Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession Part 9

As she spoke, with her face upturned to him, and the hot tears rolling down her cheeks, her fingers convulsively clasped about his hand, and her form bending closer and closer toward him, till her cheek was resting on his bosom, Arthur shuddered with intensity of feeling, and from his averted eyes the scalding drops, that had never once before moistened their surface, betrayed how terribly he was shaken with emotion.

But while she spoke, rapt as they were within themselves, they saw not one who stood with folded arms beside the rustic bench, and gazed upon them.

"As G.o.d is my hope," said Arthur, "I will disarm temptation. Fear not.

From this hour we part. Henceforth the living and the dead shall not be more estranged than we."

He arose, but started as if an apparition met his gaze. Oriana knelt beside him, and touched her lips to his hand in grat.i.tude. An arm raised her tenderly, and a gentle voice murmured her name.

It was not Arthur's.

Oriana raised her head, with a faint cry of terror. She gasped and swooned upon the intruder's breast.

It was Harold Hare who held her in his arms.

Arthur, with folded arms, stood erect, but pale, in the presence of his friend. His eye, sorrowful, yet calm, was fixed upon Harold, as if awaiting his angry glance. But Harold looked only on the lifeless form he held, and parting the tresses from her cold brow, his lips rested there a moment with such a fond caress as sometimes a father gives his child.

"Poor girl!" he murmured, "would that my sorrow could avail for both.

Arthur, I have heard enough to know you would not do me wrong. Grief is in store for us, but let us not be enemies."

Mournfully, he gave his hand to Arthur, and Oriana, as she wakened from her trance, beheld them locked in that sad grasp, like two twin statues of despair.

They led her to the house, and then the two young men walked out alone, and talked frankly and tranquilly upon the subject. It was determined that both should leave Riverside manor on the morrow, and that Oriana should be left to commune with her own heart, and take counsel of time and meditation. They would not grieve Beverly with their secret, at least not for the present, when his sister was so ill prepared to bear remonstrance or reproof. Harold wrote a kind letter for Oriana, in which he released her from her pledged faith, asking only that she should take time to study her heart, but in no wise let a sense of duty stand in the way of her happiness. He took pains to conceal the depth of his own affliction, and to avoid whatever she might construe as reproach.

They would have gone without an interview with Oriana, but that would have seemed strange to Beverly. However, Oriana, although pale and nervous, met them in the morning with more composure than they had antic.i.p.ated. Harold, just before starting, drew her aside, and placed the letter in her hand.

"That will tell you all I would say, and you must read it when your heart is strong and firm. Do not look so wretched. All may yet be well.

I would fain see you smile before I go."

But though she had evidently nerved herself to be composed, the tears would come, and her heart seemed rising to her throat and about to burst in sobs.

"I will be your true wife, Harold, and I will love you. Do not desert me, do not cast me from you. I cannot bear to be so guilty. Indeed, Harold, I will be true and faithful to you."

"There is no guilt in that young heart," he answered, as he kissed her forehead. "But now, we must not talk of love; hereafter, perhaps, when time and absence shall teach us where to choose for happiness. Part from me now as if I were your brother, and give me a sister's kiss. Would you see Arthur?"

She trembled and whispered painfully:

"No, Harold, no--I dare not. Oh, Harold, bid him forget me."

"It is better that you should not see him. Farewell! be brave. We are good friends, remember. Farewell, dear girl."

Beverly had been waiting with the carriage, and as the time was short, he called to Harold. Arthur, who stood at the carriage wheel, simply raised his hat to Oriana, as if in a parting salute. He would have given his right hand to have pressed hers for a moment; but his will was iron, and he did not once look back as the carriage whirled away.

CHAPTER X.

In the drawing-room of an elegant mansion in a fashionable quarter of the city of New York, toward the close of April, a social party were a.s.sembled, distributed mostly in small conversational groups. The head of the establishment, a pompous, well-to-do merchant, stout, short, and baldheaded, and evidently well satisfied with himself and his position in society, was vehemently expressing his opinions upon the affairs of the nation to an attentive audience of two or three elderly business men, with a ponderous earnestness that proved him, in his own estimation, as much _au fait_ in political affairs as in the routine of his counting-room. An individual of middle age, a man of the world, apparently, who was seated at a side-table, carelessly glancing over a book of engravings, was the only one who occasionally exasperated the pompous gentleman with contradictions or ill-timed interruptions.

"The government must be sustained," said the stout gentleman, "and we, the merchants of the North, will do it. It is money, sir, money," he continued, unconsciously rattling the coin in his breeches pocket, "that settles every question at the present day, and our money will bring these beggarly rebels to their senses. They can't do without us, sir.

They would be ruined in six months, if shut out from commercial intercourse with the North."

"How long before you would be ruined by the operations of the same cause?" inquired the individual at the side-table.

"Sir, we of the North hold the wealth of the country in our pockets.

They can't fight against our money--they can't do it, sir."

"Your ancestors fought against money, and fought pa.s.sably well."

"Yes, sir, for the great principles of human liberty."

"Which these rebels believe they are fighting for. You have need of all your money to keep a respectable army in the field. These Southerners may have to fight in rags, as insurgents generally do: witness the struggle of your Revolution; but until you lay waste their corn-fields and drive off their cattle, they will have full stomachs, and that, after all, is the first consideration."

"You are an alien, sir, a foreigner; you know nothing of our great inst.i.tutions; you know nothing of the wealth of the North, and the spirit of the people."

"I see a great deal of bunting in the streets, and hear any quant.i.ty of declamation at your popular gatherings. But as I journeyed northward from New Orleans, I saw the same in the South--perhaps more of it."

"And could not distinguish between the frenzy of treason and the enthusiasm of patriotism?"

"Not at all; except that treason seemed more earnest and unanimous."

"You have seen with the eyes of an Englishman--of one hostile to our inst.i.tutions."

"Oh, no; as a man of the world, a traveller, without prejudice or pa.s.sion, receiving impressions and noting them. I like your country; I like your people. I have observed foibles in the North and in the South, but there is an under-current of strong feeling and good sense which I have noted and admired. I think your quarrel is one of foibles--one conceived in the spirit of petulance, and about to be prosecuted in the spirit of exaltation. I believe the professed mutual hatred of the sections to be superficial, and that it could be cancelled. It is fostered by the bitterness of fanatics, a.s.sisted by a very natural disinclination on the part of the ma.s.ses to yield a disputed point. If hostilities should cease to-morrow, you would be better friends than ever."

"But the principle, sir! The right of the thing, and the wrong of the thing! Can we parley with traitors? Can we negotiate with armed rebellion? Is it not our paramount duty to set at rest forever the doctrine of secession?"

"As a matter of policy, perhaps. But as a right, I doubt it. Your government I look upon as a mere agency appointed by contracting parties to transact certain affairs for their convenience. Should one or more of those contracting parties, sovereignties in themselves, hold it to their interest to transact their business without the a.s.sistance of an agent, I cannot perceive that the right can be denied by any provision of the contract. In your case, the employers have dismissed their agent, who seeks to reinstate the office by force of arms. As justly might my lawyer, when I no longer need his services, attempt to coerce me into a continuance of business relations, by invading my residence with a loaded pistol. The States, without extinguishing their sovereignty, created the Federal Government; it is the child of State legislation, and now the child seeks to chastise and control the parent. The General Government can possess no inherent or self-created function; its power, its very existence, were granted for certain uses. As regards your State's connection with that Government, no other State has the right to interfere; but as for another State's connection with it, the power that made it can unmake."

"So you would have the government quietly acquiesce in the robbery of public property, the occupation of Federal strongholds and the seizure of ships and revenues in which they have but a share?"

"If, by the necessity of the case, the seceded States hold in their possession more than their share of public property, a division should be made by arbitration, as in other cases where a distribution of common property is required. It may have been a wrong and an insult to bombard Fort Sumter and haul down the Federal flag, but that does not establish a right on the part of the Federal Government to coerce the wrong-doing States into a union with the others. And that, I take it, is the avowed purpose of your administration."

"Yes, and that purpose will be fulfilled. We have the money to do it, and we will do it, sir."

A tall, thin gentleman, with a white cravat and a bilious complexion, approached the party from a different part of the room.

"It can't be done with money, Mr. Pursely," said the new comer, "Unless the great, the divine principle of universal human liberty is invoked.

An offended but merciful Providence has given the people this chance for redemption, in the opportunity to strike the shackle from the slave. I hold the war a blessing to the nation and to humanity, in that it will cleanse the land from its curse of slavery. It is an invitation from G.o.d to wipe away the record of our past tardiness and tolerance, by striking at the great sin with fire and sword. The blood of millions is nothing--the woe, the lamentation, the ruin of the land is nothing--the overthrow of the Union itself is nothing, if we can but win G.o.d's smile by setting a brand in the hand of the bondman to scourge his master. But a.s.suredly unless we arouse the slave to seize the torch and the dagger, and avenge the wrongs of his race, Providence will frown upon our efforts, and our arms will not prevail."

A tall man in military undress replied with considerable emphasis:

"Then your black-coated gentry must fight their own battle. The people will not arm if abolition is to be the watchword. I for one will not strike a blow if it be not understood that the inst.i.tutions of the South shall be respected."

"The government must be sustained, that is the point," cried Mr.

Pursely. "It matters little what becomes of the negro, but the government must be sustained. Otherwise, what security will there be for property, and what will become of trade?"

"Who thinks of trade or property at such a crisis?" interrupted an enthusiast, in figured trowsers and a gay cravat. "Our beloved Union must and shall be preserved. The fabric that our fathers reared for us must not be allowed to crumble. We will prop it with our mangled bodies," and he brushed a speck of dust from the fine broadcloth of his sleeve.