CHAPTER IX
On Sunday the whole plantation went to Church. The negroes sat in the gallery and listened with rapt attention to the service. They joined its ritual and its songs with their white folks in equal sincerity and more profound emotion.
At the crossroads the stream of carriages, carts and buggies and horseback riders parted. To the right, the way led to the Episcopal Church, the old English establishment of the State, long since separated from secular authority, yet still bearing the seal of county aristocracy. Colonel Lee was a devout member of this church. Mrs. Lee was the inspiration of its charities and the soul of its activities.
A few of the negroes of the estate attended it with the master and mistress of Arlington. By far the larger number turned to the left at the cross roads and found their way to the Antioch Baptist Church. The simplicity of its service, the fervor of its singing, and above all the emotional call of its revivals which swept the country each summer appealed to the warm-hearted Africans. They took to the Baptist and Methodist churches as ducks to water. The master made no objection to the exercise of their right to worship God as their consciences called. He encouraged their own preachers to hold weekly prayer meetings and exhort his people in the assembling places of the servants.
Nor did he object to the dance which Sam, who was an Episcopalian, invariably organized on the nights following prayer and exhortation.
This last Sunday was one of tender farewells to friends and neighbors. They crowded about the Colonel after the services. They wished him health and happiness and success in his new work.
The last greeting he got from an old bent neighbor of ninety years. It brought a cloud to his brow. All day and into the night the thought persisted and its shadow chilled the hours of his departure. James Nelson was his name, of the ancient family of the Nelsons of Yorktown.
He held Lee's hand a long time and blinked at him with a pair of keen, piercing eyes—keen from a spiritual light that burned within. He spoke in painful deliberation as if he were translating a message.
"I am glad you are going to West Point, Colonel Lee. You will have time for thinking. You will have time to study the art of war as great minds must study it alone if they lead armies to victory. Generals are not developed in the saddle on our plains fighting savages. Our country is going to need a leader of supreme genius. I saw him in a vision, the night I read in the Richmond Enquirer that you had been called to West Point. I shall not see you again. I am walking now into the sunset. Soon the shadows will enfold me and I shall sleep the long sleep. I am content. I have lived. I have loved. I have succeeded and failed. I have swept the gamut of human passion and human emotion. I have no right to more. Yet I envy you the glory of manhood in the crisis that is coming. May the God of our fathers keep you and teach you and bless you is my prayer."
Lee was too deeply moved for words to reply. He pressed his old friend's hand, held it in silence and turned away.
The young people rode horseback. Never in his life had Phil seen anything to equal the easy grace with which these Southern girls sat their horses. Their mothers before them had been born in the saddle. Their ease, their grace was not an acquirement of the teacher. It was bred in the bone.
When a boy challenged a girl for a race, the challenge was instantly accepted. Their saddles were made of the finest leather which the best saddle makers of England and America could find. Their girths were set with double silver buckles. A saddle never turned.
When the long procession reached the gates of Arlington, it seemed to Phil that half the congregation were going to stop for dinner. A large part of them did. Every friend and neighbor who pressed Colonel Lee's hand, or the hand of his wife, had been invited.
When they reached the Hall and Library to talk, their conversation covered a wide range of interest. The one topic tabooed was scandal. It might be whispered behind closed doors. It was never the subject of conversation in an assembly of friends and neighbors in the home. They talked of the rich harvest. They discussed the changes in the fortunes of their mutual friends. They had begun to demand better roads. They discussed the affairs of the County, the Church, the State. The ladies chatted of fashions, of course. But they also discussed the latest novels of George Eliot with keen interest and true insight into their significance in the development of English literature. They knew their Dickens, Thackeray and Scott almost by heart—especially Scott. They expressed their opinions of the daring work of the new author with enthusiasm. Some approved; others had doubts. They did not yet know that George Eliot was a woman.
The chief topic of conversation among the men was politics, State and National. The problems of the British Empire came in for a share of the discussion. These men not only read Burke and Hume, Dickens and Scott, they read the newspapers of England and they kept up with the program of English political parties as their fathers had. And they quoted their opinions as authority for a younger generation. On the shelves of the library could be seen the classics in sober bindings and sprinkled with them a few French authors of distinction.
Over all brooded the spirit of a sincere hospitality, gentle, cordial, simple, generous. They did not merely possess homes, they loved their homes. The two largest words in the tongue which they spoke were Duty and Honor. They were not in a hurry. The race for wealth had never interested them. They took time to play, to rest, to worship God, to chat with their neighbors, to enjoy a sunset. They came of a race of world-conquering men and they felt no necessity for hurrying or apologizing for their birthright.
It was precisely this attitude of mind which made the savage attack of the Abolitionists so far-reaching in its possible results.