Molly Elliot Seawell

“ 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. ”

“ Lyddon, looking toward the garden, saw Adrienne’s slender black figure pacing up and down the Ladies’ Walk under the black shadows of the yew hedge. It suddenly came to him that this woman was suffering a sort of death in life—the death of love and hope. He had seen long ago how things were with Adrienne and with Isabey as plainly as he had read what was passing in Angela’s soul, for Lyddon was acute and it is impossible for people who live under the same roof to successfully practice disguises one to another. ”

“ Angela had moreover a spirit of pure adventure stronger than he had ever known in any boy. She longed to see the outside world and was strangely conscious from the beginning of the narrowness of the life lived by her own people. Their horizon was bounded by the State of Virginia. Not so Angela’s. She was always teasing Lyddon to tell her stories of across the seas and planned with him triumphal journeys to the glorious cities of the Old World, marvelous explorations in the heart of India and to the very extremities of the earth. ”

“ Angela listened to this with the new sense which had come to her since the marriage ceremony between herself and Neville—the sense of analysis. She had taken such tremendous interest in Isabey and had dreamed so many idle dreams about him, decorating him with all the girlish fancies of her heart; and now Isabey, the much-talked-of, the long-expected, was nothing to her. She was still at the age when the only interest possible was a personal interest, when her own destiny she thought must be affected by every person who crossed her path. ”

“ Angela went downstairs and again sought the garden seat. She was followed by Lyddon. “Wonderful old party, Madame Isabey,” he said, throwing his long, lanky figure on the bench. “I perceive, however, that she is amusing and means to be pleased, and the other lady—by Jupiter, I have never seen a woman more beautiful than she!”
Angela started.
“Why, Mr. Lyddon,” she said, in a surprised voice, “Madame Le Noir is very, very pretty, but I shouldn’t call her beautiful!”
“My child, men will always call Madame Le Noir beautiful because she is seductive; that is beauty of the highest order.” ”

“ She was of a type of woman which he had never seen until he came to Virginia—delicate, soft-voiced, pious, the chief and only hard worker on the estate, carrying easily the burden of thought and care for her family, her unbroken stream of guests, and army of servants. Lyddon, who looked deep into souls, knew the extraordinary courage, the singular tenacity, the silent, passionate loves and hates of women like Mrs. Tremaine. One of the ever strange problems to him was that this type of woman was remarkably pleasant to live with, and was ever full of the small, sweet courtesies of life. ”

“ She was in many respects younger than her nineteen years, and this was her first acquaintance with love. But Neville knew or thought he knew that Angela’s intimacy with him was so great, her dependence on him so absolute, her affection for him of such long standing that she could not only be happy with him, but that she could not be happy with another man—for Neville Tremaine thought first of the woman he loved and secondly of himself. And in this belief he had a little time of rapture. But his dream was broken when he mentioned marriage to Angela. ”

“ I recollect four perfectly dreadful Christmases when he was at West Point and couldn’t come home. I was so miserable then, I remember.”
“So do I remember,” answered Lyddon. “I remember that you made a great outcry about your misery, but you laughed and were as merry as any child I ever saw on Christmas day, and danced in the evening until Mrs. Tremaine sent you to bed.”
“Oh, yes, of course, I danced! I can’t help that. When the music is playing it runs through my veins and makes me dance in spite of myself.”
“Now that Neville is a soldier you can’t expect him to be home every Christmas.” ”

“ As for defeat in battle, Richard could not grasp this idea at all. This caused Lyddon to smile.
“Your unmixed Anglo-Saxon blood makes it impossible for you to imagine defeat, and like all men and women of your race you prove to be bad losers. You will appeal to the arbitrament of the sword, but you will never abide by it. After the South has been drenched in blood will come the great problem of reorganization and the birth of a national life which slavery has stifled. Now you are all Virginians or Georgians or Louisianians, but the day will come when you will all be Americans.” ”

“ The voices and bustle of a crowd of persons stopped instantly, and Angela, playing the opening chord of ‘Dixie,’ Archie struck into the first inspiring strain of the air. The two played it through with immense fire and spirit and then a storm of applause burst forth. Gentlemen shook hands, ladies clasped each other and fell into a rapture of hand-clapping and cries of applause. The air had to be repeated a half dozen times, and each time the tempest of enthusiasm rose and swept with magic force the souls and hearts of all present. Two persons alone were excepted, Neville Tremaine and Lyddon. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In war men grow not only familiar with but contemptuous of death. Isabey had, however, but one Richard Tremaine to lose, and when he remembered this he stopped in his halting and stealthy walk up and down upon the pine needles and felt as if a bolt had entered his heart. It was not meant, he thought, that he should ever have wife or friend.
At ten o’clock, when he intended to rouse Angela, he went close to her and found her sleeping so soundly he had not the heart to waken her. It would, perhaps, be just as well if they reached the lines at six o’clock in the morning. ”

“ They had never known anything between the perfect dignity of a wife and the bottomless pit of degradation into which, once in a hundred years, a woman sometimes fell to be lost forever in the abyss.
“Wherever divorce is unknown, and the honor of women is protected by men with arms in their hands, [339] this state of society must result,” thought Isabey, as he plodded along through the rain back to his tent, and he would be the last person in the world to wish this unwritten law changed. He would rather have died than speak a word of open love to Angela. ”

“ The oars were laid in the bottom of the boat but close at hand, and Angela and Isabey were alone in a world of their own under a murky night sky. The air had grown warm and sultry, and heat lightning played upon the mass of black clouds on the western horizon. Every moment the darkness increased and the night, like a great black bat, seemed to press with huge and stifling wings upon the earth. In the stillness of the darkness they could hear the trampling of hundreds of iron hoofs and the shouts and cries of men searching the house and grounds and garden. ”

“ Remember, boy, that your mother and I shall require a good account of you.”
“You shall have it, father,” replied Archie, drawing himself up and looking a man, not a boy. But suddenly he became a boy again, and, throwing his arms around his father’s neck, kissed Colonel Tremaine’s furrowed cheek, saying: “I will do my best, father. I am not as clever as Richard, and can’t be an officer like him, but I can fight, aye, and die, too, as bravely as he.” Then he went up to Angela, and, again remembering that he was now a man and a soldier, took the initiative in a way he had never done before. ”

“ Angela drew back on the other side of the hearth and said: “But I want to be at peace. I would like to be at peace with Uncle Tremaine and Aunt Sophia—I love them so much. Even Archie is changed toward me, and that little insignificant George Charteris looks at me with contempt when he takes off his hat to me. And do you remember how pleased I was at the idea of Madame Isabey and Madame Le Noir coming here? Well, Madame Le Noir is at war with me.”
“Life is all a battle and a march,” was Lyddon’s answer. ”

“ All of them, the whole Harrowby family, were the most guileless people that Isabey had ever known. The mere saying of the words which made Angela the wife of Neville Tremaine on the wharf that April night at Harrowby was confidently felt, not only by the Harrowby family, but by the whole community, to put her definitely and forever out of the reach of any other man than her husband. Such a thing as a flirtation with a married woman had never been heard of among those patriarchal people. ”

“ A SOLDIER’S ERRAND THE capture of Colonel Gratiot, following upon Isabey’s narrow escape, made an immense stir in the county. There had been other descents by night and day upon places, and a few Confederate private soldiers had been picked up, but there had been nothing like the concerted design which had resulted in the capture of officers.
From a little spark of suspicion grew a great flame of accusation against Angela. The minds of men and women were so unbalanced, so tortured, so driven hither by calamity, that anything could be believed of anyone. ”

“ You don’t know how hard it is to me to feel that every hand is turned against Neville, every heart hardened toward him. You see, all of us love Neville better, I think, than anything in the world; he was Aunt Sophia’s and Uncle Tremaine’s favorite son, though they always denied they had a favorite, but Richard and Archie knew it and all of us, and there never was any jealousy of Neville. ”

“ She rose from her bed quickly and, going to the dressing table on which she kept a daguerreotype of Neville, she clasped her hands and hung her head as if overwhelmed with guilt. She was a wife, and she had dared not only to think of another man, but to touch his hand with hers! If Neville were there it would be so easy, she thought, to confess it to him. She would even write him a letter and tell him about it. But some instinct of common sense restrained her. It occurred to her that the singular change in all her other relations of life affected her with regard to Neville himself. ”

“ As for Neville, his admiration for Angela burst from him as he looked at her. “Dearest,” he said, holding both her hands, “you have become beautiful. You are a woman now and not a child. You have grown up since that night on the wharf at Harrowby.”
“I have gone through that which makes a girl into a woman,” replied Angela, softly. “Until two nights ago I had every night at family prayers to hear every name called except yours, but I called your name in my heart.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was, however, no time to be idle at Harrowby, for Mrs. Tremaine had undertaken to equip a field hospital for Richard Tremaine’s battery of artillery. She contributed to this most of her linen sheets and pillowcases, and organized a household brigade of maids and seamstresses to scrape into lint all the pieces of old linen to be found. Angela did her part with readiness and energy. And, as the case always is, work steadied her mind and her composure. Her heart and soul were growing by leaps and bounds, and in a month she progressed as far as she would have done in a year ordinarily. ”

“ Isabey had seen that same flash of joy in her eyes the night he had arrived wounded at Harrowby. Now it smote him to the heart. He knew—what Angela did not know—that when a woman changes color, smiles, trembles, and casts down her eyes at the coming of a certain man, it has a tragic meaning. She half-rose from the old bench and put her slender hand into Isabey’s, a custom which, from Isabey’s French education, always seemed strange and exciting to him. ”

“ With all else at Harrowby, however, her genuine good humor, her airy spirit, her real goodness of heart, commended her strongly. Archie became her devoted slave, and Lyddon called Madame Isabey Archie’s elective affinity. George Charteris paid his devoirs at the feet of Adrienne, who could never remember whether his name was George or Charles.
Between her and Angela came about that deep, fierce, and wordless antagonism which exists when the shadow of a man stands between two women. ”