Part 23

It was inevitable that two of us should recall and speak together in awed tones, of Handel’s rejoinder to a query, as to his emotions in writing the Chorus:

“I did verily believe that I saw the Great White Throne and Him Who sat thereon, and heard the harpers harping with their harps, and all God’s holy angels.”

I was watching the fine, uplifted head and rapt unconsciousness of him whose whole frame throbbed and thrilled with clarion tones that pealed out, “Hallelujah! hallelujah!” when a voice on the other side of me murmured in my ear:

“And all that sat there, steadfastly watching him, saw his face as it had been the face of an angel.”

I cherish a hundred pleasant and dear memories of our musical visitor. I like none other so well as this vision. It so befell that my one and only visit to the grave of Oliver Goldsmith was made when the choir of the adjacent Temple church was practising the Hallelujah Chorus. Although in the heart of mighty London, the place was strangely still and solitary. We lingered there until the last chord died into silence. It was not necessary for either of us to put into words what held the fancy of both. Only—as we turned away we looked up to the sky, and one whispered, “He is singing it, still!”

Engagements of marriage were never announced in Old Virginia. We took more pains to keep them secret than family and friends take nowadays to trumpet them abroad. Mr. Derby ran on from New York to spend Christmas and the next day with us. He came and departed without an intimation of any change in the feelings and prospects of his last September guest. Mr. Terhune went back to his Charlotte parish; letters travelled regularly and frequently back and forth. Some were addressed to me; more bore my brother’s name on the envelope, to hoodwink village post-office gossips. Young men, who were habitual visitors, called as often and were received with the olden friendliness; I accepted the escort of this, that, and the other one impartially, and at will. “The Young Evangelist” was in town for a few days of every month, and was more with us than anywhere else. And why not? He had visited us more intimately than at any other house during his six months’ occupancy of Doctor Hoge’s pulpit. It happened repeatedly that he was one of three or four callers in the evening. On these occasions he, magnanimously, as he phrased it, “never interfered with another fellow’s running.” He was as assiduous in his attentions to girls who chanced to be present as Ned Rhodes, Tom Baxter, or any other Tom, Dick, or Harry of the party could be to me. At ten o’clock he arose, made his adieux in decorous sort to the ladies of the house and to the company generally, and withdrew. If nobody showed a disposition to follow his example, he, to quote again from his tactics, “took account of stock,” and, having assured himself that the others lived in different directions, appeared in the open door, overcoat on, hat in hand, and in his mouth a jaunty query as to the probability of having company in his walk to the Exchange Hotel, where he usually put up. Few were bold enough to loiter later when the privileged habitué of the house showed so plainly that the family kept early hours. After his regrets at the prospect of a lonely tramp were uttered, he departed in good earnest. He had made but a few rounds of the block when the shutters of the front parlor window were closed, the signal that the course was clear for a return.

In mid-April he came to Richmond to receive his widowed sister, who passed some weeks with us. Mea and I had had an engagement with Messrs. Rhodes and Baxter to go to a Dempster concert. The pair were so often on escort duty that they were dubbed “The Circumstances” by our saucy brothers and sisters. It was, according to the younglings, a settled matter, when we based our prospective presence at any festive scene upon “circumstances,” that Damon and his Pythias should show up in season to take us thither.

Mrs. Greenleaf arrived on Tuesday. Her brother came by the noon train on Wednesday. It was not until I noted the grave wonder in her blue eyes, as I congratulated her and him that they would have the evening to themselves and home-talk, that it dawned upon me how unconventional was the proceeding altogether. North of Mason and Dixon’s line it would have been downright impropriety for an engaged girl to walk off coolly, in the escort of another man, within a few hours after the coming of the betrothed whom she had not seen for a month.

The person who would be supposed to suffer most discomfort from the outrage to conventionality was, fortunately, more _au fait_ to Virginia manners and social usages than his relative. When I took an opportunity to express misgivings lest I might lose ground in her good graces if I kept the engagement to hear the famous ballad-singer, I was bidden not to “waste a thought on that matter, but to enjoy the concert with all my heart. For his part, he was delighted that I had the chance to go.”

So, when our escorts appeared, I carried off a light heart, and was obedient to the injunction to get all the enjoyment that Dempster, then evidently in the decadence of his powers, could give a music-lover.

I heard him but that once. I do not regret that I went then, although sadness mingled with pleasure while we listened. Dempster’s rendition of English ballads, without other accompaniment than the piano played by himself, with no effort after brilliancy of execution, had moved two continents to smiles and tears. One searches vainly for his name in cyclopædias and dictionary lists of the famous dead. He was now a gray and flabby oldish man. His voice was broken in the high register, and thickened on the lower; his breath was irregular and short. Yet certain passages—notably in the _Irish Emigrant’s Lament_—had sympathetic sweetness that helped one to credit the stories of his former successes. He sang Tennyson’s _May Queen_ all through, not skipping a stanza of the three parts. It was a dreary performance, that grew absolutely painful before the consumptive was finally relegated to the bourne

“Where the wicked cease from troubling, And the weary are at rest.”

“Thank Heaven!” sighed Mr. Rhodes as the last word quavered forth; and Mea—“She ought to apologize for being such an unconscionably long time in dying.”

XXXI

WEDDING BELLS—A BRIDAL TOUR—A DISCOVERED RELATIVE—A NOBLE LIFE

“RICHMOND, _August 16th, 1856._

“MY VERY DEAR EFFIE,—My long silence has seemed strange and may have appeared unkind to you, but there have been a thousand hindrances to my writing.

“A sudden fit of illness interrupted the health that had remained firm throughout the warm spring weather, and obliged me to make my visit to Goochland earlier than I intended. For a week or more after my arrival there I was worse than I had been at home. When I began to recover, the amendment was rapid.

“To cut short these details, I am most unromantically well and robust, am gaining flesh daily, and boast an appetite that would throw a sentimental young woman into convulsions were she to witness my gastronomic exploits. Yet I have delayed writing to you because I wished to arrange everything relating to the final ‘performances’ before notifying you of the same.

“There have been sundry alterations in the programme since you and I last consulted over these things, the principal of which is the change of the day and hour. We expect, now, to leave home on Tuesday fortnight (September 2d) in the morning, instead of (as was first spoken of) on the afternoon of Wednesday, the 3d. This will allow us two days in Philadelphia, and, being the plan most approved of by father and Mr. Terhune, of course I am submissive.

“The bridal party will spend both Monday and Tuesday evenings, besides breakfasting here on Tuesday morning. So you girls may bring evening dresses.

“The bridesmaids are to wear blue muslin or lawn skirts, with white muslin basques—a neat breakfast costume that will look pretty as a uniform, and be becoming to all of you, without throwing my quiet travelling attire too much into the shade. You know that at a morning wedding it is customary for each to dress as she pleases. This never pleased my fancy. The company wears a motley look. Full bridal robes would be equally out of place. Therefore, we have selected this medium.

“Now, _ma chère!_ cannot you keep your intention of the Richmond trip as profound a secret as you have other matters we wot of? Your father and mother must be apprized of it, and Colonel and Mrs. Graves; but, for a few days, cannot the story be kept within the two families? I trust you to do this for me.

“The Charlotte party will come down on Monday, the 1st. We shall expect you and Virginia some days in advance of that date. I hope to have everything in readiness, even to packing my trunks, by the middle of the preceding week, and to have time to enjoy your society. Write as soon as your plans are formed, and let that time be very soon. As to my trousseau—thanks to nimble and kind fingers, the work is nearly done. Next week my time is to be divided between the dressmaker and a gentleman who writes that he has ‘business to attend to in Richmond,’ and who, it is fair to presume, may call occasionally. The latest gossip is that there is to be a double wedding here next month; that both sisters are to be dressed precisely alike and be married in the evening. Therefore, come prepared for the worst—or the best, as the case may seem.

“To drop business and jesting together—it is very hard to realize that, if Providence permit, one little fortnight will bring such a change into my life. Here, in the home of my girlhood, where all else is unaltered, and I seem to be welded, as it were, into the household chain, I cannot believe that my place is so soon to be vacant. Brain and heart are so full of crowding thoughts and emotions that I marvel how I preserve a composed demeanor. The past, with its tender and hallowed memories; the present, with a wealth of calm, real happiness; the bright, although vague future, alike strive to enchain my mind.

“I long to see you; to have a good, old-fashioned chat, a familiar interchange of our plans and our hopes. There is a sentence in your last that promises much—a promise I shall surely call upon you to redeem when we meet. I would have you feel that by this union you gain, not lose a friend....

“My love to your mother and to ‘Cousin Mag.’ May I not ask from them a sincere ‘God-speed’?

“You will not disappoint me, now, dear one? Write at once that you are all coming. You and Virginia G. will require little preparation—besides the blue skirt and the thin muslin spencer (which you are sure to have!), a pair of white gloves will be all you need.

“This is a hasty and, I fear, an incoherent letter, but a full freight of love goes with it. As I began, I end with ‘COME!’”

As may be gathered from this letter, the wedding was to be a simple affair—so quiet that it could not be called a social function.

We were of one mind on that point. To secure the presence of our most intimate friends, we went through the form of selecting bridesmaids and groomsmen. It was the custom to have a long train of attendants at large wedding-parties, and we took advantage of the fashion to limit the company to be assembled on that early September morning to “the bridal party” and the family. The exceptions to the limit were dear old Doctor Haxall (whose wife was out of town) and three friends of the bridegroom. Two were from New Jersey and family connections, although not related by blood. The other was Mr. Word, of Charlotte, the gentlest-hearted of old bachelors—known affectionately by his intimates as “Cousin Jimmy.”

Genial old saint! My heart swells now at the flashlight picture fastened upon memory of my first sight of, and speech with him. He was more closely shaven than I ever saw him afterward—and he was ever the pink of neatness. An expanse of white vest and shirt-bosom covered a broad chest that palpitated visibly, as, enfolding my hand in both of his, he said, in the best manner of the gentleman of the old school (and there are no finer gentlemen anywhere):

“My dear madam, let me entreat you to regard me from this moment as a BROTHER!”

No capitals can endow the word with the meaning he put into it. He fulfilled his part of the compact nobly.

To go back to the preparation for the quiet bridal: A Richmond fashion I have never known elsewhere, and which outlasted the war by some years, was that the bride-elect and two or three of her bridesmaids drove from house to house a day, or two or three, before the marriage, and left cards upon acquaintances who were not bidden to the ceremony. This was done in cases where, as with me, it was to be a house-wedding, and the attendants were confined to a few family friends. If there were to be a church-wedding, followed by a reception, or if the ceremony at home were to be witnessed by a large party of guests, the drive and delivery of cards preceded the “occasion” by a week or ten days. To send an invitation to any social gathering by post would be a transgression of decorum and precedent—a cheap trick unworthy of any one tolerably well versed in social forms. The delivery by the bride and her suite was delicately complimentary to those she wished to honor.

In furtherance of our design of keeping even the date of the marriage secret up to the last possible hour, we had delayed the delivery of my “P. P. C.” cards until Monday.

At the very bottom of the box of time-discolored letters preserved by the friend of my childhood and intimate of my girlhood, I found one of these cards. Time’s thumbmarks have not spared the bit of glazed pasteboard. My maiden name is there, and, in the left-hand lower corner, “P. P. C.” That was all the information it deigned to give the curious and the friendly. I was going away—somewhere. Just when and where was nobody’s business.

It will hardly be believed that we kept our own counsel so well that our own servants, while they might have their suspicions, were only certain that I was going North on Tuesday, as I had often gone on other summers, and that the girls who had been visiting me for a week were to remain to a party my sister would give on Tuesday evening. Not until Monday morning were any of them, except “Mammy Rachel,” informed what was on foot.

The day dawned—if dawn it could be called—through steady sheets of rain. No delusive adage of “Rain before seven, clear before eleven” ever gained currency in Richmond. It was as clear to our dismayed souls that this was an all-day rain, as that the drive and cards could not be postponed until to-morrow. Sampson, the carriage-driver, whom we did not dub “coachman” until after the war, was notified by the mouth of Tom, the young dining-room servant, that he must have the carriage at the door at ten o’clock, and prepare for a long expedition. We were at the breakfast-table when word came back that “it warn’t a fittin’ day for no young ladies to go out. Nor for his carriage an’ horses. De ladies will have to put off their shoppin’ for another time.”

Mea turned upon the respectful emissary with the snap of the eyes and incisive accent he knew full well:

“Say to Sampson that Miss Virginia is to be married to-morrow, and that we have to take out cards. He will be here on time!”

We had an answer before we left our chairs.

“Yes, ma’am! He says he’d go if it _killed_ him and the horses!”

We set forth at the appointed hour. Mea, Effie, Virginia Graves, and myself, wrapped up as for a winter journey, but in as high spirits as if the sun had shone and birds sung blithely in trees that shivered and shrank and streamed under the weight of the bitter rain. Poor Tom—for the nonce, the footman whose duty it was to jump down from his perch at every door before which we signalled Sampson to stop, to receive the enveloped card upon a silver tray, and to scamper up a walk or up a flight of steps, his umbrella held low over the precious consignment—had the worst of it all. He was soaked to the skin by the time the route was finished and we turned homeward. We were out four hours. And in all the four hours the rain never intermitted one drop, and the wind only changed from the east to blow from all quarters of the heavens at once. If coachman and patient footman were drenched, we were more than moist, and so chilled that we rejoiced with exceeding great joy at the sight of blazing fires in chambers and dining-room on our return.

The home atmosphere was all that it should be on the eve of the first wedding in a household where the happiness of one was the joy of all. Maybe I took it too much as a matter of course, then. I value the recollection with something akin to jealous fondness. How, all day long, while the skies streamed without and the wind dashed the water by pailfuls against the windows, mirth and frolic within went on like a peal of joy-bells, and every look, gesture, and word carried to my heart the sweet persuasion that I was not absent from the thoughts of one of them for a moment.

So certain were we that nothing could “gang agley”—and this in the teeth of the storm that had abated naught of its fury by nightfall—that when Herbert, who had gone to the station to meet the Charlotte party (including Doctor Hoge, who was returning from his vacation), brought back a rueful countenance and the news that “the flood had washed away a bridge on the Danville Railway and made it impracticable for trains to run for twenty-four hours,” we fell upon him with a hail-storm of laughing reproaches that swept away the pretence of sorrowful sympathy.

How could anything go wrong? Not one of us was hoaxed for the fraction of a second.

We took for granted, with the like gay confidence, that the tempest would rage itself faint by morning. It was no surprise that the day was so brilliantly clear, so fresh and fragrant, that Doctor Hoge was reminded of

“The rose that was newly washed by the shower”—

and, after the ceremony, strayed from one to another of the thirty present, asking if any one could tell him who was the author of the line.

Which quest, when comparison of notes elicited the fact that ten persons had been catechised, took a place among our family jests.

One incident of the journey to Washington stands out in my mind among the thousand and one “coincidences,” falsely so-called, that star or mar every human life, if we will but heed them and their consequences. Mr. Terhune, and Mr. Cardwell, one of the groomsmen, who went as far as Baltimore with us, on his way to speak at a political meeting, had gone to look to the luggage after settling me in the car in Richmond. The air was close, and I tried to raise the window by me.

“Allow me!” said a pleasant voice in my ear, and a strong hand reached forward to perform the trifling service.

I said, over my shoulder, “Thank you!” catching sight of a fine, manly face, lighted by a pair of kind, gray eyes. I saw the shadow of the hand that went up to his hat, as he uttered some conventional phrase in acknowledgment, and thought no more of him until we had taken the Potomac boat at Acquia Creek. I recognized my neighbor of the train then, in the tall man who tramped the deck to stretch long limbs cramped by sitting in the car, and checked his walk to pick up and comfort a child that fell headlong in running away from its nurse. I was struck by the gentleness of the handsome giant in handling the baby, and the tact he displayed in taking the weeper in his arms, and directing his attention to a passing steamer. The little fellow stopped crying at once, and, when the frightened nurse found the runaway, he clung to the stranger’s neck, much to the amusement of the latter. He carried him to the far end of the boat, talking cheerily with him, and finally handed him over to the woman, with a kiss upon the baby-lips held up to him.

The call to dinner diverted my mind from the little scene, and it was not until we were in our hotel in Washington that I alluded to it, and told Mr. Terhune of the courtesy the stranger had rendered me on the train.

“I wish you had mentioned it before,” he said. “I should have thanked him. I saw him at the hotel last night. His name is Brookes, I think. He is a cousin of Doctor Hoge. By-the-way, he must be related to your mother. And”—laughingly—“naturally, to yourself.”

“Of course!” I broke in, excitedly. “I wish I had guessed who he was. It must be the Rev. James Brookes, my mother’s cousin. You needn’t laugh! and you must not say ‘Another?’ He is a splendid fellow. His mother was Judith Lacy, and named for my grandmother!”

As the genealogist of the family, I reckoned up the “handsome giant” forthwith. I even knew incidents of his family history he never heard until I rehearsed them to him in his St. Louis home, thirty years afterward. He was, by then, to me the best-belovéd of all my clerical kinsmen. I upbraided him, when we were made known to one another, for not letting me know who he was at our first encounter.

“My dear cousin! On your wedding-day!” was his exclamation. “Even the tie of kindred blood would not have justified the intermeddling of a stranger at that time.”

We made up for the delay of a quarter-century by full and glad recognition of the blood-claim. He was a master in Israel; eloquent in the pulpit; as a writer, strong and convincing; in parish ministrations, as tender as a woman and helpful as a brother. He adorned his profession; as a citizen he fought evil with a lion’s strength, and succored the erring with the wisdom of Paul, the gentleness of John.

What strength and comfort I drew from intimate association with this wise, tender, and leal kinsman, may not be told here. I can never acknowledge it aright until I speak with the tongue of angels.

More than a dozen years have passed since the Easter noon, when the lightning leaped along a thousand miles of telegraph lines, to bring me this message from his son-in-law:

“_James H. Brookes fell asleep at sunrise on Easter morning._”

Since that glorious awakening he has dwelt forever with the Lord.

XXXII

PARSONAGE LIFE—WILLIAM WIRT HENRY—HISTORIC SOIL—JOHN RANDOLPH—THE LAST OF THE RANDOLPHS