A Soldier of Virginia - Burton Egbert Stevenson
"Mr. Fontaine will be here soon," she said, "and will explain it all to
you. Now run back to your room, dearest, and go to bed."
"Yes, mother," I said again, but as I turned to go, I heard a sound which
struck me motionless. No, my father was not dead, for that was his voice
I heard, pitched far above its usual key.
"I shall never go back," he cried. "I shall never go back till he asks
me."
I felt the perspiration start from my forehead.
"Have you gone, Tom?" asked my mother's voice.
"I am just going, mother," I sobbed, and tore myself away from the door.
My mammy's arms were about me again as I turned, and carried me back to
my room. This time I did not resist, but as she sat down, still holding
me, I laid my head upon her breast and sobbed myself to sleep. When I
awoke, I found that I was in bed with the covers tucked close around me,
and through my window I could see the gray dawn breaking. I lay and
watched the light grow along the horizon and up into the heavens. And
while I lay thus, with heart aching dully, the door of my room opened
softly, and with joy inexpressible I saw that it was my beloved friend
who entered.
"Oh, Mr. Fontaine!" I cried, and stretched out my arms to him. He took me
up as a mother might, and held me close against his heart.
"Do you remember, dear," he said, and his voice was trembling, "what you
told me one day by the river--that you meant to be brave under trial?"
I sobbed assent.
"Well, the trial has come, Tom, and I want you to be brave and strong.
You are not going to disappoint me, are you?"
Oh, it was hard, and I was only a child, but I sat upright on his knee
and tried to dry my tears.
"I will try," I said, but the sobs would come in spite of me.
"That is right," and he was stroking my hair in that old familiar, tender
way. "Your father is very ill, Tom."
Well, if that was all, I could bear it, certainly.
"But he will get well," I said.
He was looking far out at the purple sky, and his face seemed old and
gray.
"I hope and pray so," he said at last. "He has the smallpox, Tom.
There are some cases along the river near Charles City, and he must
have caught it there. Doctor Brayle has done everything for him that
can be done."
But I was not listening. There was room for only one thought in my brain.
"And my mother is with him!" I cried, and my heart seemed bursting.
He held me tight against him, and I felt a tear fall upon my head. This
was the trial, then--for him no less than me.
"Yes, she is with him, Tom. She believes it her duty, and will allow no
one else to enter. Ah, she has not been found wanting. Dear heart, I knew
she would never be."
Of what came after, I have no distinct remembrance. Mr. Fontaine told me
that my mother wished me to go home with him, so that I might be quite
beyond reach of the infection. He had agreed that this would be the
wisest course, and so, too stricken at heart to resist, I was bundled
into his chaise with a chest of my clothes, and driven away through the
crowd of sobbing negroes to the little house at Charles City where he and
his sister lived.
The week that followed dwells in my memory as some tremendous nightmare,
lightened here and there by the unvarying kindness of my friend and of
his sister. I wandered along the river and gazed out across the changing
water for hours at a time, with eyes that saw nothing of what was before
them. Often I remained thus until some one came for me and led me gently
back into the house. My brain seemed numbed, and no longer capable of
thought. Mr. Fontaine took charge of our affairs, doing everything that
could be done, keeping the frightened negroes to their work, and praying
with my mother through the tight-closed door. He had no fear, and would
have entered and prayed with her beside the bed, had she permitted.
I was sitting by the river-bank one evening, watching the shadows
lengthen across the water, when I heard a step behind me, and turned to
see my friend approaching. A glance at his face brought me to my feet.
"What is it?" I cried, and ran to him.
He took my hands in his.
"Your father died an hour ago, Tom," he said, and smoothed my hair in the
familiar way which seemed to comfort him as well as me.
"And my mother?" I asked, for it was of her I was thinking.
"Your mother is ill, too," he said, and placed his arms about me and held
me close, "but with God's grace we will save her life."
But I had started from him.
"If she is ill," I cried, "I must go to her. She will want me."
He shook his head, still holding to my hands.
"No, she does not want you, Tom," he said. "The one thing that will make
her happy is the thought that you are quite removed from danger. I
believed my place was at her bedside, but she would not permit it."
And then he told me, with glistening eyes, that my old mammy, who had
been my mother's thirty years before, was nursing her and would not be
sent away. She had burst in the door of the plague chamber the moment
she had heard that her mistress was ill, and dared any one disturb her.
Old Doctor Brayle had commanded that she be given her will, and declared
that in this old negro woman's careful nursing lay my mother's great
chance of life.
The scalding tears poured down my cheeks as Mr. Fontaine told me
this,--the first, I think, that I had shed that week, for after that
dreadful night, my sorrow had been of a dry and bitter kind,--and a
stinging remorse seized me as I thought of the times I had been cross and
disobedient to mammy. Ah, how I loved her now! It was the accustomed
irony of my life that I was never to tell her so.
Ere daylight the next morning I was seated beside my friend as he drove
me home. The river was cloaked in mist, and the dawn seemed inexpressibly
dreary. As we approached the house, I wondered to see how forlorn and
neglected it appeared. A crowd of wailing negroes surrounded the chaise
when we stopped, and I would have got out, but Mr. Fontaine held me
firmly in my seat.
"We must remain here," he said, and I dropped back beside him, and waited
in a kind of stupor.
Presently they brought the coffin down, the negroes who carried it
wreathing themselves in tobacco smoke, and placed it in a cart. We
followed at a distance as it rolled slowly toward the Wyeth
burying-ground in the grove of willows near the road. The thought came to
me that my father should lie with the Stewarts, not with the Wyeths, and
then suddenly a great sickness and faintness came upon me, and I remember
nothing of what followed until I found Miss Fontaine lifting me from the
chaise at the door. I was put to bed, and not until the next day was I
able to crawl forth again.
Then came days of anguish and suspense, days spent by me roaming the
woods, or lying face downward beneath the trees, and praying that God
would spare my mother's life. Bulletins were brought me from her
bedside,--she was better, she was worse, she was better,--how shall I
tell the rest?--until at last one day came my dear friend, his lips
quivering, the tears streaming down his face unrestrained, and told me
that she was dead. I think the sight of his great sorrow frightened me,
and I bore the blow with greater composure than I had thought possible.
Had she sent me no message? Yes, she had sent me a message,--her last
thought had been of me. She asked me to be a good boy and an honest man,
to follow the counsel of Mr. Fontaine in all things, and to keep my
promise to my father. So, even in death her love for him and for the
honor of his memory triumphed, as I would have had it do.
Again there was a dismal procession through the gray morning to the
willow grove, where we stood beneath the dripping branches, while afar
off the rude coffin was lowered to its last resting-place. The negroes
grouped themselves about, and my friend stood at my side, his head bare,
his face raised to heaven, as though he saw her there.
"'I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth
in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and
believeth in me, shall never die.'"
I felt the threads of my life slipping from me one by one, even as the
trees faded from before my eyes. Only that strong, exultant voice at my
side went on and on.
"'Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them
that slept.'" On and on went the voice; there was nothing else in the
whole wide world but that voice crying out over my mother's grave. "'I
heard a voice from heaven, saying unto me. Write. From henceforth blessed
are the dead who die in the Lord.'" And then the voice faltered and
broke. "She was the light of my life and the joy of my heart," it was no
longer the ritual of the church; "and yet had I to walk beside her and
tell her naught. And now is she taken from me, for the Lord hath received
her to His bosom to live in the light of His love forevermore."
I looked up into his face and saw the secret of his heart revealed,--the
secret he had kept so well, but which his anguish had wrung from him. It
was only for an instant, yet I think he knew I had read his heart--I,
alone of all the world, understood. Had my mother known, I wonder? Yes,
I think she had, and in the greatness of his love found help and comfort.
Good man and lovely woman, God rest and keep you both.
I went home with him, remembering with a pang that the place I had called
home was mine no longer. Those among my friends who know the history of
my boyhood understand to some extent my loathing for the cards and dice.
It is perhaps unreasonable,--I might be the first to deem it so in any
other man,--but when I count up the woe they brought my mother,--father
and husband slaves to the same frenzy,--how they wrecked her life and
embittered it, my passion rises in my throat to choke me. Never did I
hate them more than in the days which followed; for they had made me
outcast, and what the future held for me, I could not guess. The question
was answered of a sudden a week later, when there came from my
grandfather a curt note bidding me be sent to Riverview. It was decided
at once that I must go. I myself looked forward to the change with a
boy's blind longing for adventure, and said farewell to the man who had
been so much to me with a willingness I wince to think upon.
CHAPTER VI
I AM TREATED TO A SURPRISE
The rain was falling dismally as the coach in which I had made the
journey rolled up the drive to Riverview, and I caught but a glimpse of
the house as I was rushed up the steps and into the wide hall. A lady
dressed in a loose green gown was seated in an easy-chair before the open
fire, and she did not rise as I entered, doubtless because her lap was
full of knitting.
"Gracious, how wet the child is!" she cried, looking me over critically.
"Take him to his room, Sally, and see that he has a bath and change of
clothing. I'm sure he needs both."
I turned away without a word and followed the negro maid. Of course the
lady thought me a surly boor, but my heart was burning, for I had hoped
for a different welcome. As I passed along the hall and up the broad
staircase, the thought came to me that all of this would one day be mine,
should I choose to claim it, and then, with crimson cheeks, I put the
thought from me, as unworthy of my mother's son.
But my room looked very warm and cheerful even on this chilly day, and
from the window I could see broad fields of new-planted tobacco, and
beyond them the yellow road and then the river. I stood long looking out
at it and wondering what my life here had in store. Half an hour later,
word came from my grandfather that he wished to see me, and the same maid
led me down the stairs and to his study, I stumbling along beside her
with a madly beating heart. As I crossed the lower hall, I heard a burst
of childish laughter, and saw a boy and girl, both younger than myself,
playing near the chair where the lady sat. I looked at them with
interest, but the sight of me seemed to freeze the laughter on their
faces, and they gazed with staring eyes until I turned the corner and was
out of sight. But I had little time to wonder at this astonishing
behavior, for in a moment I was in my grandfather's office.
He was seated at a great table, and had apparently been going over some
accounts, for the board in front of him was littered with books and
papers. I saw, even beneath the disguise of his red face and white hair,
his strong resemblance to my father, and my heart went out to him on the
instant. For I had loved my father, despite the wild behavior which
marred his later clays. Indeed, I always think of him during that time as
suffering with a grievous malady, of which he could not rid himself, and
which ate his heart out all the faster because he saw how great was the
anguish it caused the woman he loved. That it was some such disease I am
quite certain, so different was his naturally strong and sunny
disposition.
My grandfather gazed at me some moments without speaking, as I stood
there, longing to throw myself into his arms, and all the misery of the
years that followed might never have been, had I buried my pride and
followed the dictates of my heart. But I waited for him to speak, and the
moment passed.
"So this is Tom's boy," he said at last. "My God, how like he is!"
He fell silent for a moment,--silenced, no doubt, by bitter memories.
"You wonder, perhaps," he said in a sterner tone, "why I have sent for
you; but I could do no less. The letter from your pastor which announced
the deaths of your father and your mother brought me the tidings also
that your mother's fortune had been diced away down to the last penny,
and that even the negroes must be sold to satisfy the claims against it.
However undutiful your father may have been, I could not permit his son
to become a charge upon the poor funds."
I felt my cheeks flushing, but I judged it best to choke back the words
which trembled on my lips.
"I can read your thought," said my grandfather quickly. "You are
thinking that the heir of Riverview could hardly be called a pauper. Do
not forget that your father forfeited his claim to the estate by his
ungentlemanly conduct."
"I shall not forget it," I burst out. "My father made sure that I should
never forget it. I shall never claim the estate. And my father's conduct
was never ungentlemanly."
"As you will," said my grandfather scornfully. "I am not apt at
mincing words. I told him one thing many years ago which I should have
thought he would remember, and which I now repeat to you. I told him
that a gentleman ceased to be a gentleman when once he gambled beyond
his means."
I waited to hear no more, but with crimson cheeks and head in air, I
turned on my heel and started for the door.
"Damn my stars, sir!" he roared. "Wait to hear me out."
But I would not wait. After a moment's struggle with the latch, I had the
door open and marched straight to my room. Once inside, I bolted the
door, and throwing myself on the floor, sobbed myself to sleep.
What need to detail further? There were a hundred such scenes between us
in the four years that followed, and as I look back upon them now, I
realize that through it all I, too, showed my full share of Stewart
obstinacy and temper. I more than suspect that my grandfather in his most
violent outbursts was inwardly trembling with tenderness for me, as was I
for him, and that a single gentle word, spoken at the right time, would
have brought us into each other's arms. And I realize too late that it
was for me, and not for him, to speak that word. It was only when I saw
him lying in his bed, stricken with paralysis, bereft of the power of
speech or movement, that I knew how great my love for him had been. His
eyes, as they met mine on that last day, had in them infinite tenderness
and pleading, and my heart melted as I bent and kissed his lips. He
struggled to speak, and the sweat broke from his forehead at the effort,
but what he would have said I can only guess, for he died that night,
without the iron bands which held him fast loosening for an instant. Yet
I love to fancy that his last words, could he have spoken them, would
have been words of love and forgiveness, for my father as well as for
myself, and such, I am sure, they would have been. With him there passed
away the only one at Riverview whom I had grown to love.
And now a word about the others among whom I passed the second period of
my boyhood. My father's younger brother, James, had married seven or
eight years before a lady whose estate adjoined Riverview,--Mrs.
Constance Randolph, a widow some years older than himself. She had one
child living, a daughter, Dorothy, who, at the time I came to Riverview,
was a girl of nine, and a year after her second marriage she bore a son,
who was named James, much against the wishes of his mother. She would
have called him Thomas, a name which had for five generations been that
of the head of the house. But this my grandfather would by no means
allow, and so the child was christened after his father. I think that
ever since the day she had entered the Stewart family, my aunt had
thought me a spectre across her path, for she was an ambitious woman and
wished the whole estate for her son,--in which I do not greatly blame
her. But she had brooded over her fear until it had become a phantom
which haunted her unceasingly, and she had come to deem me a kind of
monster, who stood between her boy and his inheritance. Her second
husband died three years after their marriage,--he was drowned one day in
January while crossing the river on the ice, which gave way under
him,--and after that she became the mistress of Riverview in earnest,
ruling my grandfather with a rod of iron, for though bold enough with
men, and especially with the men of his own family, he would succumb in a
moment to a woman's shrewish temper.
Only twice had he revolted against her rule. The first time was when she
had announced her intention of naming her boy Thomas, as I have already
mentioned. The second was when he decided to summon me to Riverview. This
she had opposed with all her might, but he had persisted, and finally
ended the argument by putting her from the room,--doubtless with great
inward trepidation. So I came to be a phantom in the flesh, and do not
wonder that she hated me, so sour will the human heart become which
broods forever on its selfishness. Her children she kept from me as from
the plague, and during the years preceding my grandfather's death, I had
almost no communication with them. He required, however, that every
respect be shown me, placed me on his right at table,--how often have I
looked up from my plate to find his eyes upon me,--selected half a dozen
negroes to be my especial servants, engaged the Rev. James Scott, pastor
of the Quantico church, as my tutor, and even ordered for me an elaborate
wardrobe from his factor in London.
Mr. Scott was a man of parts, and under him I gained some knowledge of
Latin, Greek, and mathematics. Certainly I made more progress than I
should have done under different circumstances, for finding myself
without companions or other occupation, I applied myself to my books for
want of something better. My grandfather possessed above a hundred
volumes, and when he saw how my bent lay, he ordered others for me, so
that his library came to be one of the largest on the Northern Neck,
though but indifferently selected. Absorbed in these books, I managed to
forget the disorder of my circumstances.
The remainder of my time I spent in riding along the river road on the
mare my grandfather had given me, or wandering over the estate and in and
out among the negro cabins. To the negroes I was always "Mas' Tom," and I
am proud to remember that I made many friends among them, treating them
always with justice and sometimes with mercy, as, indeed, I try yet to
do. Once I came suddenly upon old Gump, the major-domo of the house
servants, preparing to give a little pickaninny a thrashing, and I
stopped to ask what he had done.
"He's done been stealing Mas' Tom," answered Gump. "Ain' goin' t' hab no
t'iefs roun' dis yere house, not if I knows it."
"What did he steal, uncle?" I asked.
"Dis yere whip," said Gump, and he held up an old riding-whip of mine.
I looked at it and hesitated for a moment. Was it worth beating a child
for? The little beady eyes were gazing at me in an agony of supplication.
"Gump," I said, "don't beat him. That's all right. I want him to have
the whip."
Gump stared at me in astonishment.
"What, Mas' Tom," he exclaimed, "you mean dat you gib him de whip?"
"Yes," I said, "I give him the whip, Gump," and luckily the old man could
not distinguish between the past and present tenses of the verb, so that
I was spared a lie. The little thief ran away with the whip in his hand,
and it was long before the incident was recalled to me.
So I returned again to my books, and to the silent but no less active
antagonism toward my aunt. Yet, I would not paint her treatment of me in
too gloomy colors. Doubtless I gave her much just cause for offense, for
I had grown into a surly and quick-tempered boy, with raw places ever
open to her touch. That she loved her children I know well, and her love
for them was at the bottom of her dislike for me. I have learned long
since that there is no heart wholly bad and selfish.
While my grandfather yet lived, I think she had some hope that something
would happen to make me an outcast utterly, but after his death this hope
vanished, and she sent for me one morning to come to her. I found her
seated in the selfsame chair in which I had first seen him, and the
table was still littered with papers and accounts.
"Good-morning, Thomas," she said politely enough, as I entered, and, as I
returned her greeting, motioned me to a chair. She seemed to hesitate at
a beginning, and in the moment of silence that followed, I saw that her
face was growing thinner, and that her hair was streaked with gray.
"I have sent for you, Thomas," she said at last, "to find out what your
intention is with regard to this estate. You know, of course, that your
father forfeited it voluntarily, and that you have no moral claim to it.
Still, the law might sustain your claim, should you choose to assert it."
"I shall not choose to assert it," I answered coldly, and as I spoke, her
face was suffused with sudden joy. "I promised my father never to claim
it,--never to take it unless it were offered to me openly and
freely,--and I intend to keep my promise."
For a moment her emotion prevented her replying, and she pressed one hand
against her breast as though to still the beating of her heart.
"Very well," she said at last. "Your resolution does credit to your
honor, and I will see that you do not regret it. I will undertake the
management of both estates until my son becomes of age. You shall have an
ample allowance. Let me see; how old are you?"
"I am fifteen years old," I answered.
"And have about sounded the depths of Master Scott's learning, I
suppose?" she asked, smiling, the first smile, I think, she had
ever given me.
"He was saying only yesterday that I should soon have to seek
another tutor."
"'T is as I thought. Well, what say you to a course at William and Mary?"
She smiled again as she saw how my cheeks flushed.
"I should like it above all things," I answered earnestly, and, indeed, I
had often thought of it with longing, so lonely was my life at Riverview.
"It shall be done," she said. "The year opens in a fortnight's time, and
you must be there at the beginning."
I thanked her and left the room, and ran to my tutor, who had arrived
some time before, to acquaint him with my good fortune. He was no less
pleased than I, and forthwith wrote me a letter to Dr. Thomas Dawson,
president of the college, commending me to his good offices. So, in due
course, I rode away from Riverview, not regretting it, nor, I dare say,
regretted. In truth, I had no reason to love the place, nor had any
within it reason to love me.
Of my life at college, little need be said. Indeed, I have small reason
to be proud of it, for, reacting against earlier years, perhaps, I
cultivated the Apollo room at the Raleigh rather than my books, and
toasted the leaden bust of Sir Walter more times than I care to remember.
Yet I never forgot that I was a gentleman, thank God! And previous years
of study brought me through with some little honor despite my present
carelessness. I had a liberal allowance, and elected to spend my
vacations at Williamsburg or at Norfolk, or coasting up the Chesapeake as
far as Baltimore, and did not once return to Riverview, where I knew I
should get cold welcome. In fact, I was left to do pretty much as I
pleased, my aunt being greatly occupied with the care of the estate, and
doubtless happy to be rid of me so easily. So I entered my eighteenth
year, and the time of my graduation was at hand. And it was then that the
great event happened which changed my whole life by giving me something
to live for.