The victory

by Molly Elliot Seawell

Nothing could exceed the delicacy, tact, and thoughtfulness of the old officer. He told Angela that she could send a dispatch by military telegraph to Neville which would reach him within a few hours and prepare him for her arrival. Angela thanked him again and felt as if she had found a second Colonel Tremaine in this gray-mustached, soft-voiced general. She began to speak with the frankness of an unsophisticated nature of Neville Tremaine and his action in remaining in the United States army. The general listened with the utmost suavity, but made no comment. Angela had expected high commendation from him for Neville, but instead was merely this smooth courtesy, an attitude gracefully sympathetic but wholly noncommittal. Against Neville Tremaine was an iron wall of prejudice which Angela’s soft hands could not batter down. Some intuitive knowledge of this forced itself upon her mind and cut her to the heart. The unspoken enmity of his own people against Neville was easier than this secret distrust on the part of those to whom Neville gave his service from the deepest principle of conscience. This thought aroused something of the pride and sensitiveness of wifehood in Angela. She changed from the attitude of a young girl to that of a self-possessed woman, and told the general, with the coolness and composure of twice her age, of the obloquy visited upon Neville among his own people, “which,” she said, with dignity and even stateliness, “is most undeserved. My husband lost his inheritance; for that he does not grieve, but the disapproval of his father and mother and of all those dear to him, except myself, is very hard to bear. His brother Richard, who was killed only six days ago, understood my husband better than anyone, and there was never any breach between them. Richard Tremaine knew that only the strongest conviction of his duty would keep his brother in your army.”

To this the general bowed again politely and sympathetically, but said no word. Suspicion, that impalpable poison, that nameless destroyer, had gone forth against Neville Tremaine and was withering him.

All at once the general’s kindness and hospitality grew irksome to Angela. She asked when she could leave, and the general, who had been all courtesy, felt that his guest wished to depart. He told her that a boat was at her command, and the carriage would be waiting on the other side. Then the general escorted her to the dock, his orderly carrying her portmanteau, and there the young lieutenant, the general’s nephew, who was to take charge of her for the next twenty-four hours, met them.

The general introduced him. He was a pink-and-white boy who had left Harvard, where he had luxuriated on a large allowance, in order to become a soldier. The general had no mind to trust Angela with any man not of her own class in life, and had selected the greatest coxcomb, who was also one of the bravest of his youngsters, to escort her.

Nothing could have pleased Farley better. He knew more of drawing-rooms than of camps, and was delighted to figure as the guardian of anything so charming as this young girl who was already a matron. The general, assuming himself to be the obliged party and thanking Angela for the privilege of serving her, put her into the boat in which the river was crossed. On the other side was a rickety carriage drawn by a couple of stout mules.

Farley took his seat by the side of the soldier who drove. The coachman’s seat was on the same level as those within, and the roof of the carriage overhung it. Farley had fully expected to be asked to take a place within, but Angela totally forgot to ask him.

It was close upon ten o’clock when the carriage started off, and soon, clearing the camp, passed through a flat green country, interspersed with woods, along a road which had been cut up by artillery and commissary wagons. The morning was beautifully fair and bright, and Angela, leaning back in the carriage, had the feeling that she was beginning a new volume of life. That other volume, which had begun with her childhood as bright and fair as the morning, and had closed in blood and tears and agony, was now locked and laid away forever.

A new perplexity occurred to her. If Neville had not heard of Richard’s death, should she tell him? She was too inexperienced to know what was judicious, but some instinct of the heart told her that the little time she could spend with Neville, that one hour of brightness in his life of undeserved hardship, should not be marred in any way. If he did not know of Richard’s death already, he would learn it soon enough.

Thinking these thoughts, Angela, grave and preoccupied, with downcast eyes, sat back in the corner of the carriage and took no note of whither she went or how.

Farley had supposed that it was pure bashfulness which kept Mrs. Neville Tremaine from inviting him to sit in the carriage with her, but as they jolted steadily along the heavy road and the morning grew into noon, and Angela was obviously unconscious of his existence, he began to feel himself a much-injured man. He glanced back at her occasionally and did not see her once look up, and, like most men, every time he looked at her he thought her nearer to beauty. But she was no nearer to conversation. Farley would have dearly liked to find out if her talk were as interesting as her appearance, but she gave him no opportunity of judging.