The victory

by Molly Elliot Seawell

The mail came only three times a week and every mail brought long letters from Richard in Richmond. He told precisely the progress of events in the convention, the efforts of the Peace Commission, the calm hearing given to the men who wished Virginia to stay in the Union; but he never changed his opinion that the State would secede and that the day of blood was at hand.

Neville’s letters began to be irregular; only two were received from him in March and one in April. He spoke of others which he had written, but which had never been received. When Mrs. Tremaine opened these letters her face always grew pale, and it was paler still when she had finished reading them and passed them over to Colonel Tremaine. Angela read hers, too, in silence; she could not be expected to show them to anyone, but she spoke no word indicating any knowledge of what Neville meant to do.

Neville’s last letter came the middle of April. Lyddon, who had ridden to the post office, handed it to Angela in the study. She was sitting at the window reading, and Lyddon as he came in thought her a charming picture of youth and happiness. She wore a gown the color of the iris which was blooming in the box upon the window sill, for Angela claimed the right to put her flowerpots in the study windows. The April day was warm and bright, and the sunny air which was wafted in at the window had in it the intoxication of the spring. Angela’s book evidently amused her, for she was laughing as she raised her eyes to Lyddon’s when he held out the letter. Instantly her face clouded. She broke the seal and read her letter rapidly. But more rapid was the change which came over her. She sat quite still for a long time looking at the letter lying in her lap, and then, pale and quiet, rose and passed out of the room.

Meanwhile the April sky had suddenly clouded, and a few heavy drops of rain like tears had begun to fall. Lyddon’s heart ached for the girl. She was different to him from any human being he had ever known. The simile which so often occurred to him came back with strange force—that he was a gardener cultivating an exquisite flower for some one else. He had cultivated already two sturdy trees in Richard and Neville and a beautiful hardy sapling in Archie, but never before had he trained a flower in the person of a young girl. Her acquirements, which would have been nothing in a man, were extraordinary for a woman, and Lyddon in view of this would have been alarmed for her except that she understood and practiced housewifery well, was devotedly fond of music, loved to dance, and like the normal woman made dress a species of religion. Thus were the sweet femininities maintained.

Lyddon realized one price which Angela had to pay for the training he had given her—she had no intimate girl friends. She had plenty of girl companions—Dr. Yelverton’s granddaughters, Colonel Carey’s daughters; but there was no real community of soul between these young creatures and Angela. These other girls were satisfied with the quiet country life in which they dwelt as their mothers and grandmothers had dwelt, but their ideas of splendor were confined to a larger house and more servants than they possessed at present and to an annual trip to the White Sulphur Springs. Not so Angela Vaughn. She longed for palaces and parks and for the mysterious joys and splendors which she imagined therein could be found. The Greeks were her soul ancestors, and she had an adoration for beauty in form, color, and sound. She made Lyddon, who was quite insensible to music, repeat to her all the details of the few operas to which he had been dragged and which had bored him to excess during his European life. Richard’s years in Paris and Neville’s visits to New York and Saratoga had filled Angela’s girlish heart with longing, a longing which Mrs. Tremaine thought positively wicked and the girls of Angela’s acquaintance considered eminently foolish.

Lyddon, in his profession as a trainer of youth, had always reckoned as a positive detriment any education which segregated a human being from his fellows. He had reckoned all education which is totally derived from books as light without warmth. He had good reason for this belief, his own passion for books having separated him from men in general and having quenched in him most of the living and vivifying emotions. He had not been able to quench love, although he had hid it in a sepulcher and closed the door with a great stone. It was his fate, not having children of his own, to love the children of others and when he had grown to love them, they slipped easily from his grasp, except Richard and Neville Tremaine. But Lyddon believed that he should still hold to Archie and to that charming child Angela, for he could never reckon Angela as wholly grown up. There was an eternal simplicity about her, the frankness of a child in which Lyddon had never perceived any change from the time she wore pinafores.

Lyddon, thinking these thoughts, stood before the study window watching the changing April day, alternately fair and stormy. He felt convinced from Angela’s face on reading her letter that she was struggling with the great problem of whether she should stand by Neville or abandon him. Lyddon, whose knowledge of her was acute, and who knew the generous impulses of her nature, believed she would stand by Neville. But would she be happy in so doing? Ah, of that he was very far from certain! No one but Angela and himself knew that she had received a letter from Neville and the silence maintained about it proved that the letter contained something painful. At dinner that day Angela sat silent and constrained until rallied by Archie; she then assumed her usual air of gayety. In the afternoon she went for a long walk alone and coming back at twilight paced up and down the garden until Mrs. Tremaine sent a message out to her that she must come in because the night was damp and chilly. The long walk at the end of the garden, where the old wooden bench sat against the wall and the gnarled and twisted lilacs flourished in green old age, was as much Angela’s beat as the Ladies’ Walk was Mrs. Tremaine’s. She passed Lyddon on the stairs as she went up to her room to make ready for supper, and her face was so wan and woe-begone that Lyddon felt sorry for her. At supper, however, she appeared in her usual spirits. She had brought back from her walk in the woods some sprays of the trailing arbutus and wore them in her shining hair.

The talk as usual was about the coming war. The Richmond newspapers had been received that day, and Lyddon had got his English newspapers. Colonel Tremaine inquired about the state of opinion in England concerning the outbreak of civil war in America, and although Lyddon was guarded in his replies Colonel Tremaine became irritated by them. While the brief discussion lasted Lyddon was confirmed in a suspicion concerning the negroes. They were intently listening and watching all that went on, and the white family was never left alone. Formerly at meal times with Hector, Tasso, and Jim Henry to wait it was sometimes difficult to get any one of them in the room. Tasso and Jim Henry would be engaged in transporting from the kitchen hot batter cakes, hot muffins, and all the other varieties of hot bread of which the formula invariably was, “Take two and butter them while they are hot.” Meanwhile, Hector would be in the pantry resting himself from the arduous labors of directing Tasso and Jim Henry. But now one or the other of the subordinates was always at hand. Lyddon was convinced that they were the purveyors of news to all the negroes on the plantation. There was a bell on the back porch, and every one of the twenty-five servants engaged in the house, the garden, and the stables had a number. Sometimes Lyddon had known the whole gamut of this bell to be rung before a single servant appeared on the spot, but now they were always at hand.

Usually in these discussions of the coming war Angela took a prominent part. She wished to be like the maidens of Sparta and thought she could have done the act of Charlotte Corday, and talked enthusiastically of nursing, like a Sister of Mercy, soldiers in the hospitals. To-night, however, she seemed not interested in that subject, but willing to talk on any other. After supper Archie got out his violin and the two played together as usual. They generally wound up their performances with “Dixie,” but to-night Angela omitted it. No one noticed this except Lyddon.

As she took her candle from the hall table she went to the fireplace and, holding the candle above her head, studied the picture of Penelope and the Suitors. Seeing Lyddon coming out of the study she turned quickly and went upstairs. Lyddon, who was a bad sleeper, waked in the middle of the night and, going to the window to look at the night sky, saw that candles were still burning in Angela’s room. He lighted the lamp at his bedside and read an hour and then went again to the window. Angela’s light was still burning. Lyddon’s heart ached for her.