Book: The Crisis, Complete

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He sat down. And, as the sun peeps out of a troubled sky, she smiled.

"It is your chair," she said.

He glanced at the book, and the bit of sky was crimson. But still he said
nothing.

"It is your book," she stammered. "I did not know that it was yours when
I took it down. I--I was looking at it while I was waiting for Clarence."

"It is dry reading," he remarked, which was not what he wished to say.

"And yet--"

"Yes?"

"And yet you have read it twice." The confession had slipped to her lips.

She was sitting on the edge of his desk, looking down at him. Still he
did not look at her. All the will that was left him averted his head. And
the seal of honor was upon his speech. And he wondered if man were ever
more tempted.

Then the evil spread its wings, and soared away into the night. And the
moment was past. Peace seemed to come upon them both, quieting the tumult
in their hearts, and giving them back their reason. Respect like wise
came to the girl,--respect that was akin to awe. It was he who spoke
first.

"My mother has me how faithfully you nursed the Judge, Miss Carvel. It
was a very noble thing to do."

"Not noble at all," she replied hastily, "your mother did the most of it,
And he is an old friend of my father--"

"It was none the less noble," said Stephen, warmly, "And he quarrelled
with Colonel Carvel."

"My father quarrelled with him," she corrected. "It was well that I
should make some atonement. And yet mine was no atonement, I love Judge
Whipple. It was a--a privilege to see your mother every day--oh, how he
would talk of you! I think he loves you better than any one on this
earth."

"Tell me about him," said Stephen, gently.

Virginia told him, and into the narrative she threw the whole of her
pent-up self. How patient the Judge had been, and the joy he had derived
from Stephen's letters. "You were very good to write to him so often,"
she said. It seemed like a dream to Stephen, like one of the many dreams
of her, the mystery of which was of the inner life beyond our ken. He
could not recall a time when she had not been rebellious, antagonistic.
And now--as he listened to her voice, with its exquisite low tones and
modulations, as he sat there in this sacred intimacy, perchance to be the
last in his life, he became dazed. His eyes, softened, with supreme
eloquence cried out that she, was his, forever and forever. The magnetic
force which God uses to tie the worlds together was pulling him to her.
And yet the Puritan resisted.

Then the door swung open, and Clarence Colfax, out of breath, ran into
the room. He stopped short when he saw them, his hand fell to his sides,
and his words died on his lips. Virginia did not stir.

It was Stephen who rose to meet him, and with her eyes the girl followed
his motions. The broad and loosely built frame of the Northerner, his
shoulders slightly stooping, contrasted with Clarence's slighter figure,
erect, compact, springy. The Southerner's eye, for that moment, was flint
struck with the spark from the steel. Stephen's face, thinned by illness,
was grave. The eyes kindly, yet penetrating. For an instant they stood
thus regarding each other, neither offering a hand. It was Stephen who
spoke first, and if there was a trace of emotion in his voice, one who
was listening intently failed to mark it.

"I am glad to see that you have recovered, Colonel Colfax," he said.

"I should indeed be without gratitude if I did not thank Captain Brice
for my life," answered Clarence. Virginia flushed. She had detected the
undue accent on her cousin's last words, and she glanced apprehensively
at Stephen. His forceful reply surprised them both.

"Miss Carvel has already thanked me sufficiently, sir," he said. "I am
happy to have been able to have done you a good turn, and at the same
time to have served her so well. It was she who saved your life. It is to
her your thanks are chiefly due. I believe that I am not going too far,
Colonel Colfax," he added, "when I congratulate you both."

Before her cousin could recover, Virginia slid down from the desk and had
come between them. How her eyes shone and her lip trembled as she gazed
at him, Stephen has never forgotten. What a woman she was as she took her
cousin's arm and made him a curtsey.

"What you have done may seem a light thing to you, Captain Brice," she
said. "That is apt to be the way with those who have big hearts. You have
put upon Colonel Colfax, and upon me, a life's obligation."

When she began to speak, Clarence raised his head. As he glanced,
incredulous, from her to Stephen, his look gradually softened, and when
she had finished, his manner had become again frank, boyish, impetuous
--nay, penitent. He seized Stephen's hand.

"Forgive me, Brice," he cried. "Forgive me. I should have known better.
I--I did you an injustice, and you, Virginia. I was a fool--a scoundrel."
Stephen shook his head.

"No, you were neither," he said. Then upon his face came the smile of one
who has the strength to renounce, all that is dearest to him--that smile
of the unselfish, sweetest of all. It brought tears to Virginia. She was
to see it once again, upon the features of one who bore a cross,
--Abraham Lincoln. Clarence looked, and then he turned away toward the door
to the stairway, as one who walks blindly, in a sorrow.

His hand was on the knob when Virginia seemed to awake. She flew after
him:

"Wait!" she whispered.

Then she raised her eyes, slowly, to Stephen, who was standing motionless
beside his chair.

"Captain Brice!"

"Yes," he answered.

"My father is in the Judge's room," she said.

"Your father!" he exclaimed. "I thought--"

"That he was an officer in the Confederate Army. So he is." Her head went
up as she spoke.

Stephen stared at her, troubled. Suddenly her manner, changed. She took a
step toward him, appealingly.

"Oh, he is not a spy," she cried. "He has given Mr Brinsmade his word
that he came here for no other purpose than to see me. Then he heard that
the Judge was dying--"

"He has given his word to Mr. Brinsmade?

"Yes."

"Then," said Stephen, "what Mr. Brinsmade sanctions is not for me to
question."

She gave him yet another look, a fleeting one which he did not see. Then
she softly opened the door and passed into the room of the dying man.
Stephen followed her. As for Clarence, he stood for a space staring after
them. Then he went noiselessly down the stairs into the street.




CHAPTER XI

LEAD, KINDLY LIGHT

When the Judge opened his eyes for the last time in this world, they fell
first upon the face of his old friend, Colonel Carvel. Twice he tried to
speak his name, and twice he failed. The third time he said it faintly.

"Comyn!"

"Yes, Silas."

"Comyn, what are you doing here?

"I reckon I came to see you, Silas," answered the Colonel.

"To see me die," said the Judge, grimly.

Colonel Carvel's face twitched, and the silence in that little room
seemed to throb.

"Comyn," said the Judge again, "I heard that you had gone South to fight
against your country. I see you here. Can it be that you have at last
returned in your allegiances to the flag for which your forefathers
died?"

Poor Colonel Carvel

"I am still of the same mind, Silas," he said.

The Judge turned his face away, his thin lips moving as in prayer. But
they knew that he was not praying, "Silas," said Mr. Carvel, "we were
friends for twenty years. Let us be friends again, before--"

"Before I die," the Judge interrupted, "I am ready to die. Yes, I am
ready. I have had a hard life, Comyn, and few friends. It was my fault.
I--I did not know how to make them. Yet no man ever valued those few more
than! But," he cried, the stern fire unquenched to the last, "I would
that God had spared me to see this Rebellion stamped out. For it will be
stamped out." To those watching, his eyes seemed fixed on a distant
point, and the light of prophecy was in them. "I would that God had
spared me to see this Union supreme once more. Yes, it will be supreme. A
high destiny is reserved for this nation--! I think the highest of all on
this earth." Amid profound silence he leaned back on the pillows from
which he had risen, his breath coming fast. None dared look at the
neighbor beside them.

It was Stephen's mother who spoke. "Would you not like to see a
clergyman, Judge?" she asked.

The look on his face softened as he turned to her.

"No, madam," he answered; "you are clergyman enough for me. You are near
enough to God--there is no one in this room who is not worthy to stand in
the presence of death. Yet I wish that a clergyman were here, that he
might listen to one thing I have to say. When I was a boy I worked my way
down the river to New York, to see the city. I met a bishop there. He
said to me, 'Sit down, my son, I want to talk to you. I know your father
in Albany. You are Senator Whipple's son.' I said to him, 'No, sir, I am
not Senator Whipple's son. I am no relation of his.' If the bishop had
wished to talk to me after that, Mrs. Brice, he might have made my life a
little easier--a little sweeter. I know that they are not all like that.
But it was by just such things that I was embittered when I was a boy."
He stopped, and when he spoke again, it was more slowly, more gently,
than any of them had heard him speak in all his life before. "I wish that
some of the blessings which I am leaving now had come to me then--when I
was a boy. I might have done my little share in making the world a
brighter place to live in, as all of you have done. Yes, as all of you
are now doing for me. I am leaving the world with a better opinion of it
than I ever held in life. God hid the sun from me when I was a little
child. Margaret Brice," he said, "if I had had such a mother as you, I
would have been softened then. I thank God that He sent you when He did."

The widow bowed her head, and a tear fell upon his pillow.

"I have done nothing," she murmured, "nothing."

"So shall they answer at the last whom He has chosen," said the Judge. "I
was sick, and ye visited me. He has promised to remember those who do
that. Hold up your head, my daughter. God has been good to you. He has
given you a son whom all men may look in the face, of whom you need never
be ashamed. Stephen," said the Judge, "come here."

Stephen made his way to the bedside, but because of the moisture in his
eyes he saw but dimly the gaunt face. And yet he shrank back in awe at
the change in it. So must all of the martyrs have looked when the fire of
the faggots licked their feet. So must John Bunyan have stared through
his prison bars at the sky.

"Stephen," he said, "you have been faithful in a few things. So shall you
be made ruler over many things. The little I have I leave to you, and the
chief of this is an untarnished name. I know that you will be true to it
because I have tried your strength. Listen carefully to what I have to
say, for I have thought over it long. In the days gone by our fathers
worked for the good of the people, and they had no thought of gain. A
time is coming when we shall need that blood and that bone in this
Republic. Wealth not yet dreamed of will flow out of this land, and the
waters of it will rot all save the pure, and corrupt all save the
incorruptible. Half-tried men wilt go down before that flood. You and
those like you will remember how your fathers governed,--strongly,
sternly, justly. It was so that they governed themselves.

"Be vigilant. Serve your city, serve your state, but above all serve your
country."

He paused to catch his breath, which was coming painfully now, and
reached out his bony hand to seek Stephen's. "I was harsh with you at
first, my son," he went on. "I wished to try you. And when I had tried
you I wished your mind to open, to keep pace with the growth of this
nation. I sent you to see Abraham Lincoln that you might be born again
--in the West. You were born again. I saw it when you came back--I saw it
in your face. O God," he cried, with sudden eloquence. "I would that his
hands--Abraham Lincoln's hands--might be laid upon all who complain and
cavil and criticise, and think of the little things in life: I would that
his spirit might possess their spirit!"

He stopped again. They marvelled and were awed, for never in all his days
had such speech broken from this man. "Good-by, Stephen," he said, when
they thought he was not to speak again. "Hold the image of Abraham
Lincoln in front of you. Never forget him. You--you are a man after his
own heart--and--and mine."

The last word was scarcely audible. They started for ward, for his eyes
were closed. But presently he stirred again, and opened them.

"Brinsmade," he said, "Brinsmade, take care of my orphan girls. Send
Shadrach here."

The negro came forth, shuffling and sobbing, from the doorway.

"You ain't gwine away, Marse Judge?"

"Yes, Shadrach, good-by. You have served me well, I have left you
provided for."

Shadrach kissed the hand of whose secret charity he knew so much. Then
the Judge withdrew it, and motioned to him to rise. He called his oldest
friend by name. And Colonel Carvel came from the corner where he had been
listening, with his face drawn.

"Good-by, Comyn. You were my friend when there was none other. You were
true to me when the hand of every man was against me. You--you have
risked your life to come to me here, May God spare it for Virginia."

At the sound of her name, the girl started. She came and bent over him.
And when she kissed him on the forehead, he trembled.

"Uncle Silas!" she faltered.

Weakly he reached up and put his hands on her shoulders. He whispered in
her ear. The tears came and lay wet upon her lashes as she undid the
button at his throat.

There, on a piece of cotton twine, hung a little key, She took it off,
but still his hands held her.

"I have saved it for you, my dear," he said. "God bless you--" why did
his eyes seek Stephen's?--"and make your life happy. Virginia--will you
play my hymn--once more--once more?"

They lifted the night lamp from the piano, and the medicine. It was
Stephen who stripped it of the black cloth it had worn, who stood by
Virginia ready to lift the lid when she had turned the lock. The girl's
exaltation gave a trembling touch divine to the well-remembered chords,
and those who heard were lifted, lifted far above and beyond the power of
earthly spell.

"Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom
Lead Thou me on
The night is dark, and I am far from home;
Lead Thou me on.
Keep Thou my feet! I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me."

A sigh shook Silas Whipple's wasted frame, and he died.




THE CRISIS

By Winston Churchill


Volume 8.



CHAPTER XII

THE LAST CARD

Mr. Brinsmade and the Doctor were the first to leave the little room
where Silas Whipple had lived and worked and died, Mr. Brinsmade bent
upon one of those errands which claimed him at all times. He took
Shadrach with him. Virginia sat on, a vague fear haunting her,--a fear
for her father's safety. Where was Clarence? What had he seen? Was the
place watched? These questions, at first intruding upon her sorrow,
remained to torture her.

Softly she stirred from the chair where she had sat before the piano, and
opened the door of the outer office. A clock in a steeple near by was
striking twelve. The Colonel did not raise his head. Only Stephen saw her
go; she felt his eyes following her, and as she slipped out lifted hers
to meet them for a brief instant through the opening of the door. Then it
closed behind her.

First of all she knew that the light in the outer office was burning
dimly, and the discovery gave her a shock. Who had turned it down? Had
Clarence? Was he here? Fearfully searching the room for him, her gaze was
held by a figure in the recess of the window at the back of the room. A
solid, bulky figure it was, and, though uncertainly outlined in the
semi-darkness, she knew it. She took a step nearer, and a cry escaped
her.

The man was Eliphalet Hopper. He got down from the sill with a motion at
once sheepish and stealthy. Her breath caught, and instinctively she gave
back toward the door, as if to open it again.

"Hold on!" he said. "I've got something I want to say to you, Miss
Virginia."

His tones seemed strangely natural. They were not brutal. But she
shivered and paused, horrified at the thought of what she was about to
do. Her father was in that room--and Stephen. She must keep them there,
and get this man away. She must not show fright before him, and yet she
could not trust her voice to speak just then. She must not let him know
that she was afraid of him--this she kept repeating to herself. But how
to act? Suddenly an idea flashed upon her.

Virginia never knew how she gathered the courage to pass him, even
swiftly, and turn up the gas. He started back, blinking as the jet
flared. For a moment she stood beside it, with her head high; confronting
him and striving to steady herself for speech.

"Why have you come here?" she said. "Judge Whipple--died--to-night."

The dominating note in his answer was a whine, as if, in spite of
himself, he were awed.

"I ain't here to see the Judge."

She was pale, and quite motionless. And she faltered now. She felt her
lips moving, but knew not whether the words had come.

"What do you mean?"

He gained confidence. The look in his little eyes was the filmy look of
those of an animal feasting.

"I came here to see you," he said, "--you." She was staring at him now, in
horror. "And if you don't give me what I want, I cal'late to see some one
else--in there," said Mr. Hopper.

He smiled, for she was swaying, her lids half closed. By a supreme effort
she conquered her terror and looked at him. The look was in his eyes
still, intensified now.

"How dare you speak to me after what has happened! she said. If Colonel
Carvel were here, he would--kill you."

He flinched at the name and the word, involuntarily. He wiped his
forehead, hot at the very thought.

"I want to know!" he exclaimed, in faint-hearted irony. Then, remembering
his advantage, he stepped close to her.

"He is here," he said, intense now. "He is here, in that there room." He
seized her wrists. Virginia struggled, and yet she refrained from crying
out. "He never leaves this city without I choose. I can have him hung if
I choose," he whispered, next to her.

"Oh!" she cried; "oh, if you choose!"

Still his body crept closer, and his face closer. And her strength was
going.

"There's but one price to pay," he said hoarsely, "there's but one price
to pay, and that's you--you. I cal'late you'll marry me now."

Delirious at the touch of her, he did not hear the door open. Her senses
were strained for that very sound. She heard it close again, and a
footstep across the room. She knew the step--she knew the voice, and her
heart leaped at the sound of it in anger. An arm in a blue sleeve came
between them, and Eliphalet Hopper staggered and fell across the books on
the table, his hand to his face. Above him towered Stephen Brice. Towered
was the impression that came to Virginia then, and so she thought of the
scene ever afterward. Small bits, like points of tempered steel,
glittered in Stephen's eyes, and his hands following up the mastery he
had given them clutched Mr. Hopper's shoulders. Twice Stephen shook him
so that his head beat upon the table.

"You--you beast!" he cried, but he kept his voice low. And then, as if he
expected Hopper to reply: "Shall I kill you?"

Again he shook him violently. He felt Virginia's touch on his arm.

"Stephen!" she cried, "your wounds! Be careful! Oh, do be careful!"

She had called him Stephen. He turned slowly, and his hands fell from Mr.
Hopper's cowering form as his eyes met hers. Even he could not fathom the
appeal, the yearning, in their dark blue depths. And yet what he saw
there made him tremble. She turned away, trembling too.

"Please sit down," she entreated. "He--he won't touch me again while you
are here."

Eliphalet Hopper raised himself from the desk, and one of the big books
fell with a crash to the floor. Then they saw him shrink, his eyes fixed
upon some one behind them. Before the Judge's door stood Colonel Carvel,
in calm, familiar posture, his feet apart, and his head bent forward as
he pulled at his goatee.

"What is this man doing here, Virginia?" he asked. She did not answer
him, nor did speech seem to come easily to Mr. Hopper in that instant.
Perhaps the sight of Colonel Carvel had brought before him too, vividly
the memory of that afternoon at Glencoe.

All at once Virginia grasped the fulness of the power in this man's
hands. At a word from him her father would be shot as a spy--and Stephen
Brice, perhaps, as a traitor. But if Colonel Carvel should learn that he
had seized her,--here was the terrible danger of the situation. Well she
knew what the Colonel would do. Would. Stephen tell him? She trusted in
his coolness that he would not.

Before a word of reply came from any of the three, a noise was heard on
the stairway. Some one was coming up. There followed four seconds of
suspense, and then Clarence came in. She saw that his face wore a
worried, dejected look. It changed instantly when he glanced about him,
and an oath broke from his lips as he singled out Eliphalet Hopper
standing in sullen aggressiveness, beside the table.

"So you're the spy, are you?" he said in disgust. Then he turned his back
and faced his uncle. "I saw, him in Williams's entry as we drove up. He
got away from me."

A thought seemed to strike him. He strode to the open window at the back
of the office, and looked out, There was a roof under it.

"The sneak got in here," he said. "He knew I was waiting for him in the
street. So you're the spy, are you?"

Mr. Hopper passed a heavy hand across the cheek where Stephen had struck
him.

"No, I ain't the spy," he said, with a meaning glance at the Colonel.

"Then what are you doing here?" demanded Clarence, fiercely.

"I cal'late that he knows," Eliphalet replied, jerking his head toward
Colonel Carvel. "Where's his Confederate uniform? What's to prevent my
calling up the provost's guard below?" he continued, with a smile that
was hideous on his swelling face.

It was the Colonel who answered him, very quickly and very clearly.

"Nothing whatever, Mr. Hopper," he said. "This is the way out." He
pointed at the door. Stephen, who was watching him, could not tell
whether it were a grim smile that creased the corners of the Colonel's
mouth as he added. "You might prefer the window."

Mr. Hopper did not move, but his eyes shifted to Virginia's form. Stephen
deliberately thrust himself between them that he might not see her.

"What are you waiting for?" said the Colonel, in the mild voice that
should have been an ominous warning. Still Mr. Hopper did not move. It
was clear that he had not reckoned upon all of this; that he had waited
in the window to deal with Virginia alone. But now the very force of a
desire which had gathered strength in many years made him reckless. His
voice took on the oily quality in which he was wont to bargain.

"Let's be calm about this business, Colonel," he said. "We won't say
anything about the past. But I ain't set on having you shot. There's a
consideration that would stop me, and I cal'late you know what it is."

Then the Colonel made a motion. But before he had taken a step Virginia
had crossed the room swiftly, and flung herself upon him.

"Oh, don't, Pa!" she cried. "Don't! Tell him that I will agree to it.
Yes, I will. I can't have you--shot." The last word came falteringly,
faintly.

"Let me go,--honey," whispered the Colonel, gently. His eyes did not
leave Eliphalet. He tried to disengage himself, but her fingers were
clasped about his neck in a passion of fear and love. And then, while she
clung to him, her head was raised to listen. The sound of Stephen Brice's
voice held her as in a spell. His words were coming coldly, deliberately,
and yet so sharply that each seemed to fall like a lash.

"Mr. Hopper, if ever I hear of your repeating what you have seen or heard
in this room, I will make this city and this state too hot for you to
live in. I know you. I know how you hide in areas, how you talk sedition
in private, how you have made money out of other men's misery. And, what
is more, I can prove that you have had traitorous dealings with the
Confederacy. General Sherman has been good enough to call himself a
friend of mine, and if he prosecutes you for your dealings in Memphis,
you will get a term in a Government prison, You ought to be hung. Colonel
Carvel has shown you the door. Now go."

And Mr, Hopper went.




CHAPTER XIII

FROM THE LETTERS OF MAJOR STEPHEN BRICE

Of the Staff of General Sherman on the March to the Sea, and on the March
from Savannah Northward.

HEADQUARTERS MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSISSIPPI GOLDSBORO, N.C. MARCH
24, 1865

DEAR MOTHER: The South Carolina Campaign is a thing of the past. I pause
as I write these words--they seem so incredible to me. We have marched
the four hundred and twenty-five miles in fifty days, and the General
himself has said that it is the longest and most important march ever
made by an organized army in a civilized country. I know that you will
not be misled by the words "civilized country." Not until the history of
this campaign is written will the public realize the wide rivers and all
but impassable swamps we have crossed with our baggage trains and
artillery. The roads (by courtesy so called) were a sea of molasses and
every mile of them has had to be corduroyed. For fear of worrying you I
did not write you from Savannah how they laughed at us for starting at
that season of the year. They said we would not go ten miles, and I most
solemnly believe that no one but "Uncle Billy" and an army organized and
equipped by him could have gone ten miles. Nothing seems to stop him. You
have probably remarked in the tone of my letters ever since we left
Kingston for the sea, a growing admiration for "my General."

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