no more. But I took courage, and she took gloom. The papers came, a bundle of them, reaching back over several dates; giving details of the battles of the Wilderness and of Sherman's operations in the South. Mamma studied and studied, and interrupted her dinner, to study. I took the sheets as they fell from her hand and looked - for the lists of the wounded. They were long enough, but they did not hold what I was looking for. Mamma broke out at last with an earnest expression of thanksgiving that Sedgwick was killed.
"Why, mamma?" I said in some horror.
"There is one less!" she answered grimly.
"But _one_ less makes very little difference for the cause, mamma."
"I wish there were a dozen then," said she. "I wish all were shot, that have the faculty of leading this rabble of numbers and making them worth something."
But I was getting, I, to have a little pride in Northern blood. I said nothing, of course.
"You are just a traitor, Daisy, I believe," said mamma. "You read of all that is going on, and you know that Ransom and Preston Gary are in it, and you do not care; except you care on the wrong side. But I tell you this, - nothing that calls itself Yankee shall ever have anything to do with me or mine so long as I live. I will see you dead first, Daisy."
There was no answer to be made to this either. It only sank down into my heart; and I knew I had no help in this world.
The question immediately pressed itself upon our attention, where would we go? Dr. Sandford proposed Melbourne; and urged that in the first place we should avail ourselves of the hospitalities of his sister's house in that neighbourhood, most generously tendered us, till he could be at leisure to make arrangements at our old home. Just now he was under the necessity of returning immediately to Washington, where he had one or more hospitals in charge; indeed he left us that same night of our landing; but before he went he earnestly pressed his sister's invitation upon my mother, and promised that so soon as the settlement of the country's difficulties should set him free, he would devote himself to the care of us and Melbourne till we were satisfactorily established.
"And I am in hopes it will not be very long now," he said aside to me. "I think the country has got the right man at last; and that is what we have been waiting for. Grant says he will fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer; and I think the end is coming."
Mamma would give no positive answer to the doctor's instances; she thanked him and talked round the subject, and he was obliged to go away without any contentment of her giving. Alone with me, she spoke out: -
"I will take no Yankee civilities, Daisy. I will be under no obligation to one of them. And I could not endure to be in the house of one of them, if it were conferring instead of receiving obligation."
"What will you do, then, mamma."
"I will wait. You do not suppose that the South can be conquered, Daisy? The idea is absurd!"
"But, mamma? -"
"Well?"
"Why is it absurd?"
"Because they are not a people to give up. Don't you know that? They would die first, every man and woman of them."
"But mamma, whatever the spirit of the people may be, numbers and means have to tell upon the question at last."
"Numbers and means!" mamma repeated scornfully. "I tell you, Daisy, the South _cannot_ yield. And as they cannot yield, they must sooner or later succeed. Success always comes at last to those who cannot be conquered."
"What is to become of us in the mean time, mamma?"
"I don't see that it signifies much," she said, relapsing out of the fire with which the former sentences had been pronounced. "I would like to live to see the triumph come."
That was all I could get from mamma that evening. She lay down on a sofa and buried her face in pillows. I sat in the darkening room and mused. The windows were open; a soft warm air blew the curtains gently in and out; from the street below came the murmur of business and voices and clatter of feet and sound of wheels; not with the earnestness of alarm or the droop of depression, but ringing, sharp, clear, cheery. The city did not feel badly. New York had not suffered in its fortunes or prosperity. There was many a battlefield at the South where the ravages of war had swept all traces and hopes of good fortunes away; never one at the North where the corn had been blasted, or the fruits of the earth untimely ravaged, or the heart of the husbandman disappointed in his ground. Mamma's conclusions seemed to me without premise. What of my own fortunes? I thought the wind of the desert, had blown upon them and they were dead. I remember, in the trembling of my heart as I sat and listened and mused, and thoughts trooped in and out of my head with little order or volition on my part, one word was a sort of rallying point on which they gathered and fell back from time to time, though they started out again on fresh roamings - "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations"! - I remember, - it seems to me now as if it had been some time before I was born, - how the muslin curtains floated in on the evening wind, and the hum and stir of the street came up to my ear; the bustle and activity, though it was evening; and how the distant battlefields of Virginia looked in forlorn contrast in the far distance. Yet this was really the desert and that the populous place; for there, somewhere, my world was. I grew very desolate as I thought, or mused, by the window. If it had not been for those words of the refuge, my heart would have failed me utterly. After a long while mamma roused up and we had tea brought.
"Has Dr. Sandford gone?" she asked.
"He bid us good bye, mamma, you know. I suppose he took the evening train, as he said."
"Then we shall have no more meddling."
"He means us only kindness, I am sure, mamma."
"I do not like kindness. I do not know what right Dr. Sandford has to offer me kindness. I gave him none."
"Mamma, it seems to me that we are in a condition to receive kindness, - and be very glad of it."
"You are poor-spirited, Daisy; you always were. You never had any right pride of blood or of place. I think it makes no difference to you who people are. If you had done your duty to me, we should have been in no condition now to 'receive kindness,' as you express it. I may thank you."
"What do you mean to do, mamma?"
"Nothing."
"Stay here, in this hotel?"
"Yes."
"It will be very expensive, mamma."
"I will meet the expense."
"But, mamma, - without funds?"
"I have a diamond necklace yet, Daisy."
"But, mamma, when that is gone? -"
"Do you think," she broke out with violence, "that this war is going to last for ever? It _cannot_ last. The Yankees will find out what they have undertaken. Lee will drive them back. You do not suppose _he_ can be overcome?"
"Mamma - if the others have more men and more means -"
"They are only Yankees," - mamma said quietly, but with a concentration of scorn impossible to give in words.
"They know how to fight," - I could not help saying.
"Yes, but _we_ do not know how to be overcome! Do you think it, Daisy?"
"Mamma - there was New Orleans - and Vicksburg - and Gettysburg; - and now in Virginia -"
"Yes, now; these battles; you will see how they will turn. Do you suppose this Yankee Grant is a match for Robert E. Lee?"
It was best to drop the discussion, and I dropped it; but it had gone too far to be forgotten. Every bit of news from that time was a point of irritation; if good for the South, mamma asserted that I did not sympathise with it; if good for the North, she found that I was glad, though I tried not to show that I was. She was irritated, and anxious, and unhappy. What I was, I kept to myself.