The victory

by Molly Elliot Seawell

He had in his life known but one woman who could enter into his world, and that was Angela, probably because he himself had taught her; and although he was but a scholar, pure and simple, indifferent to money and clothes beyond his daily clean shirt, and careless of the glittering side of life, he was as acutely sensitive as Alcibiades himself to the beauty and charm of women. He had sometimes met women with whom he had an intellectual companionship, but they were, with the solitary exception of Angela, middle-aged, plain, dowdy in dress, and had invariably lost all their illusions. The middle Victorian era had no knowledge of women of esprit. He admired the Virginia type of maid and matron; they reminded him of the lilacs and apple blossoms which grew so luxuriantly over the fertile lowland Virginia. He had been astonished at their capacity for affairs and by their knowledge of politics, but their taste in literature was simple and chiefly confined to the “Lake Poets” and to the novels of the day. Angela he regarded as a brand saved from the burning, and he had taught and trained her to shine at another man’s table, to decorate another man’s home. Women as young and pretty and inconsequent as Adrienne generally avoided Lyddon, and he could not but be as much flattered by her notice as she was flattered by his. But as they walked up and down the broken flags in the cool, bright July morning, Lyddon realized that Adrienne was not greatly different mentally from the average woman. He surmised, however, in her a disappointment silently borne and he had from the first suspected the nature of this disappointment. Here was another human being like Heine:

I stand before Life’s great soup pot;

But alas! I have no spoon.

Angela, sitting reading in the darkened drawing-room, wondered what Lyddon and Adrienne were talking about so earnestly, and felt a tinge of womanish jealousy. Lyddon was hers and Adrienne was clearly poaching. While these thoughts were in her mind, the drawing-room door opened, and Hector, with a great flourish, announced: “Colonel Gratiot, Miss Angela. I knowed him in de Mexican War ’long wid Gineral Scott an’ dem wuffless Mexicans.”

Angela rose and gracefully greeted Colonel Gratiot, introducing herself as Mrs. Neville Tremaine. And Colonel Gratiot, who knew her story, at once recognized her and seemed prepared to meet her.

He was a small, thin, keen-eyed man, made of steel wire, and with the catlike quietness which often marks the man of fiery action.

“That pompous old wind-bag Hector,” he said, “knew me in a moment. I haven’t seen him since we were in Mexico more than fifteen years ago, when he was the laughingstock of the whole regiment. It’s no use trying to pass myself off now as Mr. Gratiot; Hector will have informed everything on the plantation who I am.”

“My uncle and aunt will be sorry to miss any part of your visit,” said Angela. “They’re at church, but will be home by one o’clock.”

“I shall be very well entertained meanwhile,” replied Colonel Gratiot gallantly, and accepting Angela’s invitation to be seated and her prompt offer of either blackberry wine or hard cider by way of refreshment.

“I’ll take the cider,” replied Colonel Gratiot, with an air of resignation. And then, Hector having brought the cider in and apologizing profusely for it, Colonel Gratiot and Angela were again left alone. The old soldier’s small figure was almost lost in the depths of a great armchair from whence he surveyed Angela critically and with admiration. There was a pathos concealed under her easy and self-possessed manner, and pity for her stirred Colonel Gratiot’s honest old heart. “She is pining for her husband,” he thought, “the poor, pretty young thing!” He began to ask Angela questions about what she was reading and what she was doing, and then spoke of Isabey, but always with tact and grace. “Captain Isabey,” he said, “I reckon one of my smartest officers. I hope, after we have licked the Yankees, that Isabey will remain in the army. He is cut out for a soldier, and a fine career awaits him. If he would only stick to a military life!”