Book: The Crisis, Complete

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The Colonel turned to Virginia, who, meanwhile, had sat silently by.

"Jinny," he said, "we must contrive to keep him."

She slid off the railing.

"I'm afraid he is determined, Pa," she answered. "But perhaps Mr. Brice
would like to see a little of the place before he goes. It is very
primitive," she explained, "not much like yours in the East."

Stephen thanked her, and bowed to the Colonel. And so she led him past
the low, crooked outbuildings at the back, where he saw old Uncle Ben
busy over the preparation of his dinner, and frisky Rosetta, his
daughter, playing with one of the Colonel's setters. Then Virginia took a
well-worn path, on each side of which the high grass bent with its load
of seed, which entered the wood. Oaks and hickories and walnuts and
persimmons spread out in a glade, and the wild grape twisted
fantastically around the trunks. All this beauty seemed but a fit setting
to the strong girlish figure in the pink frock before him. So absorbed
was he in contemplation of this, and in wondering whether indeed she were
to marry her cousin, Clarence Colfax, that he did not see the wonders of
view unrolling in front of him. She stopped at length beside a great
patch of wild race bushes. They were on the edge of the bluff, and in
front of them a little rustic summer-house, with seats on its five sides.
Here Virginia sat down. But Stephen, going to the edge, stood and
marvelled. Far, far below him, down the wooded steep, shot the crystal
Meramec, chafing over the shallow gravel beds and tearing headlong at the
deep passes.

Beyond, the dimpled green hills rose and fell, and the stream ran indigo
and silver. A hawk soared over the, water, the only living creature in
all that wilderness.

The glory of the place stirred his blood. And when at length he turned,
he saw that the girl was watching him.

"It is very beautiful," he said.

Virginia had taken other young men here, and they had looked only upon
her. And yet she was not offended. This sincerity now was as new to her
as that with which he had surprised her in the Judge's room.

And she was not quite at her ease. A reply to those simple words of his
was impossible. At honest Tom Catherwood in the same situation she would
have laughed, Clarence never so much as glanced at scenery. Her replies
to him were either flippant, or else maternal, as to a child.

A breeze laden with the sweet abundance of that valley stirred her hair.
And with that womanly gesture which has been the same through the ages
she put up her hand; deftly tucking in the stray wisp behind.

She glanced at the New Englander, against whom she had been in strange
rebellion since she had first seen him. His face, thinned by the summer
in town, was of the sternness of the Puritan. Stephen's features were
sharply marked for his age. The will to conquer was there. Yet justice
was in the mouth, and greatness of heart. Conscience was graven on the
broad forehead. The eyes were the blue gray of the flint, kindly yet
imperishable. The face was not handsome.

Struggling, then yielding to the impulse, Virginia let herself be led on
into the years. Sanity was the word that best described him. She saw him
trusted of men, honored of women, feared by the false. She saw him in
high places, simple, reserved, poised evenly as he was now.

"Why do you go in this afternoon?" she asked abruptly.

He started at the change in her tone.

"I wish that I might stay," he said regretfully. "But I cannot, Miss
Carvel."

He gave no reason. And she was too proud to ask it. Never before had she
stooped to urge young men to stay. The difficulty had always been to get
them to go. It was natural, perhaps, that her vanity was wounded. But it
hurt her to think that she had made the overture, had tried to conquer
whatever it was that set her against him, and had failed through him.

"You must find the city attractive. Perhaps," she added, with a little
laugh, "perhaps it is Bellefontaine Road."

"No," he answered, smiling.

"Then" (with a touch of derision), "then it is because you cannot miss an
afternoon's work. You are that kind."

"I was not always that kind," he answered. "I did not work at Harvard.
But now I have to or--or starve," he said.

For the second time his complete simplicity had disarmed her. He had not
appealed to her sympathy, nor had he hinted at the luxury in which he was
brought up. She would have liked to question Stephen on this former life.
But she changed the subject suddenly.

"What did you really think of Mr. Lincoln?" she asked.

"I thought him the ugliest man I ever saw, and the handsomest as well."

"But you admired him?"

"Yes," said Stephen, gravely.

"You believe with him that this government cannot exist half slave and
half free. Then a day will come, Mr. Brice, when you and I shall be
foreigners one to the other."

"You have forgotten," he said eagerly, "you have forgotten the rest of
the quotation. 'I do not expect the Union to be dissolved--I do not
expect the house to fall--but cease to be divided.' It will become all
one thing or all the other."

Virginia laughed. "That seemed to me very equivocal," said she. "Your
rail-sputter is well named."

"Will you read the rest of that speech?" he asked

"Judge Whipple is very clever. He has made a convert of you," she
answered.

"The Judge has had nothing to do with it," cried Stephen. "He is not
given to discussion with me, and until I went to Springfield had never
mentioned Lincoln's name to me."

Glancing at her, he surprised a sparkle of amusement in her eyes. Then
she laughed openly.

"Why do you suppose that you were sent to Springfield?" she asked.

"With an important communication for Mr. Lincoln," he answered.

"And that most important communication was--your self. There, now, I have
told you," said Virginia.

"Was myself? I don't understand."

Virginia puckered her lips.

"Then you haven't the sense I thought you had," she replied impatiently.
"Do you know what was in that note? No? Well, a year ago last June this
Black Republican lawyer whom you are all talking of made a speech before
a convention in Illinois. Judge Whipple has been crazy on the subject
ever since--he talks of Lincoln in his sleep; he went to Springfield and
spent two days with him, and now he can't rest until you have seen and
known and heard him. So he writes a note to Lincoln and asks him to take
you to the debate--"

She paused again to laugh at his amazement.

"But he told me to go to Springfield!" he exclaimed.

"He told you to find Lincoln. He knew that you would obey his orders, I
suppose."

"But I didn't know--" Stephen began, trying to come pass within an
instant the memory of his year's experience with Mr. Whipple.

"You didn't know that he thought anything about you," said Virginia.
"That is his way, Mr. Brice. He has more private charities on his list
than any man in the city except Mr. Brinsmade. Very few know it. He
thinks a great deal of you. But there," she added, suddenly blushing
crimson, "I am sorry I told you."

"Why?" he asked.

She did not answer, but sat tapping the seat with her fingers. And when
she ventured to look at him, he had fallen into thought.

"I think it must be time for dinner," said Virginia, "if you really wish
to catch the train."

The coldness in her voice, rather than her words, aroused him. He rose,
took one lingering look at the river, and followed her to the house.

At dinner, when not talking about his mare, the Colonel was trying to
persuade Stephen to remain. Virginia did not join in this, and her father
thought the young man's refusal sprang from her lack of cordiality.
Colonel Carvel himself drove to the station.

When he returned, he found his daughter sitting idly on the porch.

"I like that young man, if he is a Yankee," he declared.

"I don't," said Virginia, promptly.

"My dear," said her father, voicing the hospitality of the Carvels, "I am
surprised at you. One should never show one's feelings toward a guest. As
mistress of this house it was your duty to press him to stay."

"He did not want to stay."

"Do you know why he went, my dear," asked the Colonel.

"No," said Virginia.

"I asked him," said the Colonel.

"Pa! I did not think it of you!" she cried. And then, "What was it?" she
demanded.

"He said that his mother was alone in town, and needed him."

Virginia got up without a word, and went into Judge Whipple's room. And
there the Colonel found her some hours later, reading aloud from a
scrap-book certain speeches of Mr. Lincoln's which Judge Whipple had cut
from newspapers. And the Judge, lying back with his eyes half closed, was
listening in pure delight. Little did he guess at Virginia's penance!




THE CRISIS

By Winston Churchill


Volume 4.



CHAPTER VII

AN EXCURSION

I am going ahead two years. Two years during which a nation struggled in
agony with sickness, and even the great strength with which she was
endowed at birth was not equal to the task of throwing it off. In 1620 a
Dutch ship had brought from Guinea to his Majesty's Colony of Virginia
the germs of that disease for which the Nation's blood was to be let so
freely. During these years signs of dissolution, of death, were not
wanting.

In the city by the Father of Waters where the races met, men and women
were born into the world, who were to die in ancient Cuba, who were to be
left fatherless in the struggle soon to come, who were to live to see new
monsters rise to gnaw at the vitals of the Republic, and to hear again
the cynical laugh of Europe. But they were also to see their country a
power in the world, perchance the greatest power. While Europe had
wrangled, the child of the West had grown into manhood and taken a seat
among the highest, to share with them the responsibilities of manhood.

Meanwhile, Stephen Brice had been given permission to practise law in the
sovereign state of Missouri. Stephen understood Judge Whipple better. It
cannot be said that he was intimate with that rather formidable
personage, although the Judge, being a man of habits, had formed that of
taking tea at least once a week with Mrs. Brice. Stephen had learned to
love the Judge, and he had never ceased to be grateful to him for a
knowledge of that man who had had the most influence upon his life,
--Abraham Lincoln.

For the seed, sowed in wisdom and self-denial, was bearing fruit. The
sound of gathering conventions was in the land, and the Freeport Heresy
was not for gotten.

We shall not mention the number of clients thronging to Mr. Whipple's
office to consult Mr. Brice. These things are humiliating. Some of
Stephen's income came from articles in the newspapers of that day. What
funny newspapers they were, the size of a blanket! No startling headlines
such as we see now, but a continued novel among the advertisements on the
front page and verses from some gifted lady of the town, signed Electra.
And often a story of pure love, but more frequently of ghosts or other
eerie phenomena taken from a magazine, or an anecdote of a cat or a
chicken. There were letters from citizens who had the mania of print,
bulletins of different ages from all parts of the Union, clippings out of
day-before-yesterday's newspaper of Chicago or Cincinnati to three-weeks
letters from San Francisco, come by the pony post to Lexington and then
down the swift Missouri. Of course, there was news by telegraph, but that
was precious as fine gold,--not to be lightly read and cast aside.

In the autumn of '59, through the kindness of Mr. Brinsmade, Stephen had
gone on a steamboat up the river to a great convention in Iowa. On this
excursion was much of St. Louis's bluest blood. He widened his circle of
acquaintances, and spent much of his time walking the guards between Miss
Anne Brinsmade and Miss Puss Russell. Perhaps it is unfair to these young
ladies to repeat what they said about Stephen in the privacy of their
staterooms, gentle Anne remonstrating that they should not gossip, and
listening eagerly the while, and laughing at Miss Puss, whose mimicry of
Stephen's severe ways brought tears to her eyes.

Mr. Clarence Colfax was likewise on the boat, and passing Stephen on the
guards, bowed distantly. But once, on the return trip, when Stephen had a
writing pad on his knee, the young Southerner came up to him in his
frankest manner and with an expression of the gray eyes which was not to
be withstood.

"Making a case, Brice?" he said. "I hear you are the kind that cannot be
idle even on a holiday."

"Not as bad as all that," replied Stephen, smiling at him.

"Reckon you keep a diary, then," said Clarence, leaning against the rail.
He made a remarkably graceful figure, Stephen thought. He was tall, and
his movements had what might be called a commanding indolence. Stephen,
while he smiled, could not but admire the tone and gesture with which
Colfax bade a passing negro to get him a handkerchief from his cabin. The
alacrity of the black to do the errand was amusing enough. Stephen well
knew it had not been such if he wanted a handkerchief.

Stephen said it was not a diary. Mr. Colfax was too well bred to inquire
further; so he never found out that Mr. Brice was writing an account of
the Convention and the speechmaking for the Missouri Democrat.

"Brice," said the Southerner, "I want to apologize for things I've done
to you and said about you. I hated you for a long time after you beat me
out of Hester, and--" he hesitated.

Stephen looked up. For the first time he actually liked Colfax. He had
been long enough among Colfax's people to understand how difficult it was
for him to say the thing he wished.

"You may remember a night at my uncle's, Colonel Carvel's, on the
occasion of my cousin's birthday?"

"Yes," said Stephen, in surprise.

"Well," blurted Clarence, boyishly, "I was rude to you in my uncle's
house, and I have since been sorry."

"He held out his hand, and Stephen took it warmly.

"I was younger then, Mr. Colfax," he said, "and I didn't understand your
point of view as well as I do now. Not that I have changed my ideas," he
added quickly, "but the notion of the girl's going South angered me. I
was bidding against the dealer rather than against you. Had I then known
Miss Carvel--" he stopped abruptly.

The winning expression died from the face of the other.

He turned away, and leaning across the rail, stared at the high bluffs,
red-bronzed by the autumn sun. A score of miles beyond that precipice was
a long low building of stone, surrounded by spreading trees,--the school
for young ladies, celebrated throughout the West, where our mothers and
grandmothers were taught,--Monticello. Hither Miss Virginia Carvel had
gone, some thirty days since, for her second winter.

Perhaps Stephen guessed the thought in the mind of his companion, for he
stared also. The music in the cabin came to an abrupt pause, and only the
tumbling of waters through the planks of the great wheels broke the
silence. They were both startled by laughter at their shoulders. There
stood Miss Russell, the picture of merriment, her arm locked in Anne
Brinsmade's.

"It is the hour when all devout worshippers turn towards the East," she
said. "The goddess is enshrined at Monticello."

Both young men, as they got to their feet, were crimson. Whereupon Miss
Russell laughed again. Anne, however, blushed for them. But this was not
the first time Miss Russell had gone too far. Young Mr. Colfax, with the
excess of manner which was his at such times, excused himself and left
abruptly. This to the further embarrassment of Stephen and Anne, and the
keener enjoyment of Miss Russell.

"Was I not right, Mr. Brice?" she demanded. "Why, you are even writing
verses to her!"

"I scarcely know Miss Carvel," he said, recovering. "And as for writing
verse--"

"You never did such a thing in your life! I can well believe it."

Miss Russell made a face in the direction Colfax had taken.

"He always acts like that when you mention her," she said.

"But you are so cruel, Puss," said Anne. "You can't blame him."

"Hairpins!" said Miss Russell.

"Isn't she to marry him?" said Stephen, in his natural voice.

He remembered his pronouns too late.

"That has been the way of the world ever since Adam and Eve," remarked
Puss. "I suppose you meant to ask: Mr. Brice, whether Clarence is to
marry Virginia Carvel."

Anne nudged her.

"My dear, what will Mr. Brice think of us?"

"Listen, Mr. Brice," Puss continued, undaunted. "I shall tell you some
gossip. Virginia was sent to Monticello, and went with her father to
Kentucky and Pennsylvania this summer, that she might be away from
Clarence. Colfax."

"Oh, Puss!" cried Anne.

Miss Russell paid not the slightest heed.

"Colonel Carvel is right," she went on. "I should do the same thing. They
are first cousins, and the Colonel doesn't like that. I am fond of
Clarence. But he isn't good for anything in the world except horse racing
and--and fighting. He wanted to help drive the Black Republican emigrants
out of Kansas, and his mother had to put a collar and chain on him. He
wanted to go filibustering with Walker, and she had to get down on her
knees. And yet," she cried, "if you Yankees push us as far as war, Mr.
Brice, just look out for him."

"But--" Anne interposed.

"Oh, I know what you are going to say,--that Clarence has money."

"Puss!" cried Anne, outraged. "How dare you!"

Miss Russell slipped an arm around her waist.

"Come, Anne," she said, "we mustn't interrupt the Senator any longer. He
is preparing his maiden speech."

That was the way in which Stephen got his nickname. It is scarcely
necessary to add that he wrote no more until he reached his little room
in the house on Olive Street.

They had passed Alton, and the black cloud that hung in the still autumn
air over the city was in sight. It was dusk when the 'Jackson' pushed her
nose into the levee, and the song of the negro stevedores rose from below
as they pulled the gang-plank on to the landing-stage. Stephen stood
apart on the hurricane deck, gazing at the dark line of sooty warehouses.
How many young men with their way to make have felt the same as he did
after some pleasant excursion. The presence of a tall form beside him
shook him from his revery, and he looked up to recognize the benevolent
face of Mr. Brinsmade.

"Mrs. Brice may be anxious, Stephen, at the late hour," said he. "My
carriage is here, and it will give me great pleasure to convey you to
your door."

Dear Mr. Brinsmade! He is in heaven now, and knows at last the good he
wrought upon earth. Of the many thoughtful charities which Stephen
received from him, this one sticks firmest in his remembrance: A
stranger, tired and lonely, and apart from the gay young men and women
who stepped from the boat, he had been sought out by this gentleman, to
whom had been given the divine gift of forgetting none.

"Oh, Puss," cried Anne, that evening, for Miss Russell had come to spend
the night, "how could you have talked to him so? He scarcely spoke on the
way up in the carriage. You have offended him."

"Why should I set him upon a pedestal?" said Puss, with a thread in her
mouth; "why should you all set him upon a pedestal? He is only a Yankee,"
said Puss, tossing her head, "and not so very wonderful."

"I did not say he was wonderful," replied Anne, with dignity.

"But you girls think him so. Emily and Eugenie and Maude. He had better
marry Belle Cluyme. A great man, he may give some decision to that
family. Anne!"

"Yes."

"Shall I tell you a secret?"

"Yes," said Anne. She was human, and she was feminine.

"Then--Virginia Carvel is in love with him."

"With Mr. Brice!" cried astonished Anne. "She hates him!"

"She thinks she hates him," said Miss Russell, calmly.

Anne looked up at her companion admiringly. Her two heroines were Puss
and Virginia. Both had the same kind of daring, but in Puss the trait had
developed into a somewhat disagreeable outspokenness which made many
people dislike her. Her judgments were usually well founded, and her
prophecies had so often come to pass that Anne often believed in them for
no other reason.

"How do you know?" said Anne, incredulously.

"Do you remember that September, a year ago, when we were all out at
Glencoe, and Judge Whipple was ill, and Virginia sent us all away and
nursed him herself?"

"Yes," said Anne.

"And did you know that Mr. Brice had gone out, with letters, when the
Judge was better?"

"Yes," said Anne, breathless.

"It was a Saturday afternoon that he left, although they had begged him
to stay over Sunday. Virginia had written for me to come back, and I
arrived in the evening. I asked Easter where Jinny was, and I found her
--"

"You found her--?" said Anne.

Sitting alone in the summer-house over the river. Easter said she had
been there for two hours. And I have never known Jinny to be such
miserable company as she was that night."

"Did she mention Stephen?" asked Anne.

"No."

"But you did," said Anne, with conviction.

Miss Russell's reply was not as direct as usual.

"You know Virginia never confides unless she wants to," she said.

Anne considered.

"Virginia has scarcely seen him since then," she said. "You know that I
was her room-mate at Monticello last year, and I think I should have
discovered it."

"Did she speak of him?" demanded Miss Russell.

"Only when the subject was mentioned. I heard her repeat once what Judge
Whipple told her father of him; that he had a fine legal mind. He was
often in my letters from home, because they have taken Pa's house next
door, and because Pa likes them. I used to read those letters to Jinny,"
said Anne, "but she never expressed any desire to hear them."

"I, too, used to write Jinny about him," confessed Puss.

"Did she answer your letter?"

"No," replied Miss Puss,--"but that was just before the holidays, you
remember. And then the Colonel hurried her off to see her Pennsylvania
relatives, and I believe they went to Annapolis, too, where the Carvels
come from."

Stephen, sitting in the next house, writing out his account, little
dreamed that he was the subject of a conference in the third story front
of the Brinsmades'. Later, when the young ladies were asleep, he carried
his manuscript to the Democrat office, and delivered it into the hands of
his friend, the night editor, who was awaiting it.

Toward the end of that week, Miss Virginia Carvel was sitting with her
back to one of the great trees at Monticello reading a letter. Every once
in a while she tucked it under her cloak and glanced hastily around. It
was from Miss Anne Brinsmade.

"I have told you all about the excursion, my dear, and how we missed you.
You may remember" (ah, Anne, the guile there is in the best of us), "you
may remember Mr. Stephen Brice, whom we used to speak of. Pa and Ma take
a great interest in him, and Pa had him invited on the excursion. He is
more serious than ever, since he has become a full-fledged lawyer. But he
has a dry humor which comes out when you know him well, of which I did
not suspect him. His mother is the dearest lady I have ever known, so
quiet, so dignified, and so well bred. They come in to supper very often.
And the other night Mr. Brice told Pa so many things about the people
south of Market Street, the Germans, which he did not know; that Pa was
astonished. He told all about German history, and how they were
persecuted at home, and why they came here. Pa was surprised to hear that
many of them were University men, and that they were already organizing
to defend the Union. I heard Pa say, 'That is what Mr. Blair meant when
he assured me that we need not fear for the city.'

"Jinny dear, I ought not to have written you this, because you are for
Secession, and in your heart you think Pa a traitor, because he comes
from a slave state and has slaves of his own. But I shall not tear it up.

"It is sad to think how rich Mrs. Brice lived in Boston, and what she has
had to come to. One servant and a little house, and no place to go to in
the summer, when they used to have such a large one. I often go in to sew
with her, but she has never once mentioned her past to me.

"Your father has no doubt sent you the Democrat with the account of the
Convention. It is the fullest published, by far, and was so much admired
that Pa asked the editor who wrote it. Who do you think, but Stephen
Brice! So now Pa knows why Mr. Brice hesitated when Pa asked him to go up
the river, and then consented. This is not the end. Yesterday, when I
went in to see Mrs. Brice, a new black silk was on her bed, and as long
as I live I shall never forget how sweet was her voice when she said, 'It
is a surprise from my son, my dear. I did not expect ever to have
another.' Jinny, I just know he bought it with the money he got for the
article. That was what he was writing on the boat when Clarence Colfax
interrupted him. Puss accused him of writing verses to you."

At this point Miss Virginia Carvel stopped reading. Whether she had read
that part before, who shall say? But she took Anne's letter between her
fingers and tore it into bits and flung the bits into the wind, so that
they were tossed about and lost among the dead leaves under the great
trees. And when she reached her room, there was the hated Missouri
Democrat lying, still open, on her table. A little later a great black
piece of it came tossing out of the chimney above, to the affright of
little Miss Brown, teacher of Literature, who was walking in the grounds,
and who ran to the principal's room with the story that the chimney was
afire.

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