THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES > WHAT ANSWER? ANNA E. DICKINSON. BOSTON: FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO., SUCCESSORS TO TICKNOR AND FIELDS. I 869. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by ANNA E. DICKINSON, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. UNIVERSITY PRESS : WBLCH, BIGELOW, & Co., CAMBRIDGE, WHAT ANSWER? CHAPTER I. " In flower of youth and beauty's pride." DRYDEN. A CROWDED New York street, Fifth Avenue at the height of the afternoon ; a gallant and brilliant throng. Looking over the glittering array, the purple and fine linen, the sweeping robes, the ex- quisite equipages, the stately houses ; the faces, delicate and refined, proud, self-satisfied, that gazed out from their windows on the street, or that glanced from the street to the windows, or at one another, looking over all this, being a part of it, one might well say, " This is existence, and beside it there is none other. Let us dress, dine, and be merry ! Life is good, and love is sweet, and both shall endure! Let us forget that hunger and sin, s6rrow and self-sacrifice, want, struggle, and pain, havj| place in the world." Yet, even with the words, "poverty, frost-nipped in a summer suit," here and there hurried by ; and once and again through the restless tide the sorrowful procession of the tomb made way. 1201575 2 What Answer? More than one eye was lifted, and many a pleasant greeting passed between these selected few who filled the street and a young man who lounged by one of the overlooking windows ; and many a comment was uttered upon him when the greeting was made : "A most eligible parti!" " Handsome as a god ! " " O, immensely rich, I assure you I " " Is n't he a beauty ! " " Pity he was n't born poor ! " "Why?" " O, because they say he carried off all the honors at college and law-school, and is altogether overstocked with brains fo* a man who has no need to use them." "Will he practise?" " Doubtful. Why should he ? " Ambition, power, gratify one, gain the other." " Nonsense ! He '11 probably go abroad and travel for a while, come back, marry, and enjoy life." " He does that now, I fancy." Looks so." And indeed he did. There was not only vigor and manly beauty, splendid in its present, but the " possi- bility of more to be in the full process of his ripening days," a form alert and elegant, which had not yet all of a man's muscle and strength ; a face delicate, yet strong, refined, yet full of latent power ; a mass What Answer? 3 of rippling hair like burnished gold, flung back on the one side, sweeping low across brow and cheek on other; eyes " Of a deep, soft, lucent hue, Eyes too expressive to be blue, Too lovely to be gray." People involuntarily thought of the pink and flower of chivalry as they looked at him, or imagined, in some indistinct fashion, that they heard the old songs of Percy and Douglas, or the later lays of the cava- liers, as they heard his voice, a voice that was just now humming one of these same lays : " Then mounte ! then mounte, brave gallants, all, And don your helmes amaine ; Death's couriers, Fame and Honor, call Us to the field againe." " Stuff! " he cried impatiently, looking wistfully at the men's faces going by, " stuff ! We look like gal- lants to ride a tilt at the world, and die for Honor and Fame, we ! " " I thank God, Willie, you are not called upon for any such sacrifice." " Ah, little mother, well you may ! " he answered, smiling, and taking her hand, " well you may, for I am afraid I should fall dreadfully short when the time came ; and then how ashamed you 'd be of your big boy, who took his ease at home, with the great drums 4 What Answer? beating and the trumpets blowing outside. And yet I should like to be tried ! " " See, mother ! " he broke out again, " see what a life it is, getting and spending, living handsomely and doing the proper thing towards society, and all that, rubbing through the world in the old hereditary way ; though I need n't growl at it, for I enjoy it enough, and find it a pleasant enough way, Heaven knows. Lazy idler ! enjoying the sunshine with the rest. Heigh-ho ! " " You have your profession, Willie. There 's work there, and opportunity sufficient to help others and do for yourself." " Ay, and I '11 do it ! But there is so much that is poor and mean, and base and tricky, in it all, so much to disgust and tire one, all the time, day after day, for years. Now if it were only a huge giant that stands in your way, you could out rapier and have at him at once, and there an end, laid out or trium- phant. That 's worth while ! " " O youth, eager and beautiful," thought the mother w.ho listened, " that in this phase is so alike the world over, so impatient to do, so ready to brave encoun- ters, so willing to dare and die ! May the doing be faithful, and the encounters be patiently as well as bravely fought, and the fancy of heroic death be a reality of noble and earnest life. God grant itl Amen." What Answer? 5 "Meanwhile," said the gay voice, "meanwhile it 's a pleasant world ; let us enjoy it ! and as to do this is within . the compass of a man's wit, therefore will I attempt the doing." While he was talking he had once more come to the window, and, looking out, fastened his eyes un- consciously but intently upon the face of a young girl who was slowly passing by, unconsciously, yet so intently that, as if suddenly magnetized, a flicker of feeling went over it; the mouth, set with a steady sweetness, quivered a little \ the eyes dark, beauti- ful eyes were lifted to his an instant, that was all. The mother beside him did not see ; but she heard a long breath, almost a sigh, break from him as he started, then flashed out of the .room, snatching his hat in the hall, and so on to the street, and away.jpjfr Away after her, through block after block, across the crowded avenue to Broadway. "Who is she? where did she come from ? I never saw her before. I wonder if Mrs. Russell knows her, or Clara, or anybody ! I will know where she lives, or where she is going at least, that will be some clew ! There ! she is stopping that stage. I '11 help her in ! no, I won't, she will think I am chasing her. Nonsense ! do you suppose she saw you at the window ? Of course- ! No, she did n't ; don't be a fool ! There ! I'll get into the next stage. Now I '11 keep watch of that^ 6 What Answer? and she '11 not know. So all right ! Go ahead, driver." And happy with some new happiness, eager, bright, the handsome young fellow sat watching that other stage, and the stylish little lace bonnet that was all he could see of his magnet, through the intermi- nable journey down Broadway. How clear the air seemed ! and the sun, how splendidly it shone ! and what a glad look was upon all the people's faces ! He felt like breaking out into gay little snatches of song, and moved his foot to the waltz measure that beat time in his brain till the irate old gentleman opposite, whom nature had made of a sour complexion and art assisted to corns, broke out with an angry exclamation. That drew his attention for a moment. A slackening of speed, a halt, and the stage was wedged in one of the inextricable "jams" on Broadway. Vain the search for her stage then ; looking over the backs of the poor, tired horses, or from the sidewalk, here, there, at this one and that one, all for naught ! Stage and passenger, eyes, little lace bonnet, and all, had vanished away, as William Surrey confessed, and confessed with re- luctance and discontent. "No matter!" he said presently, "no matter! I shall see her again. I know it ! I feel it ! It is writ- ten in the book of the Fates ! So now I shall content me wi& something " that looks like her he did not What Answer? 7 say definitely, but felt it none the less, as, going over to the flower-basket near by, he picked out a little nosegay of mignonette and geranium, with a tea-rose- bud in its centre, and pinned it at his button-hole. "Delicate and fine!" he thought, "delicate and fine ! " and with the repetition he looked from it down the long street after the interminable line of stages \ and somehow the faint, sweet perfume, and the fair flower, and the dainty lace bonnet, were mingled in wild and charming confusion in his brain, till he shook himself, and laughed at himself, and quoted Shakespeare to excuse himself, " A mad world, my masters !" seeing this poor old earth of ours, as people always do, through their own eyes. " God bless ye ! and long life to yer honor ! and may the blessed Virgin give ye the desire of yer hear?! " called the Irishwoman after him, as he put back the change in her hand and went gayly up the street. " Sure, he 's somebody's darlint, the beauty ! the saints preserve him ! " she said, as she looked from the gold piece in her palm to the fair, sunny head, watching it till it was lost in the crowd from her grateful eyes. Evidently this young man was a favorite, for, as he passed along, many a face, worn by business and care, brightened as he smiled and spoke; many a counte- nance stamped with the trade-mark, preoccupied and hard, relaxed in a kindly recognition as he bowed and 8 What Answer? went by ; and more than one found time, even in tha; busy whirl, to glance for a moment after him, or to re- member him with a pleasant feeling, at least till the pavement had been crossed on which they met, a long space at that hour of the day, and with so much more important matters Bull and Bear, rise and fall, stock and account claiming their attention. Evidently a favorite, for, turning off into one of the side streets, coming into his father's huge foundry, faces heated and dusty, tired, stained, and smoke-begrimed, glanced up from their work, from forge and fire and engine, with an expression that invited a look or word, and look and word were both ready. "The boss is out, sir," said one of the foremen, " and if you please, and have got the time to spare, I 'd like to have a word with you before he comes in." "All right, Jim ! say your say." " Well, sir, you '11 likely think I 'm sticking my nose into what doesn't concern me. 'T ain't a very nice thing I 've got to say, but if I don't say it I don't know who in thunder will ; and, as it 's my private opinion that somebody ought to, I '11 just pitch in." " Very good ; pitch in." "Very good it is then. Only.it ain't. Very bad, more like. It 's a nasty mess, and no mistake ! and there 's the cause of it ! " pointing his brawny hand towards the door, upon which was marked, "Office. What Answer? 9 Private," and sniffing as though he smelt something bad in the air. " You don't mean my father ! " flame shooting from the clear eyes. " Be damned if I do. Beg pardon. Of course I don't. I mean the fellow as is perched up on a high stool in that there office, this very minute, poking into his books." " Franklin ? " " You Ve hit it. Franklin, Abe Franklin, that '. the ticket." " What 's the matter with him ? what has he done ? " " Done ? nothing ! not as I know of, anyway, except what 's right and proper. 'T ain't what he 's done or 's like to do. It 's what he is." " And what may that be ? " " Well, he 's a nigger ! there 's the long and short Of it. Nobody here 'd object to his working in this place,- providing he was a runner, or an errand-boy, or any- 1 ' thing that it 's right and proper for a nigger to be ; but to have him sitting in that office, writing letters for the boss, and going over the books, and superintending the accounts of the fellows, so that he knows just what they get on Saturday nights, and being as fine as a fid- dle, is what the boys won't stand ; and they swear they '11 leave, every man of 'em, unless he has his walk- ing papers, double-quick too." i* 10 What Answer? " Very well ; let them. There are other workmen, good as they, in this city of New York." " Hold on, sir ! let me say my say first. There are seven hundred men working in this place : the most of 'em have worked here a long while. Good work, good pay. There ain't a man of 'em but likes Mr. Sur rey, and would be sorry to lose the place ; so, if thej won't bear it, there ain't any that will. Wait a bit ! i ain't through yet." * " Go on," quietly enough spoken, but the mouth shook under its silky fringe, and a fiery spot burned on either cheek. " All right. Well, sir, I know all about Franklin, He 's a bright one, smart enough to stock a lot of us with brains and have some to spare ; he don't inter- fere with us, and does his work well, too, I reckon, though that 's neither here nor there, nor none of our business if the boss is satisfied ; and he looks like a gentleman, and acts like one, there 's no denying that ! and as for his skin, well ! " a smile breaking over his good-looking face, " his skin 's quite as white as mine now, anyway," smearing his red-flannel arm over his grimy phiz ; " but then, sir, it won't rub off He 's a nigger, and there 's no getting round it. " All right, sir ! give you your chance directly. Don't speak yet, ain't through, if you please. Well, sir, it 's agen nature, you may talk agen it, and What Answer? II work agen it, and fight agen it till all 's blue, and what good '11 it do ? You can't get an Irishman, and, what 's more, a free-born American citizen, to put him- self on a level with a nigger, not by no manner of means. No, sir ; you can turn out the whole lot, and get another after it, and another after that, and so on to the end of the chapter, and you can't find men among 'em all that '11 stay and have him strutting through 'em, up to his stool and his books, grand as a peacock." " Would they work with him ? " " At the same engines, and the like, do you mean ? " "Yes." " Nary time, so 't ain't likely they '11 work under him. Now, sir, you see I know what I 'm saying, and I 'm saying it to you, Mr. Surrey, and not to your father, because he won't take a word from me nor nobody else, and here 's just the case. Now I ain't bullying, you understand, and I say it because some- body else 'd say it, if I did n't, uglier and rougher. Abe Franklin '11 have to go out of this shop in precious short order, or every man here '11 bolt next Saturday night. There ! now I 've done, sir, and you can fire away." But as he showed no signs of " firing away," and stood still, pondering, Jim broke out again : " Beg pardon, sir. If I Ve said anything you don't 12 What Answer? like, sorry for it. It 's because Mr. Surrey is so good an employer, and, if you '11 let me say so, because I like you so well," glancing over him admiringly, " for, you see, a good engineer takes to a clean-built ma- chine wherever he sees it, it's just because of this I thought it was better to tell you, and get you to tell the boss, and to save any row ; for I 'd hate mortally to have it in this shop where I've worked, man and boy, so many years. Will you please to speak to him, sir? and I hope you understand." " Thank you, Jim. Yes, I understand ; and I '11 speak to him." Was it that the sun was going down, or that some clouds were in the sky, or had the air of the shop oppressed him ? Whatever it was, as he came out he walked with a slower step from which some of the spring had gone, and the people's faces looked not so happy; and, glancing down at his rosebud, he saw that its fair petals had been soiled by the smoke and grime in which he had been standing ; and, while he looked, a dead march came solemnly sounding up the street, and a soldier's funeral went by, rare enough, in that autumn of 1860, to draw a curious crowd on either side ; rare enough to make him pause and sur- vey it ; and as the line turned into another street, and the music came softened to his ear, he once more What Answer? 13 hummed the words of the song which had been haunt- ing him all the day : " Then mounte ! then mounte, brave gallants, all, And don your helmes amaine j Death's couriers, Fame and Honor, call Us to the field againe," sang them to himself, but not with the gay, bright spirit of the morning. Then he seemed to see the cavaliers, brilliant and brave, riding out to the en- counter. Now, in the same dim and fanciful way, he beheld them stretched, still and dead, upon the plain. CHAPTER II. 'Thou drugging pain by patience." ARNOLD. u T ACES cleaned, and fluting and ruffling done -* ' here," that was what the little sign swing- ing outside the little green door said. And, coming under it into the cosey little rooms, you felt this was just the place in which to leave things soiled and torn, and come back to find them, by some mysterious pro- cess, immaculate and whole. Two rooms, with folding-doors between, in which through the day stood a counter, cut up on the one side into divers pigeon-holes filled with small boxes and bundles, carefully pinned and labelled, owner's name, time left, time to be called for, money due ; neat and nice as a new pin, as every one said who had any dealings there. The counter was pushed back now, as always after seven o'clock, for the people who came in the evening were few ; and then, when that was out of the way, it seemed more home-like and less shoppy, as Mrs. Franklin said every night, as she straightened things out, and peered through the window or looked from What Answer? 15 the front door, and wondered if " Abram were n't later than usual," though sheluiew right well he was punc- tual as clock-work, good clock-work too, when he was going to his toil or hurrying back to his home. Pleasant little rooms, with the cleanest and bright- est of rag carpets on the floor ; a paper on the walls, cheap enough, but gay with scarlet rosebuds and green leaves, rivalled by the vines and berries on the pretty chintz curtains ; chairs of a dozen ages and patterns, but all of them with open, inviting counte- nances and a hospitable air ; a wood fire that looked like a wood fire crackling and sparkling on the hearth, shining and dancing over the ceiling and the floor and the walls, cutting queer capers with the big rocking-chair, which turned into a giant with long arms, and with the little figures on the mantel-shelf, and the books in their cases, softening and glorifying the two grand faces hanging in their frames opposite, and giving just light enough below them to let you read " John Brown " and " Phillips," if you had any occasion to read, and did not know those whom the world knows ; and first and last, and through all, as if it loved her, and was loath to part with her for a moment, whether she poked the flame, or straight- ened a chair, or went out towards the little kitchen to lift a lid and smell a most savory stew, or came back to the supper-table to arrange and rearrange what was 1 6 What Answer? already faultless in its cleanliness and simplicity, wherever she went and whatever she did, this fire- light fell warm about a woman, large and comfort- able and handsome, with a motherly look to her per- son, and an expression that was all kindness in her comely face and dark, soft eyes, eyes and face and form, though, that might as well have had " Pariah " written all over them, and " leper " stamped on their front, for any good, or beauty, or grace, that people could find in them ; for the comely face was a dark face, and the voice, singing an old Methodist hymn, was no Anglo-Saxon treble, but an Anglo-African voice, rich and mellow, with the touch of pathos or sorrow always heard in these tones. "There !" she said, " there he is ! " as a step, hasty yet halting, was heard on the pavement ; and, turning up the light, she ran quickly to open the door, which, to be sure, was unfastened, and to give the greeting to her "boy," which, through many a year, had never been omitted. Her boy, you would have known that as soon as you saw him, the same eyes, same face, the same kindly look; but the face was thinner and finer, and the brow was a student's brow, full of thought and spec- ulation ; and, looking from her hearty, vigorous form, you saw that his was slight to attenuation. " Sit down, sonny, sit down and rest There ! how What Answer? 17 tired you look ! " bustling round him, smoothing his thin face and rough hair. "Now don't do that! let your old mother do it ! " It pleased her to call her- self old, though she was but just in her prime. " You 've done enough for one day, I 'm sure, waiting on other people, and walking with your poor lame foot till you 're all but beat out. You be quiet now, and let somebody else wait on you." And, going down on her knees, she took up the lame foot, and began to unlace the cork- soled, high-cut shoe, and, drawing it out, you saw that it was shrunken and small, and that the leg was shorter than its fellow,. "Poor little foot !" rubbing it tenderly," smoothing the stocking over it, and chafing it to bring warmth and life to its surface. Her " baby," she called it, for it was no bigger than when he was a little fellow. " Poor, tired foot ! ain't it a dreadful long walk, sonny ? " " Pretty long, mother ; but I 'd take twice that to do such work at the end." "Yes, indeed, it's good work, and Mr. Surrey's a good man, and a kind one, that 's sure ! I only wish some others had a little of his spirit. Such a shame to have you dragging all the way up here, when any dirty fellow that wants to can ride. I don't mind for myself so much, for I can walk about spry enough yet, and don't thank them for their old omnibuses nor cars ; but it 's too bad for you, so it is, too bad ! " B * I 1 8 What Answer? " Never mind, mother ! keep a brave heart. ' There r s a good time coming soon, a good time coming ! ' as I heard Mr. Hutchinson sing the other night, and it's true as gospel." " Maybe it is, sonny ! " dubiously, " but I don't see it, not a sign of it, no indeed, not one ! It gets worse and worse all the time, and it takes a deal of faith to hold on ; but the good Lord knows best, and it '11 be right after a while, anyhow ! And now that 's straight ! " pulling a soft slipper on the lame foot, and putting its mate by his side ; then going off to pour out the tea, and dish up the stew, and add a touch or two to the appetizing supper-table. " It 's as good as a feast," taking a bite out of her nice home-made bread, " better 'n a feas.t, to think of you in that place ; and I can't scarcely realize it yet. It seems too fine to be true." " That 's the way I Ve felt all the month, mother ! It has been just like a dream to me, and I keep thinking surely I 'm asleep and will waken to find this is just an air-castle I Ve been building, or ' a vision of the night,' as the good book says." " Well, it 's a blessed vision, sure enough ! and I hope to the good Lord it '11 last ; but you won't if you make a vision of your supper in that way. You just eat, Abram! and have done your talking till you're through, if you can't do both at once. Talking 's good, What Answer? 19 but eating 's better when you 're hungry ; and it 's my opinion you ought to be hungry, if you ain't" So the teacups were filled and emptied, and the spoons clattered, and the stew was eaten, and the baked potatoes devoured, and the bread-and-butter assaulted vigorously, and general havoc made with the good things and substantial things before and between them ; and then, this duty faithfully performed, the wreck speedily vanished away; and cups and forks, spoons and plates, knives and dishes, cleaned and cupboarded, Mrs. Franklin came, and, drawing away the book over which he was poring, said, while she smoothed face and hair once more, " Come, Abram, what is it ? " " What 's what, mother ? " with a little laugh. " Something ails you, sonny. That 's plain enough. I know when anything 's gone wrong with ye, sure, and something 's gone wrong to-day." " O mother ! you worry about me too much, in- deed you do. If I 'm a little tired or out of sorts, which I have n 't any right to be, not here, or quiet, or anything, you think somebody 's been hurt- ing me, or abusing me, or that everything's gone wrong with me, when I do well enough all the time." " Now, Abram, you can't deceive me, not that way. My eyes is mother's eyes, and they see plain 2O What Answer? enough, where you 're concerned, without spectacles. Who 's been putting on you to-day ? Somebody. You don't carry that down look in your face and your eyes for nothing, I found that out long ago, and you Ve got it on to-night." " O mother ! " "Don't you ' O mother* me ! I ain't going to be put off in that way, Abram, an' you need n't think it. Has Mr. Surrey been saying anything hard to you ? " " No, indeed, mother ; you need n't ask that." " Nor none of the foremen ? " None." " Has Snipe been round ? " " Has n't been near the office since Mr. Surrey dis- missed him." "Met him anywhere?" " Nein ! " laughing, " I have n't laid eyes on him." " Well, the men have been saying or doing some- thing then." " N-no ; why, what an inquisitor it is ! " " ' N-no.' You don't say that full and plain, Abram. Something has been going wrong with the men. Now what is it? Come, out with it." " Well, mother, if you will know, you will, I sup- pose ; and, as you never get tired of the story, I 'U go over the whole tale. What Answer? 21 " So long as I was Mr. Surrey's office-boy, to make his fires, and sweep and dust, and keep things in order, the men were all good enough to me after their fashion ; and if some of them growled because they thought he favored me, Mr. Given, or some one said, * O, you know his mother was a servant of Mrs. Sur- rey for no end of years, and of course Mr. Surrey has a kind of interest in him ' ; and that put everything straight again. " Well ! you know how good Mr. Willie has been to me ever since we were little boys in the same house, he in the parlor and I in the kitchen ; the books he 's given me, and the chances he 's made me, and the way he 's put me in of learning and knowing. And he 's been twice as kind to me ever since I refused that offer of his." " Yes, I know, but tell me about it again." " Well, Mr. Surrey sent me up to the house one day, just while Mr. Willie was at home from college, and he stopped me and had a talk with me, and asked me in his pleasant way, not as if I were a ' nigger,' but just as he 'd talk to one of his mates, ever so many questions about myself and my studies and my plans ;< and I told him what I wanted, how hard you worked, and how I hoped to fit myself to go into some little business of my own, not a barber-shop, or any such thing, but something that 'd support you 22 What Answer? and keep you like a lady after while, and that would help me and my people at the same time. For, of course," I said, " every one of us that does anything more than the world expects us to do, or better, makes the world think so much the more and better of us all." "What did he say to that?" " I wish you 'd seen him ! He pushed back that beautiful hair of his, and his eyes shone, and his mouth trembled, though I could see he tried hard to hold it still, and put up his hand to cover it ; and he said, in a solemn sort of way, ' Franklin, you Ve opened a window for me, and I sha' n't forget what I see through it to-day.' And then he offered to set me up in some business at once, and urged hard when I declined." " Say it all over again, sonny ; what was it you told him ? " " I said that would do well enough for a white man ; that he could help, and the white man be helped, just as people were being and doing all the time, and no one would think a thought about it. But, sir," I said, " everybody says we can do nothing alone ; that we 're a poor, shiftless set ; and it will be just one of the master race helping a nigger to climb and to stand where he could n't climb or stand alone, and I 'd rather fight my battle alone." " Yes, yes ! well, go on, go on. I like to hear what followed." What Answer? 23 "Well, there was just a word or two more, and then he put out his hand and shook mine, and said good by. It was the first time I ever shook hands with a white gentleman. Some white hands have shaken mine, but they always made me feel that they were white and that mine was black, and that it was a condescension. I felt that, when they did n't mean I should. But there was nothing between us. I did n't think of his skin, and, for once in my life, I quite for- got I was black, and did n't remember it again till I got out on the street and heard a dirty little ragamuffin cry, 'Hi! hi! don't that nagur think himself foine ?' I suspect, in spite of my lameness, I had been holding up my head and walking like a man." In spite of his lameness he was holding up his head and walking like a man now ; up and down and across the little room, trembling, excited, the words rushing in an eager flow from his mouth. His mother sat quietly rocking herself and knitting. She knew in this mood there was nothing to be said to him ; and, indeed, what had she to say save that' which would add fuel to the flame? " Well ! " a long sigh, " after that Mr. Surrey doubled my wages, and was kinder to me than ever, and watched me, as I saw, quite closely ; and that was the way he found out about Mr. Snipe. " You see Mr. Snipe had been very careless about 24 What Answer? keeping the books ; would come down late in the mornings, just before Mr. Surrey came in, and go away early in the afternoons, as soon as he had left. Of course the books got behindhand every month, and Mr. Snipe did n't want to stay and work over- hours to make them up. One day he found out, by something I said, that I understood book-keeping, and tried me, and then got me to take them home at night and go over them. I did n't know then how bad he was doing, and that I had no business to shield him, and all went smooth enough till the day I was too sick to get down to the office, and two of the books were at home. Then Mr. Surrey discovered the whole thing. There was a great row, it seems '. and Mr. Surrey examined the books, and found, as he was pleased to say, that I 'd kept them in first-rate style; so he dismissed Mr. Snipe on the spot, with six months' pay, for you know he never does any- thing by halves, and put me in his place. " The men don't like it, I know, and have n't liked it, but of course they can't say anything to him, and they have n't said anything to me ; but I 've seen all along that they looked at me with no friendly eyes, and for the last day or two I 've heard a word here and there which makes me think there 's trouble brewing, bad enough, I 'm afraid ; maybe to the losing of my place, though Mr. Surrey has said nothing about it to What Answer? 25 Just here the little green door opened, and the fore- man whom we have before seen James Given as the register had him entered, Jim Given as every one knew him came in ; no longer with grimy face and flannel sleeves, but brave in all his Sunday finery, and as handsome a b'hoy, they said, a2his engine-house, as any that ran with the machine ; having on his arm a young lady whom he apostrophized as Sallie, as hand- some and brave as he. " Evening," a nod of the head accompanying. " Miss Howard's traps done ? " " I wish you would n't say ' traps,' Jim," corrected Sallie, sotto voce : " it 's not proper. It 's for a collar and pair of cuffs, Mrs. Franklin," she added aloud, putting down a little check. " Not proper ! goodness gracious me ! there spoke Snipe ! Come, Sallie, you 've pranced round with that stuck-up jackanapes till you 're getting spoiled entirely, so you are, and I scarcely know you. Not proper, O my ! " " Spoiled, am I ? Thank you, sir, for the compliment ! And you don't know me at all, don't you ? Very well, then I '11 say good night, and leave ; for it would n't be proper to take a young lady you don't know to the thea- tre, now, would it ? Good by ! " making for the door. "Now don't, Sallie, please." 2 26 What Answer? "Don't what?" " Don't talk that way." " Don't yourself, more like. You 're just as cross as cross can be, and disagreeable, and hateful, all be- cause I happen to know there 's some other man in the world besides yourself, and smile at him now and then. ' Don't,' indeed ! " " Come, Sallie, you 're too hard on a fellow. It 's your own fault, you know well enough, if you will be so handsome. Now, if you were an ugly old girl, or I was certain of you, I should n't feel so bad, nor act so neither. But when there 's a lot of hungry chaps round, all gaping to gobble you up, and even poor little Snipes trying to peck and bite at you, and you won't say ' yes ' nor ' no ' to me, how do you expect a man to keep cool ? Can't do it, nohow, and you need n't ask it. Human nature 's human nature, I suppose, and mine ain't a quiet nor a patient one, not by no manner of means. Come, Sallie, own up ; you would n't like me so well as I hope you do if it was, now, would you ? " Mrs. Franklin smiled, though she had heard not a word of the lovers' quarrel, as she put a pin in the back of the ruffled collar which Sallie had come to reclaim. A quarrel it had evidently been, and as evidently the lady was mollified, for she said, " Don't be absurd, Jim!" and Jim laughed and responded, "All right, Sallie, you 're an angel ! But come, we must hurry, or the What Answer? 27 curtain '11 be up," and away went the dashing and handsome couple. Abram, shutting in the shutters, and fastening the door, sat down to a quiet evening's reading, while his mother knitted and sewed, an evening the likeness of a thousand others of which they never tired j for this mother and son, to whom fate had dealt so hard a measure, upon whom the world had so persistently frowned, were more to each other than most mothers and sons whose lines had fallen in pleasanter places, compensation, as Mr. Emerson says, being the law of existence the world over. CHAPTER III. " Every one has his day, from which he dates." OLD PROVERB. U see, Surrey, the school is something extra, and the performances, and it will please Clara no end ; so I thought I 'd run over, and inveigled you into going along for fear it should be stupid, and I would need some recreation." " Which I am to afford ?" "Verily." " As clown or grindstone ? to make laugh, or sharpen your wits upon ? " "Far be it from me to dictate. Whichever suits your character best. On the whole, I think the last would be the most appropriate ; the first I can swear would n't ! " " Pourquoi ? " " O, a woman's reason, because 1 " " Because why ? Am I cross ? " " Not exactly." " Rough ? " " As usual, like a May breeze." "Cynical?" What Answer? 29 ' As Epicurus." Irritable ? " " ' A countenance [and manner] more in sorrow than in anger.' Something 's wrong with you ; who is she ? " She ! " " Ay, she. That was a wise Eastern king who put at the bottom of every trouble and mischief a woman." " Fine estimate." " Correct one. Evidently he had studied the genus thoroughly, and had a poor opinion of it." " No wonder." " Amazing ! you say ' no wonder ' ! Astounding words ! speak them again. " " No wonder, seeing that he had a mother, and that she had such a son. He must needs have been a bad fellow or a fool to have originated so base a phi- losophy, and how then could he respect the source of such a stream as himself? " " Sir Launcelot, squire of dames ! " " Not Sir Launcelot, but squire of dames, I hope." " There you go again ! Now I shall query once more, who is she ? " " No woman." " No ? " "No, though by your smiling you would seem to say so ! " 30 What Answer? " Nay, I believe you, and am vastly relieved in the believing. Take advice from ten years of superior age, and fifty of experience, and have naught to do with them. Dost hear ? " " I do." " And will heed?" " Which ? the words or the acts of my counsellor ? who, of a surety, preaches wiselv and does foolishly, or who does wisely and preaches foolishly ; for preaching and practice do not agree." "Nay, man, thou art unreasonable; to perform either well is beyond the capacity of most humans, and I desire not to be blessed above my betters. Then let my rash deeds and my prudent words both be teachers unto thee. But if it be true that no woman is responsible for your grave countenance this morn- ing, then am I wasting words, and will return to our muttons. What ails you ? " " I am belligerent." " I see, that means quarrelsome." " And hopeless." " Bad, very ! belligerent and hopeless ! When you go into a fight always expect to win ; the thought is half the victory." " Suppose you are an atom against the universe ? " " Don't fight, succumb. There 's a proverb, a wise one, Napoleon's, ' God is on the side of the strongest battalions.' " What Answer? 31 "A lie, exploded at Waterloo. There's another proverb, 'One on the side of God is a majority.' How about that ? " " Transcendental humbug." " A truth demonstrated at Wittenberg." " Are you aching for the martyr's palm ? " " I am afraid not. On the whole, I think I'd rather enjoy life than quarrel with it. But " with a sudden blaze "I feel to-day like fighting the world." " Hey, presto ! what now, young 'un ? " " I don't wonder you stare ! " a little laugh. "I'm talking like a fool, and, for aught I know, feeling like one, aching to fight, and knowing that I might as well quarrel with the winds, or stab that water as it flows by." " As with what ? " " The fellow I've just been getting a good look at." " What manner of fellow ? " " Ignorant, selfish, brutal, devilish." " Tremendous ! why don't you bind him over to keep the peace ? " " Because he is like the judge of old time, neither fears God nor respects his image, when his image is carved in ebony, and not ivory." " What do you call this fellow? r " Public Opinion." " This big fellow is abusing and devouring a poor little chap, eh ? and the chap 's black ? " 32 What Answer? " True." " And sometimes the giant is a gentleman in purple and fine linen, otherwise broadcloth ; and sometimes in hodden gray, otherwise homespun or slop-shop ; and sometimes he cuts the poor little chap with a silver knife, which is rhetoric, and sometimes with a wooden spoon, which is raw-hide. Am I stating it all cor- rectly ? " " All correctly." " And you Ve been watching this operation when you had better have been minding your own business, and getting excited when you had better have kept cool, and now want to rush into the fight, drums beating and colors flying, to the rescue of the small one. Don't deny it, it 's all written out in your eyes." " I sha' n't deny it, except about the business and the keeping cool. It 's any gentleman's business to in- terfere between a bully and a weakling that he 's abus- ing ; and his blood must be water that does not boil while he ' watches the operation ' as you say, and goes in." " To get well pommelled for his pains, and do no good to any one, himself included. Let the weakling alone. A fellow that can't save himself is not worth saving. If he can't swim nor walk, let him drop under or go to the wall ; that 's my theory." What Answer? 33 " Anglo-Saxon theory and practice." " Good theory, excellent practice, in the main. What special phase of it has been disturbing youi equanimity ? " " You know the Franklins ? " " Of course : Aunt Mina's son what 's his name ? is a sort of protege of yours, I believe : what of him ? ' " He is cleanly ? " " A nice question. Doubtless." " Respectable ? " " What are you driving at ? " "Intelligent?" " Most true." " Ambitious ? " "Or his looks belie him." " Faithful, trusty, active, helpful, in every way de- voted to my father's service and his work." " With Sancho, I believe it all because your worship says so." " Well, this man has just been discharged from my father's employ because seven hundred and forty-two other men gave notice to quit if he remained." "The reason?" " His skin." " The reason is not ' so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door, but it is enough.' Of course they would n't work with him, and my uncle Surrey, begging 34 What Answer? your pardon, should not have attempted anything so Quixotic." "His skin covering so many excellent qualities, and these qualities gaining recognition, that was the cause. They worked with him so long as he was a servant of servants : so soon as he demonstrated that he could strike out strongly and swim, they knocked him under; and, proving that he could walk alone, they ran hastily to shove him to the wall." " What ! quoting my own words against me ? " " Anglo-Saxon says we are the masters : we monopo- lize the strength and courage, the beauty, intelligence, power. These creatures, what are they? poor, worthless, lazy, ignorant, good for nothing but to be used as machines, to obey. When lo ! one of these dumb machines suddenly starts forth with a man's face; this creature no longer obeys, but evinces a right to command ; and Anglo-Saxon speedily breaks him in pieces." " Come, Willie, I hope you 're not going to assert these people our equals, that would be too much." " They have no intelligence, Anglo-Saxon declares, then refuses them schools, while he takes of their money to help educate his own sons. They have no ambition, then closes upon them every door of hon- orable advancement, and cries througn the key-hole, Serve, or starve. They cannot stand dionc, they kav* Wliat Answer? 35 no faculty for rising, then, if one trf them finds foothold, the ground is undermined beneath him. If a head is seen above the crowd, the ladder is jerked away, and he is trampled into the dust where he is fallen. If he stays in the position to which Anglo- Saxon assigns him, he is a worthless nigger j if he protests against it, he is an insolent nigger ; if he rises above it, he is a nigger not to be tolerated at all, to be crushed and buried speedily." " Now, Willie, ' no more of this, an thou lovest me.' I came not out to-day to listen to an abolition ha- rangue, nor a moral homily, but to have a good time, to be civil and merry withal, if you will allow it Of course you don't like Franklin's discharge, and of course you have done something to compensate him. I know you have found him another place. No, you could n't do that ? " "No, I could n't." " Well, you 've settled him somewhere, confess." " He has some work for the present ; some copying for me, and translating, for this unfortunate is a scholar, you know." " Very good ; then let it rest. Granted the poor devils have a bad time of it, you 're not bound to sacri- fice yourself for them. If you go on at this pace, you'll bring up with the long-haired, bloomer reformers, and then God help you. No, you need n't say 36 What Answer? another word, I sha' n't listen, not one ; so. Here we are ! school yonder, well situated ? " " Capitally." "Fine day." "Very." " Clara will be charmed to see you." " You flatter me. I hope so." "There, now you talk rationally. Don't relapse. We will go up and hear the pretty creatures read their little pieces, and sing their little songs, and see them take their nice blue-ribboned diplomas, and fall in love with their dear little faces, and flirt a bit this evening, and to-morrow I shall take Ma'm'selle Clara home to Mamma Russell, and you may go your ways." " The programme is satisfactory." " Good. Come on then." All Commencement days, at college or young ladies' school, if not twin brothers and sisters, are at least first cousins, with a strong family likeness. Who that has passed through one, or witnessed one, needs any description thereof to furbish up its memories. This of Professor Hale's belonged to the great tribe, and its form and features were of the old established type. The young ladies were charming ; plenty of white gowns, plenty of flowers, plenty of smiles, blushes, tre- mors, hopes, and fears ; little songs, little pieces, little addresses, to be sung, to be played, to be read, just as What Answer? 37 Tom Russell had foreshadowed, and proving to be " Just the least of a bore ! " as he added after listen- ing awhile ; " don't you think so, Surrey ? " "Hush! don't talk." Tom stared ; then followed his cousin's eye, fixed immovably upon one little spot on the platform. " By Jove ! " he cried, " what a beauty ! As Father Dryde.n would say, ' this is the porcelain clay of humankind.' No wonder you look. Who is she, do you know ? " "No." " No ! short, clear, and decisive. Don't devour her, Will Remember the sermon I preached you an hour ago. Come, look at this," thrusting a programme into his face, " and stop staring. Why, boy, she has bewitched you, or inspired you," surveying him sharply. And indeed it would seem so. Eyes, mouth, face, instinct with some subtle and thrilling emotion. As gay Tom Russell looked, he involuntarily stretched out his hand, as one would put it between another and some danger of which that other is unaware, and re- membered what he had once said in talking of him, " If Will Surrey's time does come, I hope the girl will be all right in every way, for he '11 plunge headlong, and love like distraction itself, no half-way ; it will be a life-and-death affair for him." " Come, I must break in on this." 38 What Answer? "Surrey!" "Yes." " There's a pretty girl." No answer. " There ! over yonder. Third seat, second row. See her ? Pretty ? " " Very pretty." " Miss Miss what 's her name ? O, Miss Perry played that last thing very well for a school-girl, eh ? " " Very well." "Admirable room this, for hearing; rare quality with chapels and halls ; architects in planning gener- ally tax ingenuity how to confuse sound. Now these girls don't make a great noise, yet you can distinguish every word, can't you ? " No response. " I say, can't you ? " "Every word." Tom drew a long breath. " Professor Hale 's a sensible old fellow ; I like the way he conducts this school." (Mem. Tom didn't know a thing about it) "Carries it on excellently." A pause. Silence. " Fine-looking, too. A man's physique has a deal to do with his success in the world. If he carries a letter of recommendation in his face, people take him What Answer? 39 on trust to begin with ; and if he 's a big fellow, like the Professor yonder, he imposes on folks awfully ; they pop down on their knees to him, and clear the track for him, as if he had a right to it all. Bless me ! I never thought of that before, it's the reason you and I have got on so swimmingly, is it not, now ? Certainly. You think so ? Of course." " Of course," sedately and gravely spoken. Tom groaned, for, with a face kind and bright, he was yet no beauty ; while if Surrey had one crowning gift in this day of fast youths and self-satisfied Young America, it was that of modesty with regard to him- self and any gifts and graces nature had blessed him withal. " Clara has a nice voice." "Very nice." "She is to sing, do you know?" " I know." " Do you know when ? " No reply. " She sings the next piece. Are you ready to lis- ten?" " Ready." " Good Lord ! " cried Tom, in despair, " the fellow has lost his wits. He has turned parrot ; he has done nothing but repeat my words for me since he sat here. He 's an echo." 4O What Answer? " Echo of nothingness ? " queried the parrot, smil- ingly. " Ah, you 've come to yourself, have you ? Capi- tal ! now stay awake. There 's Clara to sing directly, and you are to cheer her, and look as if you enjoyed it, and throw her that bouquet when I tell you, and let her think it 's a fine thing she has been doing ; for this is a tremendous affair to her, poor child, of course." " How bright and happy she is ! You will laugh at me, Tom, and indeed I don't know what has come over me, but somehow I feel quite sad, looking at those girls, and wondering what fate and time have in store for them." " Sunshine and bright hours." " The day cometh, and also the night," broke in the clear voice that was reading a selection from the Scriptures. Tom started, and Willie took from his button-hole just such a little nosegay as that he had bought on Broadway a fortnight before, a geranium leaf, a bit of mignonette, and a delicate tea-rosebud, and, seeing it was drooping, laid it carefully upon the programme on his knee. " I don't want that to fade," he thought as he put it down, while he looked across the platform at the same face which he had so eagerly pursued through a labyrinth of carriages, stages, and people, and lost at last. What Answer? 41 " There ! Clara is talking to your beauty. I won- der if she is to sing, or do anything. If she does, it will be something dainty and fine, I '11 wager. Hel- loa ! there 's Clara up, now for it." Clara's bright little voice suited her bright little face, like her brother's, only a great deal prettier, and the young men enjoyed both, aside from brotherly and cousinly feeling, cheered her " to the echo " as Willie said, threw their bouquets, great, gorgeous things they had brought from the city to please her, and wished there was more of it all when it was through. "What next? "said Willie. " Heaven preserve us ! your favorite subject. Who would expect to tumble on such a theme here? ' Slavery ; by Francesca Ercildoune.' Odd name, and, by Jove ! it 's the beauty herself." They both leaned forward eagerly as she came from her seat ; slender, shapely, every fibre fine and exqui- site, no coarse graining from the dainty head to the dainty foot ; the face, clear olive, delicate and beauti- ful, "The mouth with steady sweetness set, And eyes conveying unaware The distant hint of some regret That harbored there," eyes deep, tender, and pathetic. "What's this ? " said Tom. " Queer. It gives me a heartache to look at her." 42 What Answer? " A woman for whom to fight the world, or lose the world, and be compensated a million-fold if you died at her feet," thought Surrey, and said nothing. " What a strange subject for her to select ! " broke in Tom. It was a strange one for the time and place, and she had been besought to drop it, and take another ; but it should be that or nothing, she asserted, so she was left to her own device. Oddly treated, too. Tom thought it would be a pretty lady-like essay, and said so ; then sat astound- ed at what he saw and heard. Her face this school- girl's face grew pallid, her eyes mournful, her voice and manner sublime, as she summoned this monster to the bar of God's justice and the humanity of the world ; as she arraigned it ; as she brought wit- ness after witness to testify against it ; as she proved its horrible atrocities and monstrous barbarities ; as she went on to the close, and, lifting hand and face and voice together, thrilled out, "I look backward into the dim, distant past, but it is one night of oppression and despair ; I turn to the present, but I hear naught save the mother's broken-hearted shriek, the infant's wail, the groan wrung from the strong man in agony ; I look forward into the future, but the night grows darker, the shadows deeper and longer, the tempest wilder, and involuntarily I cry out, 'How long, O _God, how long ? ' " What Answer? 43 " Heavens ! what an actress she would make ! " said somebody before them. "That's genius," said somebody behind them; "but what a subject to waste it upon !" " Very bad taste, I must say, to talk about such a thing here," said somebody beside them. " However, one can excuse a great deal to beauty like that." Surrey sat still, and felt as though he were on fire, filled with an insane desire to seize her in one arm like a knight of old, and hew his way through these beings, and out of this place, into some solitary spot where he could seat her and kneel at her feet, and die there if she refused to take him up ; filled with all the sweet, extravagant, delicious pain that thrills the heart, full of passion and purity, of a young man who begins to love the first, overwhelming, only love of a lifetime. CHAPTER IV. 1 'T is an old tale, and often told." SIR WALTER SCOTT. THAT evening some people who were near them were talking about it, and that made Tom ask Clara if her friend was in the habit of doing startling things. " Should you think so to look at her now ? " queried Clara, looking across the room to where Miss Ercil- doune stood. "Indeed I should n't," Tom replied; and indeed no one would who saw her then. " She 's as sweet as a sugar-plum," he added, as he continued to look. " What does she mean by getting off such rampant dis- courses ? She never wrote them herself, don't tell me; at least somebody else put her up to it, that Strong-minded-looking teacher over yonder, for in- stance. She looks capable of anything, and something worse, in the denouncing way ; poor little beauty was her cat's-paw this morning." " O Tom, how you talk ! She is nobody's cat's- paw. I can tell you she does her own thinking and acting too. If you'd just go and do something hateful, What Answer? 45 or impose on somebody, one of the waiters, for in- stance, you'd see her blaze up, fast enough." "Ah! philanthropic?" Clara looked puzzled. "I don't know; we have some girls here who are all the time talking about benevolence, and charity, and the like, and they have a little sewing-circle to make up things to be sold for the church mission, or something, I don't know just what ; but Francesca won't go near it." "Democratic, then, maybe." " No, she is n't, not a bit. She 's a thorough little aristocrat : so exclusive she has nothing to say to the most of us. I wonder she ever took me for a friend, though I do love her dearly." Tom looked down at his bright little sister, and thought the wonder was not a very great one, but did n't say so ; reserving his gallantries for somebody else's sister. " You seem greatly taken with her, Tom." " I own the soft impeachment." " Well, you '11 have a fair chance, for she 's coming home with me. I wrote to mamma, and she says, bring her by all means, and Mr. Ercildoune gives his consent ; so it is all settled." " Mr. Ercildoune ! is there no Mrs. E. ?" " None, her mother died long ago ; and her father has not been here, so I can't tell you anything about 46 What Answer? him. There : do you see that elegant-looking lady talking with Professor Hale ? that is her aunt, Mrs. Lancaster. She is English, and is here only on a visit. She wants to take Francesca home with her in the spring, but I hope she won't." " Why, what is it to you ? " " I am afraid she will stay, and then I shall never see her any more." " And why stay ? do you fancy England so very fascinating ? " " No, it is not that ; but Francesca don't like America; she 's forever saying something witty and sharp about our ' democratic institutions,' as she calls them ; and, if you had looked this morning, you 'd have seen that she did n't sing The Star-Spangled Banner with the rest of us. Her voice is splendid, and Professor Hale wanted her to lead, as she often does, but she would n't sing that, she said, no, not for anything ; and though we all begged, she refused, flat." " Shocking ! what total depravity ! I wonder is she converting Surrey to her heresies." No, she was n't ; not unless silence is more potent than words ; for after they had danced together Surrey brought her to one of the great windows facing to- wards the sea, and, leaning over her chair, there was stillness between them as their eyes went out into the night. What Answer? 47 A wild night ! great clouds drifted across the moon, which shone out anon, with light intensified, defining the stripped trees and desolate landscape, and then the beach, and " Marked with spray The sunken reefe, and far away The unquiet, bright Atlantic plain," while through all sounded incessantly the mournful roar of buffeting wind and surging tide ; and whether it was the scene, or the solemn undertone of the sea, the dance music, which a little while before had been so gay, sounded like a wail. How could it be otherwise? Passion is akin to pain. Love never yet penetrated an intense nature and made the heart light ; sentiment has its smiles, its blushes, its brightness, its words of fancy and feeling, readily and at will ; but when the internal sub-soiling is broken up, the heart swells with a steady and tre- mendous pressure till the breast feels like bursting ; the lips are dumb, or open only to speak upon indif- ferent themes. Flowers may be played with, but one never yet cared to toy with flame. There are souls that are created for one another in the eternities, hearts that are predestined each to each, from the absolute necessities of their nature; and when this man and this woman come face to face, these hearts throb and are one ; these souls recognize 48 What Answer? " my master ! " " my mistress ! " at the first glance, without words uttered or vows pronounced. These two young lives, so fresh, so beautiful ; these beings, in many things such antipodes, so utterly dis- similar in person, so unlike, yet like ; their whole ac- quaintance a glance on a crowded street and these few hours of meeting, looked into one another's eyes, and felt their whole nature set each to each, as the vast tide " of the bright, rocking ocean sets to shore at the full moon." These things are possible. Friendship is excellent, and friendship may be called love ; but it is not love. It may be more enduring and placidly satisfying in the end ; it may be better, and wiser, and more prudent, for acquaintance to beget esteem, and esteem regard, and regard affection, and affection an interchange of peaceful vows : the result, a well-ordered life and home. All this is admirable, no doubt ; an owl is a bird when you can get no other ; but the love born of a moment, yet born of eternity, which comes but once in a life- time, and to not one in a thousand lives, unquestion- ing, unthinking, investigating nothing, proving nothing, sufficient unto itself, ah, that is divine ; and this divine ecstasy filled these two souls. Unconsciously. They did not define nor compre- hend. They listened to the sea where they sat, and felt tears start to their eyes, yet knew not why. They- What Answer? 49 were silent, and thought they talked ; or spoke, and said nothing. They danced j and as he held her hand and uttered a few words, almost whispered, the words sounded to the listening ear like a part of the music to which they kept time. They saw a multitude of peo- ple, and exchanged the compliments of the evening, yet these people made no more impression upon their thoughts than gossamer would have made upon their hands. " Come, Francesca ! " said Clara Russell, breaking in upon this, " it is not fair for you to monopolize my cousin Will, who is the handsomest man in the room ; and it is n't fair for Will to keep you all to himself in this fashion. Here is Tom, ready to scratch out his eyes with vexation because you won't dance with him ; and here am I, dying to waltz with somebody who knows my step, to say nothing of innumerable young ladies and gentlemen who have been casting indignant and beseeching glances this way : so, sir, face about, march ! " and away the gay girl went with her prize, leaving Francesca to the tender mercies of half a dozen young men who crowded eagerly round her, and from whom Tom carried her off with triumph and rejoicing. The evening was over at last, and they were going away. Tom had said good night. " You are to be in New York, at my uncle's, Clara tells me." 3 5O What Answer? " It is true." " I may see you there ? " For answer she put out her hand. He took it as he would have taken a delicate flower, laid his other hand softly, yet closely, over it, and, without any adieu spoken, went away. " Tom always declared Willie was a little queer, and I 'm sure I begin to think so," said Clara, as she kissed her friend and departed to her room. CHAPTER V. "A breathing sigh, a sigh for answer, A little talking of outward things." JEAN INGELOW. AH, the weeks that followed ! People ate and drank and slept, lived and loved and hated, were born and died, the same world that it had been a little while before, yet not the same to them, never to seem quite the same again. A little cloud had fallen between them and it, and changed to their eyes all its proportions and hues. They were incessantly together, riding, or driving, or walking, looking at pictures, dancing at parties, listening to opera or play. " It seems to me Will is going it at a pretty tremen- dous pace somewhere," said Mr. Surrey to his wife, one morning, after this had endured for a space. " It would be well to look into it, and to know something of this girl." "You are right," she replied. "Yet I have such absolute faith in Willie's fine taste and sense that I feel no anxiety." " Nor I ; yet I shall investigate a bit to-night at Augusta's." 52 What Answer? " Clara tells me that when Miss Ercildoune under- stood it was to be a great party, she insisted on ending her visit, or, at least, staying for a while with her aunt, but they would not hear of it." " Mrs. Lancaster goes back to England soon ? " " Very soon." " Does any one know aught of Miss Ercildoune's family save that Mrs. Lancaster is her aunt ? " " If ' any one ' means me, I understand her father to be a gentleman of elegant leisure, his home near Philadelphia ; a widower, with one other child, a son, I believe; that his wife was English, married abroad ; that Mrs. Lancaster comes here with the best of letters, and, for herself, is most evidently a lady." "Good. Now I shall take a survey of the young lady herself." When night came, and with it a crowd to Mrs. Russell's rooms, the opportunity offered for the survey, and it was made scrutinizingly. Surrey was an only son, a well-beloved one, and what concerned him was investigated with utmost care. Scrutinizingly and satisfactorily. They were dan- cing, his sunny head bent till it almost touched the silky blackness of her hair. " Saxon and Norman," said somebody near who was watching them j " what a delicious contrast ! " ' They make an exquisite picture," thought the What Answer? 53 mother, as she looked with delight and dread : delight at the beauty ; dread that fills the soul of any mother when she feels that she no longer holds her boy, that his life has another keeper, and queries, " What of the keeper? " " Well ? " she said, looking up at her husband. " Well," he answered, with a tone that meant, well. " She 's thorough-bred. Democratic or not, I will always insist, blood tells. Look at her : no one needs to ask who she is. I 'd take her on trust with- out a word." " So, then, you are not her critic, but her admirer." " Ah, my dear, criticism is lost in admiration, and I am glad to find it so." " And I. Willie saw with our eyes, as a boy ; it is fortunate that we can see with his eyes, as a man." So, without any words spoken, after that night, both Mr. and Mrs. Surrey took this young girl into their hearts as they hoped soon to take her into their lives, and called her " daughter" in their thought, as a pleas- ant preparation for the uttered word by and by. Thus the weeks fled. No word had passed be- tween these two to which the world might not have listened. Whatever language their hearts and theii eyes spoke had not been interpreted by their lips. He had not yet touched her hand save as it met his, gloved or forn.al, or as it rested on his arm ; and yet, 54 What Answer? as one walking through the dusk and stillness of a sum- mer night feels a flower or falling leaf brush his cheek, and starts, shivering as from the touch of a disem- bodied soul, so this slight outward touch thrilled his inmost being ; this hand, meeting his for an instant, shook his soul. Indefinite and undefined, there was no thought beyond the moment ; no wish to take this young girl into his arms and to call her " wife " had shaped itself in his brain. It was enough for both that they were in one another's presence, that they breathed the same air, that they could see each other as they raised their eyes, and exchange a word, a look, a smile. What- ever* storm of emotion the future might hold for them was not manifest in this sunny and delightful present Upon one subject alone did they disagree with feel- ing, in other matters their very dissimilarity proving an added charm. This was a curious question to come between lovers. All his life Surrey had been a devotee of his country and its flag. While he was a boy Kossuth had come to these shores, and he yet remembered how he had cheered himself hoarse with pride and delight, as the eloquent voice and impassioned lips of the great Magyar sounded the praise of America, as the " refuge of the oppressed and the hope of the world." He yet remembered how when the hand, every gesture of which was instinct What Answer? 55 w'th power, was lifted to the flag, the flag, stainless, spotless, without blemish or flaw ; the flag which was " fair as the sun, clear as the moon," and to the op- pressors of the earth " terrible as an army with ban- ners," he yet remembered how, as this emblem of liberty was thus apostrophized and saluted, the tears had rushed to his boyish eyes, and his voice had said for his heart, " Thank God, I am an American ! " One day he made some such remark to her. She answered, "I, too, am an American, but I do not thank God for it." At another time he said, as some emigrants passed them in the street, "What a sense of pride it gives one in one's country, to see her so stretch out her arms to help and embrace the outcast and suffering of the whole world ! " She smiled bitterly, he thought ; and replied, " O just and magnanimous country, to feed and clothe the stranger from without, while she outrages and destroys her children within ! " " You do not love America," he said. " I do not love America," she responded. " And yet it is a wonderful country." "Ay," briefly, almost satirically, "a wonderful country, indeed ! " " Still you stay here, live here." " Yes, it is my country. Whatever I think of it, I 56 What Answer? will not be driven away from it ; it is my right to re- main." " Her right to remain ? " he thought ; " what does she mean by that ? she speaks as though conscience were involved in the thing. No matter ; let us talk of something pleasanter." One day she gave him a clew. They were looking at the picture of a great statesman, a man as famous for the grandeur of face and form as for the power and splendor of his intellect. " Unequalled ! unapproachable ! " exclaimed Surrey, at last. " f ha\ e seen its equal," she answered, very quietly, yet wjth a shiver of excitement in the tones. "When? where? how? I will take a journey to look at him. Who is he ? where did he grow ? " For response she put her hand into the pocket of her gown, and took out a velvet case. What could there be in that little blue thing to cause such emo- tion ? As Surrey saw it in her hand, he grew hot, then cold, then fiery hot again. In an instant by this chill, this heat this pain, his heart was laid bare to his own inspection. In an instant he knew that his arms would be empty did they hold a universe in which Francesca Ercildoune had no part, and that with her head on his heart the world might lapse from him unheeded ; and, with this knowledge, she held tenderly and caressingly, as he saw, another man's picture in her hand. What Answer? 57 His own so shook that he could scarcely take the case from her, to open it; but, opened, his eyes de- voured what was under them. A half-length, the face and physique superb. Of what color were the hair and eyes the neutral tints of the picture gave no hint ; the brow princely, breaking the perfect oval of the face ; eyes piercing and full ; the features rounded, yet clearly cut ; the mouth with a curious combination of sadness and disdain. The face was not young, yet it was so instinct with magnifi- cent vitality that even the picture impressed one more powerfully than most living men, and one involuntarily exclaimed on beholding it, " This man can never grow old, and death must here forego its claim ! " Looking up from it with no admiration to express for the face, he saw Francesca's smiling on it with a sort of adoration, as she, reclaiming her property, said, " My father's old friends have a great deal of enjoy- ment, and amusement too, from his beauty. One of them was the other day telling me of the excessive ad- miration people had always shown, and laughingly insisted that when papa wa* a young man, and ap- peared in public, in London or Paris, it was between two police officers to keep off the admiring crowd ; and," laughing a gay little laugh herself, " of course I believed him ! why should n't I ? " 3* 58 Wliat Answer? He was looking at the picture again. "What an air of command he has ! " " Yes. I remember hearing that when Daniel Web- ster was in London, and walked unattended through the streets, the coal-heavers and workmen took off their hats and stood bareheaded till he had gone by, thinking it was royalty that passed. I think they would do the same for papa." " If he looks like a king, I know somebody who looks like a princess," thought the happy young fellow, gazing down upon the proud, dainty figure by his side ; but he smiled as he said, " What a little aristocrat you are, Miss Ercildoune ! what a pity you were born a Yankee ! " " I am not a Yankee, Mr. Surrey," replied the little aristocrat, " if to be a Yankee is to be a native of America. I was born on the sea." " And your mother, I know, was English." " Yes, she was English." " Is it rude to ask if your father was the same ? " " No ! " she answered emphatically, " my papa is a Virginian, a Virginia gentleman," the last word spoken with an untransferable accent, " there are few enough of them." " So, so ! " thought Willie, " here my riddle is read. Southern Virginia gentleman. No wonder she has no love to spend on country or flag ; no wonder What Answer? 59 we could n't agree. And yet it can't be that, what were the first words I ever heard from her mouth ? " and, remembering that terrible denunciation of the " peculiar institution " of Virginia and of the South, he found himself puzzled the more. Just then there came into the picture-gallery, where they were wasting a pleasant morning, a young man to whom Surrey gave the slightest of recognitions, well- dressed, booted, and gloved, yet lacking the nameless something which marks the gentleman. His glance, as it rested on Surrey, held no love, and, indeed, was rather malignant. " That fellow," said Surrey, indicating him, " has a queer story connected with him. He was discharged from my father's employ to give place to a man wh 1 66 Whaf^nswerf New York, and am banished to the rear seat or the ' negro car.' I go to a hotel, open for the accommo- dation of the public, and am denied access ; or am re- quested to keep my room, and not show myself in parlor, office, or at table. I come within a church, to worship the good God who is no respecter of persons, and am shown out of the door by one of his insolent creatures. I carry my intelligence to the polls on election morning, and am elbowed aside by an American boor or a foreign drunkard, and, with oppro- brious epithets by law officers and rabble, am driven away. All this in the North ; all this without excuse of slavery and of the feeling it engenders ; all this from arrogant hatred and devilish malignity. At last, the country which has disowned me, the government which has never recognized save to outrage me, the flag which has refused to cover or to protect me, are in dire need and utmost extremity. Then do they cry for me and mine to come up to their help ere they perish. At least, they hold forth a bribe to secure me.? at least, if they make no apology for the past, they offer compensation for the future ? at least, they bid high for the services they desire ? Not at all ! " They say to one man, ' Here is twelve hundred dollars bounty with which to begin ; here is sixteen dollars a month for pay ; here is the law passed, and the money pledged, to secure you in comfort for the Wtiat Miswer? 167 % rest of life, if wounded or disabled, or help for your family, if killed. Here is every door set wide for you to rise, from post to post ; money yours, ad- vancement yours, honor, and fame, and glory yours ; the love of a grateful country, the applause of an ad- miring world.' " They say to another man, you, or me, or Sam out there in the field, ' There is no bounty for you, not a cent ; there is pay for you, twelve dollars a month, the hire of a servant; there is no pension for you, or your family, if you be sent back from the front, wounded or dead ; if you are taken prisoner you can be murdered with impunity, or be sold as a slave, without interference on our part. Fight like a lion ! do acts of courage and splendor ! and you shall never rise above the rank of a private soldier. For you there is neither money nor honor, rights secur- ed, nor fame gained. Dying, you fall into a nameless grave : living, you come back to your old estate of insult and wrong. If you refuse these tempting offers, we brand you cowards. If, under these infamous re- straints and disadvantages, you fail to equal the white troops by your side, you are written down inferiors. If you equal them, you are still inferiors. If you per- form miracles, and surpass them, you are, in a measure, worthy commendation at last ; we consent to see in you human beings, fit for mention and admiration, 1 68 Wkafr Answer? not as types of your color and of what you intrinsically are, but as exceptions ; made such by the habit of association, and the force of surrounding circum- stances.' " These are the terms the American people offer you, these the terms which you stoop to accept, these the proofs that they are learning a lesson of justice! So be it ! there is need. Let them learn it to the full ! let this war go on ' until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly destroyed.' Do not you interfere. Leave them to the teachings and the judgments of God." Ercildoune had spoken with such impassioned feel- ing, with such fire in his -eyes, such terrible earnest- ness in his voice, that Robert could not, if he would, interrupt him ; and, in the silence, found no words for the instant at his command. Ere he sum- moned them they saw some one approaching. " A fine-looking fellow ! fighting has been no child's play for him," said Robert, looking, as he spoke, at the empty sleeve. Mr. Ercildoune advanced to meet the stranger, and Surrey beheld the same face upon whose pictured sem- blance he had once gazed with such intense feelings, first of jealousy, and then of relief and admiration ; the same splendor of life, and beauty, and vitality. Surrey What Answer? 169 knew him at once, knew that it was Francesca's father, and went up to him with extended hand. Mr. Ercildoune took the proffered hand, and shook it warmly. " I am happy to meet you, Mr. Surrey." " You know me ? " said he with surprise. " I thought to present myself." " I have seen your picture." "And I yours. They must have held the mirror up to nature, for the originals to be so easily known. But may I ask where you saw mine ? yours was in Miss Ercildoune's possession." " As was yours," was answered after a moment's hesitation, Surrey thought, with visible reluctance. His heart flew into his throat. " She has my picture, she has spoken of me," he said to himself. "I wonder what her father will think, what he will do. Come, I will to the point immediately." " Mr. Ercildoune," said he', aloud, " you know some- thing of me ? of my position and prospects ? " " A great deal." " I trust, nothing disparaging or ignoble." "I know nothing for which any one could desire oblivion." " Thanks. Let me speak to you, then, of a matter which should have been long since proposed to you had I been permitted the opportunity. I love your daughter. I cannot speak about that, but you will un- 170 What Answer? derstand all that I wish to say. I have twice once by letter, once by speech let her know this and my desire to call her wife. She has twice refused, abso- lutely. You think this should cut off all hope ? " Ercildoune had been watching him closely. " If she does not love you," he answered, at the pause. " I do not know. I went away from here a little while ago with her peremptory command not to return. I should not have dared disobey it had I not learned thought in fact, but for some circumstances I beg your pardon I do not know what I am saying. I believed if I saw her once more I could change her de^rmination, could induce her to give me another response, and came with that hope." "Which has failed?" " Which has thus far failed that she will not at all see me ; will hold no communication with me. I should be a ruffian did I force myself on her thus with- out excuse or reason. My own love would be no apology did I not think, did I not dare to hope, that it is not aversion to me that induces her to act as she has done. Believing so, may I beg a favor of you ? may I entreat that you will induce her to see me, if only for a little while ? " Ercildoune smiled a sad, bitter smile, as he an- swered, " Mr. Surrey, if my daughter does not love you, it would be hopeless for you or for me to assail What Answer? 171 her refusal. If she does, she has doubtless rejected you for a reason which you can read by simply looking into my face. No words of mine can destroy or do that away." " There is nothing to destroy ; there is nothing to do away. Thank you for speaking of it, and making the way easy. There is nothing in all the wide world between us, there can be nothing between us, if she loves me ; nothing to keep us apart save her in- difference or lack of regard for me. I want to say so to her if she will give me the chance. Will you not help me to it ? " " You comprehend all that I mean ? " " I do. It is, as I have said, nothing. That love would not be worth the telling that considered extra- neous circumstances, and not the object itself." " You have counted all the consequences ? I think not. How, indeed, should you be able ? Come with me a moment." The two went up to the house, across the wide veranda, into a room half library, half loung- ing-room, which, from a score of evidences strewn around, was plainly the special resort of the master. Over the mantel hung the life-size portrait of an ex- cessively beautiful woman. A fine, spirituelle face, with proud lines around the mouth and delicate nos- trils, but with a tender, appealing look in the eyes, that claimed gentle treatment. This face said, "I was 172 What Answer? made for sunshine and balmy airs, but, if darkness and storm assail, I can walk through them unflinching, though the progress be short ; I can die, and give no sign." Willie went hastily up to this, and stood, absorbed, before it. "Francesca is very like her mother," said Ercildoune, coming to his side. It was his own thought, but he made no answer. " I will tell you something of her and myself; a very little story; you can draw the moral. My father, who was a Virginian, sent my brother and me to Eng- land when we were mere boys, to be trained and edu- cated. After his fashion, doubtless, he loved us ; for he saw that we had every advantage that wealth, and taste, and care could provide ; and though he never sent for us, nor came to us, in all the years after we left his house, and though we had no legal claim upon him, he acknowledged us his children, and left us the entire proceeds of hi? ; mmense estates, un- incumbered. We were so young when we went abroad, had been so tenderly treated at home, had seen and known so absolutely nothing of the society about us, that we were ignorant as Arabs of the state of feeling and prejudice in America against such as we, who carried any trace of negro blood. Our treat- ment in England did but increase this oblivion. " We graduated at Oxford ; my brother, who was two years older than I, waiting upon me that we might go What Answer? 1/3 together through Europe ; and together we had three of the happiest years of life. On the Continent I met her. You see what she is ; you know Francesca : it is useless for me to attempt to describe her. I loved her, she loved me, it was confessed. In a little while I called her wife ; I would, if I could, tell you of the time that followed : I cannot. We had a beauti- ful home, youth, health, riches, friends, happiness, two noble boys. At last an evil fate brought us to America. I was to look after some business af- fairs which, my agent said, needed personal supervi- sion. My brother, whose health had failed, was ad- vised to try a sea-voyage, and change of scene and cli- mate. My wife was enthusiastic about the glorious Republic, the great, free America, the land of my birth. We came, carrying with us letters from friends in England, that were an open sesame to the most jealously barred doors. They flew wide at our ap- proach, but to be shut with speed when my face was seen ; hands were cordially extended, and drawn back as from a loathsome contact when mine went to meet them. In brief, we were outlawed, ostracised, sacrificed on the altar of this devilish American prejudice, wholly American, for it is found nowhere else in the world, I for my color, she for connecting her fate with mine. " I was so held as to be unable to return at onqe, 174 What Answer? and she would not leave me. Then my brother drooped more and more. His disease needed the brightest and most cheerful influences. The social and moral atmosphere stifled him. He died ; and we, with grief intensified by bitterness, laid him in the soil of his own country as though it had been that of the stranger and enemy. " At this time the anti-slavery movement was pro- voking profound thought and feeling in America. I at once identified myself with it ; not because I was connected with the hated and despised race, but be- cause I loathed all forms of tyranny, and fought against them with what measure of strength I possessed. Doubtless this made me a more conspicuous mark for the shafts of malice and cruelty, and as I could no- where be hurt as through her, malignity exhausted its devices there. She was hooted at when she appeared with me on the streets ; she was inundated with infa-' mous letters ; she was dragged before a court of jus- tice upon the plea that she had defied the law of the state against amalgamation, forbidding the marriage of white and colored ; though at the time it was known that she was English, that we were married in England and by English law. One night, in the midst of the riots which in 1838 disgraced this city, our house was surrounded by a mob, burned over us ; and I, with a few faithful friends, barely succeeded in carrying her to What Answer f 175 a place of safety, uncovered, save by her delicate night-robe and a shawl, hastily caught up as we hur- ried her away. The yelling fiends, the burning house, the awful horror of fright and danger, the shock to her health and strength, the storm, for the night was a wild and tempestuous one, which drenched her to the skin, from all these she might have recovered, had not her boy, her first-born, been carried into her, bruised and dead, dead, through an accident of burning rafters and falling stones ; an accident, they said ; yet as really murdered as though they had wil- fully and brutally stricken him down. " After that I saw that she, too, would die, were she not taken back to our old home. The preparations were hastily made ; we turned our faces towards Eng- land ; we hoped to reach it at least before another pair of eyes saw the light, but hoped in vain. There on the broad sea Francesca was born. There her mother died. There was she buried." It was with extreme difficulty Ercildoune had con- trolled his face and voice, through the last of this distressing recital, and with the final word he bowed his forehead on the picture-frame, convulsed with agony, while voiceless sobs, like spasms, shook his form. Surrey realized that no words were to be said here, and stood by, awed and silent. What hand, however tender, could be laid on such a wound as this? 176 What Answer? Presently he looked up, and continued : " I came back here, because, I said, here was my place. I had wealth, education, a thousand advantages which are denied the masses of people who are, like me, of mixed race. I came here to identify my fate with theirs ; to work with and for them ; to fight, till I died, against the cruel and merciless prejudice which grinds them down. I have a son, who has just entered the service of this country, perhaps to die under its flag. I have a daughter," Willie flushed and started forward ; "I asked you when I began this recital, if you had counted all the consequences. You know my story ; you see with what fate you link yours ; reflect ! Francesca carries no mark of her birth ; her father or brother could not come inside her home without shocking society by the scandal, were not the story earlier known. The man whom you struck down this morning is one of our neighbors ; you saw and heard his brutal assault : are you ready to face more of the like kind ? Better than you I know what sentence will be passed upon you, what measure awarded. It is for your own sake I say these things ; consider them. I have finished." Surrey had made to speak a half score of times, and as often checked himself, partly that he should not interrupt his companion partly that he might be master of his emotions, and say what he had to utter without heat or excitement. What Answer? 177 " Mr. Ercildoune," he now said, " listen to me. I should despise myself were I guilty of the wicked and vulgar prejudice universal in America. I should be beneath contempt did I submit or consent to it. Two years ago I loved Miss Ercildoune without knowing aught of her birth. She is the same now as then ; should I love her the less ? If anything hard or cruel is in her fate that love can soften, it shall be done. If any painful burdens have been thrown upon her life, I can carry, if not the whole, then a part of them. If I cannot put her into a safe shelter where no ill will befall her, I can at least take her into my arms and go v\dth her through the world. It will be easier for us, I think, I hope, to face any fate if we are together. Ah, sir, do not prevent it ; do rfot deny me this happi- ness. Be my ambassador, since she will not let me speak for myself, and plead my own cause." In his earnestness he had come close to Mr. Ercildoune, putting out his one hand with a gesture of entreaty, with a tone in his voice, and a look in his face, irresistible to hear and behold. Ercildoune took the hand, and held it in a close, firm grasp. Some strong emotion shook him. The expression, a com- bination of sadness and scorn, which commonly held possession of his eyes, went out of them, leaving them radiant. " No," he said, " I will say nothing for you. I would not for worlds spoil your plea j prevent her 8* L i;8 What Answer? hearing, from your own mouth, what you have to say. I will send her to you," and, going to a door, gave the order to a servant, "Desire Miss Francesca to come to the parlor." Then, motioning Surrey to the room, he went away, buried in thought. Standing in the parlor, for he was too restless to sit, he tried to plan how he should meet her ; to think of a sentence which at the outset should disarm her indignation at being thus thrust upon him, and convey in some measure the thought of which his heart was full, without trespassing on her reserve, or telling her of the letter which he had read. Then another fear seized him ; it was two years since he had written, two years since that painful and terrible scene had been enacted in the very room where he stood, two years since she had confessed by deed and look that she loved him. Might she not have changed ? might she not have struggled for the mastery of this feeling with only too certain success ? might she not have leamed to regard him with esteem, perchance, with friendship, sentiment, anything but that which he desired or would claim at her hands? Silence and absence and time are pitiless destructives. Might they not? aye, might they not? He paced to and fro, with quick, restless tread, at the thought. All his love and his longing cried out against such a cruel supposition. He stopped by the side of the bookcase What Answer? 179 against which she had fallen in that merciless and suf- fering struggle, and put his hand down on the little projection, which he knew had once cut and wounded her, with a strong, passionate clasp, as though it were herself he held. Just then he heard a step, her step, yet how unlike ! coming down the stairs. Where he stood he could see her as she crossed the hall, coming unconsciously to meet him. All the brightness and airy grace seemed to have been drawn quite out of her. The alert, slender figure drooped as if it carried some palpable weight, and moved with a step slow and unsteady as that of sickness or age. Her face was pathetic in its sad pallor, and blue, sor- rowful circles were drawn under the deep eyes, heavy and dim with the shedding of unnumbered tears. It almost broke his heart to look at her. A feeling, piti- ful as a mother would have for her suffering baby, took possession of his soul, a longing to shield and pro- tect her. Tears blinded him ; a great sob swelled in his throat ; he made a step fonvard as she came into the room. "Papa," she said, without looking up, " you wanted me ? " There was no response. " Pa- pa ! " In an instant an arm enfolded hei; ; a pres- ence, tender and strong, bent above her ; a voice, husky with crowding emotions, yet sweet with all the sweetness of love, breathed, " My darling ! my dar- ling i " as his fair, sunny hair swept her face. i8o What Answer? Even then she remembered another scene, remem- bered her promise j even then she thought of him, of his future, and struggled to release herself from his embrace. What did he say ? what could he say ? Where were the arguments he had planned, the entreaties he had purposed ? where the words with which he was to tell his tale, combat her refusal, win her to a willing and happy assent ? All gone. There was nothing but his heart and its caresses to speak for him. Silent, with the ineffable stillness he kissed her eyes, her mouth, held her to his breast with a passionate fondness, a tender, yet masterful hold, which said, "Nothing shall separate us now." She felt it, recognized it, yielded without power to longer contend, clasped her arms about his neck, met his eyes, and dropped her face upon his heart with a long, tremulous sigh which confessed that heaven was won. CHAPTER XIV. " The golden hours, on angel wings, Flew o'er me and my dearie." BURNS. THE evening that followed was of the brightest and happiest; even the adieus spoken to the soldier who was just leaving his home did not sadden it. They were in such a state of exaltation as to see everything with courageous and hopeful eyes, and sent Robert off with the feeling that all these horrible real- ities they had known so long were but bogies to fright- en foolish children, and that he would come back to them wearing, at the very least, the stars of a major- general. Whatever sombre and painful thoughts filled Ercildoune's heart he held there, that no gloom might fall from him upon these fresh young lives, nor sadden the cheery expectancy of his son. Surrey, having carried the first line of defence, pre- pared for a vigorous assault upon the second. Like all eager lovers, his primary anxiety was to hear " Yes " ; afterwards, the day. To that end he was pleading with every resource that love and impatience could lend ; but Francesca shook her head, and smiled, and said that was a long way off, that was not to be 1 82 What Answer f thought of, at least till the war was over, and her sol- dier safe at home ; but he insisted that this was the flimsiest and poorest of excuses ; nay, that it was the very reverse of the true and sensible idea, which was of course wholly on his side. He had these few weeks at home, and then must away once more to chances of battle and death. He did not say this till he had exhausted every other entreaty; but at last, gathering her close to him with his one loving arm, " how fortunate," he had before said, " that it is the left arm, because if it were the other I could not hold you so near my heart ! " so holding her, he glanced down at the empty sleeve, and whispered, " My darling ! who knows ? 1 have been wounded so often, and am now only a piece of a fellow to come to you. It may be something more next time, and then I shall never call you wife. It would make no difference hereafter, I know : we belong to each other for time and eternity. But then I should like to feel that we were something more to one another than even be- trothed lovers, before the end comes, if come it does, untimely. Be generous, dearie, and say yes." He did not give utterance to anotner fear, which was that by some device she might again be taken away from him ; that some -cruel plan might be put in execution to separate them once more. He would not take the risk ; he would bind her to him so securely What Answer? 183 that no device, however cunning, no plan, however hard and shrewd, could again divide them. She hesitated long ; was long entreated ; but the result was sure, since her own heart seconded every prayer he uttered. At last she consented ; but insisted that he should go home at once, see the mother and father who were waiting for him with such anxious hearts, give to them as was their due at least a part of the time, and then, when her hasty bride-prep- arations were made, come back and take her wholly to himself. Thus it was arranged, and he left her. Into the mysteries which followed the mysteries of hemming and stitching, of tucking and trimming, ruffling, embroidering, of all the hurry and delicious confusion of an elegant yet hasty bridal trousseau let us not attempt to investigate. Doubtless through those days, through this sweet and happy whirl of emotion, Francesca had many anx- ious and painful hours : hours in which she looked at the future for him more than for herself with sor- rowful anticipations and forebodings. But with each evening came a letter, written in the morning by his dear hand ; a letter so full of happy, hopeful love, of resolute, manly spirit, that her cares and anxieties all took flight, and were but as a tale that is told, or as a dream of darkness when the sun shines upon a blessed reality. 1 84 What Answer f He wrote her that he had told his parents of his wishes and plans ; and that, as he had known before, they were opposed, and opposed most bitterly; but he was sure that time would soften, and knowledge de- stroy this prejudice utterly. He wrote as he believed. They were so fond of him, so devoted to him who was their only child, that he was assured they would not and could not cast him off, nor hate that which he loved. He did not know that his father, who had never before been guilty of a base action, his mother, who was fine to daintiness, were both so warped by this senseless and cruel feeling having seen Francesca and known all her beautiful and noble elements of personal character as to have written her a letter which only a losel should have penned and an outcast read. She did not tell him. Being satisfied that they two belonged to one another ; that if they were separated it would be as the tearing asunder of a perfect whole, leaving the parts rent and bleeding, she would not listen to any voice that attempted, nor heed any hand that strove to drive an entering wedge, or to divide them. Why, then, should she trouble him by the knowledge that this effort had again been made, and by those he trusted and honored. Let it pass. The future must decide what the future must be, meanwhile, they were to live in a happy present. He learned of it, however, before he left his home. What Answer? 185 Finding that neither persuasions, threats, nor prayers could move him, that he would be true to honor and love, they told him of what they had done; laid bare the whole intensity of their feeling ; and putting her on the one side, placing themselves on the other, said. " Choose, this wife, or those who have loved you for a lifetime. Cleave to her, and your father disowns you, your mother renounces, your home shuts its doors upon you, never to open. With the world and its judgment we have nothing to do ; that is be- tween it and you ; but no judgment of indifferent strangers shall be more severe than ours." A painful position ; a cruel alternative ; but not for an instant did he hesitate. Taking the two hands of father and mother into his solitary one, he said, " Father, I have always found you a gentleman ; mother, you have shown all the graces of the Christian character which you profess ; yet in this you are sup- porting the most dishonorable sentiment, the most infidel unbelief, with which the age is shamed. You are defying the dictates of justice and the teachings of God. When you ask me to rank myself on your side, I cannot do it. Were my heart less wholly enlisted in this matter, my reason and sense of right would rebel. Here, then, for the present at least, we must say fare- well." And so, with many a heart-ache and many a pang, he went away. 1 86 What Answer? As true love always grows with passing time, so his increased with the days, and intensified by the cruel heat which was poured upon it. He realized the torture to which, in a thousand ways, this darling of his heart had for a lifetime been subjected ; and his tenderness and love in which was an element of indignation and pathos deepened with every fresh revelation of the passing hours. When he came back to her he had few words to speak, and no airy grace of sentence or caress to bestow ; he followed her about in a curious, shadow-like way, with such a strain on his heart as made him many a time lift his hand to it, as if to check physical pain. For her, she was as one who had found a beloved master, able and willing to lighten all her burdens ; a physician, whose slightest touch brought balm and healing to every aching wound. And so these two when the time came, spite of the absence of friends who should have been there, spite of warnings and denunciations and evil prophe- cies, stood up and said to those who listened what their hearts had long Before confessed, that they were one for time and eternity ; then, hand in hand, went out into the world. For the present it was a pleasant enough world to them. Surrey had a lovely little place on the Hudson to which he would carry her, and pleased himself by fitting it up with every convenience and beauty that taste could devise and wealth supply. What Answer? 187 How happy they were there ! To be sure, nobody came to see them, but then they wished to see nobody ; so every one was well satisfied. The delicious lovers' life of two years before was renewed, but with how much richer and deeper delights and blissfulness ! They galloped on many a pleasant morning across miles and miles of country, down rocky slopes, and through wild and romantic glens. They drove lazily, on summer noons, through leafy fastnesses and cool forest paths ; or sat idly by some little stream on the fresh, green moss, with a line dancing on the crystal water, amusing themselves by the fiction that it was fishing upon which they were intent, and not the dear delight of watching one another's faces reflected from the placid stream. They spent hours at home, read- ing bits of poems, or singing scraps of love-songs, talk- ing a little, and then falling away into silence ; or she sat perched on his knee or the elbow of his chair, smoothing his sunny hair, stroking his long, silky mustache, or looking into his answering eyes, till the world lapsed quite away fromShem, and they thought themselves in heaven. An idle, happy time ! a time to make a worker sigh only to behold, and a Benthamite lift his hands in dep- recation and despair. A time which would not last, because it could not, any more than apple-blossoms and May flowers, but which was sweet and fragrant past all describing while it endured. 1 88 What Answer? Some -kindly disposed person sent Surrey a city pa- per with an item marked in such wise as to make him understand its unpleasant import without the reading. " Come," he said, " we will have none of this ; this owl does not belong to our sunshine," and so destroyed and forgot it. Others, however, saw that which he scorned to read. He had not been into the city since he called at his father's house, and walked into the re- ception room of his aunt, and been refused interview or speech at either place. " Very well," he thought, " I will go from this painful inhospitality and coldness to my Paradise ; " and he went, and remained. The only letter he wrote was to his old friend and favorite cousin, Tom Russell, who was away some- where in the far South, and from whom he had not heard for many a day, and hoped that he, at least, would not disappoint him ; would not disappoint the hearty trust he had in his breadth of nature and manly sensibility. And so, with clouds doubtless in the sky, but which they did not see, the sun shone so bright for them ; and some discords in the minor keys which they did not heed, the major music was so sweet and intoxi- cating, the brief, glad hours wore away, and the time for parting, with hasty steps, had almost reached and faced them. Meanwhile, what was occurring to oth ers, in other scenes and among other surroundings ? CHAPTER XV. " There are some deeds so grand That their mighty doers stand Ennobled, in a moment, more than kings." BOKER. IT was towards the evening of a blazing July day on Morris Island. The mail had just come in and been distributed. Jim, with some papers and a pre- cious missive from Sallie in one hand, his supper in the other, betook himself to a cool spot by the river, if, indeed, any spot could be called cool in that fiery sand, and proceeded to devour the letter with won- derful avidity while the " grub," properly enough, stood unnoticed and, uncared for. Presently he stopped, rubbed his eyes, and re-read a paragraph in the epistle before him, then re-rubbed, and read it again; and then, laying it down, gave utterance to a long whistle, expressive of unbounded astonishment, if not incre- dulity. The whistle was answered by its counterpart, and Jim, looking up, beheld his captain, Coolidge by name, a fast, bright New York boy, standing at a little distance, and staring with amazed eyes at a paper he held in his hands. Glancing from this to Jim, en- countering his look, he burst out laughing and came towards him. 190 What Answer? " Helloa, Given ! " he called : Jim was a favorite with him, as indeed with pretty much every one with whom he came in contact, officers and men, " you, too, seem put out. I wonder if you 've read anything as queer as that," handing him the paper and striking his finger down on an item; "read it." Jim read: " MISCEGENATION. DISGRACEFUL FREAK IN HIGH LIFE. FRUIT OF AN ABOLITION WAR. We are cred- ibly informed that a young man belonging to one of the first families in the city, Mr. W. A. S., we spare his name for the sake of his relatives, who has been en- gaged since its outset in this fratricidal war, has just given evidence of its legitimate effect by taking to his bosom a nigger wench as his wife. Of course he is disowned by his family, and spurned by his friends, even radical fanaticism not being yet ready for such a dose as this. However " Jim did not finish the homily of which this was the presage, but, throwing the paper on the ground, indignantly drove his heel through it, tearing and soiling it, and then viciously kicked it into the river. Said the Captain when this operation was completed, having watched it with curious eyes, " Well, my man, are you aware of the fact that that is my paper ? " " Don't care if it is. What in thunder did you bring the damned Copperhead sheet to me for, if you did n't want it smashed ? Ain't you ashamed of yourself hav- What Answer? 191 ing such a thing round ? How 'd you feel if you were picked up dead by a reb, with that stuff in your pock- et ? Say now ! " Coolidge laughed, he was always ready to laugh : that was probably why the men liked him so well, and stood in awe of him not a bit. " Feel ? horridly, of course. Bad enough, being dead, to yet speak, and tell 'em that paper did n't represent my politics : 'd that do?" Jim shook his head dubiously. " What are you making such a devil of a row for, I'd like to know ? it 's too hot to get excited. 'Tain't likely you know anything about Willie Surrey." " O ho I it is Mr. Will, then, is it ? Know him, don't I, though ? Like a book. Known him ever since he was knee-height of a grasshopper. I'd like to have that fellow " shaking his fist toward the floating paper " within arm's reach. Would n't I pummel him some ? O no, of course not, not at all. Only, if he wants a sound skin, I'd advise him, as a friend, to be scarce when I'm round, because it 'd very likely be damaged." " You think it 's all a Copperhead lie, then ! I should have thought so, at first, only I know Surrey 's capable of doing any Quixotic thing if he once gets his mind fixed on it." " I know what I know," Jim answered, slowly fold- 192 What Answer ? ing and unfolding Sallie's letter, which he still held in his hand. " I know all about that young lady he 's been manying. She 's young, and she 's handsome handsome as a picture and rich, and as good as an angel ; that 's about what she is, if Sallie Howard and I know B from a bull's foot." "Who is Sallie Howard? " queried the Captain. " She ? O," very red in the face, " she 's a friend of mine, and she 's Miss Ercildoune's seamstress." " Ercildoune ? good name ! Is she the lady upon whom Surrey has been bestowing his ?" " Yes, she is ; and here 's her photograph. Sallie begged it of her, and sent it to me, once after she had done a kind thing by both of us. Looks like a ' nigger wench,' don't she ?" The Captain seized the picture, and, having once fastened his eyes upon it, seemed incapable of remov- ing them. "This? this her?" he cried. " Great Caesar ! I should think Surrey would have the fellow out at twenty paces in no time. Heavens, what a beauty ! " Jim grinned sardonically : " She is rather pretty, now, ain't she ? " " Pretty ! ugh, what an expression ! pretty, indeed ! I never saw anything so beautiful. But what a sad face it is ! " " Sad ! well, 't ain't much wonder. I guess her life 's Wliat Answer ? 193 been sad enough, in spite of her youth, and her beauty, and her riches, and all the rest." "Why, how should that be ? " " Suppose you take another squint at that face." " Well." " See anything peculiar about it ? " " Nothing except its beauty." " Not about the eyes ? " " No, only I believe it is they that make the face so sorrowful." " Very like. You generally see just such big mourn- ful-looking eyes in the faces of people that are called octoroons." "What? " cried the Captain, dropping the picture in his surprise. " Just so, " Jim answered, picking it up and dust- ing it carefully before restoring it to its place in his pocket-book. " So, then, it is part true, after all." "True!" exclaimed Jim, angrily, "don't make an ass of yourself, Captain." " Why, Given, did n't you say yourself that she was an octoroon, or some such thing ? " " Suppose I did, what then ? " " I should say, then, that Surrey has disgraced him- self forever. He has not only outraged his family and his friends, and scandalized society, but he has 9 M 194 What Answer? run against nature itself. It 's very plain God Al- mighty never intended the two races to come to- gether." " O, he did n't, hey ? Had a special despatch from him, that you know all about it? I 've heard just such talk before from people who seemed to be pretty well posted about his intentions, in this particular matter, though I generally noticed they were n't chaps who were very intimate with him in any other way." The Captain laughed. "Thank you, Jim, for the compliment ; but come, you are n't going to say that nature has n't placed a barrier between these people and us ? an instinct that repels an Anglo-Saxon from a negro always and everywhere ? " " Ho, ho ! that's good ! why, Captain, if you keep on, you '11 make me talk myself into a regular aboli- tionist. Instinct, hey ? I'd like to know, then, where all the mulattoes, and the quadroons, and the octoroons come from, the yellow-skins and brown-skins and skins so nigh white you can't tell 'em with your specta- cles on ! The darkies must have bleached out amaz- ingly here in America, for you 'd have to hunt with a long pole and a telescope to boot to find a straight-out black one anywhere round, leastwise that 's my ob- servation." "That was slavery.' What Answer? 195 " Yes 't was, and then the damned rascals talk about the amalgamationists, and all that, up North. 'Twan't the abolitionists ; 'twas the slaveholders and their friends that made a race of half-breeds all over the country ; but, slavery or no slavery, they showed nature had n't put any barriers between them, and it seems to me an enough sight decenter andnore re- spectable plan to marry fair and square than to sell your own children and the mother that bore them. Come, now, ain't it ? " " Well, yes, if you come to that, I suppose it is." " You suppose it is ! See here, I 've found out something since I Ve been down here, and have had time to think; 't ain't the living together that troubles squeamish stomachs ; it 's the marrying. That 's what 's the matter ! " " Just about ! " assented the Captain, with an amused look, " and here 's a case in point. Surrey ought to have been shot for marrying one of that degraded race." " Bah ! he married one of his own race, if I know how to calculate." " There, Jim, don't be a fool ! If she 's got any negro blood in her veins she .'s a nigger, and all your talk won't make her anything else." " I say, Captain, I 've heard that some of your an- cestors were Indians : is that so ? " 196 What Answer? " Yes : my great-grandmother was an Indian chiefs daughter, so they say ; and you might as well claim royally when you have the chance." " Bless me ! your great-grandmother, eh ? Come, now, what do you call yourself, an Injun ? " " No, I don't. I call myself an Anglo-Saxon." "What, not call yourself an Injun, when your great-grandmother was one ? Here 's a pretty go ! " " Nonsense ! 'tis n't likely that filtered Indian blood can take precedence and mastery of all the Anglo- Saxon material it 's run through since then." " Hurray ! now you 've said it. Lookee here, Cap- tain. You say the Anglo-Saxon 's the master race of the world." " Of course I do." " Of course you do, being a sensible fellow. So do I ; and you say the negro blood is mighty poor stuff, and the race a long way behind ours." " Of course, again." " Now, Captain, just take a sober squint at your own logic. You back Anglo-Saxon against the field ; very well ! here 's Miss Ercildoune, we '11 say, one eighth negro, seven eighths Anglo-Saxon. You make that one eighth stronger than all the other seven eighths : you make that little bit of negro master of all the lot of Anglo-Saxon. Now I have such a good opinion of my own race that if it were t' other way about, I 'd What Answer? 197 think the one eighth Saxon strong enough to beat the seven eighths nigger. That 's sound, is n't it ? conse- quently, I call anybody that 's got any mixture at all, and that knows anything, and keeps a clean face, and ain't a rebel, nor yet a Copperhead, I call him, if it 's a him, and her, if it 's a she, one of us. And I mean to say to any such from henceforth, ' Here 's your chance, go in, and win, if you can, and anybody be damn'd that stops you ! ' " " Blow away, Jim," laughed the Captain, " I like to hear you ; and it 's good talk if you don't mean it." " I '11 be blamed if I don't." " Come, you 're talking now, you 're saying a lot more than you '11 live up to, you know that as well as I. People always do when they 're gassing." " Well, blow or no blow, it 's truth, whether I live up to it or not." And he, evidently with not all the steam worked off, began to gather sticks and build a fire to fry his bit of pork and warm the cold coffee. Just then they heard the plash of oars keeping time to the cadence of a plantation hymn, which came float- ing solemn and clear through the night : " My brudder sittin' on de tree ob life, An' he yearde when Jordan roll. Roll Jordan roll Jordan, roll Jordan, roll, Roll Jordan, roll ! " l They both paused to listen as the refrain was again and again repeated. 198 What Answer? " There 's nigger for you," broke out Jim, " what *n thunder 'd they mean by such gibberish as that ? " The Captain laughed. " Come, Given, don't quarrel with what 's above your comprehension. Doubtless there 's a spiritual meaning hidden away somewhere, which your unsanctified ears can't interpret." " Spiritual fiddlestick ! " "Worse and worse ! what a heathen you 're demon- strating yourself! Violins are no part of the heavenly chorus." " Much you know about it ! Hark, they 're at it again" ; and again the voices and break of oars came through the night : " O march, de angel march ! O march, de angel march ! O my soul arise in heaven, Lord, for to yearde when Jordan roll! Roll Jordan, roll Jordan, roll Jordan, roll." " Well, I confess that 's a little bit above my com- prehension, that is. Spiritual or something else. Lazy vermin ! they '11 paddle round in them boats, or lie about in the sun, and hoot all day and all night about ' de good Lord ' and ' de day ob jubilee,' and think God Almighty is going to interfere in their spe- cial behalf, and do big things for them generally." " It 's a fact ; they do all seem to be waiting for something." " Well, I reckon they need n't wait any longer. The What Answer? 199 day of miracles is gone by, for such as them, anyway. They ain't worth the salt that feeds them, so far as I can discover." Through the wash of the waters they could hear from the voices, as they sang, that their possessors were evidently drawing nearer. " Sense or not," said the Captain, " I never listen to them without a queer feeling. What they sing is gen- erally ridiculous enough, but their voices are the most pathetic things in the world." Here the hymn stopped ; a boat was pulled up, and presently they saw two men coming from the sands and into the light of their fire, ragged, dirty ; one shabby old garment a pair of tow pantaloons on each ; bareheaded, barefooted, great, clumsy feet, stupid and heavy-looking heads ; slouching walk, stooping shoulders ; something eager yet deprecating in their black faces. " Look at 'em, Captain ; now you just take a fair look at 'em ; and then say that Mr. Surrey's wife be- longs to the same family, own kith and kin, you ca - a - n't do it." " Faugh ! for heaven's sake, shut up ! of course, when it comes to this, I can't say anything of the kind." "'Nuff said. You see, I believe in Mr. Surrey, and what 's more, I believe in Miss Ercildoune, have reason to ; and when I hear anybody mixing her up 2OO What Answer? with these onry, good-for-nothing niggers, it 's more 'n I can stand, so don't let 's have any more of it " j and turning with an air which said that subject was ended, Jim took up his forgotten coffee, pulled apart some brands and put the big tin cup on the coals, and then bent over it absorbed, sniffing the savory steam which presently came up from it. Meanwhile the two men were skulking about among the trees, watching, yet not coming near, " at their usual work of wait- ing," as the Captain said. " Proper enough, too, let 'em wait. Waiting 's their business. Now," taking off his tin and looking to- wards them, " what d 'ye s'pose those anemiles want ? Pity the boat had n't tipped over before they got here. Camp's overrun now with just such scoots. Here, you ! " he called. The men came near. " Where 'd you come from ?" One of them pointed back to the boat, seen dimly on the sand. " Was that you howling a while ago, ' Roll Jordan/ or something ? " " Yes, massa." " And where did you come from ? no, you need n't look back there again, I mean, where did you and the boat too come from ? " " Come from Mass' George Wingate's place, massa." ' " Far from here ? " What Answer? 201 " Big way, massa." " What brought you here ? what did you come for?" "If you please, massa, 'cause the Linkum sojers was yere, an' de big guns, an' we yearde dat all our peo- ple 's free when dey gets yere." " Free ! what '11 such fellows as you do with free- dom, hey ? " The two looked at their interrogator, then at one another, opened their mouths as to speak, and shut them hopelessly, unable to put into words that which was struggling in their darkened brains, and then with a laugh, a laugh that sounded wofully like a sob, answered, " Dunno, massa." "What fools!" cried Jim, angrily; but the Cap- tain, who was watching them keenly, thought of a line he had once read, " There is a laughter sadder than tears." " True enough, poor devils ! " he added to himself. " Are you hungry ? " Jim proceeded. " I hope massa don't think we's come yere for to git suthin' to eat," said the smaller of the two, a little, thin, haggard-looking fellow, " we 's no beggars. Some ob de darkies is, but we 's not dem kind, Jim an' me, we's willin' to work, ain't we, Jim ? " " Jim ! " soliloquized Given, " my name, hey ? we '11 take a squint at this fellow." The squint showed two impoverished-looking wretch- 9* 2O2 What Answer? es, with a starved look in their eyes, which he did not comprehend, and a starved look in their faces and forms, which he did. " Come, now, are you hungry ? " he queried once more. " If ye please, massa," began the little one who was spokesman, ' little folks always are gas-bags,' Jim was fond of saying from his six feet of height, " if ye please, massa, we 's had nothin' to eat but berries an* roots an' sich like truck for long while." " Well, why the devil have n't you had something else then ? what Ve you been doing with yourselves for ' long while ' ? what d'ye mean, coming here starved to death, making a fellow sick to look at you ? Hold your gab, and eat up that pork," pushing over his tin plate, " 'n' that bread," sending it after, " 'n' that hard tack, 't ai'n't very good, but it 's better 'n roots, I reckon, or berries either, 'n' gobble up that coffee, double-quick, mind ; and don't you open your heads to talk till that grub 's gone, slick and clean. Ugh ! " he said to the Captain, " sight o' them fellows just took my appetite away ; could n't eat to save my soul ; lucky they came to devour the rations ; pity to throw them away." The Captain smiled, he knew Jim. " Poor cusses ! " he added presently, " eat like canni- bals, don't they ? hope they enjoy it. Had enough ?" seeing they had devoured everything put before them. W/tat Answer? 203 " Thankee, massa. Yes, massa. Bery kind, massa. Had quite 'nuff." " Well, now, you, sir ! " looking at the little one, " by the way, what 's your name ? " "'Bijah, if ye please, massa." " 'Bijah ? ^fbijah, hey ? well, I don't please ; how- ever, it's none of my name. Well, 'Bijah, how came you two to be looking like a couple of animated skele- tons ? that 's the next question." "Yes, massa." " I say, how came you to be starved ? Hai'n't they nothing but roots and berries up your way? Mass' George Wingate must have a jolly time, feasting, in that case. Come, what 's your story ? Out with the whole pack of lies at once." " I hope massa thinks we would n't tell nuffin but de truf," said Jim, who had not before spoken save to say, " Thankee," " cause if he don't bleeve us, ain't no use in talkin'." " You shut up ! I ain't conversing with you, raw- bones ! Speak when you 're spoken to ! Come, 'Bi- jah, fire away." " Bery good, massa. Ye see I 'se Mass' George Wingate's boy. Mass' George he lives in de back country, good long way from de coast, over a hun- dred miles, Jim calklates, an' Jim 's smart at cal- klathig ; well. Mass' George he 's not berry good to 2O4 What Answer? his people; ne^er was, an' he's been wuss 'n ever since the Linkum sojers cum round his way, 'cause it 's made feed scurce ye see, an' a lot of de boys dey tuck to runnin' away, so what wid one ting an' an- oder, his temper got spiled, an' he was mighty hard on us all de time. "At las' I got tired of bein' cuffed an' knocked round, an' den I yearde dat if our people, any of dem, got to de Fedral lines dey was free, so I said, ' Cum, 'Bijah, freedom 's wuth tryin' for'; an' one dark night I did up some hoe-cake an' a piece of pork an' started. I trabbeled hard 's I could all night, 'bout fifteen mile, I reckon, an' den as 't was gittin' toward mornin' I hid away in a swamp. Ye see I felt drefful bad, for I could year way off, but plain enuff, de bayin' of de hounds, an' I knew dat de men an' de guns an' de dogs was all after me ; but de day passed an' dey did n't come. So de next night I started off agen, an run an' walked hard all night, an' towards mornin' I went up to a little house standen off from de road, thinking it was a nigger house, an' jest as I got up to it out walked a white woman scarin' me awfully, an' de fust ting she axed me was what I wanted." " Tight shave ! " interrupted Jim, " what d' ye do then ? " " Well, massa, ye see I saw mighty quick I was in for a lie anyhow, so I said, ' Is massa at home ? ' . ' Yes,' What Answer? 205 says she, an' sure nuff, he cum right out. ' Hello, nigger ! ' he said when he seed me, ' whar you cum from? so I tells him from Pocotaligo, an' before he could ax any more queshuns, I went on an' tole him we cotched fifty Yankees down dere yesterday, an' massa he was so tickled dat he let me go to Barnwells to see my family, an' den I said I 'd got off de track an' was dead beat an' drefful hungry, an' would he please to sell me suthin to eat. At dat de woman streaked right into de house, an' got me some bread an' meat, an' tole me to eat it up an' not talk about payin', ' we don't charge good, faithful niggers nothin',' she said, so I thanked her an' eat it all up, an' den,* when de man had tole me how to go, I went right long till I got out ob sight ob de little house, an' den I got into de woods, an' turned right round de oder way an' made tracks fast as I could in dat direcshun." " Ho ! ho ! you 're about what I call a 'cute nigger," laughed Jim. " Come, go on, this gets interesting." " Well, directly I yearde de dogs. Dere was a pond little way off; so I tuck to it, an' waded out till I could just touch my toes an' keep my nose above water so 's to breathe. Presently dey all cum down, an' I yeatde Mass' George say, ' I '11 hunt dat nigger till I find him if takes a month. I'se goin' to make a zample of him,' so I shook some at dat, for I know 'd what Mass' George's zamples was. Arter while one ob de 206 What Answer? men says, ' He ain't yere, he 'd shown hisself before dis, if he was,' an' I spose I would, for I was pretty nearly choked, only I said to myself when I went in, ' I '11 go to de bottom before I '11 come up to be tuck,' so I jest held on by my toes an' waited. " I did n't dare to cum out when dey rode away to try a new scent, an' when I did I jest skulked round de edge ob de pond, ready to take to it agen if I yearde dem, an' when night cum I started off an' run an' walked agen hard 's I could, an' den at day-dawn I tuck to anoder pond, an' went on a log dat was stickin' in de water, and broke down some rushes an' bushes enuf to lie .down on an' cover me up, an' den I slept all day, for I was drefful tired an' most starved too. Next evenin' when it got dark, I went on agen, an' trabblin through de woods I seed a little light, an' sartin dis time dat it was a darkey's cabin, I made for it, an' it was. It was his'n," pointing to the big fellow who stood beside him, and who nodded his head in assent. " I had a palaver before he 'd let me in, but when I was in I seed what de matter was. He had a sojer dere, a Linkum sojer, bad wounded, what he 'd found in de woods, he was a runaway hisself, ye see, like me, an' he 'd tuck him to dis ole cabin an 'd been nussin him up for good while. When I seed dat I felt drefful bad, for I knowed dey was a huntin for me yet, What Answer f 207 an' I tought if de dogs got on de trail dey 'd get to dis cabin, sure : an' den dey 'd both be tuck. So I up an' tole dem, an' de sojer he says, ' Come, Jim, you 've done quite enuff fur me, my boy. If you 're in dan- ger now, be off with you fast as you can, an' God reward you, for I never can, for all you 've done for me.' " ' No,' says Jim, ' Capen, ye need n't talk in dat way, for I'se not goin to budge widout you. You got wounded fur me an' my people, an' now I '11 stick by you an' face any thing fur you if it 's Death hisself ! ' That 's just what Jim said ; an' de sojer he put his hand up to his face, an' I seed it tremble bad, he was weak, you see, an' some big tears cum out troo his fingers onto de back ob it. " Den Jim says, ' Dis is n't a safe place for any on us, an' we '11 have to take to our heels agen, an' so de sooner we 's off de better.' So he did up some vittels, all he had dere, an' gave 'em to me to tote, an' den before de Capen could sneeze he had him up on his back, an' we was off. " It was pretty hard work I kin tell you, strong as Jim was, an' we 'd have to stop an' rest putty ofen ; an' den, Jim an' I, we 'd tote him atween us on some boughs ; an' den we had to lie by, some days, all day, . an' we trabbled putty slow, cause we 'd lost our bearins an' was in a secesh country, we knowed, an* 208 What Answer? we had nuffin but berries an' sich to eat, an' got nigh starved. " One night we cum onto half a dozen fellows skulk- in' in de woods, an' at fust dey made fight, but d'rectly dey know'd we was friends, fur dey was some more Linkum sojers, an' dey 'd lost dere way, or ruther, dey know'd where dey was, but dey did n't know how to git way from dere. Dey was 'scaped pris'ners, dey told us ; when I yearde where 'twas I know'd de way to de coast, an' said I'd show 'em de way if dey'd cum long wid us, so dey did ; an' we got 'long all right till we got to de ribber up by Mass' Rhett's place." " Yes, I know where it is," said the Captain. " Den what to do was de puzzle. De country was all full ob secesh pickets, an' dere was de ribber, an' we had no boat, so Jim, he says, ' I know what to do ; fust I '11 hide you yere,' an' he did all safe in de woods ; ' an' den I '11 git ye suthin to eat from de niggers round,' an' he did dat too, do he could n't git much, for fear he'd be seen; an' den we, he and I, made some ropes out ob de tall grass like dat we 'd ofen made fur mats , an' tied dem together wid some oder grass, an' stuck a board in, an' den made fur de Yankee camp, an' yere we is." " Yes, ' said the black man Jim, here, breaking silence, " we '11 show you de way back ?f you kin go What Answer? 209 up in a boat dey can rest in, fur dey's most all clean done out, an' de capen's wound is awful bad yit." " This captain, what 's his name ? " inquired Coolidge. "His name is here," said Jim, carefully drawing forth a paper from his rags, " he has on dis some figgers an' a map of de country he took before he got wounded, an' some words he writ wid a bit of burnt stick just before we cum away, an' he giv it to me, an' tole me to bring it to camp, fur fear something might happen to him while we was away." " My God ! " cried Coolidge when he had opened the paper, and with hasty eyes scanned its contents, " it 's Tom Russell ; I know him well. This must be sent up to head-quarters, and I '11 get an order, and a boat, and some men, to go for them at once." ' All of which was promptly done. " See here ! I speak to be one of the fellows what goes," Jim emphatically announced. " All right. I reckon we '11 both go, Given, if the General will let us, and I think he will," which was a safe guess and a true one. The boat was soon ready and manned. 'Bijah, too weak to pull an oar, was left behind ; and Jim, really not fit to do aught save guide them, still insisted on taking his share of work. They found the place at last, and the men ; and taking them on board, Russell having to be 2 1 What A nswer ? moved slowly and carefully, they began to pull for home. The tide was going out, and the river low : that, with the heavily laden boat, made their progress lingering ; a fact which distressed them all, as they knew the night to be almost spent, and that the shores were so lined with batteries, open and masked, and the country about so scoured by rebels, as to make it al- most sure death to them if they were not beyond the lines before the morning broke. The water was steadily and perceptibly ebbing, the rowing growing more and more insecure, the danger becoming imminent. " Ease her off, there ! ease her off! " cried the Cap- tain, as a harsh, gravelly sound smote on his ear, and at the same moment a shot whizzed past them, showing that they were discovered, " ease her off, there ! or we 're stuck ! " The warning came too late, indeed, could not have been obeyed, had it come earlier. The boat struck ; her bottom grating hard on the wet sand. " Great God ! she 's on a bar," cried Coolidge, " and the tide 's running out, fast." " Yes, and them damned rebs are safe enough from our fire," said one of the men. A few scattering shot fell about them. " They 're going to make their mark on us, anyway,** put in another. What Answer 1 ? 211 " And we can't send 'em anything in return, blast 'em ! " growled a third. "That 's the worst of it," broke out a fourth, "to be shot at like a rat in a hole." All said in a breath, and the balls by this time falling thick and fast, a fiery, awful rain of death. The men were no cowards, and the captain was brave enough ; but what could they do ? To stand up was but to make figure-heads at which the concealed enemy could fire with ghastly certainty; to fire in return was to waste their ammunition in the air. The men flung themselves face foremost on the deck, silent and watchful. Through it all Jim had been sitting crouched over his oar. He, unarmed, could not have fought had the chance offered ; breaking out, once and again, into the solemn-sounding chant which he had been singing when he came up in his boat the evening before : " O my soul arise in heaven, Lord, for to yearde when Jordan roll, Roll Jordan, roll Jordan, roll Jordan, roll," the words falling in with the sound of the water as it lapsed from them. " Stop that infernal noise, will you ? " cried one of the men, impatiently. The noise stopped. "Hush, Harry, don't swear!" expostulated an- other, beside whom was lying a man mortally wound- 212 What Answer? ed. " This is awful ! 't ain't like going in fair and square, on your chance." " That 's so, it's enough to make a fellow pray," was the answer. Here Russell, putting up his hand, took hold of Jim's brawny black one with a gesture gentle as a woman's. It hurt him to hear his faithful friend even spoken to harshly. All this, while the hideous shower of death was dropping about them ; the water was ebbing, ebbing, falling and running out fast to sea, leaving them higher and drier on the sands ; the gray dawn was steadily brightening into day. At this fearful pass a sublime scene was enacted. " Sirs ! " said a voice, it was Jim's voice, and in it sounded something so earnest and strange, that the men involuntarily turned their heads to look at him. Then this man stood up, a black man, a little while before a slave, the great muscles swollen and gnarled with unpaid toil, the marks of the lash and the branding-iron yet plain upon his person, the shadows of a life-time of wrongs and sufferings looking out of his eyes. " Sirs ! " he said, simply, " somebody's got to die to get us out of dis, and it may as well be me," plunged overboard, put his toil-hardened shoulders to the boat ; a struggle, a gasp, a mighty wrench, pushed it off clear ; then fell, face foremost, pierced by a dozen bullets. Free at last ! CHAPTER XVI. " Ye died to live." BOKER. THE next day Jim was recounting this scene to some men in camp, describing it with feeling and earnestness, and winding up the narration by the declaration, "and the first man that says a nigger ain't as good as a white man, and a damn'd sight better 'n those graybacks over yonder, well " " Well, suppose he does ? " interrupted one of the men. " O, nothing, Billy Dodge, only he and I '11 have a few words to pass on the subject, that 's all" ; doub- ling up his fist and examining the big cords and mus- cles on it with curious and well-satisfied interest. " See here, Billy ! " put in one of his comrades, " don't you go to having any argument with Jim, he 's a dabster with his tongue, Jim is." " Yes, and a devil with his fist," growled a sullen- looking fellow. " Just so," assented Jim, " when a blackguard 's round to feel it." " Well, Given, do you like the darkies well enough 214 What Answer? to take off your cap to them ? " queried a sergeant standing near. " What are you driving at now, hey ? " "O, not much; but you'll have to play second fiddle to them to-night. The General thinks they 're as good as the rest of us, and a little bit better, and has sent over for the Fifty-fourth to lead the charge this evening. -What have you got to say to that ? " " Bully for them ! that 's what I 've got to say. Any objections? " looking round him. "Nary objec!" "They deserve it!" "They fought like tigers over on James Island ! " "I hope they '11 pepper the rebs well ! " " It ought to be a free fight, and no quarter, with them ! " " Yes, for they get none if they 're taken ! " " Go in, Fifty-fourth ! " These and the like exclamations broke from the men on all sides, with absolute, heartiness and good will. " It seems to "me," sneered a dapper little officer who had been looking and listening, " that the niggers have plenty of advocates here." Two or three of the men looked at Jim. " You may bet your pile on that, Major ! " said he, with becoming gravity ; " we love our friends, and we hate our ene- mies, and it 's the dark-complected fellows that are the first down this way." " Pretty-looking set of friends ! " " Well, they ain't much to look at, that 's a fact ; What Answer? 215 but I never heard of anybody saying you was to turn a cold shoulder on a helper because he was homely, except," this as the Major was walking away, " ex- cept a secesh, or a fool, or one of little Mac's staff officers." "Homely? what are you gassing about?" objected a little fellow from Massachusetts ; " the Fifty-fourth is as fine-looking a set of men as shoulder rifles anywhere in the army." "Jack's sensitive, about the credit of his State," chaffed a big Ohioan. " He wants to crack up these fellows, seeing they're his comrades. I say, Johnny, are all the white men down your way such little shav- ers as you ? " " For a felfow that 's all legs and no brains, you talk too much," answered Johnny. " Have any of you seen the Fifty-fourth ? " " I have n't." " Nor I." " Yes, I saw them at Port Royal." " And I." " And I." " Well, the Twenty-third was at Beaufort while they were there, and I used to go over to their camp and talk with them. I never saw fellows so in earnest ; they seemed ready to die on the instant, if they could help their people, or walk into the slaveholders any, first. They were just full of it ; and yet it seemed ab- surd to call 'em a black regiment ; they were pretty much all colors, and some of 'em as white as I am." 2i6 What Answer? " Lord," said Jim, " that 's not saying much, you Ve got a smutty face." The men laughed, Jack with the rest, as he dabbed at his heated, powder-stained countenance. " Come," said he, " that 's no fair, they 're as white as I am, then, when I Ve just scrubbed ; and some of them are first-raters, too ; none of your rag, tag, and bobtail. There 's one I remember, a man from Philadelphia, who walks round like a prince. He 's a gentleman, every inch, and he 's rich, and about the hand- somest-looking specimen of humanity I Ve set eyes upon for an age." " Rich, is he ? how do you know he 's rich ? " " I was over one night with Captain^are, and ha and this man got to talking about the pay for the Fifty- fourth. The government promised them regular pay, you see, and then when it got 'em refused to stick to its agreement, and they would take no less, so they have n't seen a dime since they enlisted ; and it 's a darned mean piece of business, that 's my opinion of the matter, and I don't care who knows it," looking round belligerently. " Come, Bantam, don't crow so loud," interrupted the big Ohioan ; " nobody 's going to fight you on that statement ; it 's a shame, and no mistake. But what about your paragon ? " " I '11 tell you. The Captain was trying to convince What Answer? 217 him that they had better take what they could get till they got the whole, and that, after all, it was but a pal- try difference. ' But,' said the man, ' it 's not the money, though plenty of us are poor enough to make that an item. It's the badge of disgrace, the stigma attached, the dishonor to the government. If it were only two cents we would n't submit to it, for the differ- ence would be made because we are colored, and we 're not going to help degrade our own people, not if we starve for it. Besides, it's our flag, and our government now, and we Ve got to defend the honor of both against any assailants, North or South, whether they 're Republican Congressmen or rebel sol- diers.' The Captain looked puzzled at that, and asked what he meant. ' Why,' said he, ' the United States government enlisted us as soldiers. Being such, we don't intend to disgrace the service by accepting the pay of servants.' " " That 's the kind of talk," bawled Jim from a fence- rail upon which he was balancing. " I 'd like to have a shake of that fellow's paw. What 's his name, d 'ye know ? " " Ercildoune." "Hey?" " Ercildoune." " Jemime ! Ercildoune, from Philadelphia, you say?" 10 218 What Answer? " Yes, do you know him? " " Well, no, I don't exactly know him, but I think I know something about him. His pa 's rich as a nob, if it 's the one I mean," and then finished sotto vote, " it 's Mrs. Surrey's brother, sure as a gun ! " "Well, he ought to be rich, if he ain't. As we, that 's the Captain and me, were walking away, the Cap- tain said to one of the officers of the Fifty-fourth who 'd been listening to the talk, ' It 's easy for that man to preach self-denial for a principle. He 's rich, I Ve heard. It don't hurt him any ; but it 's rather selfish to hold some of the rest up to his standard ; and I presume that such a man as he has no end of influence with them ! ' ^ " ' As he should,' said his officer. ' Ercildoune has brains enough to stock a regiment, and refinement, and genius, and cultivation that would assure him the high- est position in society or professional life anywhere out of America. He won't leave it though; for in spite of its wrongs to him he sees its greatness and goodness, says that it is his, and that it is to be saved, it and all its benefits, for Americans, no mat- ter what the color of their skin, of whom he is one. He sets plain enough that this war is going to break the slave's chain, and ultimately the stronger chain of prejudice that binds his people to the grindstone, and he 's full of enthusiasm for it, accordingly ; though I'm What Answer? 219 free to confess, the magnanimity of these colored men from the North who fight, on faith, for the government, is to me something amazing.' " " ' Why,' said the Captain, ' why, any more from the North than from the South ? ' " " Why ? the blacks down here can at least fight their ex-masters, and pay off some old scores ; but for a man from the North who is free already, and so has nothing to gain in that way, whose rights as a man and a citizen are denied, for such a man to enlist and to fight, without bounty, pay, honor, or promotion, without the promise of gaining anything whatever for himself, condemned to a thankless task on the one side, to a merciless death or even worse fate on the other, facing all this because he has faith that the great republic will ultimately be redeemed ; that some hands will gather in the harvest of this bloody sowing, though he be lying dead under it, I tell you, the more I see of these men, the more I know of them, the more am I filled with admiration and astonish- ment " Now here 's this one of whom we are talking, Er- cildoune, born with a silver spoon in his mouth : in- stead of eating with it, in peace and elegance, in some European home, look at him here. You said some- thing about his lack of self-sacrifice. He 's doing what he is from a principle ; and beyond that, it 's no won- 22O What Answer? der the men care for him : he has spent a small fortune on the most needy of them since they enlisted, find- ing out which of them have families, or any one de- pendent on them, and helping them in the finest and most delicate way possible. There are others like him here, and it 's a fortunate circumstance, for there 's not a man but would suffer, himself, and, what 's more, let his family suffer at home, before he 'd give up the idea for which they are contending now." " ' Well, good luck to them ! ' said the Captain as we came away ; and so say I," finished Jack. " And I," " And I," responded some of the men. " We must see this man when they come over here." " I '11 bet you a shilling," said Jim, pulling out a bit of currency, " that he '11 make his mark to-night." " Lend us the change, Given, and I '11 take you up," said one of the men. The others laughed. "He don't mean it," said Jim : which, indeed, he did n't. Nobody seemed in- clined to run any risks by betting on the other side of so likely a proposition. This talk took place late in the afternoon, near the head-quarters of the commanding General ; and the men directly scattered to prepare for the work of the evening : some to clean a bayonet, or furbish up a rifle ; others to chat and laugh over the chances and What Answer? 221 to lay plans for the morrow, the morrow which was for them never to dawn on earth ; and yet others to sit down in their tents and write letters to the dear ones at home, making what might, they knew, be a final farewell, for the fight impending was to be a fierce one, or to read a chapter in a little book carried from some quiet fireside, balancing accounts perchance, in anticipation of the call of the Great Captain to come up higher. Through the whole afternoon there had been a tre- mendous cannonading of the fort from the gunboats and the land forces : the smooth, regular engineer lines were broken, and the fresh-sodded embankments torn and roughened by the unceasing rain of shot and shell. About six o'clock there came moving up the island, over the burning sands and under the burning sky, a stalwart, splendid-appearing set of men, who looked equal to any daring, and capable of any heroism j men whom nothing could daunt and few things subdue. Now, weary, travel-stained, with the mire and the rain of a two days' tramp ; weakened by the incessant strain and lack of food, having taken nothing for forty- eight hours save some crackers and cold coffee ; with gaps in their ranks made by the death of comrades who had fallen in battle but a little time before, under all these disadvantages, it was plain to be seen of what 222 What Answer? stuff these men were made, and for what work they were ready. As this regiment, the famous Fifty-fourth, came up the island to take its place at the head of the storming party in the assault on Wagner, it was cheered from all sides by the white soldiers, who recognized and honored the heroism which it had already shown, and of which it was soon to give such new and sublime proof. The evening, or rather the afternoon, was a lurid and sultry one. Great masses of clouds, heavy and black, were piled in the western sky, fringed here and there by an angry red, and torn by vivid streams of lightning. Not a breath of wind shook the leaves or stirred the high, rank grass by the water-side ; a por- tentous and awful stillness rilled the air, the stillness felt by nature before a devastating storm. Quiet, with the like awful and portentous calm, the black regiment, headed by its young, fair-haired, knightly colonel, marched to its destined place and action. When within about six hundred yards of the fort it was halted at the head of the regiments already sta- tioned, and the line of battle formed. The prospect was such as might daunt the courage of old and well- tried veterans, but these soldiers of a few weeks seemed but impatient to take the odds, and to make light of impossibilities A slightly rising ground, raked What Answer? 223 by a murderous fire, to within a little distance of the battery ; a ditch holding three feet of water ; a straight lift of parapet, thirty feet high ; an impregnable po- sition, held by a desperate and invincible foe. Here the men were addressed in a few brief and burning words by their heroic commander. Here they were besought to glorify their whole race by the lustre of their deeds ; here their faces shone with a look which said, " Though men, we are ready to do deeds, to achieve triumphs, worthy the gods ! " here the word of command was given : "We are ordered and expected to take Battery Wagner at the point of the bayonet Are you ready ? " " Ay, ay, sir ! ready ! " was the answer. And the order went pealing down the line, " Ready ! Close ranks ! Charge bayonets ! Forward ! Double- quick, march ! " and away they went, under a scat- tering fire, in one compact line till within one hundred feet of the fort, when the storm of death broke upon them. Every gun belched forth its great shot and shell ; every rifle whizzed out its sharp-singing, death- freighted messenger. The men wavered not for an instant ; forward, forward they went ; plunged into the ditch ; waded through the deep water, no longer of muddy hue, but stained crimson with their blood ; and commenced to climb the parapet. The foremost line fell, and then the next, and the next. The ground 224 What Answer? was strewn with the wrecks of humanity, scattered prostrate, silent, where they fell, or rolling under the very feet of the living comrades who swept onward to fill their places. On, over the piled-up mounds of dead and dying, of wounded and slain, to the mouth of the battery ; seizing the guns ; bayoneting the gun- ners at their posts ; planting their flag and struggling around it ; their leader on the walls, sword in hand, his blue eyes blazing, his fair face aflame, his clear voice calling out, " Forward, my brave boys ! " then plunging into the hell of battle before him. Forward it was. They followed him, gathered about him, gained an angle of the fort, and fought where he fell, around his prostrate body, over his peaceful heart, shielding its dead silence by their living, pulsating ones, till they, too, were stricken down ; then hacked, hewn, battered, mangled, heroic, yet overcome, the remnant was beaten back. Ably sustained by their supporters, Anglo-African and Anglo-Saxon vied together to carry off the palm of courage and glory. All the world knows the last fought with heroism sublime : all the world forgets this and them in contemplating the deeds and the death of their compatriots. Said Napoleon at Auster- litz to a young Russian officer, overwhelmed with shame at yielding his sword, " Young man, be con- soled : those who are conquered by my soldiers may What Answer? 225 still have titles to glory." To say that on that memo- rable night the last were surpassed by the first is still to leave ample margin on which to write in glowing characters the record of their deeds. As the men were clambering up the parapet their color-sergeant was shot dead, the colors trailing stained and wet in the dust beside him. Ercildoune, who was just behind, sprang forward, seized the staff from his dying hand, and mounted with it upward. A ball struck his right arm, yet ere it could fall shattered by his side, his left hand caught the flag and carried it onward. Even in the mad sweep of assault and death the men around him found breath and time to hurrah, and those behind him pressed more gallantly forward to follow such a lead. He kept in his place, the colors flying, though faint with loss of blood and wrung with agony, up the slippery steep ; up to the walls of the fort ; on the wall itself, planting the flag where the men made that brief, splendid stand, and melted away like snow before furnace-heat. Here a bayonet thrust met him and brought him down, a great wound in his brave breast, but he did not yield ; dropping to his knees, pressing his unbroken arm upon the gaping wound, bracing himself against a dead comrade, the colors still flew ; an inspiration to the men aboxit him ; a defi- ance to the foe. At last when the shattered ranks fell back, sullenly 10* o 226 What Answer? and slowly retreating, it was seen by those who watched him, men lying for three hundred rods around in every form of wounded suffering, that he was painfully working his way downward, still holding aloft the flag, bent evidently on sarving it, and saving it as flag had rarely, if ever, been saved before. Some of the men had crawled, some had'been car- ried, some hastily caught up and helped by comrades to a sheltered tent out of range of the fire ; a hospital tent, they called it, if anything could bear that name which was but a place where men could lie to suffer and expire, without a bandage, a surgeon, or even a drop of cooling water to moisten parched and dying lips. Among these was Jim. He had a small field- glass in his pocket, and forgot or ignored his pain in his eager interest of watching through this the progress of the man and the flag, and reporting accounts to his no less eager companions. Black soldiers and white were alike mad with excitement over the deed ; and fear lest the colors which had not yet dipped should at last bite the ground. Now and then he paused at some impediment : it was where the dead and dying were piled so thickly as to compel him to make a detour. Now and then he rested a moment to press his arm tighter against his torn and open breast The rain fell in such tor- rents, the evening shadows were gathering so thickly, What Answer? 227 that they could scarcely trace his course, long before it was ended. Slowly, painfully, he dragged himself onward, step by step down the hill, inch by inch across the ground, to the door of the hospital ; and then, while dying eyes brightened, dying hands and even shat- tered stumps were thrown into the air, in brief, while dying men held back their souls from the eter- nities to cheer him, gasped out, " I did but do my duty, boys, and the dear old flag never once touched the ground," and then, away from the reach and sight of its foes, in the midst of its defend- ers, who loved and were dying for it, the flag at last fell. Meanwhile, other troops had gone up to the encoun- ter ; other regiments strove to win what these men had failed to gain ; and through the night, and the storm, and the terrific reception, did their gallant endeavor in vain. The next day a flag of truce went up to beg the body of the heroic young chief who had so led that marvellous assault. It came back without him. A ditch, deep and wide, had been dug ; his body, and those of twenty-two of his men found dead upon and about him, flung into it in one commor? heap- 228 What Answer? and the word sent back was, " We have buried him with his niggers." It was well done. The fair, sweet face and gallant breast lie peacefully enough under their stately monu- ment of ebony. It was well done. What more fitting close of such a life, what fate more welcome to him who had fought with them, had loved, and believed in them, had led them to death, than to lie with them when they died ? It was well done. Slavery buried these men, black and white, together, black and white in a common grave. Let Liberty see to it, then, that black and white be raised together in a life better than the old. CHAPTER XVII. " Spirits are not finely touched But to fine issues." SHAKESPEARE. SURREY was to depart for his command on Mon- day night, and as there were various matters which demanded his attention in town ere leaving, he drove Francesca to the city on the preceding Sunday, a soft clear summer evening, full of pleasai t sights and sounds. They scarcely spoke as, hand in hand, they sat drinking in the scene whilst the old gray, for they wished no high-stepping prancers for this ride, jogged on the even tenor of his way. Above them, the blue of the sky never before seemed so deep and tender , while in it floated fleecy clouds of delicate amber, rose, and gold, like gossamer robes of happy spir- its invisible to human eyes. The leaves and grass just stirred in the breeze, making a slight, musical murmur, and across them fell long shadows cast by the westering sun. A sentiment so sweet and pleas- urable as to be tinged with pain, took possession of these young, susceptible souls, as the influences of the time closed about them. In our happiest mo- ments, our moments of utmost exaltation, it is always 230 What Answer? thus : when earth most nearly approaches the beati- tudes of heaven, and the spirit stretches forward with a vain longing for the far off, which seems but a little way beyond ; the unattained and dim, which for a space come near. " Darling ! " said Surrey softly, " does it not seem easy now to die?" " Yes, Willie," she whispered, " I feel as though it would be stepping over a very little stream to some new and beautiful shore." Doubtless, when a pure and great soul is close to eternity, ministering angels draw nigh to one soon to be of their number, and cast something of the peace and glory of their presence on the spirit yet held by its cerements of clay. At last the ride and the evening had an end. The country and its dear delights were mere memories, fresh, it is true, but memories still, and no longer re- alities, in the luxurious rooms of their hotel. Evidently Surrey had something to say, which he hesitated and feared to utter. Again and again, when Francesca was talking of his plans and purposes, trusting and hoping that he might see no hard ser- vice, nor be called upon for any exposing duty, " not yet awhile," she prayed, at least, again and again he made as if to speak, and then, ere she could notice the movement, shook his head with a gesture of si- What Answer? 231 lence, or she seeing it, and asking what it was he had to say found ready utterance for some other thought, and whispered to himself, " not yet ; not quite yet. Let her rest in peace a little space longer." They sat talking far into the night, this last night that they could spend together in so long a time, how long, God, with whom are hid the secrets of the future, could alone tell. They talked of what had passed, which was ended, and of what was to come, which was not sure but full of hope, but of both with a feeling that quickened their heart-throbs, and brought happy tears to their eyes. Twice or thrice a sound from some far distance, un- decided, yet full of a solemn melody, came through the open window, borne to their ears on the still air of night, something so undefined as not consciously to arrest their attention, yet still penetrating their nerves and affecting some fine, inner sense of feeling, for both shivered as though a chill wind had blown across them, and Surrey half ashamed of the confession said, " I don't know what possesses me, but I hear dead marches as plainly as though I were following a sol- dier's funeral." Francesca at that grew white, crept closer to his breast, and spread out her arms as if to defend him by that slight shield from some impending danger ; then both laughed at these foolish and superstitious fan- 232 What Answer? cies, and went on with their cheerful and tender talk. Whatever the sound was, it grew plainer and came nearer ; and, pausing to listen, they discovered it was a mighty swell of human voices and the marching of many feet. " A regiment going through," said they, and ran to the window to see if it passed their way, looking for it up the long street, which lay solemn and still in the moonlight. On either side the palace-like houses stood stately and dark, like giant sentinels guarding the magnificent avenue, from whence was banished every sight and sound of the busy life of day ; not a noise, not a footfall, not a solitary soul abroad, not a wave nor a vestige of the great restless sea of humanity which a little space before surged through it, and which, in a little while to come, would rise and swell to its full, and then ebb, and fall, and drop away once more into silence and nothingness. Through this white stillness there came marching a regiment of men, without fife or drum, moving to the music of a refrain which lifted and fell on the quiet air. It was the Battle Hymn of the Republic, and the two listeners presently distinguished the words, " In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me ; As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While God is marching on." What Answer? 233 The effect of this ; the thousand voices which sang ; the marching of twice one thousand feet ; the majesty of the words ; the deserted street ; the clear moonlight streaming over the men, reflected from their gleam- ing bayonets, brightening the faded blue of their uni- forms, illumining their faces which, one and all, seemed to wear and probably did wear a look more sol- emn and earnest than that of common life and feel- ing, the combined effect of it all was something in- describably impressive : inspiring, yet solemn. They stood watching and listening till the pageant had vanished, and then turned back into their room, Francesca taking up the refrain and singing the line, " As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While God is marching on." Surrey's face brightened at the rapt expression of hers. " Sing it again, dearie ! " he said. She sang it again. " Do you mean it ? " he asked then. " Can you sing it, and mean it with all your heart, for me? " She looked at him with an expression of anxiety and pain. " What are you asking, Willie ? " He sat down; taking her upon his knee, and with the old fond gesture, holding her head to his heart, "I should have told you before, dearie, but I did not wish to throw any shadow on the happy days we have been spending together ; they were few and brief 234 What Answer? enough without marring them ; and I was certain of the effect it would have upon you, by your incessant anxiety for Robert." She drew a long, gasping sigh, and started away from his hold : " O Willie, you are not going to " His arm drew her back to her resting-place. " I do not return to my command, darling. I am to raise a black brigade." " Freedmen ? " " Yes, dearie." " Willie, and that act just passed ! " " It is true ; yet, after all, it is but one risk more." " One ? O Willie, it is a thousand. You had that many chances of escape where you were ; you might be wounded and captured a score of times, and come home safe at last ; but this ! " " I know." " To go into every battle with the sentence of death hanging over you; to know that if you are anywhere captured, anyhow made prisoner, you are condemned to die, O Willie, I can't bear it ; I can't bear it ! I shall die, or go mad, to carry such a thought all the time." For answer he only held her close, with his face rest- ing upon her hair, and in the stillness they could hear each other's heart beat. "It is God's service," he said, at last What Answer? 235 " I know." " It will end slavery and the war more effectually than aught else." " I know." " It will make these freedmen, wherever they fight, free men. It will give them and their people a sense of dignity and power that might otherwise take gener- ations to secure." " I know." " And I. Both feeling and knowing this, who so fit to yield and to do for such a cause ? If those who see do not advance, the blind will never walk." Silence for a space again fell between them. Fran- cesca moved in his arm. " Dearie." She looked up. " I want to do no half service. I go into this heart and soul, but I do not wish to go alone. It will be so much to me to know that you are quite willing, and bade me go. Think what it is." 5 She did. For an instant all sacrifices appeared easy, all burdens light. She could send him out to death unfaltering. One of those sublime moods in which martyrdom seems glorious filled and possessed her. She took away her clinging arms from his neck, and said, " Go, whether it be for life or for death j whether you come back to me or go up to God ; I am willing glad to yield you to such a cause." 236 What Answer? It was finished. There was nothing more to be said. Both had climbed the mount of sacrifice, and sat still with God. After a while the cool gray dawn stole into their room. The night had passed in this communion, and another day come. There were many "last things" which claimed Surrey's attention ; and he, wishing to get through them early, so as to have the afternoon and evening undisturbed with Francesca, plunged into a stinging bath to refresh him for the day, breakfasted, and was gone. He attended to his business, came across many an old acquaintance and friend, some of whom greeted him coldly ; a few cut him dead ; whilst others put out their hands with cordial frankness, and one or two congratulated him heartily upon his new condition and happiness. These last gave him fresh courage for the task which he had set himself. If friends regarded the matter thus, surely they his father and mother would relent, when he came to say what might be a final adieu. He ran up the steps, rang the bell, and, speaking a pleasant word to the old servant, went directly to his mother's room. His father had not yet gone down town ; thus he found them together. They started at seeing him, and his mother, forgetting for the instant What Answer? 237 all her pride, chagrin, and anger, had her arms about his neck, with the cry, " O Willie, Willie," which came from the depths of her heart ; then seeing her husband's face, and recovering herself, sat down cold and still. It was a painful interview. He could not leave without seeing them once more ; he longed for a lov- ing good by ; but after that first outburst he almost wished he had not forced the meeting. He did not speak of his wife, nor did they ; but a barrier as of adamant was raised between them, and he felt as though congealing in the breath of an iceberg. At length he rose to go. " Father ! " he said then, " perhaps you will care to know that I do not return to my old command, but have been commissioned to raise a brigade from the freedmen." Both father and mother knew the awful peril of this service, and both cried, half in suffering, half in an- ger, "This is your wife's work!" while his fathei added, with a passionate exclamation, " It is right, quite right, that you should identify yourself with her people. Well, go your way. You have made your bed ; lie in it." The blood flushed into Surrey's face. He opened his lips, and shut them again. At last he said , "Father, will you never forego this cruel preju- dice?" 238 What Answer? " Never ! " answered his mother, quickly. " Never ! " repeated his father, with bitter emphasis. " It is a feeling that will never die out, and ought never to die out, so long as any of the race remain in America. She belongs to it, that is enough." Surrey urged no further ; but with few words, con- strained on their part, though under its covering of pride the mother's heart was bleeding for him, sad and earnest on his, the farewell was spoken, and they watched him out of the room. How and when would they see him again ? There was one other call upon his time. The day was wearing into the afternoon, but he would not neglect it. This was to see his old protege, Abram Franklin, in whom he had never lost interest, and for whose welfare he had cared, though he had not seen him in more than two years. He knew that Abram was ill, had been so for a long time, and wished to see him and speak to him a few friendly and cheer- ing words, sure, from what the boy's own hand had written, that this would be his last opportunity upon earth to so do. Thus he went on from his father's stately palace up Fifth Avenue, turned into the quiet side street, and knocked at the little green door. Mrs. Franklin came to open it, her handsome face thinner and sadder than of old. She caught Surrey's hand between both of What Answer? 239 hers with a delighted cry: "Is it you, Mr. Willie? How glad I am to see you ! How glad Abrarn will be ! How good of you to come ! " And, holding his hand as she used when he was a boy, she led him up stairs to the sick-room. This room was even cosier than the two below ; its curtains and paper cheerfuller ; its furniture of quainter and more hospitable aspect ; its windows letting in more light and air ; everything clean and homely, and pleasant for weary, suffering eyes to look upon. Abram was propped up in bed, his dark, intelligent face worn to a shadow, fiery spots breaking through the tawny hue upon cheeks and lips, his eyes bright with fever. Surrey saw, as he came and sat beside him, that for him earthly sorrow and toil were almost ended. He had brought some fruit and flowers, and a little book. This last Abram, having thanked him eagerly for all, stretched out his hand to examine. " You see, Mr. Willie, I have not gotten over my old love," he said, as his fingers closed upon it. " Whit- tier ? ' In War-Time ' ? that is fine. I can read about it, if I can't do anything in it," and he lay for a while quietly turning over the pages. Mrs. Franklin had gone out to do an errand, and the two were alone. " Do you know, Mr. Willie," said Abram, putting his finger upon the titles of two successive poems, " The Waiting," and " The Summons," " I had hard work to 240 What Answer? submit to this sickness 1 a few months ago? I fought against it strong ; do you know why ? " " Not your special reason. What was it ? " " I had waited so long, you see, I, and my peo- ple, for a chance. It made me quite wild to watch this big fight go on, and know that it was all about us, and not be allowed to participate ; and at last when the chance came, and the summons, and the way was opened, I could n't answer, nor go. It 's not the dying I care for ; I M be willing to die the first battle I was in ; but I want to do something for the cause before death comes." The book was lying open where it had fallen from his hand, and Surrey, glancing down at the very poem of which he spoke, said gently, " Here is your answer, Franklin, better than any I can make ; it ought to comfort you ; listen, it is God's truth ! ' O power to do ! O baffled will ! O prayer and action ! ye are one ; Who may not strive may yet fulfil The harder task of standing still, And good but wished with God is done ! ' " * It is so," said Abram. " You act and I pray, and you act for me and mine. I 'd like to be under you when you get the troops you were telling me about ; but God knows best" Surrey sat gazing earnestly into space, crowded by What Answer? 241 emotions called up by these last words, whilst Abram lay Watching him with admiring and loving eyes. " For me and mine," he repeated softly, his look fas- tening on the blue sleeve, which hung, limp and empty, near his hand. This he put out cautiously, but drew it back at some slight movement from his companion ; then, seeing that he was still absorbed, advanced it once more, and slowly, timidly, gently, lifted it to his mouth, pressing his lips upon it as upon a shrine. " For me and mine ! " he whispered, " for me and mine ! " tears dimming the pathetic, dying eyes. The peaceful quiet was broken by a tempest of aw- ful sound, groans and shrieks and yells mingled in horrible discord, blended with the trampling of many feet, noises which seemed to their startled and ex- cited fancies like those of hell itself. The next moment a door was flung open ; and Mrs. Franklin, bruised, lame, her garments torn, blood flowing from a cut on her head, staggered into the room. " O Lord ! O Lord Jesus ! " she cried, " the day of wrath has come ! " and fell, shuddering and crying, on the floor. CHAPTER XVIII. " Will the future come? It seems that we may almost ask this question, when we see such terrible shadow." VICTOR HUGO. HERE it will be necessary to consider some facts which, while they are rather in the domain of the grave recorder of historical events, than in that of the narrator of personal experiences, are yet essential to the comprehension of the scenes in which Surrey and Francesca took such tragic parts. Following the proclamation for a draft in the city ot New York, there had been heard on all sides from the newspaper press which sympathized with and aided the rebellion, premonitions of the coming storm ; denunciations of the war, the government, the sol- diers, of the harmless and inoffensive negroes ; angry incitings of the poor man to hatred against the rich, since the rich man could save himself from the neces- sity of serving in the ranks by the payment of three hundred dollars of commutation money ; incendiary appeals to the worst passions of the most ignorant portion of the community ; and open calls to insurrec- tion and arms to resist the peaceable enforcement of a law enacted in furtherance of the defence of the na- tion's life. What Answer? 243 Doubtless this outbreak had been intended at the time of the darkest and most disastrous days of the Republic ; when the often-defeated and sorely dispirited Army of the Potomac was marching northward to cover Washington and Baltimore, and the victorious legions of traitors under Lee were swelling across the border, into a loyal State ; when Grant stood in seem- ingly hopeless waiting before Vicksburg, and Banks before Port Hudson ; and the whole people of the North, depressed and disheartened by the continued series of defeats to our arms, were beginning to look each at his neighbor, and whisper with white lips, " Perhaps, after all, this struggle is to be in vain." Had it been attempted at this precise time, it would, without question, have been, not a riot, but an insur- rection, would have been a portion of the army of rebellion, organized and effective for the prosecution of the war, and not a mob, hideous and devilish in its work of destruction, yet still a mob ; and as such to be beaten down and dispersed in a comparatively short space of time. On the morning of Monday, the thirteenth of July, began this outbreak, unparalleled in atrocities by anything in American history, and equalled only by the horrors of the worst days of the French Revolu- tion. Gangs of men and boys, composed of railroad employees, workers in machine-shops, and a vast 244 . What Answer? crowd of those who lived by preying upon others, thieves, pimps, professional ruffians, the scum of tlie city, jail-birds, or those who were running with swift feet to enter the prison-doors, began to gather on the corners, and in streets and alleys where they lived ; from thence issuing forth they visited the great estab- lishments on the line of their advance, commanding their instant close and the companionship of the workmen, many of them peaceful and orderly men, on pain of the destruction of one and a murderous assault upon the other, did not their orders meet with instant compliance. A body of these, five or six hundred strong, gather- ed about one of the enrolling-offices in the upper part of the city, where the draft was quietly proceeding, and opened the assault upon it by a shower of clubs, bricks, and paving-stones torn from the streets, fol- lowing it up by a furious rush into the office. Lists, records, books, the drafting-wheel, every article of fur- niture or work in the room was rent in pieces, and strewn about the floor or flung into the street ; while the law officers, the newspaper reporters, who are expected to be everywhere, and the few peaceable spectators, were compelled to make a hasty retreat through an opportune rear exit, accelerated by the curses and blows of the assailants. A safe in the room, which contained some of the What Answer? 245 hated records, was fallen upon by the men, who strove to wrench open its impregnable lock with their naked hands, and, baffled, beat them on its iron doors and sides till they were stained with blood, in a mad frenzy of senseless hate and fury. And then, finding every portable article destroyed, their thirst for ruin grow- ing by the little drink it had had, and believing, or rather hoping, that the officers had taken refuge in the upper rooms, set fire to the house, and stood watching the slow and steady lift of the flames, filling the air with demoniac shrieks and yells, while they waited for the prey to escape from some door or window, from the merciless fire to their merciless hands. One of these, who was on the other side of the street, courageously stepped forward, and, telling them that they had utterly demolished all they came to seek, informed them that helpless women and little children were in the house, and besought them to extinguish the flames and leave the ruined premises ; to disperse, or at least to seek some other scene. By his dress recognizing in him a government offi- cial, so far from hearing or heeding his humane appeal, they set upon him with sticks and clubs, and beat him till his eyes were blind with blood, and he bruised and mangled succeeded in escaping to the handful of police who stood helpless before this howling crew, now increased to thousands. With difficulty and pain 246 What Answer 1 the inoffensive tenants escaped from the rapidly spread- ing fire, which, having devoured the house originally lighted, swept across the neighboring buildings till the whole block stood a mass of burning flames. The firemen came up tardily and reluctantly, many of them of the same class as the miscreants who surrounded them, and who cheered at their approach, but either made no attempt to perform their duty, or so feeble and farcical a one, as to bring disgrace upon a service they so generally honor and ennoble. At last, when there was here nothing more to ac- complish, the mob, swollen to a frightful size, includ- ing myriads of wretched, drunken women, and the half-grown, vagabond boys of the pavements, rushed through the intervening streets, stopping cars and in- sulting peaceable citizens on their way, to an armory where were manufactured -and stored carbines and guns for the government. In anticipation of the at- tack, this, earlier in the day, had been fortified by a police squad capable of coping with an ordinary crowd of ruffians, but as chaff before fire in the pres- ence of these murderous thousands. Here, as before, the attack was begun by a rain of missiles gathered from the streets ; less fatal, doubtless, than more civ- ilized anus, but frightful in the ghastly wounds and injuries they inflicted. Of this no notice was taken by those who were stationed within ; it was repeated. What Answer? 247 A.t last, finding they were treated with contemptuous silence, and that no sign of surrender was offered, the crowd swayed back, then forward, in a combined attempt to force the wide entrance-doors. Heavy hammers and sledges, which had been brought from forges and workshops, caught up hastily as they gath- ered the mechanics into their ranks, were used with frightful violence to beat them in, at last successfully. The foremost assailants began to climb the stairs, but were checked, and for the moment driven back by the fire of the officers, who at last had been com- manded to resort to their revolvers. A half-score fell wounded ; and one, who had been acting in some sort as their leader, a big, brutal, Irish ruffian, dropped dead. The pause was but for an instant. As the smoke cleared away there was a general and ferocious on- slaught upon the armory ; curses, oaths, revilings, hideous and obscene blasphemy, with terrible yells and cries, filled the air in every accent of the English tongue save that spoken by a native American. Such were there mingled with the sea of sound, but they were so few and weak as to be unnoticeable in the roar of voices. The paving-stones flew like hail, until the street was torn into gaps and ruts, and every win- dow-pane, and sash, and doorway, was smashed or broken. Meanwhile, divers attempts were made to 248 WJtat Answer? fire the building, but failed through haste or ineffect- ual materials, or the vigilant watchfulness of the be- sieged. In the midst of this gallant defence, word was brought to the defenders from head-quarters that nothing could be done for their support ; and that, if they would save their lives, they muslSftnake a quick and orderly retreat. Fortunately, there was a side passage with which the mob was unacquainted, and, one by one, they succeeded in gaining this, and van- ishing. A few, too faithful or too plucky to retreat before such a foe, persisted in remaining at their posts till the fire, which had at last been communicated to the building, crept unpleasantly near ; then, by drop- ping from sUjhto sill of the broken windows, or sliding by their hands and feet down the rough pipes and stones, reached the pavement, but not without inju- ries, and blows, and broken bones, which disabled for a lifetime, if indeed they did not die in the hospitals to which a few of the more mercifully disposed carried them. The work thus begun, continued, gathering in force and fury as the day wore on. Police-stations, enroll- ing-offices, rooms or buildings used in any way by government authority, or obnoxious as representing the dignity of law, were gutted, destroyed, then left to the mercy of the flames. Newspaper offices, whose issues had been a fire in the rear of the nation's What Answer? 249 armies by extenuating and defending treason, and through violent and incendiary appeals stirring up " lewd fellows of the baser sort " to this very carnival of ruin and blood, were cheered as the crowd went by. Those that had been faithful to loyalty and law were hooted, stoned, and even stormed by the army of miscreants who were only driven off by the gallant and determined charge of the police, and in one place by the equally gallant, and certainly unique defence, which came from turning the boiling water from the engines upon the howling wretches, who, unprepared for any such warm reception as this, beat a precipitate and general retreat. Before night fell it was no longer one vast crowd collected in a single section, but great numbers of gatherings, scattered over the whole length and breadth of the city, some of them engaged in actual work of demolition and ruin ; others with clubs and weapons in their hands, prowl- ing round apparently with no definite atrocity to per- petrate, but ready for any iniquity that might offer, and, by way of pastime, chasing every stray police officer, or solitary soldier, or inoffensive negro, who crossed the line of their vision ; these three objects the badge of a defender of the law, the uniform of the Union army, the skin of a helpless and outraged race acted upon these madmen as water acts upon a rabid dog. ii 250 What Answer? Late in the afternoon a crowd which could have numbered not less than ten thousand, the majority of whom were ragged, frowzy, drunken women, gathered about the Orphan Asylum for Colored Children, a large and beautiful building, and one of the most, admirable and noble charities of the city. When it became evident, from the menacing cries and groans of the multitude, that danger, if not destruction, was meditated to the harmless and -inoffensive inmates, a flag of truce appeared, and an appeal was made in their behalf, by the principal, to every sentiment of humanity which these beings might possess, a vain appeal ! Whatever human feeling had ever, if ever, filled these souls was utterly drowned and washed away in the tide of rapine and blood in which they had been steeping themselves. The few officers who stood guard over the doors, and manfully faced these demoniac legions, were beaten down and flung to one side, helpless and stunned, whilst the vast crowd rushed in. All the articles upon which they could seize beds, bedding, carpets, furniture, the very garments of the fleeing inmates, some of these torn from their persons as they sped by were carried into the streets, and hurried off by the women and children who stood ready to receive the goods which their hus- bands, sons, and fathers flung to their care. The little ones, many of them, assailed and beaten ; all, What Answer? 251 orphans and care-takers, exposed to every indignity and every danger, driven on to the street, the build- ing was fired. This had been attempted whilst the helpless children some of them scarce more than babies were .still in their rooms; but this devilish consummation was prevented by the heroism of one man. He, the Chief of the Fire Department, strove by voice and arm to stay the endeavor ; and when, over- come by superior numbers, the brands had been lit and piled, with naked hands, and in the face of threatened death, he tore asunder the glowing embers, and trod them under foot. Again the effort was made, and again failed through the determined and heroic opposition of this solitary soul. Then, on the front steps, in the midst of these drunken and infuri- ate thousands, he stood up and besought them, if they cared nothing for themselves nor for these hapless orphans, that they would not bring lasting disgrace upon the city by destroying one of its noblest chari- ties, which had for its object nothing but good. He was answered on all sides by yells and execra- tions, and frenzied shrieks of " Down with the nagurs ! " coupled with every oath and every curse that malig- nant hate of the blacks could devise, and drunken, Irish tongues could speak. It had been decreed that this building was to be razed to the ground. The house was fired in a thousand places, and in less than 252 What Answer? two hours the walls crashed in, a mass of smoking, blackened ruins ; whilst the children wandered through the streets, a prey to beings who were wild beasts in everything save the superior ingenuity of man to agonize and torture his victims. Frightful as the day had been, the night was yet more hideous ; since to the horrors which were seen was added the greater horror of deeds which might be committed in the darkness ; or, if they were seen, it was by the lurid glare of burning buildings, the red flames of which flung upon the stained and brutal faces, the torn and tattered garments, of men and women who danced and howled around the scene of ruin they had caused made the whole aspect of affairs seem more like a gathering of fiends rejoicing in Pandemonium than aught with which creatures of flesh and blood had to do. Standing on some elevated point, looking over the great city, which presented, as usual, at night, a solemn and impressive show, the spectator was thrilled with a fearful admiration by the sights and sounds which gave to it a mysterious and awful interest. A thousand fires streamed up against the sky, making darkness visible ; and from all sides came a combination of noises such as might be heard from an asylum in which were gathered the madmen of the world. The next morning's sun rose on a city which was What Answer f 253 ruled by a reign of terror. Had the police possessed the heads of Hydra and the arms of Briareus, and had these heads all seen, these arms all fought, they would have been powerless against the multi- tude of opposers. Outbreaks were made, crowds gathered, houses burned, streets barricaded, fights enacted, in a score of places at once. Where the officers appeared they were irretrievably beaten and overcome ; their stand, were it ever so short, but in- flaming the passions of the mob to fresh deeds of vio- lence. Stores were closed ; the business portion of the city deserted ; the large works and factories emptied of men, who had been sent home by their employers, or were swept into the ranks of the marauding bands. The city cars, omnibuses, hacks, were unable to run, and remained under shelter. Every telegraph wire was cut, the posts torn up, the operators driven from their offices. The mayor, seeing that civil power was help- less to stem this tide, desired to call the military to his aid, and place the city under martial law, but was op- posed by the Governor, a governor, who, but a few days before, had pronounced the war a failure; and not only predicted, but encouraged this mob rule, which was now crushing everything beneath its heavy and ensanguined feet. This man, through almost two days of these awful scenes, remained at a quiet sea- side retreat but a few miles from the city. Coming to 254 What Answer? it on the afternoon of the second day, instead of ordering cannon planted in the streets, giving these creatures opportunity to retire to their homes, and, in the event of refusal, blowing them there by powder and ball, he first went to the point where was collected the chiefest mob, and proceeded to address them. Before him stood incendiaries, thieves, and murderers, who even then were sacking dwelling-houses, and butchering powerless and inoffensive beings. These wretches he apostrophized as " My friends," repeating the title again and again in the course of his harangue, assuring them that he was there as a proof of his friendship, which he had demonstrated by " sending his adjutant-general to Washington, to have the draft stopped "; begging them to " wait for his return "; " to separate now as good citizens "; with the promise that they " might assemble again whenever they wished to so do"; meanwhile, he would "take care of their rights." This model speech was incessantly inter- rupted by tremendous cheering and frantic demon- strations of delight, one great fellow almost crushing the Governor in his enthusiastic embrace. This ended, he entered a carriage, and was driven through the blackened, smoking scenes of Monday's devastations ; through fresh vistas of outrage, of the day's execution ; bland, gracious, smiling. Wherever he appeared, cheer upon cheer rent the air from these crowds of drunken What A nswer ? 255 blasphemers ; and in one place the carriage in which he sat was actually lifted from the ground, and carried some rods, by hands yet red with deeds of arson and murder ; while from all sides voices cried out, " Will ye stop the draft, Gov'nur ? " " Bully boy ! " "Ye 're the man for us ! " " Hooray for Gov'nur Saymoor ! " Thus through the midst of this admiring and applauding crowd, this high officer of the law, sworn to maintain public peace, moved to his hotel, where he was met by a despatch from Washington, informing him that five regiments were under arms and on their way to put an end to this bloody assistance to the Southern war. His allies in newspaper offices attempted to throw the blame upon the loyal press and portion of the community. This was but a repetition of the cry, raised by traitors in arms, that the government, struggling for life in their deadly hold, was responsible for the war : " If thou wouldst but consent to be murdered peacea- bly, there could be no strife.-" These editors outraged common sense, truth, and decency, by speaking of the riots as an " uprising of the people to defend their liberties," " an opposition on the part of the workingmen to an unjust and op- pressive law, enacted in favor of the men of wealth and standing." As though the people of the great metropo- lis were incendiaries, robbers, and assassins ; as though 256 What Answer t the poor were to demonstrate their indignation against the rich by hunting and stoning defenceless women and children ; torturing and murdering men whose only offence was the color God gave them, or men wearing the self-same uniform as that which they de- clared was to be thrust upon them at the behest of the rich and the great. It was absurd and futile to characterize this new Reign of Terror as anything but an effort on the part of Northern rebels to help Southern ones, at the most critical moment of the war, with the State militia and available troops absent in a neighboring Common- wealth, and the loyal people unprepared. These editors and their coadjutors, men of brains and ability, were of that most poisonous growth, traitors to the Government and the flag of their country, renegade Americans. Let it, however, be written plainly and graven deeply, that the tribes of savages the hordes of ruffians found ready to do their loathsome bid- ding, were not of native growth, nor American born. While it is true that there were some glib-tongued fellows who spoke the language without foreign accent, all of them of the lowest order of Democratic ward- politicians, or creatures skulking from the outstretched arm of avenging law ; while the most degraded of the German population were represented ; while it is also true that there were Irish, and Catholic Irish too, What Answer? 257 industrious, sober, intelligent people, who indignant- ly refused participation in these outrages, and mourned over the barbarities which were disgracing their national name ; it is pre-eminently true, proven by thousands of witnesses, and testified to by numberless ^ tongues, that the masses, the rank and file, the almost entire body of rioters, were the worst classes of Irish emigrants, infuriated by artful appeals, and .maddened by the atrocious whiskey of thousands of %rog-shops. ,4 " By far the most infamous part of these cruelties was" that which wreaked every species of torture and linger- ing death upon the colored people of the city, men, women, and children, old and young, strong and feeble alike. Hundreds of these fell victims to the prejudice fostered by public opinion, incorporated in our statute-books, sanctioned by our laws, which here and thus found legitimate outgrowth and action. The horrors which blanched the face of Christendom were but the bloody harvest of fields sown by society, by cultured men and women, by speech, and book, and press, by professions and politics, nay, by the < pulpit itself, and the men who there make God's truth a lie, garbling or denying the inspired declaration that "He has made of one blood all people to dwell upon the face of the earth " ; and that he, the All-Just and Merciful On e, " is no respecter of persons." Q 258 What Answer? This riot, begun ostensibly to oppose the enforce- ment of a single law, developed itself into a burn- ing and pillaging assault upon the homes and prop- erty of peaceful citizens. To realize this, it was only necessary to walk the streets, if that were pos- sible, through those days of riot and conflagration, observe the materials gathered into the vast, moving multitudes, and scrutinize the faces of those of whom they were composed, deformed, idiotic, drunken, imbecile, poverty-stricken ; seamed with every line which wretchedness could draw or vicious habits and associations delve. To walk these streets and look upon these faces was like a fearful witnessing in perspective of the last day, when the secrets of life, more loathsome than those of death, shall be laid bare in all their hideous deformity and ghastly shame. The knowledge of these people and their deeds was sufficient to create a paralysis of fear, even where they were not seen. Indeed, there was terror every- where. High and low, rich and poor, cultured and ignorant, all shivered in its awful grasp. Upon stately avenues and noisome alleys it fell with the like blackness of darkless. Women cried aloud to God with the same agonized entreaty from knees bent on velvet carpets or bare and dingy floors. Men wandered up and down, prisoners in their own What Answer? 259 homes, and cursed or prayed with equal fury or intensity whether the homes were simple or splen- did. Here one surveyed all his costly store of rare and exquisite surroundings, and shook his head as he gazed, ominous and foreboding. There, another of darker, hue peered out from garret casement, or cellar light, or broken window-pane, and, shuddering, watched some woman stoned and beaten till she died , some child shot down, while thousands of heavy, brutal feet trod over it till the hard stones were red with its blood, and the little prostrate form, yet warm, lost every likeness of humanity, and lay there, a sickening mass of mangled flesh and bones ; some man assaulted, clubbed, overborne, left wounded or dying or dead, as he fell, or tied to some convenient tree or lamp-post to be hacked and hewn, or flayed and roasted, yet living, where he hung, and watch- ing this, and cowering as he watched, held his breath, and waited his own turn, not knowing when it might come. CHAPTER XIX. "In breathless quiet, after all their ills." ARNOLD. A body of these wretches, fresh from some act of rapine and pillage, had seen Mrs. Franklin, hastening home, and, opening the hue and cry, had started in full chase after her. Struck by sticks and stones that darkened the air, twice down, fleeing as those only do who flee for life, she gained her own house, thinking there to find security. Vain hope! the door was battered in, the windows demolished, the puny barriers between the room in which they were gathered and the creatures in pursuit, speedily iestroyed, and these three turned to face death. By chance, Surrey had his sword at his side, and, tearing this from its scabbard, sprang to the defence, a gallant intent, but what could one weapon and one arm do against such odds as these ? He was speedily beaten down and flung aside by the miscreants who swarmed into the room. It was marvellous they did not kill him outright. Doubtless they would have done so but for the face propped against the pillows, which caught their hungry eyes. Soldier and woman were alike forgotten at sight of this dying boy. Here What Answer? 261 was a foeman worthy their steel. They gathered about him, and with savage hands struck at him and the bed upon which he lay. A pause for a moment to hold consultation, crowded with oaths and jeers and curses ; obscenity and blas- phemy too hideous to read or record, then the cruel hands tore him from his bed, dragged him over the prostrate body of his mother, past the senseless form of his brave young defender, out to the street. Here they propped him against a tree, to mock and torment him ; to prick him, wound him, torture him ; to task endurance to its utmost limit, but not to extin- guish life. These savages had no such mercy as this in their souls ; and when, once or twice he fell away into insensibility, a cut or blow administered with dev- ilish skill or strength, restored him to anguish and to life. Surrey, bewildered and dizzy, had recovered con- sciousness, and sat gazing vacantly around him, till the cries and yells without, the agonized face with- in, thrilled every nerve into feeling. Starting up, he rushed to the window, but recoiled at the awful sight. Here, he saw, there was no human power within reach or call that could interfere. The whole block, from street to street, was crowded with men and boys, armed with the armory of the street, and rejoicing like veritable fiends of hell over the pangs of their victim. 262 What Answer? Even in the moment he stood there he beheld that which would haunt his memory, did it endure for a century. At last, tired of their sport, some of those who were just about Abram had tied a rope about his body, and raised him to the nearest branch of an over- hanging tree ; then, heaping under him the sticks and clubs which were flung them from all sides, set fire to the dry, inflammable pile, and watched, for the moment silent, to see it burn. Surrey fled to the other side of the room, and, cow- ering down, buried his head in his arm to shut out the awful sight and sounds. But his mother, O mar- vellous, inscrutable mystery of. mother-love ! his mother knelt by the open window, near which hung her boy, and prayed aloud, that he might hear, for the wrung body and passing soul. Great God ! that such things were possible, and thy heavens fell not ! Through the sound of falling blows, reviling oaths, and hideous blasphemy, through the crackling of burning fagots and lifting flames, there went out no cry for mercy, no shriek of pain, no wail of despair. But when the tor- ture was almost ended, and nature had yielded to this work of fiends, the dying face was turned towards his mother, the eyes, dim with the veil that falls be- tween time and eternity, seeking her eyes with their latest glance, the voice, not weak, but clear and thrilling even in death, cried for her ear, " Be of What Answer? 263 good cheer, mother ! they may kill the body, but they cannot touch the soul ! " and even with the words the great soul walked with God. After a while the mob melted out of the street to seek new scenes of ravage and death ; not, however, till they had marked the house, as those within learned, for the purpose of returning, if it should so please them, at some future time. When they were all gone, and the way was clear, these two the mother that bore him, the elegant patrician who instinctively shrank from all unpleasant and painful things took down the poor charred body, and carrying it carefully and tenderly into the house of a trembling neighbor, who yet opened her doors and bade them in, composed it decently for its final rest. It was drawing towards evening, and Surrey was eager to get away from this terrible region, both to take the heart-stricken woman, thus thrown upon his care, to some place of rest and safety, and to re- assure Francesca, who, he knew, would be filled with maddening anxiety and fear at his long absence. At length they ventured forth : no one was in the square; turned at Fortieth Street, all clear; went on with hasty steps to the Avenue, not a soul in sight. " Safe, thank God ! " exclaimed 264 What Answer? Surrey, as he hurried his companion onward. Hah the space to their destination had been crossed, when a band of rioters, rushing down the street from the sack and burning of the Orphan Asylum, came upon them. Defence seemed utterly vain. Every house was shut ; its windows closed and barred ; its in- mates gathered in some rear room. Escape and hope appeared alike impossible; but Surrey, flinging his charge behind him, with drawn sword, face to the on-sweeping hordes, backed down the street. The combination a negro woman, a soldier's uniform intensified the mad fury of the mob, which was nevertheless held at bay by the heroic front and gleaming steel of their single adversary. Only for a moment ! Then, not venturing near him, a shower of bricks and stones hurtled through the air, falling about and upon him. At this instant a voice called, " This way ! this way ! For God's sake ! quick ! quick ! " and he saw a friendly black face and hand thrust from an area window. Still covering with his body his defenceless charge, he moved rapidly towards this refuge. Rapid as was the motion, it was not speedy enough; he reached the railing, caught her with his one powerful arm, imbued now with a giant's strength, flung her over to the waiting hands that seized and dragged her in, pausing for an instant, ere he leaped himself, to What Answer f 265 beat back a half-dozen of the foremost miscreants, who would else have captured their prey, just vanish- ing from sight. Sublime, yet fatal delay! but an instant, yet in that instant a thousand forms sur- rounded him, disarmed him, overcame him, and beat him down. Meanwhile what of Francesca? The morning passed, and with its passing came terrible rumors of assault and death. The afternoon began, wore on, the rumors deepened to details of awful facts and re- alities; and he he, with his courage, his fatal dress was absent, was on those death-crowded streets. She wandered from room to room, forgetting her reserve, and accosting every soul she met for later news, for information which, received, did but tor- ture her with more intolerable pangs, and send her to her knees ; though, kneeling, she could not pray, only cry out in some dumb, inarticulate fashion, " God be merciful ! " The afternoon was spent ; the day gone ; the sum- mer twilight deepening into night ; and still he did not come. She had caught up her hat and mantle with some insane intention of rushing into the wide, wild city, on a frenzied search, when two gentlemen passing by her door, talking of the all-absorbing theme, arrested her ear and attention. "The house ought to be guarded! These devils 266 Wtiat Answer? will be here presently, they are on the Avenue now." " Good God ! are you certain ? " " Certain." " You may well be," said a third voice, as another step joined theirs. "They are just above Thirtieth Street. I was coming down the Avenue, and saw them myself. I don't know what my fate would have been in this dress," Francesca knew from this that he who talked was of the police or soldiery, " but they were engaged in fighting a young officer, who made a splendid defence before they cut him down ; his cour- age was magnificent. It makes my blood curdle to think of it. A fair-haired, gallant-looking fellow, with only one arm. I could do nothing for him, of course, and should have been killed had I stayed ; so I ran for life. But I don't think I '11 ever quite forgive my- self for not rushing to the rescue, and taking my chance with him." She did not stay to hear the closing words. Out of the room, past them, like a spirit, through the broad halls, down the wide stairways, on to the street, up the long street, deserted here, but O, with what a crowd beyond ! A company of soldiers, paltry in number, yet each with loaded rifle and bayonet set, charged past her at double-quick upon this crowd, which gave way slowly What Answer? 267 and sullenly at its approach, holding with desperate ferocity and determination to whatever ghastly work had been employing their hands, dropped at last, left on the stones, the soldiers between it and the mob, silent, motionless, she saw it, and knew it where it lay. O woful sight and knowledge for loving eyes and bursting heart! Ere she reached it some last stones were flung by the retreating crowd, a last shot fired in the air, fired at random, but speeding with as unerring aim to her aching, anguished breast, death-freighted and life destroying, but not till she had reached her Destined point and end ; not till her feet failed close to that bruised and silent form ; not till she had sunk beside it, gathered it in her fair young arms, and pil- lowed its beautiful head from which streamed golden hair, dabbled and blood-bestained upon her faith- ful heart. There it stirred ; the eyes unclosed to meet hers, a gleam of divine love shining through their fading fire ; the battered, stiffened arm lifted, as to fold her in the old familiar caress. " Darling die to make free " came in gasps from the sweet, yet whitening lips. Then she lay still. Where his breath blew across her hair it waved, and her bosom moved above the slow and labored beating of his heart ; but, save for this, she was as quiet as the peaceful dead within 268 What Answer? their graves, and, like them, done with the noise and strife of time forever. For him, the shadows deepened where he lay, the stars came out one by one, looking down with clear and solemn eyes upon this wreck of fair and beautiful things, wrought by earthly hate and the aw- ful passions of men, then veiled their light in heavy and sombre clouds. The rain fell upon the noble face and floating, sunny hair, washing them free of soil, and dark and fearful stains ; moistening the fevered, burning lips, and cooling the bruised and aching frame. How passed the long night with that half-insensible soul ? God knoweth. The secrets of that are hidden in the eternity to which it now be- longs. Questionless, ministering spirits drew near, freighted with balm and inspiration ; for when the shadows fled, and the next morning's sun shone upon these silent forms, it revealed faces radiant as with some celestial fire, and beatified as reflecting the smile of God. The inmates of the house before which lay this solemn mystery, rising to face a new-made day, look- ing out from their windows to mark what traces were left of last night's devastations, beheld this awful yet sublime sight. "A prejudice which, I trust, will never end," had What Answer? 269 Mr. Surrey said, in bidding adieu to his son but a few short hours before. This prejudice, living and active, had now thus brought death and desolation to his own doors. " How unsearchable are the judg- ments of God, and his ways past finding out 1 " CHAPTER XX. "Drink, for thy necessity is yet greater than mine." SIR PHILI* SIDNEY. THE hospital boat, going out of Beaufort, was a sad, yet great sight. It was but necessary to look around it to see that the men here gathered had stood on the slippery battle-sod, and scorned to flinch. You heard no cries, scarcely a groan; whatever anguish wrung them as they were lifted into their berths, or were turned or raised for comfort, found little outward sign, a long, gasping breath now and then j a suppressed exclamation ; sometimes a laugh, to cover what would else be a cry of mortal agony ; almost no swearing ; these men had been too near the awful realities of death and eternity, some of thern^ were still too near, to make a mock at either. Having demonstrated themselves heroes in action, they would, one and all, be equally heroes in the hour of suffering, or on the bed of lingering death. Jim, so wounded as to make every movement a pang, had been carefully carried in on a stretcher, and as carefully lifted into a middle berth. "Good," said one of the men, as he eased him down on his pillow. What Answer? 271 " What 's good ? " queried Jim. " The berth ; middle berth. Put you in as easy as into the -lowest one : bad lifting such a leg as yours into the top one, and it's the comfortablest of the three when you 're in." " O, that 's it, is it ? all right ; glad I 'm here then ; getting in did n't hurt more than a flea-bite," saying which Jim turned his face away to put his teeth down hard on a lip already bleeding. The wrench to his shattered leg was excruciating, "But then," as he announced to himself, " no snivelling, James ; you 're not going to make a spooney of yourself." Presently he moved, and lay quietly watching the others they were bringing in. "Why!" he called, "that's Bertie Curtis, ain't it?" as a slight, beautiful-faced boy was carried past him, and raised to his place. "Yes, it is," answered one of the men, shortly, to cover some strong feeling. Jim leaned out of his berth, regardless of his pro- testing leg, canteen hi hand. " Here, Bertie ! " he called, " my canteen 's full of fresh water, just filled. I know it'll taste good to you." The boy's fine face flushed. "O, thank you, Given, it would taste deliciously, but I can't take it," glan- cing down. Jim followed the look, to see that both arms were gone, close to the graceful, boyish form; 272 What Answer? seeing which his face twitched painfully, not with his own suffering, and for a moment words failed him. Just then came up one of the sanitary nurses with some cooling drink, and fresh, wet bandages for the fevered stumps. Great .drops were standing on Bertie's forehead, and ominous gray shadows had already settled about the mouth, and under the long, shut lashes. Looking at the face, so young, so refined,- some mother's pride and darling, the nurse brushed back tenderly the fair hair, murmuring, " Poor fellow ! " The eyes unclosed quickly : " There are no poor fel- lows here, sir ! " he said. "Well, brave fellow, then!" " I did but do my duty," a smile breaking through the gathering mists. Here some poor fellow, poor indeed, delirious with fever, called out, "Mother! mother! I want to see my mother ! " Tears rushed to the clear, steady eyes, dimmed them, dropped down unchecked upon the face. The nurse, with a sob choking in his throat, softly raised his hand to brush them away. " Mother," Ber- tie whispered, " mother ! " and was gone where God wipes away the tears from all eyes. For the space of five minutes, as Jim said after- wards, in telling about it, " that boat was like a meet- What Answer? 273 ing-house." Used as they were to death in all forms, more than one brave fellow's eye was dim as the silent shape was carried away to make place for the stricken living, one of whom was directly brought in, and the stretcher put down near Jim. " What 's up ? " he called, for the man's face was turned from him, and his wounded body so covered as to give no clew to its condition. " What 's wrong ? " seeing the bearers did not offer to lift him, and that they were anxiously scanning the long rows of berths. " Berth 's wrong," one of them answered. " What 's the matter with the berth ? " " Matter enough ! not a middle one nor a lower one empty." " Well," called a wounded boy from the third tier, " plenty of room up here ; sky-parlor, airy lodgings, all fine, I see a lot of empty houses that '11 take him in." " Like enough, but he 's about blown to pieces," said the bearer in a low voice, " and it '11 be aw ful putting him up there; however," commencing to take off the light cover. " Helloa ! " cried Jim, " that 's a dilapidated-looking leg," his head out, looking at it " Stop a bit ! " body half after the head, " you just stop that, and come here and catch hold of a fellow ; now put me up there. I reckon I '11 bear hoisting better 'n he 274 What Answer? will, anyway. Ugh ! ah ! um ! owh ! here we are ! bully ! " If Jim had been of the fainting or praying order he would certainly have fainted or prayed ; as it was, he said " Bully ! " but lay for a while thereafter still as a mouse. " Given, you 're a brick ! " one of the boys was apostrophizing him. Jim took no notice. " And your man 's in, safe and sound " ; he turned at that, and leaned forward, as well as he could, to look at the oc- cupant of his late bed. " Jemime ! " he cried, when he saw the face. " I say, boys ! it 's Ercildoune Robert flag Wagner hurray let 's give three cheers for the color-ser- geant, long may he wave ! " The men, propped up or lying down, gave the three cheers with a will, and then three more ; and then, de- lighted with their performance, three more after that, Jim winding up the whole with an " a-a-ah, -Tiger ! " that made them all laugh ; then relapsing into silence and a hard battle with pain. A weary voyage, a weary journey thereafter to the Northern hospitals, some dying by the way, and low- ered through the shifting, restless waves, or buried with hasty yet kindly hands in alien soil, accounted strangers and foemen in the land of their birth. God grant that no tread of rebellion in the years to come, What Answer 1 275 nor thunder of contending armies, may disturb theij. peace ! Some stopped in the heat and dust of Washington to be nursed and tended in the great barracks of hospitals, uncomfortable-looking without, clean and spacious and admirable within ; some to their homes, on long-desired and eagerly welcomed furloughs, there to be cured speedily, the body swayed by the mind some to suffer and die ; some to struggle against winds and tides of mortality and conquer, yet scarred and maimed ; some to go out, as giants refreshed with new wine, to take their places once more in the great conflict, and fight there faithfully to the end. Among these last was Jim ; but not till after many a hard battle, and buffet, and back-set did life triumph and strength prevail. One thing which sadly retarded his recovery was his incessant anxiety about Sallie, and his longing to see her once more. He had himself, after his first hurt, written her that he was slightly wounded ; but when he reached Washington, and the surgeon, looking at his shattered leg, talked about am- putation and death, Jim decided that Sallie should not know a word of all this till something definite was pro- nounced. " She ought n't to have an ugly, one-legged fellow, he said, " to drag round with her ; and, if she knows how bad it is, she '11 post straight down here, to nurse 276 What Answer? and look after me, I know her ! and she '11 have me in the end, out of sheer pity; and I ain't going to take any such mean advantage of her : no, sir-ee, not if I know myself. If I get well, safe and sound, I '11 go to her ; and, if I 'm going to die, I '11 send for her ; so I '11 wait," which he did. He found, however, that it was a great deal easier making the decision*, than keeping it when made. Sallie, hearing nothing from him, ^ supposing him still in the South, fearful as she had all along been that she stood on uncertain ground, Mrs. Surrey away in New York, and Robert Ercildoune, as the * papers asserted in their published lists, mortally wounded, having no indirect means of communica- tion with him, and fearing to write again without some sign from him, was sorrowing in silence at home. The silence reacted on him ; not realizing its cause he grew fretful and impatient, and the fretfulness and impatience told on his leg, intensified his fever, and put the day of recovery if recovery it was to be farther into the future. " See here, my man," said the quick little sur- geon one day, " you 're worrying about something. This '11 never do ; if you don't stop it, you '11 die, as sure as fate ; and you might as well make up your mind to it at once, so, now ! " " Well, sir/' answered Jim, " it 's as good a time What Answer f 277 to die now, I reckon, as often happens ; but I ain't dead yet, not by a long shot ; and I ain't going to die neither ; so, now, yourself!" The doctor laughed. " All right ; if you '11 get up that spirit, and keep it, I '11 bet my pile on your recov- ery, but you '11 have to stop fretting. You 've got something on your mind that 's troubling you ; and the sooner you get rid of it, if you can, the better. That 's all I Ve got to say." And he marched off. " Get rid of it," mused Jim, " how in thunder '11 I get rid of it if I don't hear from Sallie ? Let me see ah ! I have it ! " and looking more cheerful on the instant he lay still, watching for the doctor to come down the ward once more. " Helloa ! " he called, then. " Helloa ! " responded the doctor, coming over to him, " what 's the go now ? you 're improved al- ready." " Got any objection to telling a lie ?" this might be called coming to the point. " That depends "said the doctor. " Well, all 's fair in love and war, they say. This is for love. Help a fellow ? " " Of course, if I can, and the fellow 's a good one, like Jim Given. What is it you want ? " "Well, I want a letter written, and I can't do it my- self, you know," looking down at his still bandaged arm, " likewise I want a lie told in it, and these 278 What Answer? ladies here are all angels, and of course you can't ask an angel to tell a lie, no offence to you; so if you can take the time, and '11 do it, I '11 stand your ever- lasting debtor, and shoulder the responsibility if you ; re afraid of the weight" " What sort of a lie ? " " A capital one ; listen. I want a young lady to know that I 'm wounded in the arm, you see ? not bad; nor nothing over which she need worry, and nothing that hurts me much; and I ain't damaged in any other way ; legs not mentioned in this concern, you understand?" The doctor nodded. "But it 's tied up my hand, so that I have to get you to say all this for me. I '11 be well pretty soon ; and, if I can get a furlough, I '11 be up in Philadelphia in a jiffy, so she can just prepare for the infliction, &c. Comprendy ? And '11 you do it? " " Of course I will, if you don't want the truth told, and the fib '11 do you any good ; and, "upon my word, the way you 're looking I really think it will. So now for it." Thus the letter was written, and read, and re-read, to make sure that there was nothing in it to alarm Sallie ; and, being satisfactory on that head, was finally sent away, to rejoice the poor girl who had waited, and watched, and hoped for it through such a weary time. When she answered it, her letter was What Answer? 279 so full of happiness and solicitude, and a love that, in spite of herself, spoke out in every line, that Jim furtively kissed it, and read it into tatters in the first few hours of its possession ; then tucking it away in his hospital shirt, over his heart, proceeded to get well as fast as fast could be. " Well," said the doctor, a few weeks afterwards, as Jim was going home on his coveted sick-leave, " Mr. Thomas Carlyle calls fibs wind-bags. If that singular remedy would work to such a charm with all my men, I 'd tell lies with impunity. Good by, Jim, and the best of good luck to you." "The same to you, Doctor, and I hope you may always find a friend in need, to lie for you. Good by, and God bless you ! " wringing his hand hard, " and now, hurrah for home ! " " Hurrah it is ! " cried the little surgeon after him, as, happy and proud, he limped down the ward, and turned his face towards home. CHAPTER XXI. "Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm." GRAY. JIM scarcely felt the jolting of the ambulance over the city stones, and his impatience and eagerness to get across the intervening space made dust, and heat, and weariness of travel seem but as feather weights, not to be cared for, nor indeed considered at all ; though, in fact, his arm complained, and his leg ached distressingly, and he was faint and weak with- out confessing it long before the tiresome journey reached its end. "No matter," he said to himself; "it '11 be all well, or forgotten, at least, when I see Sallie once more ; and so, what odds ? " The end was gained at last, and he would have gone to her fast as certain Rosinantes, yclept hack- horses, could carry him, but, stopping for a moment to consider, he thought, " No, that will never do ! Go to her looking like such a guy? Nary time. I '11 get scrubbed, and put on a clean shirt, and make myself decent, before she sees me. She always used to look nice as a new pin, and she liked me to look so too ; so I 'd better put my best foot foremost when she Wtiat Answer 1 281 has n't laid eyes on me for such an age. I 'm fright enough, anyway, goodness knows, with my thinness, and my old lame leg ; so " sticking his head out of the window, and using his lungs with astonishing vigor " Driver ! streak like lightning, will you, to the ' Merchants '? and you shall have extra fare." " Hold your blab there," growled the driver ; " I ain't such a pig yet as to take double fare from a wounded soldier. You '11 pay me well at half-price, when we get where you want to go," which they did soon. " No ! " said Jehu, thrusting back part of the money, "I ain't agoin' to take it, so you needn't poke it out at me. I 'm all right ; or, if I ain't, I '11 make it up on the next broadcloth or officer I carry ; never you fear ! us fellows knows how to take care of ourselves, you 'd better believe ! " which statement Jim would have known to be truth, without the necessity of repetition, had he been one of the aforesaid " broadcloths," or " officers," and thus better acquainted with the genus hack-driver in the ordinary exercise of its profession. As it was, he shook hands with the fellow, pocketed the surplus change, made his way into the hotel, was in his room, in his bath, under the barber's hands, cleaned, shaved, brushed, polished, shining, as he himself would have declared, " in a jiffy." Then, de- ciding himself to be presentable to the lady of his 282 What Answer? heart, took his crutch and sallied forth, as good-looking a young fellow, spite of the wooden appendage, as any the sun shone upon in all the big city, and as happy, as it was. bright. He knew where to go, and, by help of street-cars and other legs than his own, he was there speedily. He knew the very room towards which to turn ; and, reach- ing it, paused to look in through the half-open door, delighted thus to watch and listen for a little space unseen. Sallie was sitting, her handsome head bent over her sewing, Frankie gambolling about the floor. " O sis ! don't you wish Jim would come home ? " queried the youngster. " I do, I wish he 'd come right straight away." " Right straight away ? What do you want to see Jim for?" " O, 'cause he 's nice ; and 'cause he '11 take me to the Theayter ; and 'cause he '11 treat, apples, and pea- nuts, and candy, you know, and and ice-cream," wiping the beads from his little red face, the last desideratum evidently suggested by the fiery summer heat. " I say, Sallie ! " a pause " won't you get me some ice-cream this evening ? " " Yes, Bobbity, if you '11 be a good boy." Frankie looked dubious over that proposition. Jim never made any such stipulations : so, after another What Answer? 283 pause, in which he was probably considering the whole subject with due and becoming gravity, evidently desiring to hear his own wish propped up by some- body else's seconding, he broke out again, " Now, Sallie, don't you just wish Jim would come home ? " " O Frankie, don't I ? " cried the girl, dropping her work, and stretching out her empty arms as though she would clasp some shape in the air. Frankie, poor child ! innocently imagining the prof- fered embrace was for him, ran forward, for he was an affectionate little soul, to give Sallie a good hug, but found himself literally left out in the cold ; no arms to meet, and no Sallie, indeed, to touch him. Something big, burly, and blue loomed up on his sight, some- thing that was doing its best to crush Sallie bodily, and to devour what was not crushed ; something that could say nothing by reason of its lips being so much more pleasantly engaged, and whose face was invisible through its extraordinary proximity to somebody else's face and hair. Frankie, finding he could gain neither sight nor sound of notice, began to howl. But as neither of the hard-hearted creatures seemed to care for the poor little chap's howling, he fell upon the coat-tails of the big blue obstruction, and pulled at them lustily, not to say viciously, till their owner turned, and beheld him panting and fiery. 284 What Answer f " Helloa, youngster ! what 's to pay now ? " " Wow ! if 't ain't Jim. Hooray ! " screeched the youngster, first embracing the blue legs, and then pro- ceeding to execute a dance upon his head. " Te, te, di di, idde i-dum," he sang, coming feet down, finally. Evidently the bad boy's language had been cor- rupted by his street confreres ; it was a missionary ground upon which Sallie entered, more or less faith- fully, every day to hoe and weed ; but of this last specimen-plant she took no notice, save to laugh as Jim, catching him up, first kissed him, then gave him a shake and a small spank, and, thrusting a piece of currency into his hand, whisked him outside the door with a " Come, shaver, decamp, and treat your- self to-day," and had it shut and fastened in a twink- ling. " O Jim ! " she cried then, her soul in her hand- some eyes. " O Sallie ! " and he had her fast and tight once more. An ineffable blank, punctuated liberally with sound- ing exclamation points, and strongly marked periods, though how or why a blank should be punctuated at all, only blissful lovers could possibly define. " Jim, dear Jim ! " whispering it, and snuggling her blushing face closer to the faded blue, " can you love me after all that has happened ? " What Answer? 285 " Come now ! can I love you, my beauty ? Slightly, I should think. O, te, te, di di, idde i-dum," sing- ing Frank's little song with his big, gay voice, "I 'm happy as a king." Happy as a king, that was plain enough. And what shall be said of her, as he sat down, and, resting the wounded leg, stiff and sore yet, held Sallie on his other knee, then fell to admiring her while she stroked his mustache and his crisp, curling hair, looking at both and at him altogether with an ex- pression of contented adoration in her eyes. Frank, tired of prowling round the door, candy in hand, here thrust his head in at the window, and, unfortunately for his plans, sneezed. "Mutual-ad- miration society ! " he cried at that, seeing that he was detected in any case, and running away, his fun spoiled as soon as it began. " We are a handsome couple," laughed Jim, hold- ing back her face between both hands, " ain't we, now ? " Yes, they were, no mistake about that, handsome as pictures. And merry as birds, through all of his short stay. They would see no danger in the future : Jim had been scathed in time past so often, yet come out safe and sound, that they would have no fear for what was to befall him in time to come. If they had, neither 286 What Answer? showed it to the other. Jim thought, " Sallie would break her heart, if she knew just what is down there, so it would be a pity to talk about it " ; and Sallie thought, " It 's right for Jim to go, and I won't say a word to keep him back, no matter how I feel." The furlough was soon ah ! how soon out, the days of happiness over ; and Jim, holding her in a last close embrace, said his farewell : " Come, Sallie, you 're not to cry now, and make me a coward. It '11 only be for a little while ; the Rebs carft stand it much longer, and then " " Ah, Jim ! but if you should " " Yes, but I sha'n't, you see ; not a bit of it ; don't you go to think it. ' I bear ' what is it ? O ' a charmed life,' as Mr. Macbeth says, and you '11 see me back right and tight, and up to time. One kiss more, dear. God bless you ! good by ! " and he was gone. She leaned out of the window, she smiled after him, kissed her hand, waved her handkerchief, so long as he could see them, till he had turned a corner way down the street, and smile, and hand, and handkerchief were lost to his sight ; then flung herself on the floor, and cried as though her very heart would break. "God send him home, send him- safe and soon home ! " she implored ; entreaty made for how many loved ones, by how many aching hearts, that What Answer? 287 speedily lost the need of saying amen to any such petition, the prayer for the living lost in mourning for the dead. Heaven grant that no soul that reads this ever may have the like cause to offer such prayer again ! CHAPTER XXII. " When we see the dishonor of a thing, then it is time to renounce it" PLUTARCH. A LETTER which Sallie wrote to Jim a few weeks after his departure tells its own story, and hence shall be repeated here. PHILADELPHIA, October 29, 1863. DEAR JIM : I take my pen in hand this morning to write you a letter, and to tell you the news, though I don't know much of the last except about Frankie and myself. However, I suppose you will care more to hear that than any other, so I will begin. Maybe you will be surprised to hear that Frankie and I are at Mr. Ercildoune's. Well, we are, and I will tell you how it came about. Not long after you went away, Frank began to pine, and look droopy. There was n't any use in giving him medicine, for it did n't do him a bit of good. He could n't eat, and he did n't sleep, and I was at my wits' ends to know what to do for him. One day Mrs. Lee, that Mr. Ercildoune's house- keeper, an old English lady she is, and she 's lived with him ever since he was married, and before he What Answer? 289 came here, a real lady, too, came in with some sewing, some fine shirts for Mr. Robert Ercildoune. I asked after him, and you '11 be glad to know that he 's recovering. He did n't have to lose his leg, as they feared j and his arm is healing ; and the wound in his breast getting well. Mrs. Lee says she 's very sorry the stump is n't longer, so that he could wear a Palmer arm, but she's got no complaints to make; they 're only too glad and thankful to have him living at all, after such a dreadful time. While I was talking with her, Frankie called me from the next room, and began to cry. You would n't have known him, he cried at everything, and was so fretful and cross I could scarcely get along at all. When I got him quiet, and came back, Mrs. Lee says, "What's the matter with Frank?" so I told her I didn't know, but would she see him? Well, she saw him, and shook her head in a bad sort of way that scared me awfully, and I suppose she saw I was frightened, for she said, "All he wants is plenty of fresh air, and good, wholesome country food and exer- cise." I can tell you, spite of that, she went away, leaving me with heavy enough a heart. The next day Mr. Ercildoune came in. How he is changed ! I have n't seen him before since Mrs. Sur- rey died, and that of itself was enough to kill him, without this dreadful time about Mr. Robert 290 What Answer? " Good morning, Miss Sallie," says he, " how are you ? and I 'm glad to see you looking so well." So I told him I was well, and then he asked for Frankie. " Mrs. Lee tells me," he said, " that your little brother is quite ill, and that he needs country air and exercise. He can have them both at The Oaks ; so if you '11 get him ready, the carriage will come for you at whatever time you appoint Mrs. Lee can find you plenty of work as long as you care to stay." He looked as if he wanted to say something more, but did n't j and I was just as sure as sure could be that it was some- thing about Miss Francesca, probably about her having me out there so much ; for his face looked so sad, and his lips trembled so, I knew that must be in his mind. And when I thought of it, and of such an awful fate as it was for her, so young, and handsome, and happy, like the great baby I am, I just threw my apron over my head, and burst out crying. " Don't ! " he said, " don't ! " in O, such a voice ! It was like a knife going through me ; and he went quick out of the room, and down stairs, without even saying good by. Well, we came out the next day, and I have plen- ty to do, and Frankie is getting real bright and strong. I can see Mr. Ercildoune likes to have us here, be- cause of the connection with Miss Francesca. She was so interested in us, and so kind to us, and he knows What Answer? 291 I loved her so very dearly, and if it 's any comfort to him I'm sure I'm glad to be here, without taking Frankie into the account, for the poor gentleman looks so bowed and heart-broken that it makes one's heart ache just to see him. Mr. Robert is n't well enough to be about yet, but he sits up for a while every day, and is getting on the doctor says nicely. They both talk about you often ; and Mr. Ercildoune, I can see, thinks everything of you for that good, kind deed of yours, when you and Mr. Robert were on the transport together. Dear Jim, he don't know you as well as I do, or he 'd know that you could n't help doing such things, not if you tried. I hope you'll like the box that comes with this. Mr. Robert had it packed for you in his own room, to see that everything went in that you 'd like. Of course, as he 's been a soldier himself, he knows better what they want than anybody else can. Dear Jim, do take care of yourself; don't go and get wounded ; and don't get sick ; and, whatever you do, don't let the rebels take you prisoner, unless you want to drive me frantic. I think about you pretty much all the time, and pray for you, as well as I know how, every night when I go to bed, and am always Your own loving SALLIE. 292 What Answer? "Wow! " said Jim, as he read, "she 's in a good berth there." So she was, and so she stayed. Frankie got quite well once more, and Sallie began to think of going, but Mr. Ercildoune evidently clung to her and to the sunshine which the bright little fellow cast through the house. Sallie was quite right in her supposition. Francesca had cared for this girl, had been kind to her and helped her, and his heart went out to everything that reminded him of his dear, dead child. So it happened that autumn passed, and winter, and spring, and still they stayed. In fact, she was domesticated in the house, and, for the first time in years, enjoyed the delightful sense of a home. Here, then, she set up her rest, and remained : here, when the " cruel war was over," the armies disbanded, the last regiments discharged, and Jimmy " came marching home," brown, handsome, and a captain, here he found her, and from here he married and carried her away. It was a happy little wedding, though nobody was there beside the essentials, save the family and a dear friend of Robert's, who was with him at the time, as he had been before and would be often again, none other than William Surrey's favorite cousin and friend, Tom Russell. The letter which Surrey had written never reached his hand till he lay almost dying from the effects of What Answer? 293 wounds and exposure, after he had been brought in safety to our lines by his faithful black friends, at Mor- ris Island. Surrey had not mistaken his temper ; gay, reckless fellow, as he was, he was a thorough gentle- man, in whom could harbor no small spite, nor petty prejudice, and without a mean fibre in his being. At a glance he took in the whole situation, and insist- ing upon being propped up in bed, with his own hand though slowly, and as a work of magnitude suc- ceeded in writing a cordial letter of congratulation and affection, that would have been to Surrey like the grasp of a brother's hand in a strange and foreign country, had it ever reached his touch and eyes. But even while Tom lay writing his letter, occasion- ally muttering, " They '11 have a devilish hard time of it ! " or " Poor young un ! " or " She 's one in a mil- lion ! " or some such sentence which marked his feel- ing and care, these two of whom he thought, to whose future he looked with such loving anxiety, were beyond the reach of human help or hindrance, done alike with the sorrows and joys of time. From a distance, with the help of a glass, and ab- sorbing interest, he had followed the movements of the flag and its bearer, and had cheered, till he fainted from weakness and exhaustion, as he saw them safe at last. It was with delight that he found himself on the same transport with Ercildoune, and discovered in him 294 What Answer? the bi other of the young girl for whom, in the past, he had had so pleasing and deep a regard, and whose present and future were so full of interest for him, in their new and nearer relations. These two young men, unlike as they were in most particulars, were drawn together by an irresistible at- traction. They had that common bond, always felt and recognized by those who possess it, of the gentle blood, tastes and instincts in common, and a fine, chivalrous sentiment which each felt and thoroughly ap- preciated in the other. The friendship thus begun grew with the passing years, and was intensified a hundred fold by a portion of the past to which they rarely referred, but which lay always at the bottom of their hearts. They had each for those two who had lain dead together in the streets of New York the strongest and tenderest love, and though it was not a tie about which they could talk, it bound them to- gether as with chains of steel. Russell was with Ercildoune at the time of the wed- ding, and entered into it heartily, as they all did. The result was, as has been written, the gayest and merriest of times. Sallie's dress, which Robert had given her, was a sight to behold ; and the pretty jewels, which were a part of his gift, and the long veil, made her look, as Jim declared, " so handsome he did n't know her," though that must have been one of Jim's What Answer? 295 stories, or else he was in the habit of making love to strange ladies with extraordinary ease and effrontery. The breakfast was another sight to behold. As Mary the cook said to Jane the housemaid, " If they 'd been born kings and queens, Mrs. Lee could n't have laid herself out more ; it 's grand, so it is, just you go and see " ; which Jane proceeded to do, and forth- with thereafter corroborated Mary's enthusiastic state- ment. There were plenty of presents, too : and when it was all over, and they were in the carriage, to be sent to the station, Mr. Ercildoune, holding Sallie's hand in farewell, left there a bit of paper, " which is for you," he said. " God protect, and keep you happy, my child ! " Then they were gone, with many kind adieus and good wishes called and sent after them. When they were seated in the cars, Sallie looked at her bit of paper, and read on its outer covering, " A wedding- gift to Sallie Howard from my dear daughter Frances- ca," and found within the deed of a beautiful little home. God bless her ! say we, with Mr. Ercildoune. God bless them both, and may they live long to enjoy it! That afternoon, as Tom and Robert were driving, Russefl, noting the unwonted look of life and activity, and the gay flags flung to the breeze, demanded what it all meant. " Why," said he, " it is like a field day." ^ 296 What Answer? " It is so," answered Robert, " or what is the same ; it is election day." " Bless my soul ! so it is ; and a soldier to be elected. Have you voted ? " " No ! " "No? Here's a nice state of affairs! a fellow that '11 get his arm blown off for a flag, but won't take the trouble to drop a scrap of paper for it. Come, I '11 drive you over." " You forget, Russell ! " "Forget? Nonsense! This isn't 1860, but 1865. I don't forget ; I remember. It is after the war now, come." " As you please," said Robert. He knew the dis- appointment that awaited his friend, but he would not thwart him now. There was a great crowd about the polling-office, and they all looked on with curious interest as the two young men came up. No demonstration was made, though a half-dozen brutal fellows uttered some coarse remarks. " Hear the damned Rebs talk ! " said a man in the army blue, who, with keen eyes, was observing the scene. " They 're the same sort of stuff we licked in Carolina." " Ay," said another, " but with a difference ; blue led there ; but gray '11 come off winner here, or I 'm mistaken." What Ansn'cr? 297 Robert stood leaning upon his cane ; a support which he would need for life; one empty sleeve pinned across his breast, over the scar from a deep and yet unhealed wound. The clear October sun shone down upon his form and face, upon the broad folds of the flag that waved in triumph above him, upon a country where wars and rumors of wars had ceased. " Courage, man ! what ails you ? " whispered Rus- sell, as he felt his comrade tremble ; " it 's a ballot in place of a bayonet, and all for the same cause ; lay it down." Robert put out his hand. "Challenge the vote!" "Challenge the vote!" " No niggers here ! " sounded from all sides. The bit of paper which Ercildoune had placed on the window-ledge fluttered to the ground on the outer side, and, looking at Tom, Robert said quietly, "1860 or 1865 ? is the war ended ? " " No ! " answered Tom, taking his arm, and walking away. " No, my friend ! so you and I will continue in the service." " Not ended ; it is true ! how and when will it be closed ? " "That is for the loyal people of America to de- cide," said Russell, as they turned their faces towards home. 298 What Answer? How and when will it be closed ? a question asked by the living and the dead, to which America must respond. Among the living is a vast army : black and white, shattered, and maimed, and blind : and these say, " Here we stand, shattered and maimed, that the body politic might be perfect 1 blind forever, that the glori- ous sun of liberty might shine abroad throughout the land, for all people, through all coming time." And the dead speak too. From their crowded graves come voices of thrilling and persistent pathos, whispering, " Finish the work that has fallen from our nerveless hands. Let no weight of tyranny, nor taint of oppression, nor stain of wrong, cumber the soil nor darken the land we died to save. NOTE. OINCE it is impossible for anyone memory to carry the entire record of the war, it is well to state, that almost every scene in this book is copied from life, and that the incidents of battle and camp are part of the history of the great contest. The story of Fort Wagner is one that needs no such emphasis, it is too thoroughly known ; that of the Color- Sergeant, whose proper name is W. H. Carney, is taken from a letter written by General M. S. Littlefield to Colo- nel A. G. Browne, Secretary to Governor Andrew. From the New York Tribune and the Providence Jour- nal were taken the accounts of the finding of Hunt, the coming of the slaves into a South Carolina camp, and the voluntary carrying, by black men, ere they were enlisted, of a schooner into the fight at Newbern. Than these two papers, none were considered more reliable and trustwor- thy in their war record. Almost every paper in the North published the narrative of the black man pushing off the boat, for which an official report is responsible. The boat was a flat-boat, with a company of soldiers on board; and the battery under the fire of which it fell was at Rodman's Point, North 3OO Note. Carolina. In drawing the outlines of this, as of the others, I have necessarily used a somewhat free pen- cil, but the main incident of each has been faithfully preserved. The disabled black soldier my own eyes saw thrust from a car in Philadelphia. The portraits of Ercildoune and his children may seem to some exaggerated ; those who have, as I, the rare plessure of knowing the originals, will say, "the half has oot been told." Every leading New York paper, Democratic and Re- oublican, was gone over, ere the summary of the Riots was viade ; and I think the record will be found historically Accurate. The Anglo-African gives the story of poor Abram Franklin ; and the assault on Surrey has its like- ness in the death of Colonel O'Brien. In a conversation between Surrey and Francesca, allu- sion is made to an act the existence of which I have fre- quently heard doubted. I therefore copy here a part of the " Retaliatory Act," passed by the Rebel Govern- ment at Richmond, and approved by its head, May i, 1863 : " SEC. 4. Every white person, being a commissioned officer, or acting as such, who, during the present war, shall command negroes or mulattoes in arms against the Confederate States, or who shall arm, train, organize, or prepare negroes or mulattoes for military service against the Confederate States, or who shah 1 voluntarily aid ne- groes or mulattoes in any military enterprise, attack, or conflict in such service, shall be deemed as inciting Note. 301 servile insurrection ; and shall, if captured, be put to death." I have written this book, and send it to the con- sciences and the hearts of the American people. May God, for whose " little ones " I have here spoken, vivify its words. THE END, Cambridge : Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. UflL-LD UftUft LD-UK1 4 1991 JUN 07199? fEt MAY DEC UMJRl 31993 m L9-75m-7,'61(C1437s4)444 3 1158 00013 8122 PS