To which Elizabeth, her spirit dying within her at the aspect of things, answered: “Is not the front bedroom in the third story furnished? Perhaps I could go there.”
Serena eagerly led the way. It was the room which had been Elizabeth’s ten years ago. She had chosen it because General Brandon was always entertaining some of his relations, and had the old-time idea that hospitality to a guest meant the upsetting of all family arrangements; so Elizabeth had chosen this upper room for her own, secure in not being turned out of it to accommodate some ex-Confederate general, judge, or other person distinguished in “our great Civil War,” as General Brandon always spoke of it. The windows had a good outlook upon the blue Potomac and on the misty line of the Virginia hills far beyond. Otherwise it had not a single recommendation.
Serena, her heart in her beady black eyes, was all sympathy and attention. She brought tea, called Elizabeth “honey,” and talked in her slow and soothing voice of “de Gin’l.” Evidently General Brandon was a hero to his maid-of-all-work.
At last Serena went out, and Elizabeth was alone. She sat down before the little dressing-table and removed her widow’s bonnet and veil. And remembering that when she had last seen herself in that mirror she had been a bride and in the glory of her youth, she could not but study the changes in herself. She had then been beautiful, in a vivid, irregular manner, and ought to have been so still, as she was but little past her thirtieth birthday. But she saw plainly that she was haggard, that she was sallow, that she was painfully thin. She looked at her own reflection with self-pity, thinking, “I should be handsome still if I had but some flesh and color, and if life were not so hard and disappointing.” She sat a long while, leaning her head on her hand, and seeing in the mirror, not her own reflection, but the hapless story of her own life passing before her. Then, recalling herself, like a person waking from a dream, she went to the window and looked out upon the quiet street.
It was already dusk, and the mist of the late autumn afternoon made mysterious shadows, through which the houses loomed large and near. Directly before her towered the great stone house, and just above the porte-cochère was a large, square window, with delicate lace draperies. It was quite dark enough for the wood fire, sparkling in the white-tiled fireplace, to show the interior of the room, which was evidently a boudoir of the most beautiful and luxurious character. Elizabeth was keen of sight, and she could not refrain from looking into so charming a room placed under her eyes. The walls were panelled with flowered silk; the furniture was of gold and spindle-legged; there was a delicious little sofa drawn up to the fire; everything spoke of wealth informed by taste.
In a minute more the mistress of this delightful room entered—a graceful, girlish figure, enveloped in a long, full cloak of a shimmering, silvery satin and wearing a flower-decked white hat. She threw aside her cloak and sat down for a moment on the sofa before the fire. Her air was not that of happy abandon, but rather of thoughtfulness, even of sadness. She was not beautiful, but Elizabeth, with a woman’s ready appraisement of another woman’s charms, saw at a glance that this girl’s appearance was interesting. Her features were delicate, but her face was too pale for beauty; her thin-lipped mouth was large, though redeemed by perfect teeth; but her air, her figure, her walk, were full of grace and elegance. She remained only a few minutes in the room, then passed into the inner room and closed the door after her. And in a moment a maid came in and drew the silk curtains, leaving only a rosy glow from the window instead of a captivating picture.
Elizabeth, distracted for only a little while from her own thoughts, went back to the sad employment of casting up her sorrows and disappointments. She remembered her childhood on the old Virginia plantation with her father’s mother. The war was not many years past then, and over all her life hung that great black shadow of chaos following defeat, the wreck of fortune, the upheaval of society, the helplessness, the despair of millions of people, with their whole social fabric a wreck, all values destroyed, everything disrupted and out of joint. She had realized later on how General Brandon had stinted himself for the little dark-eyed daughter on the Virginia plantation, and his magnanimous investment of his savings in Egyptian bonds, which made Elizabeth smile faintly in the midst of her wretchedness. In those years of separation and of learning from the great, wide-open book of life, Elizabeth had come to understand her father better than during that part of her life passed with him.
The General was a West Point graduate, and had been the best-loved man in his class, in spite of having been also the handsomest and one of the dullest. So when his old classmates in the army had heard of his straits, they all agreed that “something must be done for Dick Brandon.” Although a West Point man, he was not a scientific man; he was too handsome to know much. His old friends did the best they could for him by getting him a clerkship in Washington; and General Brandon, who had commanded a brigade of three thousand fighting men, during four years of unremitting warfare, found himself subject to a chief of division young enough to be his son and as ignorant as men are made.
The old soldier had borne his lot with a fine patience and a sweet calmness that placed him well up in the ranks of unrecorded heroes. He had a superb courage, a charming temper; he remained incurably handsome, and likewise he was and always remained incurably simple in every way. Anybody could hoodwink him, and most people did. When he had come to Washington, bringing with him his daughter Elizabeth, then eighteen, and some remnant of property coming to him, he bought the shabby house. Or, rather, he thought he bought it, for it had a heavy mortgage on it, which General Brandon never had the least expectation of lifting—mortgages being as natural to Virginians as sparks flying upward.
Washington in those days was a simple, merry place, with a delightful and unique society based upon official rank, and a few old resident families, who were in society when Abigail Adams had the clothes dried in the East Room of the White House. Elizabeth remembered that she had been a great belle with gay young army and navy men and sprigs of diplomats and was not unhappy, although she had felt at every turn the prick of poverty. She had been ashamed to complain, however, in the presence of General Brandon’s cheerful submission. He had his compensations, though,—chiefly his evening visits to and from other grizzled officers of both sides, when they sat and talked gravely and tensely of issues as dead as Julius Cæsar, and solemnly discussed what might have been, to an accompaniment of whiskey and cigars. General Brandon’s whiskey and cigars were poor—he smoked a pipe himself, declaring he preferred it. But no army man of any rank ever animadverted on the General’s whiskey or cigars; and, although both were evilly cheap, they drank and smoked cheerfully, with a relish for the man if not for his entertainment.