A Soldier of Virginia Part 4

One other figure do I recall distinctly. We had driven to church as usual one Sunday morning in early fall, and when we came in sight of the little brick building, peeping through its veil of ivy, I was surprised to see the parishioners in line on either side the path which led to the broad, low doorway. Mr. Fontaine stood there as though awaiting some one, and when he saw us, came down the steps and spoke a word to father. In a moment, from down the road came the rumble of heavy wheels, and then a great, gorgeous, yellow chariot, with four outriders, swung into view and drew up with a flourish before the church. The footmen sprang to the door, opened it, and let down the steps. I, who was staring with all my eyes, as you may well believe, saw descend a little old man, very weak and very tremulous, yet holding his head proudly, and after him a younger. They came slowly up the walk, the old man leaning heavily upon the other's shoulder and nodding recognition to right and left. As they drew near, I caught the gleam of a great jewel on his sword-hilt, and then of others on finger, knee, and instep. The younger bore himself very erect and haughty, yet I saw the two were fashioned in one mould. On up the steps and into the church they went, Mr. Fontaine before and we after them. They took their seats in the great pew with the curious carving on the back, which I had never before seen occupied.

"Who are the gentlemen, mother?" I whispered, so soon as I could get her ear.

"It is Colonel Byrd and his son come back from London," she answered.

"Now take your eyes off them and attend the service."

Take my eyes off them I did, by a great effort of will, but I fear I heard little of the service, for my mind was full of the great house on the river-bank, which it had once been my fortune to visit. Mr. Fontaine had taken me with him in his chaise for a pastoral call at quite the other end of his parish, and as we returned, we were caught in a sudden storm of rain. My companion had hesitated for a moment, and then turned his horse's head through a gateway with a curious monogram in iron at the top, along an avenue of stately tulip-trees, and so to the door of a ma.s.sive square mansion of red brick, which stood on a little knoll overlooking the James. The door was closed and the windows shuttered, but half a dozen negroes came running from the back at the sound of our wheels and took us in out of the storm. A mighty fire was started in the deep fireplace, and as I stood steaming before it, I looked with dazzled eyes at the great carved staircase, at the paintings and at the books, of which there were many hundreds.

Presently the old overseer, whom Mr. Fontaine addressed as Murray, and who had grown from youth to trembling age in the Byrd service, came in to offer us refreshment, and over the table they fell to gossiping.

"Westover's not the place it was," said Murray, sipping his flip disconsolately,--"not the place it was while Miss Evelyn was alive. There was no other like it in Virginia then. Why, it was always full of gay company, and the colonel kept a n.i.g.g.e.r down there at the gate to invite in every traveler who pa.s.sed. But all that's changed, and has been these six year."

Mr. Fontaine nodded over his tea.

"Yes," he said, "Evelyn's death was a great blow to her father."

"You may well say that, sir," a.s.sented Murray, with a sigh. "He was never the same man after. He used to sit there at that window and watch her in the garden, after they came back from London, and every day he saw her whiter and thinner. At night, after she was safe abed, I have seen him walking up and down over there along the river, sobbing like a baby. And when she died, he was like a man dazed, thinking, perhaps, it was he who had killed her."

"I know," nodded Mr. Fontaine. "I was here." There was a moment's silence. I was bursting with questions, but I did not dare to speak.

"The young master took him back to London after that," went on Murray, "hoping that a change would do him good and take his mind off Miss Evelyn, but I doubt he'll ever get over it. While they were in London, Sir G.o.dfrey Kneller painted him and Miss Evelyn. Would you like to see the pictures, sir?"

"Yes, I should like to see them," said Mr. Fontaine softly. "Evelyn was very dear to me."

They were hanging side by side in the great hall, and even my childish eyes saw their strength and beauty. His was a narrow, patrician face, beautiful as a woman's, looking from a wealth of brown curls, soft and flowing. The little pucker at the corners of his mouth bespoke his relish of a jest, and the high nose and well-placed eyes his courage and spirit. But it was at the other I looked the longest. She was seated upon a gra.s.sy bank, with the shadows of the evening gathering about her. In the branches above her head gleamed a red-bird's brilliant plumage. On her lap lay a heap of roses, and in her hand she held a shepherd's crook.

Her gown, of pale blue satin, was open at the throat, and showed its fair sweet fullness and the bosom's promise. Her face was pensive,--sad, almost,--the lips just touching, a soft light in the great dark eyes. I had never seen such a picture,--nor have I ever looked upon another such.

I can close my eyes and see it even now. But the storm had pa.s.sed, and it was time to go.

"Why did Miss Evelyn die?" I questioned, as soon as we were out of the avenue of tulips and in the highway.

He looked down at me a moment, and seemed hesitating for an answer.

"She loved a man in London," he said. "Her father would not let her marry him, and brought her home. She was not strong, and gossips say her heart was broken."

"But why would he not let her marry him?" I asked.

"He was not of her religion. Her father thought he was acting for her good."

I pondered on this for a time in silence, and found here a question too great for my small brain.

"But was he right?" I asked at last, falling back upon my companion's greater knowledge.

"It is hard to say," he answered softly. "Perhaps he was, and yet I have come to think there is little to choose between one sect and another, so Christ be in them and the man honest."

He looked out across the fields with tender eyes and I slipped my hand in his. A vision of her sad face danced before me and I fell asleep, my head within his arm, to waken only when he lifted me down at our journey's end.

All this came back to me with the vividness which childish recollections sometimes have, as I sat there in the pew at my mother's side. Only I could not quite believe that this little wrinkled old man was the same who looked so proudly from Kneller's canvas. But when the service ended and he stopped to exchange a word with father, I saw the face was indeed the same, though now writ over sadly by the hand of time weighted down with sorrow. It was the only time I ever saw him in the flesh, for he was near the end and died soon after. He was buried beside his daughter in the little graveyard near his home. It was Mr. Fontaine who closed his eyes in hope of resurrection and spoke the last words above his grave,-- beloved in this great mansion as in the lowliest cabin at Charles City.

My pen would fain linger over the portrait of this sainted man, which is the fairest and most benign in the whole gallery of my youth, but I must turn to another subject,--to the cloud which began to shadow my life at my tenth year, and which still shadows it to-day. For the first six or seven years of their married life my father and mother were, I believe, wholly and unaffectedly happy. When I think of them now, I think of them only as they were during that time, and wonder how many of the married people about me could say as much. Their means were small, and they lived a quiet life, which had few luxuries. But as time went on, my father began to chafe at the petty economies which the smallness of their income rendered necessary. He had been bred amid the luxuries of a great estate, where the house was open to every pa.s.ser-by, and it vexed him that he could not now show the same wide hospitality. I think he yet had hopes of succeeding to his father's estate, out of which, indeed, there was no law in Virginia to keep him should he choose to claim it. Whatever his thoughts may have been, he grew gradually to live beyond his means, and as the years pa.s.sed, he had recourse to the cards and dice in the hope, no doubt, of recouping his vanishing fortune. It was true then, as it is true now and always will be true, that the man who gambles because he needs the money is sure to lose, and affairs went from bad to worse until the final disaster came.

It was just after my tenth birthday. My mother and I were sitting together on the broad porch which overlooked the river. She had been reading to me from the Bible,--the parable of the talents,--in which and in the kind advice of Parson Fontaine she found her only comfort in the anxious days which had gone before, and which I knew nothing of. But the lengthening shadows finally fell across the page, and she closed the book and held it on her knee, while she talked to me about my lessons and a ramble we had planned for the morrow. The red of the sunset still lingered in the west, and a single crimson cloud hung poised high up against the sky. I remember watching it as it turned to purple and then to gray. A burst of singing came from the negro quarters behind the house, and in the strip of woodland by the river the noises of the night began to sound.

As the twilight deepened to darkness, my mother's voice faltered and ceased, and when I glanced at her, I saw she had fallen into a reverie, and that there was a shadow on her face. I have only to shut my eyes, and the years roll back and she is sitting there again beside me, in her white gown, simply made, and gathered at the waist with a broad blue ribbon, her slim white hands playing with the book upon her knee, her eyes gazing afar off across the water, her mouth drooping in the curve which it had never known till recently, her wealth of blue-black hair forming a halo round her head. Ah, that she were there when I open my eyes again, that I might speak to her! For the bitterest thought that ever came to me is one which troubles my rest from time to time even now: Did I love her as she deserved; was I a staff for her to lean upon in her trouble; was I not, rather, a careless, unseeing boy, who recked nothing of the impending storm until it burst about him? I trust the tears which have wet my pillow since have gladdened her heart in heaven.

I was awakened from the doze into which I had fallen by the sound of rapid hoof-beats down the road. We listened to them in silence, as they drew near and nearer. I did not doubt it was my father, for few others ever rode our way. He had been from home all day, as he frequently was of late, only he did not usually return so early in the evening. Something in my mother's face as she strained her eyes into the shadows to catch a glimpse of the advancing horseman drew me from my chair and to her side.

"It is your father," she said, in a voice almost inaudible, and as she spoke, the rider leaped from the shadow of the trees. He drew his horse up before the porch with a jerk and threw himself from the saddle. As he came up the steps, I saw that his face was strangely flushed and his eyes gleaming in a way that made me shiver. I felt my mother's arm about me trembling as she drew me closer to her.

"Well, it's over," he said, flinging himself down upon the upper step, "and damme if I'm sorry. Anything's better than living here in the woods like a lump on a log."

"What do you mean is over, Tom?" asked my mother very quietly.

"I mean our possession of this place is over. Since an hour ago, it has belonged to Squire Blakesley, across the river."

"You mean you have gambled it away?"

"If you choose to call it that," said my father ungraciously, and he turned his back to us and gazed gloomily out over the water.

For a moment there was silence.

"Since we no longer possess this place," said my mother at last, "I suppose you intend to forget your foolish anger against your father, and claim your patrimony?"

"Foolish or not," he cried, "I have sworn never to take it until it is offered to me, and I mean to keep my word!"

"You would make your boy a beggar to gratify a foolish whim!" retorted my mother, her voice trembling with pa.s.sion. I had never seen her so, and even my father glanced at her furtively in some astonishment. "Very well.

In that it is for you to do as you may choose, but his estate here, or what is left of it, shall be kept intact for him."

"What do you mean?" cried my father, and he sprang to his feet and slashed his boot savagely with his riding-whip.

"I mean," said my mother very quietly, "that since a gambling debt is not recoverable by law, we have only to live on quietly here and no one will dare disturb us."

"And my honor?" cried my father with an oath, the first I had ever heard him use. "It seems to me that you forget my honor, madam."

"You have been the first to forget your honor, sir," said my mother, rising to face him, but still keeping me within her arm, "in staking your son's inheritance upon a throw of the dice."

My father started as though he had been struck across the face, but he was too far gone in anger to listen to the voice of reason. Indeed, I have always found that the more a man deserves rebuke, the less likely is he to take it quietly.

"Come here, Tom," he said to me, and when I hesitated, added in a sterner tone, "come here, sir, I say."

I had no choice but to go to him, nor did my mother seek to hold me back.

He caught me by the arms and bent until his face was close to mine.

"You are to promise me two things, Tom," he said, and I perceived that his breath was heavy with the fumes of wine. "One is that you are never to claim your inheritance of Riverview until it is offered to you freely by them that now possess it. Do you promise me that?"

"Yes," I faltered. "I promise you, sir."

"Good!" he said. "And the other is that you will pay my debts of honor after I am dead, if they be not paid before. Promise me that also, Tom."

His eyes were on mine, and I could do nothing but obey, even had I thought of resisting.