“You are not one of these crazy abolitionists, I hope. What would we do with the negroes if we freed them? Look at my place. I have a hundred of them here, happy, well-fed, well cared for, nursed in illness, provided for in old age, decently buried when they are dead. Every Sunday afternoon I give up my time to teaching a Sunday-school among them. Every negro woman on this place has one of my silk dresses which I have given her. What do you say to that?” she cried vehemently.
Isabey laughed at Mrs. Charteris’s final enumeration of the disposition of her old silk gowns, and the tension between them was somewhat relieved, but he went on:
“I say the psychology of this struggle is strange. I think it is like what the old noblesse in France went through at the time of the Revolution. They would not believe that anything was going to happen until something had happened. Two years ago this county was like a Garden of Eden for peace, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” replied Mrs. Charteris, “a great deal too much like the Garden of Eden. I was the only person in the county who ever quarreled with anybody, and nobody would ever quarrel with me with the spirit and energy I should have liked. We talked and thought of nothing except the best way to make mango pickle, the new fashions from Baltimore, and our trips to the White Sulphur Springs in summer. Now we spend our time scraping up our old linen sheets and pillowcases into lint for the soldiers, our looms and spinning wheels are going like mad, and we make jokes when we sweeten our potato coffee with honey instead of sugar. Every man in the county who can handle a musket or saber has gone to the war.”
“Except the Rev. Mr. Brand,” said Isabey, gravely, at which Mrs. Charteris suddenly rippled into laughter.
“My son is simply watching his chance to slip away to the instruction camp. He would be returned, of course, by the military authorities, because his age is known, but if he can get as far as Richmond he can pass himself off for full eighteen. Archie Tremaine is just the same, and Mrs. Tremaine and I know what is in those boys’ hearts. When my boy runs away he will take his mother’s blessing with him.”
Mrs. Charteris spoke with a kindling eye and the color suffused her smooth cheek. Isabey looked at her admiringly. Her matronly beauty was resplendent, and the high courage which made her eager to give this darling only son to her country was worthy of the brave days of old. Then Isabey spoke again of Angela, but evidently under restraint.
“I wish,” he said, “that you, with your determination and high-handedness, would stand by Mrs. Neville Tremaine and help to disprove this horrid suspicion against her. It is ridiculous, as I say. She has nothing to tell about military matters that would be worth any man’s listening. She knows nothing; how can she?”
“One can hear a good many things,” replied Mrs. Charteris.
“My dear madam, you can depend upon it, the military authorities at the North know quite as much as Mrs. Neville Tremaine or any other girl in this county can tell them. Her position is painful enough, God knows, and this frightful suspicion makes it that much worse. Only exercise your own sound sense for a moment, Mrs. Charteris, and see how impossible it is that Angela—that Mrs. Neville Tremaine should be able to communicate anything.”