At half past nine, according to invariable custom, the whole family, including the house servants, assembled in the library for family prayers. This, like all the other rooms in the new part, was spacious and high-ceiled. It was lined with those books which no gentleman’s library should be without: solemn sets of library books with undimmed gilt lettering and which were only taken from their library shelves to be dusted. All the books which were ever read were in the shabby old study across the corridor. Everything at Harrowby was done in a certain fixed and unvarying manner. The candles used at prayers were always of wax, in tall silver candlesticks, which were placed with the great open Bible on a round mahogany table in the middle of the room. The family sat ranged about in chairs, the servants standing, Hector behind Colonel Tremaine and Mammy Tulip behind Archie, who as a small boy had required watching at “pra’r time.” Colonel Tremaine read in a deep sonorous voice the Gospel, and Mrs. Tremaine made a prayer short and conventional, but with sometimes a phrase or two added that stirred the heart. To-night she thanked God for all their blessings adding, “and last of all for having our children Neville, Richard, Archibald, and Angela about us in health and well-being.”
Angela Vaughn had ever been included as a child of Harrowby since as a wailing infant she had first been held in Mrs. Tremaine’s arms. She was no blood relationship to them and had no fortune, but she had never felt the want of either love or money.
After prayers, it was bedtime for Mrs. Tremaine and Angela. The girl kissed Colonel Tremaine good night to which he responded, “Good night, my daughter, and God keep you.” Latterly, in the dignity of her nineteen years, she had acquired the habit of putting up her cheek to be kissed by Richard and Archie instead of placing her arms about their necks as she did with Colonel Tremaine. When she held her smooth, pale cheek toward Neville, he brushed his dark mustache over it, and Lyddon saw something which amazed him—a deep red color showed suddenly under Neville’s tan and sunburn. Richard saw it, too; nothing escaped his vigilant eye.
Another Harrowby custom was that after the ladies had retired Lyddon with his pupils would repair to their own habitat, the old study, where they read and smoked until the small hours. Colonel Tremaine took that time for writing his diary, a voluminous record of seedtime and harvest, colts and calves, and all the minutiæ of a landed estate, together with moral reflections and sage observations on the weather, and long excerpts from Pope’s “Iliad” and Wordsworth’s “Excursion.” He therefore bade his sons and Lyddon good night, who began their symposium in the study. Little had been said about the great impending struggle in those first hours of Neville’s home-coming. Once or twice during Colonel Tremaine’s inquiries about his old friends in the army, he had said of certain Southern officers, “I suppose they will resign their commissions when their States secede,” to which Neville had replied calmly, “I suppose so, sir, or it is generally understood that such will be the case.”
Lyddon, Neville, and Richard, once in the study with a roaring fire going and with pipes and cigars, began to enjoy those evening hours which are to men the cream of the day. Archie by virtue of his sixteen years was good-humoredly allowed in the company of his elders, but strictly forbidden to touch either pipe or cigar, cigarettes being unknown in that time and place. Finding the conversation beyond his years, Archie soon grew tired and marched off to bed. Lyddon had never acquired the American habit of cocking his feet up over his head, but stretching his legs out toward the ruddy blaze, he began to speak of the impending conflict in terms which were perfectly familiar to both his listeners.
“The doom of slavery is sounded,” he said. “All the forces of civilization are arrayed against it. Up to 1830 the problem of slavery was manageable; the South let the golden moment pass and after 1830 the problem became unmanageable. So the South shut its eyes and passed within the gates of sleep. You know that island in the Euxine Sea whose inhabitants never dream—well, the South has done nothing but dream for the last thirty years. Meanwhile the genie of slavery has got out of the box. Rivers of blood will be shed in settling this question because everything of value in the life of a nation has its blood price. But the emancipation of the negroes really means your emancipation, my dear fellows, and that of your children.”
Richard combated this with all the brilliant sophistries of the school of Calhoun which lost nothing in the handling. Richard was a born reasoner, and Lyddon always admired his masterly presentation of the case of the South. He frankly admitted that the South must return to the teachings of the fathers and some day abolish slavery, but never under the pressure of threats and fanaticism from the North and from Great Britain. As for defeat in battle, Richard could not grasp this idea at all. This caused Lyddon to smile.
“Your unmixed Anglo-Saxon blood makes it impossible for you to imagine defeat, and like all men and women of your race you prove to be bad losers. You will appeal to the arbitrament of the sword, but you will never abide by it. After the South has been drenched in blood will come the great problem of reorganization and the birth of a national life which slavery has stifled. Now you are all Virginians or Georgians or Louisianians, but the day will come when you will all be Americans.”
Neville sat and smoked in silence except for an occasional word full of pith and sense interjected in the conversation. It had always been like this. Neville was the listener, even as a boy, while Lyddon and Richard delighted in the attrition of minds. Their talk usually ranged far afield, but to-night they spoke of nothing except the coming conflict, and matters referring to it.
“By the way,” said Richard, “I had a letter this afternoon from Philip Isabey in New Orleans. He returned from Paris months earlier than he expected because he foresees war, and the first news that reached him was of the secession of South Carolina. I have always looked forward to having you, Mr. Lyddon, know Isabey. He writes that he is already taking steps toward raising a battery of artillery, just the branch of the service which I shall join when the war breaks out. Isabey is a man born for success at whatever he undertakes as you well know by all I have told you of him.”