CHAPTER I.
A June Morning of Eighteen Hundred and Sixty-three—Glimpses of West Philadelphia—The Days before Gettysburg—the Two on the Piazza—Margaret Hayley and Elsie Brand—An Embrace and a Difference—Foreshadowings of Carlton Brand, Brother and Lover.
A wide piazza, with the columns made of such light tracery in scrolled plank-work that they seemed to be almost unreal and gave an appearance of etheriality to the whole front of the house. The piazza, flecked over with the golden June sunshine that stole down between the branches of the tall trees standing in front and shading the house, and that crept in through the network of twine and climbing roses clambering almost up to the roof from the balustrade below. The house to which the piazza adjoined, large, built of wood in that half Flemish and half Elizabethan style which has of late years been made popular through cheap books on cottage architecture and the illustrations in agricultural newspapers,—two and a half stories in height, with a double gabled front that belonged to the one, elaborate cornices and work over the piazza that belonged to the other, and a turret in the centre that belonged to neither. A wide, tall door opening from the piazza, and windows also opening upon it, sweeping down quite to the floor. Altogether a house which approached more nearly to the "composite" order of architecture so much affected by wealthy Americans, than to any one set down in the books by a particular designation; and yet shapely and imposing, and showing that if the most unimpeachable taste had not presided over the erection, yet wealth had been lavishly expended and all the modern graces and ornaments freely supplied.
In front of the house, and sweeping down to the road that ran within a hundred feet, a grassed lawn lying in the lovely green of early summer, only broken at irregular intervals by the dozen of trees of larger and smaller sizes, round which the earth had been artistically made to swell so as to do away with any appearance of newness and create the impression that the roundness had been caused by the bursting of the trees farther out of the ground through many years of vigorous growth. Beneath one of the largest of the trees—a maple, with the silver sheen almost equally divided between its bark and its glossy leaves, a long wooden bench or settee, with two or three sofa-cushions thrown carelessly upon it, as if it formed at times a favorite lounge for a reader or a smoker. On the piazza a triad of chairs, irregularly placed and all unoccupied. One of the two folding doors leading into the halls from the piazza, wide open, as became the season, and the other half closed as if a single puff of summer breeze coming through the hall had become exhausted before closing it entirely. One of the windows opening from the piazza into what seemed to be the better part of the house, closed entirely; and the other, with the shutters "bowed" or half open, permitting a peep into a large parlor or sitting-room, with rich carpet and handsome furniture, but kept dusky under the impression (more or less reasonable) that thereby additional coolness would be secured.
Near the house, on both sides, other houses of corresponding pretension though displaying great variety in style of architecture; and in front, across the wide road, still others showing to the right and left, and the whole appearance of the immediate neighborhood evidencing that it was neither country nor city, but a blending of both, suburban, and a chosen spot for the residences of those who did business in the great city and wished to be near it, and who possessed means and taste to make so pleasant a selection. Still farther away in front, as seen between the other houses and shrubbery, and stretching off southward in a long rolling sweep, rich agricultural country, with some of the hay-crop yet ungathered, broad fields of grain receiving the last ripening kiss of the sun before yielding to the sickle or the reaping-machine, and fruit-trees already beginning to be golden with the apples, pears and peaches glimmering amid the leaves. A quiet, gentle scene, with evident wealth to gild it and perfect repose to lend it character; and over all the warm sun of a June morning resting like a benediction, and a slight shadow of golden haze in the air softening every object in the perspective. Occasionally a pedestrian figure moving slowly along one of the foot-paths that bordered the wide road; and anon a farm-wagon loaded with early produce and on its way to market, rumbling by with such a sleepy expression on the face of the driver and such lollings of the ears of the full-fed and lazy horses, that the episode of its passage rather added to than detracted from the slumberous quiet of the prospect.
Then another passage, very different and not at all in keeping with any of the points that have before been noted. An officer in full uniform, with the front of his chasseur cap thrown high in defiance of the glare of the sunshine, spurring by on a high-stepping and fast-trotting horse, eastward towards the city, with such life and haste in every movement of himself and the animal he bestrode as to momentarily dash the whole view with unquiet. Then the equestrian figure out of sight and the beat of his horse's hoofs heard no longer; and the scene relapsing into that languor born of the June morning verging rapidly towards noon.
Then a sudden sound, still more discordant with the drowsy peace of the hour than the sight of the spurring soldier, and still more painfully suggestive of war in the land of peace. The quick, sharp rattle of a snare-drum, but a little space removed, and apparently passing down one of the lateral roads in the neighborhood, dying away with a light tap into the distance a moment after, and quiet coming back again yet more markedly after so incongruous an interruption.
The place, West Philadelphia, half a mile or more beyond the Schuylkill, not far from the line traversed beyond the bridge by the Market Street cars, and near the intersection of that branch of the main artery known as the Darby Road,—in the outer edge of that beautiful little section with its tall trees and plats of natural green, out of and into which the shrieking monsters of the Pennsylvania Central Railroad dart every hour in the day with freight and passengers to and from the Great West. The time, late in June, 1863, a few days before Gettysburg, when the long-threatened invasion of the North by the rebels had become for the moment an accomplished fact, when Lee and Ewell had crossed the Potomac, swept on through Upper Maryland, entered Pennsylvania, devastated the farms and carried away the stock of the farmers on the border, laid York under a contribution, burned the barracks at Carlisle, and threatened every hour to capture Harrisburgh and force the passage of the Susquehanna. When women and children, and by far too many of the able-bodied inhabitants who should have shown more pride if they indeed possessed no courage, had fled away from the Seat of Government of the Keystone State, and the public records were following them to prevent their falling into the hands of an enemy known to be destructive and revengeful, and for the moment believed to be irresistible. When the rebels themselves boasted that they were about to teach the North all the horrors of war that had fallen upon the South in the long contest,—and that in a few days they would water their cavalry-horses in the Delaware, if they did not achieve the same success at the very banks of the Hudson; and when the newspapers of New York and Philadelphia, for the moment completely discouraged, gave up the line of defence of the Susquehanna, and gravely debated, whether a check could indeed be made at the Delaware, with the loss of the Quaker City, or whether the great struggle must at last be transferred to the Hudson hills of New Jersey. When the Reserves were mustering in Philadelphia, and the Coal Regiments forming in the haunts of the sturdy miners. When the Pennsylvania coal-mines were to be set on fire by the invader, and left to burn on until all the fuel of the nation was destroyed, if the "great conflagration" of the whole earth did not follow as a result. When more placards calling for the defence of the State, were exhibited in the neighborhood of old Independence Hall, than had ever shown there, inviting the idle to amusement, in the most prosperous seasons of opera, theatre and concert-saloon—drums beating at every corner, brass bands blowing on every square, patriotic appeals and efforts to recruit on every hand, and yet the people apparently lying under bodily apathy or mental paralysis. When Governor Seymour, of New York, and Governor Parker, of New Jersey, waiving the political question for the moment, were calling out the troops of those States to the defence of Pennsylvania; and when the militia of the city of New York and the returned nine-months volunteers of New Jersey were showing themselves equally ready to respond to the call. When the Army of the Potomac seemed for the moment to be nothing, even for the defence of the North, Hooker discredited, no successor discovered, public confidence lost, the very darkest day of the struggle at hand, and no man able or willing to predict what might be the extent of disaster reached before the rolling back of the tide of invasion from the homes of the loyal States.
Such were the place, the time, the surroundings, and the atmosphere (so to speak) of the house of the blended Flemish and Elizabethan styles of architecture, at West Philadelphia, of which, thus far, only the outward aspects have been presented. Yet there may be an inexcusable neglect of the proprieties, in presenting a house, its green lawn, shady trees, and even the pleasant landscape stretching away in front of it, before those living figures which would certainly have attracted the attention of an observer in advance of any of the inanimate beauties of art or nature.
Those figures were two in number, both standing on the piazza, very near the trellis of climbing roses, and where the flecks of sunshine fell through the leaves upon them and dashed them with little dots and lines of moving light, as well as the floor upon which they stood. Both were girls—both young—both beautiful; at least each possessed that combination of features, form and manner, making her very pleasing to the casual observer, and certain to be reckoned beautiful by some one admitted to a closer knowledge of the spirit enshrined within. They were evidently dear friends; for as they stood near the trellis, and the hand of the taller of the two plucked a half-open rose from one of the clusters, and she playfully tried to coax it to a fuller opening by breathing caressingly upon it and separating its clinging leaves with her dainty fingers,—the arm of the other was around her waist, and both the trim and graceful forms were slightly swaying backward and forward in that pleasant, idle, school-girl motion which the grown woman does not easily forget until it has given the "fidgets" to half her elder acquaintances.
The taller and perhaps by a year the elder—she of the rose—was the daughter of the mistress of that pleasant summer paradise, born to wealth and position, and her birth registered some two-and-twenty years before in the predecessor of the heavy family Bible with its golden clasps, which lay in state in the parlor so near her, as Margaret Hayley. She was a little above the average height of womanhood, and might have seemed too tall for grace but for the exquisite rounding of the lithe form, the matchless fall of a pair of sloping shoulders that could not probably be matched within a radius of an hundred miles, the graceful carriage of a neck that would have been long if less elegantly poised, the beauty in shape and spring in motion of the Arab foot under which the water would have run as easily as beneath a bridge, and the supple delicacy of the long taper fingers with their rose-tinted nails, which seemed perfect and high-blooded enough to have a mission of playing among heart-strings as the fingers of others might do among the chords of a harp.
In feature the young girl had quite as many claims to attention. The hair was very dark and very profuse—so near to black that it needed the sunlight before the golden shadows in the dark brown became fully apparent—swept plainly down on either side, in the madonna fashion, from a brow that was very pure, high and clear. The face was handsomely moulded, rather long than broad, as beseemed the figure, rather pale than ruddy, though with a dash of healthy color in each cheek that belied any momentary suspicion of ill health; the nose a little long and somewhat decided, but very classic in outline and finely cut at the nostril; the eyes dark—so dark that a careless observer would have lost their brown and called them black, and their expression a little reserved if not sad and even sometimes severe; the mouth small and well-shaped, with the lips as delicately tinted as the faintest blush-rose in the cluster near her, but a shade too thin for the exhibition of exuberant passion, and showing a slight curl of pride at the corners of the upper; the chin rounded, full, and forming a pleasant point for the eye to rest upon as it descended from the face to study the contour of neck and shoulders. The first appreciative glance at her was certain to be followed by the suppressed exclamation: "How very handsome!" and the second by a thought that the lips did not syllable: "How very proud and queenly!" It might have needed many more than a third, before the gazer could go to the full depth of a very marked character, and say how much of that queenly bearing might be ready to bend at last to the magic touch of the softer passions, and how much of that evident goodness and firmness might be employed in conveying happiness to others than herself. Among her peculiarities, she seemed to despise stripes, plaids, sprigs, spots, and the other endless varieties of color in material; and the lawn which swept that morning around her erect figure was of a neutral tint and as devoid of spot as were arms, ears and neck of any ornament in jewelry except a small cameo at the throat, a slight gold chain around the neck and descending to the bosom, and a single cluster diamond sparkling on the forefinger of the right-hand that was dallying with the spirit hidden among the rose-leaves.
No more telling contrast to the tall, majestic girl could well have been supplied, than her neighbor and dear friend, Elsie Brand (Elspeth, baptismally, for reasons that will hereafter develop themselves, but always called Elsie by those admitted to the least intimacy.) She was at least four inches shorter than Miss Hayley, round and rather plump, though very graceful in figure, with a chubby face, ruddy cheeks, piquant nose, merry blue eyes, pouting red lips, full hair coming low down on the forehead and of that pale gold which the old Scotch poets immortalized as "yellow," in so many of their lays of the bardic era. Pretty, beyond question, but more good and attractive-looking than beautiful; and if a second look at Margaret Hayley would have induced an observation having reference to her pride, a second at Elsie Brand was certain to bring out the thought if not the speech: "What a charming, good little girl!" Perhaps a third, with persons not too severely in training for the great Olympian races of morality, was very likely to create such a sensation as one experiences in gazing at a lusciously ripe peach, having particular reference to the pulpy red lips with their funny pout and kissable look, and ending in a wish that the crimson love-apples of the modern Hesperides were not quite so zealously guarded.
Elsie had not yet passed her twenty-second birthday, though she had been "of age" for a good many twelvemonths, in the estimation of those who had come near enough to her to feel the beating of her warm heart. Doctor James Holton, graduate of the Pennsylvania Medical College, and lately a student with one who had been a student with David Hosack, held his own peculiar estimation of Elsie Brand, and had almost been driven into rank atheism from the necessity of both holding and proving that the theory of our springing from one common father and mother could not possibly be correct, as the clay of which Elsie was made had been so very different—so much purer, sweeter and better—from that employed in the moulding of ordinary mortals!
For some minutes the two young girls had been standing in silence, Margaret engaged with experiments on her opening rose and Elsie with one arm around her and lazily observing the operation—both apparently full of that indolent enjoyment born of ease, content, and the languid air of the summer morning. Then the little one spoke:
"Margaret, do you know of what I have been thinking for the last two minutes?"
"Haven't any machine by which I could pry into the droll secrets of your brain, Elsie, my dear!" answered the taller, pleasantly, but with no smile upon her lips meanwhile, and apparently with all her attention yet absorbed in her horticultural experiment.
"Shall I tell you?" queried Elsie.
"Certainly, pet, if you like!" was the reply, the tone, as well as the word of endearment, showing indefinably that Margaret Hayley thought of herself as a woman and yet of her companion (of nearly the same age) as little more than a child.
"I was thinking," said the little girl, "how much of character is sometimes shown in the action of a moment, and how very different we are."
"Who thought your little head was so philosophical, Elsie?" answered Margaret, and this time she for a moment deserted her rose and looked around with a pleasant smile. "Well, the application of your thought to yourself and to me?"
"Oh," said the little one. "It was only about the rose. I should have plucked it, if I plucked it at all, and enjoyed it as it was. You are trying to make something else out of it, and yet show no wish to destroy the flower. A cruel woman—different from either of us, I hope—would probably be plucking off the leaves one by one and throwing them away, without caring how much pain she might be inflicting on the life of the flower, hidden away down somewhere in its heart."
"A very pretty idea, upon my word!" said Margaret, ceasing to blow upon and pluck at the leaves, and turning upon her companion a countenance showing something like surprised admiration. "And what do you make of my character, Elsie, as shown by my handling of the rose?"
"You must not be angry with me, Margaret," answered the young girl, a little in the spirit of deprecation. "But you see I should have been satisfied with the rose as it was, and the other would have been cruelly dissatisfied with it in any shape, and you——"
"Well, dear? I——"
"You showed that you were not entirely satisfied with every thing as it was, and that you had a little self-will leading you to force things to be as you chose, by trying to make that poor little flower outrun the course of nature and bloom before it was quite ready."
"I think you are right, Elsie," said Margaret, nodding her head in that slight and repeated manner indicative of answering the mind within quite as much as any observation from without. "I am not satisfied with every thing in the world, Elsie. I am not cruel, I hope and believe; but I am sharper, harder, more requiring than you, and consequently not formed for half so much true happiness. I do feel like forcing things to be what I require, sometimes, and then I suppose I grow unamiable."
"You are never any thing else than a dear good girl, with a wiser head than my rattle-pate, and my own sweet sister that is to be!" and the arm of the speaker went still more closely around the slight waist it encircled. A blush as delicately roseate as the first flushings of dawn crept over the more classic face that bent above her own, the lips above came down to meet those pouting below, and the two young girls were kissing and embracing as if they had been two lovers of opposite sexes but very much of one opinion as to the best office of the lips. Any delicately-nerved old bachelor who should have happened to pass in front of the house at that moment and catch a glimpse of the scene just then enacted on the piazza, would certainly have fainted away on the spot, at the idea of such a waste of the most delicious of "raw material."
"You may have the rose for your lesson—you see I have not spoiled it, after all," said Margaret, when the kiss had been given and the rosy flush died away from her own cheek.
"To give to Carlton?" asked Elsie, as she held out her hand for it.
"No, Carlton must come after his own roses!" was the reply, with the least dash of pride in the curling of the upper lip.
"And pluck them himself?" asked saucy Elsie.
"Certainly!"
"No matter where he finds them growing—on tree, or on cheek, or on lips!" continued the young girl, with a light laugh.
For an instant the same flush rose again on the cheek of Margaret Hayley; then she forced it away, smiled, and said:
"Certainly! why not? Carlton Brand kisses me, sometimes, and I have more than once kissed him back. What is that to you, sauce-box, when we are engaged to be married?"
"What is that to me? Every thing! Joy—happiness—to know that I am going to have so dear a sister!" cried the little one, throwing both her arms, this time, around the pliant waist of Margaret and hugging her in a perfect transport of delight, which seemed quite shared in, though more tranquilly, by the object of the demonstration.
The saddest, cruellest thing in all the lyric drama is the blast of De Sylva's horn on Ernani's wedding morning, calling him in one instant from happy love to dishonor or death. Neither in romance nor in nature should such sudden transitions occur. Alas, for humanity! they do occur in both, not occasionally but habitually. The Duchess of Richmond's ball—then Waterloo. De Joinville springs on board his flag-ship to sail for the attack on Vera Cruz, in the very ball dress in which he has been dancing the whole night through with the republican belles at Castle Garden. The Pall is over every thing of earth: how sadly and how inevitably it droops above the Banner! No scene upon earth could have been more exquisitely peaceful, and few could have been lovelier, than that which surrounded and comprehended those two fair girls in their embrace upon the piazza. Wealth, youth, beauty, good feeling, happiness—all were there; and love blent with friendship, for was not the embrace, given by Elsie Brand and accepted by Margaret Hayley, both given and accepted quite as much for her brother's sake as her own? It was fitting, then, according to the sad fitness of earth, that the element of discord should enter into the peaceful and the beautiful.
The officer spurred by, as we have seen him do, gazing only with our incorporeal eyes. Both the young girls, just releasing each other from their embrace, saw the dark cloud of war sweeping between them and the sunlit grain fields. Elsie Brand shuddered and drew back, as if the incongruity jarred her nature. Margaret Hayley instantly lifted her proud neck the higher, as if something in her nature sympathized with every suggestion of the struggle, and as if she was, indeed, insensibly riding on with the hurrying horseman.
"And what does the shudder mean, little one?" asked Margaret, who had plainly distinguished it at the moment of release.
"I hate war, and every thing connected with it!" was the reply, the tone almost petulant.
"And I do not hate it, painful as it may be in many particulars," said Margaret. "Force and energy are the noblest developments in life. Bravery is the nearest possible approach to that divine character which knows no superior and consequently fears none."
"Nearer to the divine than love?" asked the little one.
Just for one instant, again, that roseate tint on the cheek of Margaret, as she said: "Nobler, if not nearer to the divine; and sorry as I must be to see the bloodshed caused by a civil war in my native land, I am almost glad that it has occurred, sometimes, as a means of rousing the sluggish pulses of men who would otherwise have stagnated in trade and pleasure, and proving that we yet possess something of the hero spirit of old."
"And I am sorry for it all the while, night and day, in my prayers and in my dreams," answered Elsie Brand, with a sigh. "Hark!" as the tap of the drum came across from the lateral road before-mentioned. "There is another reminder of the curse, and one that comes nearer home. Do you remember, Margaret, that I shall soon have a brother, and you a lover, separated from us and in terrible danger? They say Harrisburgh must be taken, unless a very large body of troops can reach it at once. The Reserves will probably go on, to-night, and Carlton will probably accept his old commission again. I do want him to do his duty, Margaret, if it is his duty; but I hope that he will not think so—that he will not go away."
"And I hope that he will!" answered Margaret, her tall form drawn up to its full height, and a look of stern pride upon her face that could not very well be mistaken.
"To go into danger—perhaps to death?" asked Elsie, looking sadly at the proud Sibylline face.
"To a thousand deaths, if necessary, rather than towards the least suspicion of a want of true manhood!"
"Ah, you do not know the trembling fear of a sister's love!" said Elsie, with a sigh.
"I know a love fifty times deeper!" said Margaret, the pride still on her face, and yet that ever-returning flush coming up again to say that if love had not conquered pride it had at least divided the dominion. "Listen, Elsie Brand, to some words that you may as well understand now as ever. There is no one near to hear us, and so it is almost like speaking before heaven alone. I love your brother, deeply, devotedly, with all the power of my nature—so devotedly that if that love should be wrenched away from my heart by any circumstance, I know that my life would thenceforth be but one long, wretched mockery of existence. Happy natures like yours, Elsie, do not know the absolute agony that lies in such love. And yet I could give up that love, and my life with it, and would do so, before I would live, love, and yet despise!"
"Despise?—are you speaking of Carlton—of my brother?" asked the young girl, apparently a little lost in the mysterious energy of her companion's words.
"I said that I could not despise," Margaret Hayley went on. "I must not, or we have no future. Do you know that I should have reverenced your brother more, even if I did not love him better, if he had not refused the commission in the army tendered him at the commencement of the war? I might have wept, perhaps mourned—but I should have idolized. Now, I only love a mortal like myself, where I might have been worshipping a hero!"
"Or sobbing over a grave!" said Elsie, with a sigh which told how easily she might have been brought to illustrate the word she used.
"What then!" was the quick reply of Margaret. "The glory would have been his—the loss and grief would have been mine, and I could have borne them. But he did not choose to enter the struggle, prominent as he had once been in military movements. He had the excuse of business and occupation, and I have tried to believe that he needed no other."
"Needed?—what do you mean, Margaret?" cried Elsie Brand in a tone and with a movement of starting back which evidenced both pain and alarm.
"It is a painful thing, but I must say it, to you, as I do not know that I could say it to him," pursued Margaret. "I mean, that I have tried to believe that there was no flaw in my idol—that Carlton Brand, who held every pulse of my woman's heart responsive to his touch—did not lack the one manly virtue of courage!"
"And would you dare to believe my brother—the man you have pretended to love—a coward?" There was something vexed and sharp, almost angry, in Elsie's tone, now, that did not promise another immediate embrace like that of a few moments previous. Margaret Hayley saw the expression of her face, but neither blenched before it nor seemed to feel any anger at the manifestation.
"Elsie Brand," she said, her words slow, measured, and with a cadence that was somehow inexpressibly pained and mournful, "I am no school-girl, and I am speaking words that I mean. I know your brother to be patriotic, I know him to be in high health, athletic, vigorous and determined; and have sometimes believed that if he had possessed that one requisite, animal courage, he would long ago have been fighting the foes of the republic. Grieve as I may to part with him, I am glad you believe that he is going with the Reserves. He had his choice, before, and I let my own heart instead of my reason have sway, and did not question its propriety. But were he to hang back now, when his native State is invaded and every arm necessary to drive back the rebels from Pennsylvania soil, I should know that he was a coward!"
"I don't like you, Margaret Hayley, when your face looks so and you talk in that manner!" said the little girl. "But I will not quarrel with you. Carlton is going with the Reserves, and some day when he is killed or you hear how he has shamed all the rest with his bravery, you will be sorry for the words you have just spoken!" Just then the little yellow-haired girl was the Sibyl, and her prophecy went upon record with the wild words of Margaret, to be afterwards remembered—how sadly!
"No—do not be angry with me, Elsie," said Margaret, taking the hand that had been temporarily released. "You have no cause. I have been speaking against my own heart all the while, much more than against the man whom I truly love. I know him to be noble and true, and I will believe him brave. Are you satisfied? Kiss me!" and the proud, statuesque face once more lost its gravity, to bring back all the joyousness into the rounder and merrier one from which it had temporarily departed.
The light summer jockey-hat of Elsie lay just within the door, on a chair. With a quick glance at the watch hidden under her waist-riband, she stepped within the door, threw on her hat, and was about to terminate her somewhat prolonged morning-call, when Margaret took it off again, dropped it into one of the vacant chairs, and said:
"No—do not go away. You have nothing to do at home—mother has gone down to the city for the day, you know, and I shall be lonely. We shall have some lunch—you may call it dinner if it will taste any better,—very soon. Stay till the afternoon—cannot you do so, just as well as not?"
"I suppose so—no, I must see Carlton—yes, though, Carlton will be quite as likely to come here first as to go home, if he has arranged to go away—yes, I will stay if you wish it so much!" rapidly answered the little one.
"That is a good girl," said Margaret Hayley, just as she might have patted a school hobby-de-hoy on the head. "Now run into the parlor and get the very nicest book you can find, draw the easy-chair out of the hall, and enjoy yourself the best you can for just twenty minutes, while I go down to the kitchen, in ma's place, and see what progress our new Dutch cook has been making."
She disappeared with the words, and her injunctions were acted upon almost as rapidly. In half a minute Elsie had the arm-chair out of the hall, and an illustrated work off one of the tables in the parlor, and was prepared for her short period of indolent enjoyment.