Book: The Crisis, Complete

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All day long she had been striving to put away from her the memory of
Christmas eves past and gone of her father's early home-coming from the
store, a mysterious smile on his face; of Captain Lige stamping noisily
into the house, exchanging uproarious jests with Ned and Jackson. The
Captain had always carried under his arm a shapeless bundle which he
would confide to Ned with a knowing wink. And then the house would be
lighted from top to bottom, and Mr. Russell and Mr. Catherwood and Mr.
Brinsmade came in for a long evening with Mr. Carvel over great bowls of
apple toddy and egg-nog. And Virginia would have her own friends in the
big parlor. That parlor was shut up now, and icy cold.

Then there was Judge Whipple, the joyous event of whose year was his
Christmas dinner at Colonel Carvel's house. Virginia pictured him this
year at Mrs. Brice's little table, and wondered whether he would miss
them as much as they missed him. War may break friendships, but it cannot
take away the sacredness of memories.

The sombre daylight was drawing to an early close as the two stood
looking out of the sitting-room window. A man's figure muffled in a
greatcoat slanting carefully across the street caught their eyes.
Virginia started. It was the same United States deputy marshal she had
seen the day before at Mr. Russell's house.

"Pa," she cried, "do you think he is coming here?"

"I reckon so, honey."

"The brute! Are you going to pay?"

"No, Jinny."

"Then they will take away the furniture."

"I reckon they will."

"Pa, you must promise me to take down the mahogany bed in your room. It
--it was mother's. I could not bear to see them take that. Let me put it in
the garret."

The Colonel was distressed, but he spoke without a tremor.

"No, Jinny. We must leave this house just as it is." Then he added,
strangely enough for him, "God's will be done."

The bell rang sharply. And Ned, who was cook and housemaid, came in with
his apron on.

"Does you want to see folks, Marse Comyn?"

The Colonel rose, and went to the door himself. He was an imposing figure
as he stood in the windy vestibule, confronting the deputy. Virginia's
first impulse was to shrink under the stairs. Then she came out and stood
beside her father.

"Are you Colonel Carvel?"

"I reckon I am. Will you come in?"

The officer took off his cap. He was a young man with a smooth face, and
a frank brown eye which paid its tribute to Virginia. He did not appear
to relish the duty thrust upon him. He fumbled in his coat and drew from
his inner pocket a paper.

"Colonel Carvel," said he, "by order of Major General Halleck, I serve
you with this notice to pay the sum of three hundred and fifty dollars
for the benefit of the destitute families which the Rebels have driven
from their homes. In default of payment within a reasonable time such
personal articles will be seized and sold at public auction as will
satisfy the demand against you."

The Colonel took the paper. "Very well, sir," he said. "You may tell the
General that the articles may be seized. That I will not, while in my
right mind, be forced to support persons who have no claim upon me."

It was said in the tone in which he might have refused an invitation to
dinner. The deputy marvelled. He had gone into many houses that week; had
seen indignation, hysterics, frenzy. He had even heard men and women
whose sons and brothers were in the army of secession proclaim their
loyalty to the Union. But this dignity, and the quiet scorn of the girl
who had stood silent beside them, were new. He bowed, and casting his
eyes to the vestibule, was glad to escape from the house.

The Colonel shut the door. Then he turned toward Virginia, thoughtfully
pulled his goatee, and laughed gently. "Lordy, we haven't got three
hundred and fifty dollars to our names," said he.

The climate of St. Louis is capricious. That fierce valley of the
Missouri, which belches fitful blizzards from December to March, is
sometimes quiet. Then the hot winds come up from the Gulf, and sleet
melts, and windows are opened. In those days the streets will be fetlock
deep in soft mud. It is neither summer, nor winter, nor spring, nor
anything.

It was such a languorous afternoon in January that a furniture van,
accompanied by certain nondescript persons known as United States Police,
pulled up at the curb in front of Mr. Carvel's house. Eugenie, watching
at the window across the street, ran to tell her father, who came out on
his steps and reviled the van with all the fluency of his French
ancestors.

Mammy Easter opened the door, and then stood with her arms akimbo, amply
filling its place. Her lips protruded, and an expression of defiance hard
to describe sat on her honest black face.

"Is this Colonel Carvel's house?"

"Yassir. I 'low you knows dat jes as well as me." An embarrassed silence,
and then from Mammy, "Whaffor you laffin at?"

"Is the Colonel at home?"

"Now I reckon you knows dat he ain't. Ef he was, you ain't come here
'quirin' in dat honey voice." (Raising her own voice.) "You tink I dunno
whaffor you come? You done come heah to rifle, an' to loot, an' to steal,
an' to seize what ain't your'n. You come heah when young Marse ain't to
home ter rob him." (Still louder.) "Ned, whaffor you hidin' yonder? Ef
yo' ain't man to protect Marse Comyn's prop-ty, jes han' over Marse
Comyn's gun."

The marshal and his men had stood, half amused, more than half baffled by
this unexpected resistance. Mammy Easter looked so dangerous that it was
evident she was not to be passed without extreme bodily discomfort.

"Is your mistress here?"

This question was unfortunate in the extreme.

"You--you white trash!" cried Mammy, bursting with indignation. "Who is
you to come heah 'quiring fo' her! I ain't agwine--"

"Mammy!"

"Yas'm! Yas, Miss Jinny." Mammy backed out of the door and clutched at
her bandanna.

"Mammy, what is all this noise about?" The torrent was loosed once more.

"These heah men, Miss Jinny, was gwine f'r t' carry away all yo' pa's
blongin's. I jes' tol' 'em dey ain't comin' in ovah dis heah body."

The deputy had his foot on the threshold. He caught sight of the face of
Miss Carvel within, and stopped abruptly.

"I have a warrant here from the Provost Marshal, ma'am, to seize personal
property to satisfy a claim against Colonel Carvel."

Virginia took the order, read it, and handed it back. "I do not see how I
am to prevent you," she said. The deputy was plainly abashed.

"I'm sorry, Miss. I--I can't tell you how sorry I am. But it's got to be
done."

Virginia nodded coldly. And still the man hesitated. "What are you
waiting for?" she said.

The deputy wiped his muddy feet. He made his men do likewise. Then he
entered the chill drawing-room, threw open the blinds and glanced around
him.

"I expect all that we want is right here," he said. And at the sight of
the great chandelier, with its cut-glass crystals, he whistled. Then he
walked over to the big English Rothfield piano and lifted the lid.

The man was a musician. Involuntarily he rested himself on the mahogany
stool, and ran his fingers over the keys. They seemed to Virginia,
standing motionless in the ball, to give out the very chords of agony.

The piano, too, had been her mother's. It had once stood in the brick
house of her grandfather Colfax at Halcyondale. The songs of Beatrice lay
on the bottom shelf of the what-not near by. No more, of an evening when
they were alone, would Virginia quietly take them out and play them over
to the Colonel, as he sat dreaming in the window with his cigar,
--dreaming of a field on the borders of a wood, of a young girl who held
his hand, and sang them softly to herself as she walked by his side. And,
when they reached the house in the October twilight, she had played them
for him on this piano. Often he had told Virginia of those days, and
walked with her over those paths.

The deputy closed the lid, and sent out to the van for a truck. Virginia
stirred. For the first time she heard the words of Mammy Easter.

"Come along upstairs wid yo' Mammy, honey. Dis ain't no place for us, I
reckon." Her words were the essence of endearment. And yet, while she
pronounced them, she glared unceasingly at the intruders. "Oh, de good
Lawd'll burn de wicked!"

The men were removing the carved legs. Virginia went back into the room
and stood before the deputy.

"Isn't there something else you could take? Some jewellery?" She flushed.
"I have a necklace--"

"No, miss. This warrant's on your father. And there ain't nothing quite
so salable as pianos."

She watched them, dry-eyed, as they carried it away. It seemed like a
coffin. Only Mammy Easter guessed at the pain in Virginia's breast, and
that was because there was a pain in her own. They took the rosewood
what-not, but Virginia snatched the songs before the men could touch
them, and held them in her arms. They seized the mahogany velvet-bottomed
chairs, her uncle's wedding present to her mother; and, last of all, they
ruthlessly tore up the Brussels carpet, beginning near the spot where
Clarence had spilled ice-cream at one of her children's parties.

She could not bear to look into the dismantled room when they had gone.
It was the embodied wreck of her happiness. Ned closed the blinds once
more, and she herself turned the key in the lock, and went slowly up the
stairs.




CHAPTER V

THE AUCTION

"Stephen," said the Judge, in his abrupt way, "there isn't a great deal
doing. Let's go over to the Secesh property sales."

Stephen looked up in surprise. The seizures and intended sale of
secession property had stirred up immense bitterness and indignation in
the city. There were Unionists (lukewarm) who denounced the measure as
unjust and brutal. The feelings of Southerners, avowed and secret, may
only be surmised. Rigid ostracism was to be the price of bidding on any
goods displayed, and men who bought in handsome furniture on that day
because it was cheap have still, after forty years, cause to remember it.

It was not that Stephen feared ostracism. Anne Brinsmade was almost the
only girl left to him from among his former circle of acquaintances. Miss
Carvel's conduct is known. The Misses Russell showed him very plainly
that they disapproved of his politics. The hospitable days at that house
were over. Miss Catherwood, when they met on the street, pretended not to
see him, and Eugenie Renault gave him but a timid nod. The loyal families
to whose houses he now went were mostly Southerners, in sentiment against
forced auctions.

However, he put on his coat, and sallied forth into the sharp air, the
Judge leaning on his arm. They walked for some distance in silence.

"Stephen," said he, presently, "I guess I'll do a little bidding."

Stephen did not reply. But he was astonished. He wondered what Mr.
Whipple wanted with fine furniture. And, if he really wished to bid,
Stephen knew likewise that no consideration would stop him.

"You don't approve of this proceeding, sir, I suppose," said the Judge.

"Yes, sir, on large grounds. War makes many harsh things necessary."

"Then," said the Judge, tartly, "by bidding, we help to support starving
Union families. You should not be afraid to bid, sir."

Stephen bit his lip. Sometimes Mr. Whipple made him very angry.

"I am not afraid to bid, Judge Whipple." He did not see the smile on the
Judge's face.

"Then you will bid in certain things for me," said Mr. Whipple. Here he
hesitated, and shook free the rest of the sentence with a wrench.
"Colonel Carvel always had a lot of stuff I wanted. Now I've got the
chance to buy it cheap."

There was silence again, for the space of a whole block. Finally, Stephen
managed to say:-- "You'll have to excuse me, sir. I do not care to do
that."

"What?" cried the Judge, stopping in the middle of a cross-street, so
that a wagon nearly ran over his toes.

"I was once a guest in Colonel Carvel's house, sir. And--"

"And what?"

Neither the young man nor the old knew all it was costing the other to
say these things. The Judge took a grim pleasure in eating his heart. And
as for Stephen, he often went to his office through Locust Street, which
was out of his way, in the hope that he might catch a glimpse of
Virginia. He had guessed much of the privations she had gone through. He
knew that the Colonel had hired out most of his slaves, and he had
actually seen the United States Police drive across Eleventh Street with
the piano that she had played on.

The Judge was laughing quietly,--not a pleasant laugh to hear,--as they
came to Morgan's great warerooms. A crowd blocked the pavement, and
hustled and shoved at the doors,--roughs, and soldiers off duty, and
ladies and gentlemen whom the Judge and Stephen knew, and some of whom
they spoke to. All of these were come out of curiosity, that they might
see for themselves any who had the temerity to bid on a neighbor's
household goods. The long hall, which ran from street to street, was
packed, the people surging backward and forward, and falling roughly
against the mahogany pieces; and apologizing, and scolding, and swearing
all in a breath. The Judge, holding tightly to Stephen, pushed his way
fiercely to the stand, vowing over and over that the commotion was a
secession trick to spoil the furniture and stampede the sale. In truth,
it was at the Judge's suggestion that a blue provost's guard was called
in later to protect the seized property.

How many of those mahogany pieces, so ruthlessly tumbled about before the
public eye, meant a heartache! Wedding presents of long ago, dear to many
a bride with silvered hair, had been torn from the corner where the
children had played--children who now, alas, were grown and gone to war.
Yes, that was the Brussels rug that had lain before the fire, and which
the little feet had worn in the corner. Those were the chairs the little
hands had harnessed, four in a row, and fallen on its side was the
armchair--the stage coach itself. There were the books, held up to common
gaze, that a beloved parent had thumbed with affection. Yes, and here in
another part of the hall were the family horses and the family carriage
that had gone so often back and forth from church with the happy brood of
children, now scattered and gone to war.

As Stephen reached his place beside the Judge, Mr. James's effects were
being cried. And, if glances could have killed, many a bidder would have
dropped dead. The heavy dining-room table which meant so much to the
family went for a song to a young man recently come from Yankeeland,
whose open boast it was--like Eliphalet's secret one--that he would one
day grow rich enough to snap his fingers in the face of the Southern
aristocrats. Mr. James was not there. But Mr. Catherwood, his face
haggard and drawn, watched the sideboard he had given his wife on her
silver wedding being sold to a pawnbroker.

Stephen looked in vain for Colonel Carvel--for Virginia. He did not want
to see them there. He knew by heart the list of things which had been
taken from their house. He understood the feeling which had sent the
Judge here to bid them in. And Stephen honored him the more.

When the auctioneer came to the Carvel list, and the well-known name was
shouted out, the crowd responded with a stir and pressed closer to the
stand. And murmurs were plainly heard in more than one direction.

"Now, gentlemen, and ladies," said the seller, "this here is a genuine
English Rothfield piano once belonging to Colonel Carvel, and the
celebrated Judge Colfax of Kaintucky." He lingered fondly over the names,
that the impression might have time to sink deep. "This here magnificent
instrument's worth at the very least" (another pause) "twelve hundred
dollars. What am I bid?"

He struck a base note of the keys, then a treble, and they vibrated in
the heated air of the big hall. Had he hit the little C of the top
octave, the tinkle of that also might have been heard.

"Gentlemen and ladies, we have to begin somewheres. What am I bid?"

A menacing murmur gave place to the accusing silence. Some there were who
gazed at the Rothfield with longing eyes, but who had no intention of
committing social suicide. Suddenly a voice, the rasp of which penetrated
to St. Charles Street, came out with a bid. The owner was a seedy man
with a straw-colored, drunkard's mustache. He was leaning against the
body of Mrs. Russell's barouche (seized for sale), and those about him
shrank away as from smallpox. His hundred-dollar offer was followed by a
hiss. What followed next Stephen will always remember. When Judge Whipple
drew himself up to his full six feet, that was a warning to those that
knew him. As he doubled the bid, the words came out with the aggressive
distinctness of a man who through a long life has been used to
opposition. He with the gnawed yellow mustache pushed himself clear of
the barouche, his smouldering cigar butt dropping to the floor. But there
were no hisses now.

And this is how Judge Whipple braved public opinion once more. As he
stood there, defiant, many were the conjectures as to what he could wish
to do with the piano of his old friend. Those who knew the Judge (and
there were few who did not) pictured to themselves the dingy little
apartment where he lived, and smiled. Whatever his detractors might have
said of him, no one was ever heard to avow that he had bought or sold
anything for gain.

A tremor ran through the people. Could it have been of admiration for the
fine old man who towered there glaring defiance at those about him? "Give
me a strong and consistent enemy," some great personage has said, "rather
than a lukewarm friend." Three score and five years the Judge had lived,
and now some were beginning to suspect that he had a heart. Verily he had
guarded his secret well. But it was let out to many more that day, and
they went home praising him who had once pronounced his name with
bitterness.

This is what happened. Before he of the yellow mustache could pick up his
cigar from the floor and make another bid, the Judge had cried out a sum
which was the total of Colonel Carvel's assessment. Many recall to this
day how fiercely he frowned when the applause broke forth of itself; and
when he turned to go they made a path for him, in admiration, the length
of the hall, down which he stalked, looking neither to the right nor
left. Stephen followed him, thankful for the day which had brought him
into the service of such a man.

And so it came about that the other articles were returned to Colonel
Carvel with the marshal's compliments, and put back into the cold parlor
where they had stood for many years. The men who brought them offered to
put down the carpet, but by Virginia's orders the rolls were stood up in
the corner, and the floor left bare. And days passed into weeks, and no
sign or message came from Judge Whipple in regard to the piano he had
bought. Virginia did not dare mention it to the Colonel.

Where was it? It had been carried by six sweating negroes up the narrow
stairs into the Judge's office. Stephen and Shadrach had by Mr. Whipple's
orders cleared a corner of his inner office and bedroom of papers and
books and rubbish, and there the bulky instrument was finally set up. It
occupied one-third of the space. The Judge watched the proceeding grimly,
choking now and again from the dust that was raised, yet uttering never a
word. He locked the lid when the van man handed him the key, and thrust
that in his pocket.

Stephen had of late found enough to do in St. Louis. He was the kind of
man to whom promotions came unsought, and without noise. In the autumn he
had been made a captain in the Halleck Guards of the State Militia, as a
reward for his indefatigable work in the armories and his knowledge of
tactics. Twice his company had been called out at night, and once they
made a campaign as far as the Merimec and captured a party of recruits
who were destined for Jefferson Davis. Some weeks passed before Mr.
Brinsmade heard of his promotion and this exploit, and yet scarcely a day
went by that he did not see the young man at the big hospital. For
Stephen helped in the work of the Sanitary Commission too, and so strove
to make up in zeal for the service in the field which he longed to give.

After Christmas Mr. and Mrs. Brinsmade moved out to their place on the
Bellefontaine Road. This was to force Anne to take a rest. For the girl
was worn out with watching at the hospitals, and with tending the
destitute mothers and children from the ranks of the refugees. The
Brinsmade place was not far from the Fair Grounds,--now a receiving camp
for the crude but eager regiments of the Northern states. To Mr.
Brinsmade's, when the day's duty was done, the young Union officers used
to ride, and often there would be half a dozen of them to tea. That
house, and other great houses on the Bellefontaine Road with which this
history has no occasion to deal, were as homes to many a poor fellow who
would never see home again. Sometimes Anne would gather together such
young ladies of her acquaintance from the neighbor hood and the city as
their interests and sympathies permitted to waltz with a Union officer,
and there would be a little dance. To these dances Stephen Brice was
usually invited.

One such occasion occurred on a Friday in January, and Mr. Brinsmade
himself called in his buggy and drove Stephen to the country early in the
afternoon. He and Anne went for a walk along the river, the surface of
which was broken by lumps of yellow ice. Gray clouds hung low in the sky
as they picked their way over the frozen furrows of the ploughed fields.
The grass was all a yellow-brown, but the north wind which swayed the
bare trees brought a touch of color to Anne's cheeks. Before they
realized where they were, they had nearly crossed the Bellegarde estate,
and the house itself was come into view, standing high on the slope above
the withered garden. They halted.

"The shutters are up," said Stephen. "I understood that Mrs. Colfax had
come out here not long a--"

"She came out for a day just before Christina," said Anne, smiling, "and
then she ran off to Kentucky. I think she was afraid that she was one of
the two women on the list of Sixty."

"It must have been a blow to her pride when she found that she was not,"
said Stephen, who had a keen remembrance of her conduct upon a certain
Sunday not a year gone.

Impelled by the same inclination, they walked in silence to the house and
sat down on the edge of the porch. The only motion in the view was the
smoke from the slave quarters twisting in the wind, and the hurrying ice
in the stream.

"Poor Jinny!" said Anne, with a sigh, "how she loved to romp! What good
times we used to have here together!"

"Do you think that she is unhappy?" Stephen demanded, involuntarily.

"Oh, yes," said Anne. "How can you ask? But you could not make her show
it. The other morning when she came out to our house I found her sitting
at the piano. I am sure there were tears in her eyes, but she would not
let me see them. She made some joke about Spencer Catherwood running
away. What do you think the Judge will do with that piano, Stephen?"

He shook his head.

"The day after they put it in his room he came in with a great black
cloth, which he spread over it. You cannot even see the feet."

There was a silence. And Anne, turning to him timidly, gave him a long,
searching look.

"It is growing late," she said. "I think that we ought to go back."

They went out by the long entrance road, through the naked woods. Stephen
said little. Only a little while before he had had one of those vivid
dreams of Virginia which left their impression, but not their substance,
to haunt him. On those rare days following the dreams her spirit had its
mastery over his. He pictured her then with a glow on her face which was
neither sadness nor mirth,--a glow that ministered to him alone. And yet,
he did not dare to think that he might have won her, even if politics and
war had not divided them.

When the merriment of the dance was at its height that evening, Stephen
stood at the door of the long room, meditatively watching the bright
gowns and the flash of gold on the uniforms as they flitted past.
Presently the opposite door opened, and he heard Mr. Brinsmade's voice
mingling with another, the excitable energy of which recalled some
familiar episode. Almost--so it seemed--at one motion, the owner of the
voice had come out of the door and had seized Stephen's hand in a warm
grasp,--a tall and spare figure in the dress of a senior officer. The
military frock, which fitted the man's character rather than the man, was
carelessly open, laying bare a gold-buttoned white waistcoat and an
expanse of shirt bosom which ended in a black stock tie. The ends of the
collar were apart the width of the red clipped beard, and the mustache
was cropped straight along the line of the upper lip. The forehead rose
high, and was brushed carelessly free of the hair. The nose was almost
straight, but combative. A fire fairly burned in the eyes.

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