The Man in Gray: A Romance of North and South Part 67

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

A little mother with a laughing boy two years old and baby in her arms was awaiting at a crowded hotel in Washington the coming of her father from the Western plains. Her men were going in opposite directions in these tragic days that were trying the souls of men. Colonel Phillip St. George Cooke was a Virginian. Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart was a Virginian. The soul of the little mother was worn out with the question that had no answer. Why should her lover-husband and her fine old daddy fight each other?

She stood appalled before such a conflict. She had written to her father a letter so gentle, so full of tender appeal, he could not resist its call. She had asked that he come to see her babies and her husband and, face to face, say the things that were in his heart.

Her own sympathies were with her husband. He had breathed his soul into hers. She thought as he thought and felt as he felt. But her dear old daddy must have deep reasons for refusing to follow Virginia, if she should go with the South in Secession. She must hear these reasons.

Stuart must hear them. If he could convince them, they would go with him.

In her girl's soul she didn't care which way they went, as long as they did not fight each other. She had watched the shadow of this war deepen with growing anguish. If her father should meet her husband in battle and one should kill the other! How could she live? The thought was too horrible to frame in, words, but it haunted her dreams. She couldn't shake it off.

That her rollicking soldier man would come out alive she felt sure somehow. No other thought was possible. To think that he might be killed in the pride and glory of his youth was nonsense. Her mind refused now to dwell on the idea. She dismissed it with a laugh. He was so vital.

He lived to his finger tips. His voice rang with the joy of living.

The spirit of eternal youth danced in his blue eyes. He was just twenty-eight years old. He was the father of a darling boy who bore his name and a baby that nestled in her arms to whom they had given hers.

Life in its morning of glory was his--wife, babies, love, youth, health, strength, clean living and high thinking. No, it was the thought of harm to her father that was eating her heart out. He has pa.s.sed the noon-tide of life. His slender, graceful form lacked the st.u.r.dy power of youth.

His chances were not so good.

The thing that sickened her was the certainty that both these men, father and husband, would organize the cavalry service and fight on horseback. They had spent their honeymoon on the plains. She had ridden over them with her joyous lover.

He would be a cavalry commander. She knew that he would be a general.

Her father was a master of cavalry tactics and was at work on the Manuel for the United States Army.

The two men were born under the same skies. Their tastes were similar.

Their clean habits of life were alike. Their ideals were equally high and n.o.ble. How could two such men fight each other to the death over an issue of politics when some wife or sister or mother must look on a dead face when the smoke has cleared?

Her soul rose in rebellion against it all. She summoned every power of her mind to the struggle with her father.

She brought them together at last in the room with her babies, asleep in their cradles. She sat down between the two and held a hand in each of hers.

"Now, daddy dear, you must tell me why you're going to fight Virginia if she secedes from the Union."

The gentle face smiled sadly.

"How can I make you understand, dear baby? It's foolish to argue such things. We follow our hearts--that's all."

"But you must tell me," she pleaded.

"There's nothing to tell, child. We must each decide these big things of life for himself. I'll never draw my sword against the Union. My fathers created it. I've fought for it. I've lived for it. And I've got to die for it, if must be, that's all--"

He paused, withdrew his hand from hers, rose and put it on Stuart's shoulder.

"You've chosen a fine boy for your husband, my daughter. I love him. I'm proud of him. I shall always be proud that your children bear his name.

He must fight this battle of his allegiance in his own soul and answer to G.o.d, not to me. I would not dare to try to influence him."

Stuart rose and grasped the Colonel's hand. His eyes were moist.

"Thank you, Colonel. I shall always remember this hour with you and my Flora. And I shall always love and respect you, in life or death, success or failure."

The older man held Stuart's hand in a strong grip.

"It grieves me to feel that you may fight the Union, my son. I have seen the end in a vision already. The Union is indissoluble. The stars in their courses have said it."

"It may be, sir," Stuart slowly answered. "Who knows? We must do each what we believe to be right, as G.o.d gives us to see the right."

The little mother was softly crying. Her hopes had faded. There was the note of finality in each word her men had uttered. She was crushed.

For an hour she talked in tender commonplaces. She tried to be cheerful for her father's sake. She saw that he was suffering cruelly at the thought of saying a goodbye that might be the last.

She broke down in a flood of bitter tears. The father took her into his arms and soothed her with tender words. But something deep and strange had stirred in the mother heart within her.

She drew away from his arms and cried in anguish.

"It's wrong. It's wrong. It's all wrong--this feud of blood! And G.o.d will yet save the world from it. I must believe that or I'd go mad!"

The two men looked at each other in wonder for a moment and then at the mother's convulsed face. Into the older man's features slowly crept a look of awe, as if he had heard that voice before somewhere in the still hours of his soul.

Stuart bent and kissed her tenderly.

"There, dear, you're overwrought. Don't worry. Your work G.o.d has given you in these cradles."

"Yes, that's why I feel this way," she whispered on his breast.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII

If reason had ruled, the Gulf States of the South would never have ordered their representatives to leave Washington on the election of Abraham Lincoln. The new administration could have done nothing with the Congress chosen. The President had been elected on a fluke because of the division of the opposition into three tickets. Lincoln was a minority President and was powerless except in the use of the veto.

If the Gulf States had paused for a moment they could have seen that such an administration, whatever its views about Slavery, would have failed, and the next election would have been theirs. The moment they withdrew their members of Congress, however, the new party had a majority and could shape the nation's laws.

The crowd mind acts on blind impulse, never on reason.

In spite of the President's humane purpose to keep peace when he delivered his first inaugural, he had scarcely taken his seat at the head of his Cabinet when the mob mind swept him from his moorings and he was caught in the torrent of the war mania.

The firing on Fort Sumter was not the first shot by the Secessionists.

They had fired on the _Star of the West_, a ship sent to the relief of the Fort, weeks before. They had driven her back to sea. But the President at that moment had sufficient power to withstand the cry for blood. At the next shot he succ.u.mbed to the inevitable and called for 75,000 volunteers to invade the South. This act of war was a violation of his powers under Const.i.tutional law. Congress alone could declare war. But Congress was not in session.

The mob had, in fact, declared war. The President and his Cabinet were forced to bow to its will and risk their necks on the outcome of the struggle.

So long as Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee refused to secede and stood with the Border States of Maryland, Missouri and Kentucky inside the Union, the Confederacy organized at Montgomery, Alabama, must remain a mere political feint.

The call of the President on Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri and Maryland, all slave States, to furnish their quota of troops to fight the seceders, was in effect a declaration of war by a united North upon the South.

Virginia had refused to join the Confederacy before by an overwhelming majority. All eyes were again turned on the Old Dominion. Would she accept the President's command and send her quota of troops to fight her sisters of the South, or would she withdraw from the Union?