THE DIPPING OF THE RED STARS.
"Will you oblige me at the piano, Miss Seymour?" Judge Livingstone asked, as they were seated in the parlor at Ingleside after the retirement of Judge Bonham.
With a show of embarrassment Alice consented as the judge escorted her to the instrument.
"Shall I play your favorite?" she asked a little coquettishly.
"Ah no; not mine, but yours, I beg, and please accompany the chords with your own sweet voice, will you not?"
Alice, thrumming the piano in a perfunctory way, lifted her eyes to her guest as she replied smilingly,
"I have no favorite, sir, indeed I have not. Shall I play yours?"
"Well, yes; you may if you will not laugh at my old-fashioned fancy. I do not mind telling you that one of my favorites is, 'Then You'll Remember Me.' I suspect that there are selections from Beethoven, Mozart and Chopin that are inexpressibly grand, but for soulful melody there is nothing like the sweet, dear old song."
Alice threw her spirit into the old song, and with eyes glistening through her tears, remarked sadly, "This old melody is very dear to me, very, very dear."
"I should imagine so," replied the judge, "and I know if it could syllable its love it would tell you of its passion for you. I think it has taken possession of your whole heart, Miss Seymour," continued the high official with animation.
To this tentative kind of inquiry Alice did not reply, but looked blushingly into the judge's earnest face and sweetly laughed, like the artless girl she was.
The golden hours were fast slipping away, and the little goldsmith was hammering, too, at the tiny arrows.
"I fear I have afflicted you very cruelly, my sweet friend," the judge observed after a pause, as he noted that the hour hand of the ivory time piece upon the mantel had run its circuit eight times in succession. "I doubt not that I have wearied you by the unreasonable length of my visit; but like a bound captive, I have been held in thrall with silken chains for forty-eight hours."
"And have you really enjoyed the time?" she asked, quite artlessly.
"Why, my dear Alice," he now ventured to address her, "I am in love—enmeshed in the delightful toils of the most beautiful woman in the wide, wide world. Will you permit me to declare my passion—my love—for my queen, my beauty? To tell you that I have been captivated by the only girl that can under all circumstances make me happy? And can you, my sweet Alice, reciprocate the feeling?"
There was no response from the girl, but her soul was thrilled by an experience new and exciting, and she buried her face in her hands for the moment.
Perhaps there is very little to interest a third party in the initial chapters of a love story; there are to be sure the old fancies that are animated, then its incidents become melodramatic, and then we laugh, and then possibly forget. As Alice raised her eyes to the portrait just above the piano, her face radiant as it were with an indescribable beauty, the enamored judge looked into the lustrous blue eyes and felt that he read within their azure depths, the passion of a beautiful woman's love; and with much confusion he observed,
"Perhaps Alice, I have originated a surprise for you; please do not be alarmed if my feelings have overmastered my discretion."
The embarrassed girl essayed quite tactfully to withdraw the attention of her suitor from the subject he was nervously pressing, and pointing to the portrait of a gentleman wearing the stars of a colonel in the Confederate army, she asked him if he recognized her father in the painting.
"Do you know," she remarked without awaiting an answer "that I feel inexpressibly sad when I think of our poor boys who wore the gray in the bloody battles of the South?" and a tiny tear quivered in her soft eye.
"I doubt not," replied the judge in sympathy with her feelings, that the retrospection is extremely painful. "I am sure that I have reason to deplore a catastrophe, that over laid our beloved country as with a shroud."
"You were not a soldier in the Union army?" she suggested interrogatively.
"And could you respect me if I were?" he asked.
"Oh yes," Alice replied without hesitation, "you have been so true to the South in the character of judge I can and do honor you, and I am quite sure if you were a Yankee soldier you believed you were performing your duty."
"My sweet Alice," he exclaimed. "Don't let us have Yankee soldiers in this beautiful Southern home; you don't know how opprobriously the term Yankee sounds to me. I was a Union soldier and fought under the Stars and Stripes, through the bloody battle of Manassas, and can my rebel sweetheart forgive me?" he asked, as he timidly took her soft hand in his own.
"Assuredly sir," she replied "if you will give me your word upon honor, that you never shot our poor boys in the battle; now did you?" she feelingly asked as she looked into his face, aglow with the holy passion of love.
"No," he replied emphatically, "but if I had carried a musket instead of a sword I would have done my duty."
"Do you know sweet Alice that whilst there were frowning clouds upon the horizon,there were rainbows with bright hues that bridged them over; that whilst there were incidents excitingly tragical, there were experiences that provoked laughter in camps and prisons? Let me give you a single illustration that occurs to me just this moment, if you will pardon me, and let me say that I am convinced that it was patriotism that kept the Confederate soldiers in the army, where they preferred the thick of the battle, and sought death itself as the highest reward of the brave. It would illustrate our pride as a nation to put the gallant soldiers of the South in an attitude of glory equal to our own.
"I was assistant provost marshal at the military prison at Point Lookout in the years 1863 and 1864, and I recall an amusing character who was brought into the prison with a large number of other prisoners who had been captured at Chancellorsville. I think his name was Patrick Sullivan, a red-haired freckled faced Irishman, clad in butternut homespun; and every available square inch of coat, vest, pants and hat was decorated by military buttons of all kinds and sizes. I asked the prisoner why this superfluity of decorations? and he answered with a drawl as he squinted his left eye;
"Wall mister, I reckin ye haint hearn tell how thrivin the cussed Yankees used to be down South twell we un's got to thinnin em out sorter; they come down thar pine blank in gangs, like skeeters in the Savanny mashes, twell weun's run afoul of em like a passel of turkeys chasing hopper grasses in the clover patches; and bless your soul honey the captain lowed that every dead Yankee would fetch a gold dollar at pay day, arter we had licked old Lincum; and I've got just nineteen hundred and seventy-six ginerals and kurnels and captains and privates in the rear rank to my credic at settlin day. That thar button up thar in the tip end of my hat was a Major, that was skeddadlin to the rare arter weun's was plumb licked at Bull Run; and that thar button on the tother end of the hat was the fust giniral I kilt at Seben Pines; and bless your soul honey, killing ginerals and majors after that won't no more than shooting bull-bats down in Georgy; and as to captains and leftenants, I just flung them in with the foot cavalry sorter pomiscuous."
"Sad to say," the judge continued, "the poor fellow died in prison. We buried him with all his generals and foot cavalry where the Potomac sings its threnody by night and by day."
The narrative with the amusing grimaces of the judge interested Alice, and she laughed until tears came into her eyes. She became serious again however, and asked her guest if he really participated in the battle of Manassas.
"Yes indeed," he rejoined, "and my experience in that battle was inexpressibly sad. I cannot think of Manassas," he resumed, "that I do not recall an incident full of pathos and glory. Without the mechanism of a regular army; with a currency as erratic as the proclamation money of the colonists, without experience or discipline, they had the courage of Spartans; and the proud eminence they assumed in every engagement made them heroes in the forlorn struggle. There is not a single instance upon record where the swords or guns of the Southern armies were tarnished by ignoble flight or inglorious surrender; and whenever their flag was struck, it was because the elements of resistance were exhausted. Sad indeed that the drama should have begun and closed with such heart-rending tragedies. Could I so order and direct the policy of the government, I would make the glory of our American arms as imperishable as the Republicanism of our government. I would make Gettysburg and Chancellorsville to gleam through the haze of centuries like Marathon and Plataea and upon each return of the glorious anniversaries, I would find a Pericles to proclaim from our American Acropolis the fadeless glory of the men who wore the gray as well as the men who wore the blue."
The impassioned eloquence of the distinguished guest enthused Alice with a strange experience, and in her discriminating judgment she discovered a lover whose exalted spirit of patriotism, whose fervid oratory, challenged her admiration. She could only bow her thanks to her honored friend whose role upon the tragic stage must have been highly dramatic.
"I was a lieutenant in the twenty-sixth Pennsylvania cavalry," he continued, "and at the head of a squadron rode a dashing young Confederate officer who, at the time I saw him, was in the act of cleaving the head of one of our captains with his sabre, when a shot from one of our men arrested the sabre in mid air, and he fell mortally wounded from the saddle. I instantly dismounted and raised the young officer in my arms who could only say, "Take the ring on my finger to my darling Al——" and died. I have worn the ring ever since, vainly prosecuting the search for the true claimant. I presume that the owner will never be found. You will observe from its facets and artistic workmanship that the diamond must be very costly; and if you will take it into your hand you will read within the circlet your name and mine, "Alice to Arthur"." The girl taking the ring into her hands uttered a scream that pierced the judge's soul, and she fell heavily upon the floor in a swoon.
"Merciful Father in Heaven," exclaimed the affrighted man in a paroxysm of agony. "What have I done! what have I done!" Clasping the unconscious girl to his bosom, he cried loudly for help, and Clarissa ran in great agitation into the room shrieking out in a delirium of fear.
"Mars jedge has yu dun und sassinated my yung missis in cold blood in dis heer great house? If yu has yu'l sho be swung on de gallus. Oh my lands sakes alive! Jerrusulum my king!" and the old negro ran frantically about the parlor, hither and thither, over turning tables and chairs and throwing info the face of her young mistress great clusters of flowers and water and rugs which had the happy effect of resuscitating the poor girl; and on regaining her senses she looked dazedly up and saw Clarissa coming with a teapot of boiling water, with which the old negro in her transport was about to parboil her young mistress. She motioned Clarissa away, and as soon as she could control her voice she said to the judge;
"Oh, how I must have alarmed you sir!"
"Ugh! My King!" interrupted Clarissa in her grave earnestness "Yu knows yu skeert us jamby to def; yu fokses aint fittin to stay in dis heer parlor by yoselves, ef dem is de shines yu is agwine to cut up; a little mo und yu mout been dead as a mackrel und den dat dar jedge mout be hung on de gallus;" and with this unparliamentary speech the old negro, decidedly out of temper with the situation of persons and things, strode out of the room muttering to herself as she closed the door, "I aint satisfied in my mind pine plank whedder Miss Alice had a sho nuff fit, or whedder she drapped down dat dar way jest to be kotched up by the jedge fo she hit de flo. Dese heer white gals is monstrous sateful dat day is."
"You don't understand our maid," Alice observed to her guest apologetically as Clarissa walked out of the room. "We have to make allowances for her." The judge could not speak for a while, for Clarissa's oddities had thrown him into a fit of laughter. After recovering himself he said argumentatively. "I think I can see that the civilization of the South will have lost much of its fragrance when the old negroes are dead. The history of your country has been refreshed by the charm they have brought to it; and I doubt not that despite their strong individuality, their crudities, they will be sadly missed one of these days."
"Now that I have survived those ridiculous sensations that quite overpowered me," Alice blushingly remarked "will you accompany me for a moment?" And the judge quietly assenting gave Alice his arm not knowing whither she was leading him. She paused before an exquisite painting partially veiled by drapery, and bade him look upon it. The judge obeying her command, saw upon the wall the faithful portraiture of the handsome young officer who was slain under his own eye at Manassas; and from whose hand he had taken the ring that had thrown Alice into the swoon.
"Ah!" he exclaimed emotionally "It is he, it is he, your lover, Alice, your brave soldier boy who died for his darling, ever so far away."
"You will pardon my tears will you not?" she asked entreatingly, "if I tell you that he was so true, so good, so brave, that I loved him so dearly?"
"Yes, I can freely pardon, since you confide your grief, your love to me. Take the ring Alice," he pleaded so eloquently, "Take it from Arthur Livingstone, who loves you with his whole heart; who has come to Ingleside, to your own sweet bower, to your own dear self, to proffer his life, his honor; to relight the candle upon the same altar, upon which your brave soldier boy first lighted it, when he proffered to you his life, his homage, his all. He who returns the ring to you that you gave Arthur Macrae, would take his place in your heart and guard its portal with his life, until the very stars shall pale their fires in the heavens above. God in Heaven will ratify the compact, and 'neither powers, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor life, nor death shall separate us from one another.'"
A smile of unutterable joy was the only answer she gave him.
"Now my darling," the judge pleaded passionately, "in the presence of the angels and of your own Arthur, let us plight our holy troth to one another."
The girl sweetly looking into the radiant face lovingly answered, "And Arthur has promised to give me away at the altar, and to put the ring that I gave him with my love; this ring upon my finger."
"Thank God," he exclaimed, in an ecstacy of feeling, "the cup of my joy overflows," and pressing her soft hand to his lips he kissed it over and over again, and looking only as a lover can look into her upturned face, beaming with happiness, he said, "After all to what can I compare the love of a true, beautiful woman?"
"May I guess?" she asked still laughing.
"Yes, oh yes," he rejoined.
"To the love of a true, manly man."
The scattered sun rays were coalescing and forming a nimbus of beauty around every facade and chamber, except one in Ingleside. Upon this threshold, shadows were by turns advancing and receding. The undiplomatic ambassador with his commission of power to slay, without being outlawed by any judicial tribunal, was inditing his judgment. It ran in the name of Commonwealths and States Universal. This Plenipotentiary had been into this mansion before, but he came without terrors, without equipages, without liveried slaves. He came softly and sweetly. There were no harsh commands that he uttered, no rattling of wheels over cobble stones, no exhibition of a despotic will.
"My daughter," he whispered "you are wearied, come with me I will give you rest." Will he come with this fascination again?
Here lies an old man broken like a wheel by the force of cataracts and torrents, that have been increasing their momentum for all these years, as they have heaved and billowed over his poor soul.
Pending the treaty of love in the parlor, old Ned and Clarissa were holding a whispered conversation in the kitchen.
"Ned," Clarissa asked in alarm, "did dat dar jedge ax yu ary question about Miss Alice when he cum in de do?"
"No, not pintedly," Ned answered.
Clarissa hung her head for a moment, and with her old checked apron to her liquid eyes, she continued sobbingly, "Dar is gwine to cum a breaking up in dis heer fambly Ned, sho as yu born. I seed it de fust time dat furrinner sot his foot in dis heer grate house. Miss Alice aint neber had her hart toched befo, but when he cum, her eyes looked bright lak de stars, und a smile smole all over her beautiful face, und she has been singing love himes ever since, and dat dar jedge when he gets whay Miss Alice is, is jes as happy as a mole in a tater hill."
It was Ned's turn now to dash away a tear from his leaky eyes, and with arms bent over his bowed bosom, and with drooping head and a seesaw motion he said, "Clarsy, I been a studdin erbout dis heer situashun, und ef dat dar furriner tices yung missis from dis heer plantashun, in de name ob Gord what is agwine to come ob ole marser?"
"Yu better ax wot is agwine ter cum ob me und yu. Ole marser is agwine away fust, yu heer my racket. I dun heerd deth er calling him. Ole marser walks rite cranked-sided now, wid dat wheezin in his chiss, und twixt dese franksized niggers, und dis outlandish konstrucshun, und ole missis dun und gon, ole marser is er pinin lak a dedded gum in de low ground."
"Eggzackly so, eggzackly so," ejaculated Ned, "Wot is agwine ter cum of me und yu."
"Dares where yu interests me Ned; what is agwine ter cum of me und yu sho nuff? Deres ole Joshaway nigh erbout one hundred years ole, ded und gon now, jes lived on de rode trapezing baccards und furrards to de ole kommissary, wid his happysack und jimmyjon as emty as my tub dere wid nary botom, twell ole mars fotched him back home; und pend pon it, Ned, ef Miss Alice don't make some perwishun fur me und yu, we's agwine to suck sorrow as sho as yer born."
"Dat's de gospil troof," replied Ned.
"Uncle Ned," came the voice of Alice from the parlor, "Will you please bring Judge Livingstone's hat to him?"
"Sartainly, yung missis," quickly the negro replied, and he ran as fast as his stiff joints would permit, and bowing very humbly, placed the hat in the judge's hand.
"And will you not give me a kiss now in the presence of your old servant?" asked the judge. And the beautiful girl, half yielding, allowed her lover to print one or more upon her rosy lips.
"Adieu my love, until I come again in October to claim my own."
Alice returned to the parlor and threw her soul into the old, old song, the judge's favorite, "Then you'll remember me."
Ned shuffled back to Clarissa with his old bandana to his eyes with the observation "Taint wuff while to pester yosef er sobbing und er sighing no mo Clarsy, I dun und seed de margige sealed und livered. I heerd the nupshall wows sploding same as er passel of poppercrackers."
"Oh my heavens," screamed Clarissa, as she jerked her old apron to her eyes.
The three blood red stars were now blotted out of the reconstruction calendar; like the painted dolphins in the circus at Antioch, they had been taken down one by one. The old Colonel had been running flank and flank with the athletes of reconstruction, but within the last stadium he had lost, and the old man, like the fire scathed oak, was yielding his life after all; dying like a gladiator with his wounds upon his breast; dying, yet holding fast to the traditions of his fathers, with no blemish upon their name or his; with no bar sinister upon the family shield; with no stain upon his sword. Dying a Seymour, a soldier, a southron of the bluest blood; dying with the prophecy upon his lips, "The old South, by the help of God, shall be crowned with all the blessings of civilization, with the last and highest attainments in the manhood and womanhood of her people," Dying with another prophecy upon his lips, scarcely audible, "My daughter, you will live to see the old South, now reeling and tottering like a bewildered traveller, come to her own again; like a magnanimous queen, reigning in love and tranquility; her soil yielding its harvest in bounty, and her people blessed in basket and store."