This was deeply mortifying to Hector repeated in the presence of Peter, who thrust his tongue in his cheek and winked disrespectfully at Hector, which caused the latter to say viciously: “You teck dem ho’ses to de stables right ’way, you black nigger. When Marse Richard gwine to de war I lay he teck me stid you.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” said Angela, putting her arm through Archie’s, “if you and Uncle Tremaine didn’t both run away together some day, but anyhow Harrowby has two men to give the State, Richard and Neville.”
A short silence followed. Mrs. Tremaine looked down upon the ground, and Colonel Tremaine’s troubled eyes turned from the frank and questioning looks of Archie and Angela and Lyddon’s inscrutable gaze. Nobody knew whether Harrowby had two men to defend Virginia or whether there was but one, while the other should draw his sword to shed the blood of his brethren.
CHAPTER VI
THE QUAKING OF THE EARTH
WITH the opening of the books of enlistment the whole county caught fire. When the people met at the old Petworth Church on Sundays there was nothing but talk of the coming war. The sermons of Mr. Brand, the rector, were one long war cry against the Yankees and exhortations to go forth and fight to the death in the great cause of States’ Rights. The clergyman was remorselessly badgered by Mrs. Charteris, who had extorted from him the secret of his age, which was considerably over forty-five. Dr. Yelverton, who, in spite of his sixty-five years, thought Mrs. Charteris, who was not yet forty years old, none too young for him, immediately grew in favor with the lady. Mrs. Charteris had played them off one against the other with consummate skill for fifteen years. But when the trumpet of war resounded and Mr. Brand elected to stay at home, while Dr. Yelverton, examining himself as a surgeon, pronounced himself entirely fit for duty in the army, he at once gained a tremendous lead in the lady’s favor.
George Charteris, the only son of his mother, was at school near Baltimore, but by command of Mrs. Charteris he was to make straight for Greenhill as soon as Virginia should secede.
All the boys in the county of Archie Tremaine’s and George Charteris’s age were burning to enlist and formed companies of their own, studying and drilling with the utmost ardor. The interest in events was not confined to the white people. The negroes, knowing that the whole future of their race depended upon the issue of the coming struggle, took a feverish, furtive interest in the unfolding of each day’s happenings and listened slyly to all that was said by the white people. At night they collected at their quarters and, sitting around in a ring, listened to what the house servants had to tell them of the talk that went on at the “gret house.” They were no longer permitted to visit the different estates freely at night, but were kept as far as possible from communicating with each other. Lyddon saw this and trembled for the fate of the women and children to be left defenseless in the power of the black race, and thought the white people madly optimistic when they expressed no fear whatever of the negroes in case of war—a confidence which was nobly sustained when the hour came.
The outward peace was not broken; Lyddon had ever thought lowland Virginia the most entirely peaceful spot he had ever known in his life, but the earthquake was at hand. He said this to Angela, who in Richard’s absence in Richmond attending the convention had come to be the only person to whom Lyddon could speak his mind freely.
“You have always been restless and yearning for something to happen,” he said to her one day in the garden as she was snipping dead twigs off a rose bush. “But you won’t be able to complain of that any more; stupendous things will happen and that very shortly.”
Angela’s eyes flashed with pleasure. “I don’t mind things happening,” she said. “I have red blood in me; I don’t like stagnation.” Lyddon, looking at her, felt pity welling up in his heart; the pity which maturity, having already suffered, feels for youth—pathetic youth, which has still to suffer. Whether Angela went with Neville or against him it would be hard for her. The idea of turning against Neville would be to her as if the sun rose in the west or water ran uphill. She had for him a sublimated friendship which was like love and yet was not love.