As the weeks wore on the tension of minds grew more acute, and it soon came to the point that Lyddon could no longer openly express his political views, which were totally opposed to slavery; the Southern people allowed no man freedom of conscience in the matter. Slavery, which for the first thirty years of the century had been frankly condemned and anxiously sought to be abolished by Washington, Jefferson, and all thinking men in the State, had in the next thirty years fastened itself, in all its monstrosity, upon the body politic and had stifled remonstrance. As John Randolph said: “The South had a wolf by the ears and was afraid to let go and afraid to hold on”; but as their fear of letting go was greater than their fear of holding on, they held on until they were half-devoured by this wolf called Slavery.
Lyddon, watching and observing, could not speak his mind on the past and future of slavery even to Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine. Until then Lyddon’s views had been accepted with good-humored tolerance and looked upon as the cranky notions of a stranger from beyond the ocean seas. Now, however, the matter had become too acute, too exquisitely painful, and after one or two fierce contradictions from the usually mild-mannered Colonel Tremaine, followed by profuse apologies, Lyddon sat silent whenever the subject of the coming war was under discussion. But he could still talk with Richard Tremaine and to Lyddon’s sardonic amusement with Angela. She was, of course, red-hot for the South, but condescended to exchange views with Lyddon sometimes on the subject when they sat together on winter evenings in the study. The Harrowby family had long ago instinctively formed itself into three groups—Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine, whose habitat was the colonel’s big library full of unread books, Lyddon with Richard and Neville, when he was at home, in the study, and Angela and Archie, who were graduated from the nursery, also in the study as the schoolroom.
The habit still kept up, and while in the big, handsome library Mrs. Tremaine in the evenings stitched thread cambric ruffles for the colonel’s shirt fronts and Colonel Tremaine read aloud to her from the “Lake Poets,” a practice that he had formed during their courtship days when between compliments and lovemaking, he had read to her the whole of Wordsworth’s “Excursion.” At the same hour in the evening Angela and Archie were supposed to be learning their lessons in the study, which after they went to bed was given over to smoking and the talk of grown-ups like Lyddon and Richard. Archie had always depended upon Angela to help him with his lessons and although she no longer studied regularly herself, she was always there to encourage Archie. While the boy with his fingers in his ears was struggling with his Latin and Greek, Angela would listen to Lyddon and flash back at him those quick intuitive truths which women acquire without knowing how they do it. As Lyddon often quoted to Angela:
“A man with much labor and difficulty climbs to the top of a high mountain; when he arrives he finds a woman there already, but she could not tell to save her life how she got there.”
“But she is there all the same, Mr. Lyddon,” Angela would reply with demure eyes and a saucy smile.
Neville’s letters, as affectionate as ever, came regularly, for the mails with the North were not yet interrupted. These letters were brief. Neville had not Richard’s powers of language; he was distinctively a man of action, but he expressed himself with simplicity and vigor which is the embodiment of the best eloquence. Once a week Angela received from him a letter full of affection. It was a model love letter, quite beyond the power of the professedly accomplished letter writer. Angela read it with a blush not of pleasure but of that secret discomfort of which she was ashamed and actually afraid, and at this thought the discomfort increased. “Did ever any girl before feel as she did when receiving her lover’s letters?” she asked herself.
On the assembling of the convention Richard Tremaine left Harrowby for Richmond. As soon as the body assembled, the result of its deliberations were easily foreseen and from that day the whole of Virginia became a great camp of instruction. The initial steps were taken toward the organization of regiments. The women were not a whit behind in their eagerness to begin the work of equipping hospitals, of furnishing the soldiers with stockings and other comforts, and of raising funds for the presentation of flags to the different companies. Mrs. Tremaine, the soul of modesty and retirement, was the chief mover in all these plans and was ably seconded by Mrs. Charteris. The men were fiercely determined; the women were more fiercely indomitable. Colonel Tremaine at seventy-two and much troubled with rheumatism was full of military ardor, and proposed to take the field with Hector as soon as Virginia seceded. Hector did not receive this proposition with unalloyed delight, and argued with Colonel Tremaine.
“Ole Marse, you got de rheumatiz an’ I got de ager an’ we cyarn’ do much fightin’ when you is cussin’ de rheumatiz an’ my teef is rattlin’ wid de ager.”
“With cowardice, you mean, you black scoundrel,” answered Colonel Tremaine, who spoke his mind freely to Hector, although by no means allowing anyone else so great a liberty. “When I had you in Mexico, by gad, you had the ague every time you got within ten miles of a Mexican and you would run like a rabbit at the sight of a green uniform.”
“Good Gord A’might’, Marse! You done forgot——”