Christmas at Thompson Hall

by Anthony Trollope

  “Never, Frank; I shall never be your wife, — whether I marry him or no.”

  “All I ask of you now is to pause. This is no time for marrying or for giving in marriage.”

  “There I agree with you; but as my word is pledged to him, I shall let him be my adviser in that.”

  Late on that same night Ada saw her betrothed and bade him adieu. She bade him adieu with many tears, for he came to tell her that he intended to leave Frankfort very early on the following morning. “My staying here now is out of the question,” said he. “I am resolved to secede, whatever the State may do. My father is resolved against secession. It is necessary, therefore, that we should part. I have already left my father and mother, and now I have come to say good-bye to you.”

  “And your brother, Tom?”

  “I shall not see my brother again.”

  “And is that well after such words as you have spoken to each other? Perhaps it may be that you will never see him again. Do you remember what you threatened?”

  “I do remember what I threatened.”

  “And did you mean it?”

  “No; of course I did not mean it. You, Ada, have heard me speak many angry words, but I do not think that you have known me do many angry things.”

  “Never one, Tom: — never. See him then before you go, and tell him so.”

  “No, — he is hard as iron, and would take any such telling from me amiss. He must go his way, and I mine.”

  “But though you differ as men, Tom, you need not hate each other as brothers.”

  “It will be better that we should not meet again. The truth is, Ada, that he always despises anyone who does not think as he thinks. If I offered him my hand he would take it, but while doing so he would let me know that he thought me a fool. Then I should be angry, and threaten him again, and things would be worse. You must not quarrel with me, Ada, if I say that he has all the faults of a Yankee.”

  “And the virtues too, sir, while you have all the faults of a Southern —. But, Tom, as you are going from us, I will not scold you. I have, too, a word of business to say to you.”

  “And what’s the word of business, dear?” said Tom, getting nearer to her as a lover should do, and taking her hand in his.

  “It is this. You and those who think like you are dividing yourselves from your country. As to whether that be right or wrong, I will say nothing now, — nor will I say anything as to your chance of success. But I am told that those who go with the South will not be able to hold property in the North.”

  “Did Frank tell you that?”

  “Never mind who told me, Tom.”

  “And is that to make a difference between you and me?”

  “That is just the question that I am asking you. Only you ask me with a reproach in your tone, and I ask you with none in mine. Till we have mutually agreed to break our engagement you shall be my adviser. If you think it better that it should be broken, — better for your own interests, be man enough to say so.”

  But Tom Reckenthorpe either did not think so, or else he was not man enough to speak his thoughts. Instead of doing so he took the girl in his arms and kissed her, and swore that whether with fortune or no fortune she should be his, and his only. But still he had to go, — to go now, within an hour or two of the very moment at which they were speaking. They must part, and before parting must make some mutual promise as to their future meeting. Marriage now, as things stood at this Christmas time, could not be thought of even by Tom Reckenthorpe. At last he promised that if he were then alive he would be with her again, at the old family house in Frankfort, on the next coming Christmas day. So he went, and as he let himself out of the old house Ada, with her eyes full of tears, took herself up to her bedroom.

  During the year that followed — the year 1861 — the American war progressed only as a school for fighting. The most memorable action was that of Bull’s Run, in which both sides ran away, not from individual cowardice in either set of men, but from that feeling of panic which is engendered by ignorance and inexperience. Men saw waggons rushing hither and thither, and thought that all was lost. After that the year was passed in drilling and in camp-making, — in the making of soldiers, of gunpowder, and of cannons. But of all the articles of war made in that year, the article that seemed easiest of fabrication was a general officer. Generals were made with the greatest rapidity, owing their promotion much more frequently to local interest than to military success. Such a State sent such and such regiments, and therefore must be rewarded by having such and such generals nominated from among its citizens. The wonder perhaps is that with armies so formed battles should have been fought so well.

  Before the end of 1861 both Major Reckenthorpe’s sons had become general officers. That Frank, the soldier, should have been so promoted was, at such a period as this, nothing strange. Though a young man he had been a soldier, or learning the trade of a soldier, for more than ten years, and such service as that might well be counted for much in the sudden construction of an army intended to number seven hundred thousand troops, and which at one time did contain all those soldiers. Frank too was a clever fellow, who knew his business, and there were many generals made in those days who understood less of their work than he did. As much could not be said for Tom’s quick military advancement. But this could be said for them in the South, — that unless they did make their generals in this way, they would hardly have any generals at all, and General Reckenthorpe, as he so quickly became, — General Tom as they used to call him in Kentucky, — recommended himself specially to the Confederate leaders by the warmth and eagerness with which he had come among them. The name of the old man so well known throughout the Union, who had ever loved the South without hating the North, would have been a tower of strength to them. Having him they would have thought that they might have carried the State of Kentucky into open secession. He was now worn out and old, and could not be expected to take upon his shoulders the crushing burden of a new contest. But his eldest son had come among them, eagerly, with his whole heart; and so they made him a general.

  The poor old man was in part proud of this and in part grieved. “I have a son a general in each army,” he said to a stranger who came to his house in those days; “but what strength is there in a fagot when it is separated? of what use is a house that is divided against itself? The boys would kill each other if they met.”

  “It is very sad,” said the stranger.

  “Sad!” said the old man. “It is as though the Devil were let loose upon the earth; — and so he is; so he is.”

  The family came to understand that General Tom was with the Confederate army which was confronting the Federal army of the Potomac and defending Richmond; whereas it was well known that Frank was in Kentucky with the army on the Green River, which was hoping to make its way into Tennessee, and which did so early in the following year. It must be understood that Kentucky, though a slave state, had never seceded, and that therefore it was divided off from the Southern States, such as Tennessee and that part of Virginia which had seceded, by a cordon of pickets; so that there was no coming up from the Confederate army to Frankfort in Kentucky. There could, at any rate, be no easy or safe coming up for such a one as General Tom, seeing that being a soldier he would be regarded as a spy, and certainly treated as a prisoner if found within the Northern lines. Nevertheless, General as he was, he kept his engagement with Ada, and made his way into the gardens of his father’s house on the night of Christmas-eve. And Ada was the first who knew that he was there. Her ear first caught the sound of his footsteps, and her hand raised for him the latch of the garden door.

  “Oh, Tom, it is not you?”

  “But it is though, Ada, my darling!” Then there was a little pause in his speech. “Did I not tell you that I should see you to-day?”

  “Hush. Do you know who is here? Your brother came across to us from the Green River yesterday.”

  “The mischief he did. Then I shall never find my way back again. If you kne
w what I have gone through for this!”

  Ada immediately stepped out through the door and on to the snow, standing close up against him as she whispered to him, “I don’t think Frank would betray you,” she said. “I don’t think he would.”

  “I doubt him, — doubt him hugely. But I suppose I must trust him. I got through the pickets close to Cumberland Gap, and I left my horse at Stoneley’s, halfway between this and Lexington. I cannot go back to-night now that I have come so far!”

  “Wait, Tom; wait a minute, and I will go in and tell your mother. But you must be hungry. Shall I bring you food?”

  “Hungry enough, but I will not eat my father’s victuals out here in the snow.”

  “Wait a moment, dearest, till I speak to my aunt.” Then Ada slipped back into the house and soon managed to get Mrs. Reckenthorpe away from the room in which the Major and his second son were sitting. “Tom is here,” she said, “in the garden. He has encountered all this danger to pay us a visit because it is Christmas. Oh, aunt, what are we to do? He says that Frank would certainly give him up!”

  Mrs. Reckenthorpe was nearly twenty years younger than her husband, but even with this advantage on her side Ada’s tidings were almost too much for her. She, however, at last managed to consult the Major, and he resolved upon appealing to the generosity of his younger son. By this time the Confederate General was warming himself in the kitchen, having declared that his brother might do as he pleased; — he would not skulk away from his father’s house in the night.

  “Frank,” said the father, as his younger son sat silently thinking of what had been told him, “it cannot be your duty to be false to your father in his own house.”

  “It is not always easy, sir, for a man to see what is his duty. I wish that either he or I had not come here.”

  “But he is here; and you, his brother, would not take advantage of his coming to his father’s house?” said the old man.

  “Do you remember, sir, how he told me last year that if ever he met me on the field he would shoot me like a dog?”

  “But, Frank, you know that he is the last man in the world to carry out such a threat. Now he has come here with great danger.”

  “And I have come with none; but I do not see that that makes any difference.”

  “He has put up with it all that he may see the girl he loves.”

  “Psha!” said Frank, rising up from his chair. “When a man has work to do, he is a fool to give way to play. The girl he loves! Does he not know that it is impossible that she should ever marry him? Father, I ought to insist that he should leave this house as a prisoner. I know that that would be my duty.”

  “You would have, sir, to bear my curse.”

  “I should not the less have done my duty. But, father, independently of your threat, I will neglect that duty. I cannot bring myself to break your heart and my mother’s. But I will not see him. Good-bye, sir. I will go up to the hotel, and will leave the place before daybreak to-morrow.”

  After some few further words Frank Reckenthorpe left the house without encountering his brother. He also had not seen Ada Forster since that former Christmas when they had all been together, and he had now left his camp and come across from the army much more with the view of inducing her to acknowledge the hopelessness of her engagement with his brother, than from any domestic idea of passing his Christmas at home. He was a man who would not have interfered with his brother’s prospects, as regarded either love or money, if he had thought that in doing so he would in truth have injured his brother. He was a hard man, but one not wilfully unjust. He had satisfied himself that a marriage between Ada and his brother must, if it were practicable, be ruinous to both of them. If this were so, would not it be better for all parties that there should be another arrangement made? North and South were as far divided now as the two poles. All Ada’s hopes and feelings were with the North. Could he allow her to be taken as a bride among perishing slaves and ruined whites?

  But when the moment for his sudden departure came he knew that it would be better that he should go without seeing her. His brother Tom had made his way to her through cold, and wet, and hunger, and through infinite perils of a kind sterner even than these. Her heart now would be full of softness towards him. So Frank Reckenthorpe left the house without seeing any one but his mother. Ada, as the front door closed behind him, was still standing close by her lover over the kitchen fire, while the slaves of the family, with whom Master Tom had always been the favourite, were administering to his little comforts.

  Of course General Tom was a hero in the house for the few days that he remained there, and of course the step he had taken was the very one to strengthen for him the affection of the girl whom he had come to see. North and South were even more bitterly divided now than they had been when the former parting had taken place. There were fewer hopes of reconciliation; more positive certainty of war to the knife; and they who adhered strongly to either side, and those who did not adhere strongly to either side were very few, — held their opinions now with more acrimony than they had then done. The peculiar bitterness of civil war, which adds personal hatred to national enmity, had come upon the minds of the people. And here, in Kentucky, on the borders of the contest, members of the same household were, in many cases, at war with each other. Ada Forster and her aunt were passionately Northern, while the feelings of the old man had gradually turned themselves to that division in the nation to which he naturally belonged. For months past the matter on which they were all thinking, — the subject which filled their minds morning, noon, and night, — was banished from their lips because it could not be discussed without the bitterness of hostility. But, nevertheless, there was no word of bitterness between Tom Reckenthorpe and Ada Forster. While these few short days lasted it was all love. Where is the woman whom one touch of romance will not soften, though she be ever so impervious to argument? Tom could sit upstairs with his mother and his betrothed, and tell them stories of the gallantry of the South, — of the sacrifices women were making, and of the deeds men were doing, — and they would listen and smile and caress his hand, and all for a while would be pleasant; while the old Major did not dare to speak before them of his Southern hopes. But down in the parlour, during the two or three long nights which General Tom passed in Frankfort, open secession was discussed between the two men. The old man now had given away altogether. The Yankees, he said, were too bitter for him. “I wish I had died first; that is all,” he said. “I wish I had died first. Life is wretched now to a man who can do nothing.” His son tried to comfort him, saying that secession would certainly be accomplished in twelve months, and that every Slave State would certainly be included in the Southern Confederacy. But the Major shook his head. Though he hated the political bitterness of the men whom he called Puritans and Yankees, he knew their strength and acknowledged their power. “Nothing good can come in my time,” he said; “not in my time, — not in my time.”

  In the middle of the fourth night General Tom took his departure. An old slave arrived with his horse a little before midnight, and he started on his journey. “Whatever turns up, Ada,” he said, “you will be true to me.”

  “I will; though you are a rebel, all the same for that.”

  “So was Washington.”

  “Washington made a nation; — you are destroying one.”

  “We are making another, dear; that’s all. But I won’t talk secesh to you out here in the cold. Go in, and be good to my father; and remember this, Ada, I’ll be here again next Christmas-eve, if I’m alive.”

  So he went, and made his journey back to his camp in safety. He slept at a friend’s house during the following day, and on the next night again made his way through the Northern lines back into Virginia. Even at that time there was considerable danger in doing this, although the frontier to be guarded was so extensive. This arose chiefly from the paucity of roads, and the impossibility of getting across the country where no roads existed. But General Tom got safely back to Ric
hmond, and no doubt found that the tedium of his military life had been greatly relieved by his excursion.

  Then, after that, came a year of fighting, — and there has since come another year of fighting; of such fighting that we, hearing the accounts from day to day, have hitherto failed to recognise its extent and import. Every now and then we have even spoken of the inaction of this side or of that, as though the drawn battles which have lasted for days, in which men have perished by tens of thousands, could be renewed as might the old German battles, in which an Austrian general would be ever retreating with infinite skill and military efficacy. For constancy, for blood, for hard determination to win at any cost of life or material, history has known no such battles as these. That the South has fought the best as regards skill no man can doubt. As regards pluck and resolution there has not been a pin’s choice between them. They have both fought as Englishmen fight when they are equally in earnest. As regards result, it has been almost altogether in favour of the North, because they have so vast a superiority in numbers and material.

  General Tom Reckenthorpe remained during the year in Virginia, and was attached to that corps of General Lee’s army which was commanded by Stonewall Jackson. It was not probable, therefore, that he would be left without active employment. During the whole year he was fighting, assisting in the wonderful raids that were made by that man whose loss was worse to the Confederates than the loss of Vicksburg or of New Orleans. And General Tom gained for himself mark, name, and glory, — but it was the glory of a soldier rather than of a general. No one looked upon him as the future commander of an army; but men said that if there was a rapid stroke to be stricken, under orders from some more thoughtful head, General Tom was the hand to strike it. Thus he went on making wonderful rides by night, appearing like a warrior ghost leading warrior ghosts in some quiet valley of the Federals, seizing supplies and cutting off cattle, till his name came to be great in the State of Kentucky, and Ada Forster, Yankee though she was, was proud of her rebel lover.