“Now out on you, you lazy, slavish loons,” crïed Rose; “can’t you see these men are raised up to fight for freedom for more than themselves? If the chain is broken at one end, the links will fall apart sooner or later. When you see the sun on the mountain-top, you may be sure it will shine into the deepest valleys before long.”
“I s’pose what you mean, Rose, is, that all men are going to be free. I heard Mr. Herbert say, when he argied with master, that ‘all men were born free and equal;’ he might as well say, all men were born white and tall; don’t you say so, gin’ral.”
“Be sure, Mr. Linwood, be sure. And I wonder what good their freedom would do ’em. Freedom ant horses and char’ots, tho’ horses and char’ots is freedom. Don’t you own that, Miss Rose?”
“He’s a dog that loves his collar,” retorted Rose.
“Don’t be ’fronted, Miss Rose. Tell me now, don’t you r’ally think it’s Cain-like and ongenteel for a son to fight ’gainst his begotten father, and so on?”
“I would have every man fight on the Lord’s side,” replied Rose, “and that’s every man for his own rights.”
173“La, Miss Rose, then what are them to do what has not got any?” Rose apparently disdained a reply to this argument, and the general interposed.
“It may be well Mr. Herbert is gone, if he ant dead and gone; for by what folks say, if the war goes on, there won’t be too much left for Miss Isabella.”
“‘Folks say!’” growled Rose, “don’t come here, Mart, with any lies but your own.”
“Well, well, Miss Rose; I did not say noting. I know Miss Isabella is sure to have a grander fortin nor ever her father had, and that ’fore long too—Jem Meredith tells me all about it.”
“That being the case, Rose,” said Jupe, “hand us on a bit of butter. You are as close as if we were in a ’sieged city.”
“Butter for you, you old cormorant! and butter a dollar a pound! No, no; up, Jupe—out, out, Mars—let me clear away.”
Rose was absolute in her authority. Jupiter rose, and Mars crawled most unwillingly out at the door. When there, the drowsy, surfeited animal was suddenly electrified; he snuffed, wagged his tail, barked, and ran in and out again. “What does all this mean?” demanded Rose; and pushing the door wide open, she espied a figure quietly seated on the steps, repressing Mars, and whittling with apparent unconcern. Now Rose, in common with many energetic domestics, had the same sort of antipathy to beggars that she had to moths and vermin of every description, considering them all equally marauders on the domicil.
“What are you doing here, you lazy varmint? pretty time of day for a great two-fisted fellow to be lying over the door, littering the steps this fashion. Fawning on a beggar, Mars! shame on you! clear out, sir!”—and she gave a stroke with her broom, so equally shared by the man and dog, that it was 174not easy to say for which it was designed. The dog yelped, the man sprang adroitly on one side of the step, raised his cap, and looked Rose in the face.
It was a Gorgon glance to Rose. For an instant she was transfixed; and then recovering her self-possession, she said, so as to appear to her auditors within to be replying to a petition:—“Hungry, are you?—well, well, go to the wash-house, and I’ll bring you some victuals—the hungry must be fed.”
“That’s what master calls sound doctrine, Rose,” said Jupiter; “I hope you won’t forget it before nay supper-time.”
“You, you hound, you never fast long enough to be hungry; but I’ll remember you at supper-time—I’ve some fresh pies in the pantry—if you’ll take the big kettle to be mended. Now is a good time—Mart will lend you a hand.”
Both assented, and thus in a few moments were disposed of; and Rose repaired to the wash-house to embark her whole heart in Herbert’s concerns, provided her mind could be satisfied on some cardinal points. After she had given vent to the first burst of joy, something seemed to stick in Rose’s throat—she hemmed, coughed, placed and displaced the moveables about her, and then speaking out her upright soul, she said, “you ant a deserter?”
“A deserter, Rose! I’d not look you in the face if I were.”
“Nor a spy, Mr. Herbert?”
“Indeed, I am not, Rose.”
“Then,” she cried, striking the back of one hand into the palm of the other, “then we’ll go through fire and water for you; but Miss Belle and I could not raise our hands for spy or deserter, though he were bone of her bone.”
These preliminaries settled, nothing was easier than for Rose to sympathize fully with the imprudent intensity of Herbert’s longings to see his own family. Nothing beyond present concealment was to be thought of till a council could 175be held with Isabella. Her injunction was obeyed, and Rose immediately conducted Herbert to his own apartment. On his way thither he caught through a glass door a glimpse of his mother, who was alone, employing some stolen moments in knitting for her son;—stolen we say, for well beloved as he was, she dared not even allude to him in his father’s presence. Mrs. Linwood was thoroughly imbued with the conjugal orthodoxy, that
“Man was made for God,
Woman for God in him.”
She firmly believed that the husband ruled by divine right. She loved her son; but love was not with her as with Isabella, like the cataract in its natural state, free and resistless; but like the cataract subdued by the art of man, controlled by his inventions, and subserving his convenience. Such characters, if not interesting, are safe, provided they fall into good hands. Such as she was, her son loved her tenderly, and found it hard to resist flying to her arms; and he would actually have done so when he saw her take up the measure-stocking lying in her lap and kiss it, and Rose said, “It is yours,” but Rose held him back.
Every thing in his apartment had been preserved, with scrupulous care, just as he had left it, and all indicated that he was daily remembered. There was nothing of the vault-like atmosphere of a deserted room, no dust had accumulated on the furniture. His books, his writing-materials, his little toilet affairs, were as if he had left them an hour before. Herbert had never felt more tenderly than at this moment, surrounded by these mute witnesses of domestic love, the sacrifice he had made to his country. He was destined to feel it more painfully.
Rose reappeared with the best refreshments of her larder. “Times are changed, Mr. Herbert,” she said, “since you used 176to butter your bread both sides, and when you dropped it on the carpet say, ‘The butter side is up, Rosy.’ If the war lasts much longer we shall have no buttered side to our bread.”
“How so, Rose? I thought you lived on the fat of the land in the city. Heaven knows our portion is lean enough.”
“Oh, Mr. Herbert, it takes a handful of money now to buy one day’s fare; and money is far from being plentiful with your father, though I’d pull out my tongue before I’d say so to any but your father’s son. There’s little coming in from the rents, when the empty houses of the rebels (as our people call them) are to be had for nothing, or next to nothing. They say the commandant does take the rent for some, and give it to the poor; which is like trying to cheat the devil by giving a good name to a bad deed.”
“But, Rose, my father has property out of the city.”
“Yes, Mr. Herbert; but the farms are on what’s called the neutral ground; and the tenants write that what one side does not take, t’other does not leave; and so between friends and foes it’s all Miss Isabella and I can do to keep the wheels agoing. She has persuaded your father to dispose of all the servants but Jupe and me—plague and no profit were they always, as slaves always are. There’s no telling the twists and turns that she and your mother makes that your father may see no difference on the table, where he’d feel it most. If he does, he’s sure to curse the rebels; and that’s a dagger to them.”
“Rose, does my father never speak of me?”
“Never, Mr. Herbert, never.”
“Nor my mother?”
Rose shook her head. “Not in your father’s hearing.”
“And my
sister—is she afraid to speak my name?”
“She!—the Lord forgive you, Mr. Herbert. When did she ever fear to do what was right? There’s not a day she does not talk of you, though your mother looks scared, and your father 177looks black; but I mistrust he’s pleased. I heard her read to him out of a newspaper one day how General Washington had sent your name in to Congress as one of them that had done their duty handsome at Stony Point or some of them places; and she clapped her hands, and put her arms round his neck, and said, with that voice of hers that’s sweeter than a flute, ‘Are you not proud of him?’”
“My noble sister!—what did he say, Rose?”
“Never a word with his lips; but he went out of the room as if he’d been shot, his face speaking plainer than words.”
“Oh, he’ll forgive me!—I’m sure he will!” exclaimed Herbert, his ardent feelings kindling at the first light.
“Don’t be too sartin, Mr. Herbert—will and heart are at war; and will has been master so long that I mistrust heart is weakest—if, indeed,” she added, averting her eye, “you should join the Reformees—”
“Ay, then the fatted calf would be killed for me! No, Rose, I had rather die with my father’s curse upon me.”
“And better—better!—far better, Mr. Herbert: your father’s curse, if you don’t desarve it, won’t cut in; but the curse of conscience is what can’t be borne. I must not stay here longer. If you get tired sitting alone, you can sleep away the time. The bed has fresh linen—I change it every month, so it sha’n’t get an old smell, and put them in mind how long you’ve been gone.”
“After all,” thought Herbert, as the faithful creature quitted the room, “I have never suffered the worst of absence—the misery of being forgotten!” But every solacing reflection was soon lost in the anxieties that beset him. A light-hearted, thoughtless youth, is like the bark that dances over the waves when skies are cloudless, breezes light, and tides favourable, but wants strength and ballast for difficult straits and tempestuous weather. “I have swamped myself completely,” thought Herbert. “Eliot must inevitably leave me in the city. It was 178selfish in me to expose him to censure—that never occurred to me. Instead of getting my father’s forgiveness—a fond, foolish dream—I stand a good chance, if Rose is right, of being handed over to the tender mercies of Sir Henry Clinton. And if I escape hanging here I am lost with General Washington: imprudence and rashness are sins of the first degree with him. Would to Heaven I could get out of this net as easily as I ran into it! I always put the cart before the horse—action before thought.”
With such meditations the time passed heavily; and Herbert took refuge in Rose’s advice, and threw himself on the bed within the closely-drawn curtains.
We hope our sentimental readers will not abandon him, when we confess that he soon fell into a profound sleep, from which he did not awaken for several hours. They must be agitating griefs that overcome the strong tendencies of a vigorous constitution to eating and sleeping. And besides, it must be remembered in Herbert’s favour, that the preceding night had been one long fatiguing vigil. Kind nature, pardon us for apologizing for thy gracious ministry.
179CHAPTER XV.
“L’habitude de vivre ensemble fit naître les plus
doux sentimens qui soient connus des hommes.”
—ROUSSEAU.
Herbert’s sleep was troubled with fragments and startling combinations of his waking thoughts. At one moment he was at Westbrook, making love to Bessie, who seemed to be deaf to him, and intently reading a letter in Jasper Meredith’s hand; while Helen Ruthven stood behind her, beckoning to Herbert with her most seductive smile, which he fancied he was not to be deluded by. Suddenly the scene changed—he had a rope round his neck, and was mounting a scaffold, surrounded by a crowd, where he saw Washington, Eliot, his father, mother, and Isabella—all unconcerned spectators. Then, as is often the case, a real sound shaped the unreal vision. He witnessed his own funeral obsequies, and heard his father reading the burial service over him. By degrees, sleep loosened the chain that bound his fancy, and the actual sounds became distinct. He awoke: a candle was burning on the table, and he heard his father in an adjoining apartment, to which it had always been his habit to retire for his evening devotions. He heard him repeat the formula prescribed by the church, and then his voice, tremulous with the feeling that gushed from his heart, broke forth in an extempore appeal to Him who holds all hearts in the hollow of his hand. He prayed him to visit with his grace his wandering 180son; and to incline him to turn away from feeding on husks with swine, and bring him home to his father’s house—to his duty—to his God. “If it please thee,” he said, “humble thy servant in any other form—send poverty, sickness, desertion, but restore my only and well-beloved boy; wipe out the stain of rebellion from my name. If this may not be, if still thy servant must go sorrowing for the departed glory of his house, keep him steadfast in duty, so that he swerve not, even for his son, his only son.”
The prayer finished, his door was opened, and he saw his father enter without daring himself to move. Mr. Linwood looked at the candle, glanced his eye around the room, and then sat down at the table, saying, as if in explanation, “Belle has been here.” He covered his face with both his hands, and murmured in a broken voice, “Oh, Herbert, was it to store up these bitter hours that I watched over your childhood—that I came every night here, when you were sleeping, to kiss you and pray over your pillow?—what fools we are! we knit the love of our children with our very heart-strings—we tend on them—we pamper them—we blend our lives with theirs, and then we are deserted—forgotten!”
“Never, never for one moment!” cried Herbert, who with one spring was at his father’s feet. Mr. Linwood started from him, and then, obeying the impulse of nature, he received his son’s embrace, and they wept in one another’s arms.
The door softly opened. Isabella appeared, and her face irradiating with most joyful surprise, she called, “Mamma, mamma; here, in Herbert’s room!” In another instant, Herbert had folded his mother and sister to his bosom; and Mr. Linwood was beginning to recover his self-possession, and to feel as if he had been betrayed into the surrender of a post. He walked up and down the room, then suddenly stopping and laying his hand on Herbert’s shoulder, and surveying him from head to foot, “I know not, but I fear,” he said, “what 181this disguise may mean—tell me, in one word, do you return penitent?”
“I return grieving that I ever offended you, my dear father, and venturing life and honour to see you—to hear you say that you forgive me.”
“Herbert, my son, you know,” replied Mr. Linwood, his voice faltering with the tenderness against which he struggled, “that my door and my heart have always been open to you, provided—”
“Oh, no provideds, papa! Herbert begs your forgiveness—this is enough.”
“I wish, sir, you would think it was enough,” sobbed Mrs. Linwood.
“You must think so, papa; it is the sin and misery of these unhappy times that divides you. Give to the winds your political differences, and leave the war to the camp and the field. Herbert has always loved and honoured you.”
Mr. Linwood felt as if they were dragging him over a precipice, and he resisted with all his might. “A pretty way he has taken to show it!” he said, “let him declare he has abandoned the rebels and traitors, and their cause, and I will believe it.”
Herbert was silent.
“My dear father,” said Isabella.
“Nay, Isabella, do not ‘dear father’ me. I will not be coaxed out of my right reason. If you can tell me that your brother abandons and abjures the miscreants, speak—if not, be silent.”
“If it were true that he did abandon them, he would be no son of yours, no brother of mine. If he were thus restored to us, who could restore him to himself? where could he hide him from himself? Your own soul would spurn a renegado!—think better of him—think better of his friends—they are not all miscreants. There are many noble, highminded—”<
br />
182“What? what, Isabella?”
“As deluded as he is.”
“A wisely-finished sentence, child. But you need not undertake to teach me what they are. I know them—a set of paltry schismatics—pettifogging attorneys—schoolmasters—mechanics—shop-keepers—bankrupts—outlaws—smugglers—half-starved, half-bred, ragged sons of Belial; banded together, and led on by that quack Catiline, that despot-in-chief, Washington. ‘No son of mine if he abjures them!’ I swear to you, Herbert, that on these terms alone will I ever again receive you as my son.” Again he paused, and after some reflection, added, “You have an alternative if you do not choose to avail yourself of Sir Henry’s standing proclamation, and come in and receive your pardon as a deserter—you may join the corps of Reformees. This opportunity now lost, is lost for ever. Is my forgiveness worth the price I have fixed? speak, Herbert.”
“Have I not proved how inexpressibly dear it is to me?”
“No faltering, young man! speak to the point.”
“Oh, my dear, dear son,” said his mother, “if you but knew how much we have all suffered for you, and how happy you can now make us, if you only will, you would not hesitate, even if the rebel cause were a good one: you are but as one man to that, and to us you are all the world.”
This argumentum ad hominem (the only argument of weak minds) clouded Herbert’s perception. It was a moment of the most painful vacillation; the forgiveness of his father, the ministering, indulgent love of his mother, the presence of his sister, the soft endearments of home, and all its dear familiar objects, solicited him. He had once forsaken them, but then he was incited by the immeasurable expectation of unrebuked youth, thoughts of high emprise, romantic deeds, and strange incidents; but his experience, with few and slight exceptions, had been a tissue of dangers without the opportunity 183of brilliant exploits; of fatigue without reward; and of rough and scanty fare, which, however well it may tell in the past life of a hero, has no romantic charm in its actual details. He continued silent. His father perceived, or at least hoped, that he wavered.
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