II: April 13, 1861

II

APRIL 13, 1861

I

SHE HAD FORGOTTEN, BECAUSE SHE SO SELDOM WENT BEYOND the garden gate any more, that Williamsburg no longer looked quite as pretty as it had done in her youth. She forgot that the Palace had burned down, that the Raleigh and the Capitol were deserted shells, that even the College was shabby and patched up, and many of the fine houses wanted paint and sheltered only the remnants and relics of the proud families who had lived there in the days which were so much more vivid to her now than recent times since her world had shrunk.

But Williamsburg did look very pretty when Cabot returned to it that Saturday in mid-April. The mulberry trees which lined the wide, unpaved seven-eighths of a mile which was the Duke of Gloucester Street were a new, tender green, and flowers showed bright in the dooryards, and the air was soft and sweet and scented with spring, and the women were wearing light dresses. To anyone fresh from the crowded confusion of the Spotswood Hotel in Richmond the bygone town seemed a little lost paradise of dignity and leisure.

Cabot had promised himself that he would not come back to Williamsburg. Even in the very act of buying Tibby Day’s Christmas present on his way out of Charleston, with Dabney at his elbow, he had told himself that the thing to do was to leave the parcel with Dabney—that way she would get it sooner, and his responsibility for it would be ended.

Instead, he paid for it in a rather embarrassed silence and when they left the shop Dabney was still trying not to wonder who the lady was for whom this unsentimental-seeming Yankee took so much trouble and chose such an expensive and unusual gift. Now that he heard Cabot was coming to bring Gran a belated Christmas present he wondered some more, and knew that if it was the same purchase he had seen, Cabot’s taste and tact were irreproachable.

To receive him, she wore her lilac-grey silk gown, and Eden, after turning out her wardrobe and changing her mind half a dozen times and anxiously consulting the weather, which remained warm and bright, chose a light blue lawn with white lace at the neck and wrists, and enormous angel sleeves. Once she had got it on she felt uncomfortably that she had “dressed up” too much for a solitary afternoon caller, but Gran, placidly wearing her own best, said that one might as well give the poor man something pleasant to look at these days, he must be very tired by now of women who wore cockades and talked politics.

He arrived with no less than three neatly wrapped parcels under his arm, and was conducted at once to Gran’s room, where Eden, too, awaited him, in what she secretly termed a state of idiotic twitters. No one else had ever made her feel like that before. No one, she was sure, but Cabot Murray could ever do it again. But her eyes and smile were so steady as she gave him her hand that he was surprised to find her fingers cold with what could only be nervous excitement matching his own, and his long first look was rueful and kind.

Cabot, too, had had time now to contemplate what had happened between them last autumn, and it did not fit in with his plans. He was no less in love with Eden in Washington than he had been in Williamsburg, but less than ever at that distance could he see any way to join that new absorbing emotion to the pattern of his life. Besides, he still mistrusted it a little, because he had never believed such a thing could happen to him. This headlong, consuming, sobering, and enduring desire was a very different thing from the casual, skilfully conducted flirtations with the Washington belles he was accustomed to know or the dull chaperoned acquaintance with marriageable misses who fluttered their eyelashes at him in modest attempts to interest so famous a catch as Cabot Murray. He laughed in the faces of the pouting belles, and the misses bored him. He believed that he understood both types, and he gave each of them what they seemed to expect—audacious, disconcerting, sometimes quite fascinating advances to one, and a more or less polite indifference to the other.

He had been amused, and sometimes stimulated, and once or twice rather attracted, but he had never been stirred as this honest, laughing Virginia girl had stirred him, with her level green gaze and her odd little dignity, and her sweet reposefulness which was just her breeding. Once he

had admitted to himself that he wanted her for his own; he was so drunk with surprise, and whatever else, that he had recklessly admitted it to her before his conscience, or whatever it was, reminded him that it would never do. His was no life to offer a woman brought up as she had been. He lived at the end of a telegraph line, he was off at the drop of a hat for Chicago or Charleston or Boston or far less suitable places. His best friends were a professional journalist’s friends, the like of whom she had never imagined

—men like himself without roots or ties or illusions, often without manners or morals, women who—never mind. He had lived like that deliberately, wilfully, making a rude gesture at his own upbringing now that he was clear of Trenton, New Jersey, and all it had stood for during his suppressed, rebellious boyhood. Until last autumn it had satisfied him to live like that, but it was nothing to offer Eden. Therefore Eden must be only a dream—a sort of mirage, forever beyond his reach.

During the past winter he had striven thus to convince himself that he could not afford to think of Eden, except as a fragrant episode which was finished. He had seen her once upon a time, and she was sweet. But that was all. No more Eden for him. Even if there was not going to be a war—

and there was—but even if no war had threatened, there was no place in his life for Eden. Even if he tried he could never tone himself down to the sort of fellow Eden ought to marry. Even though he loved her with all he had to give, it was not enough, he was not her kind, she would be lost and unhappy and bewildered in his catch-as-catch-can existence. Besides—he never meant to marry….

Thus he reasoned the winter away, while the war fever rose, and the States seceded one by one, and the little garrison at Sumter held out in its dreary sense of virtue, and Washington waltzed and whispered and waited to see what Lincoln would do. Then he was sent to Richmond to report the Virginia Convention for the newspaper. And there he met Sally again, and became friends with Sedgwick, and heard enchanting stories of Gran, and the need to see Eden once more grew and grew. He knew that he had said things to her that he had no business to, and he told himself that the least he could do was to remove himself once and for all from her life….

And so here he was, on that Saturday in April, and his big fingers closed crushingly on the slim cold ones surrendered to him, and his eyes lingered in spite of him even after he had let her hand go.

“Always wear a blue dress, Eden,” he said as his only greeting. “I always seem to think of you in a blue dress.”

Eden flushed and glanced at Gran to see how this easy use of her given name would be received, knowing quite well that Felicity’s eyebrows would have risen.

“That’s because you’ve never seen her in a pink one,” said her grandmother.

“I thought redheads couldn’t wear pink,” he remarked with interest.

“She’s not really red,” Gran pointed out without reproach. “She doesn’t freckle.”

“Titian,” he suggested, grinning, and she nodded, while Eden found it impossible to say anything at all in this ridiculous conversation which ignored her presence as though she were a child, or a picture. With relief she saw him lay one of the parcels in Gran’s lap. “There’s your gift from Charleston,” he said affectionately. “I suppose you know that without young Dabney you might never have got it?”

“So I hear,” she murmured, her fingers already busy at the cord.

“Dabney knows how much I like gifts!” And their eyes met briefly with laughter.

Inside the wrapping paper was a box, and inside the box was a folded fan. She lifted it out and spread it carefully in her two small hands—a French fan painted on silk in the manner of Fragonard, with a rose-clad lady bestowing coquettish fingertips on a bowing youth in blue knee breeches, a skirted coat, and a sword. Both wore their hair powdered and they stood in a classic grove with a broken column and a marble bench beyond. The colours were as fresh and dainty as they had ever been. The sticks and guard were mother-of-pearl, pierced and gilt. She who so loved presents held it in a silent rapture for a long moment and then said softly:

“It’s the loveliest thing I ever owned. Regina Sprague had one, when I was a girl—she brought it back with her from London. I never thought—”

She looked up at him, brimming with happiness. “I never thought I’d have one!”

“As soon as I saw it, it belonged to you,” he smiled.

“It must be very old,” she said, awed. “It must be older than I am.”

“By fifteen or twenty years at least. And it wears its age as lightly.”

“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for my lovely gift. Look, Eden

—I told you—they wore their hair powdered—I can remember—”

“Yes, Gran, it’s beautiful.” Eden became aware of a white-wrapped parcel extended towards her.

“Yours isn’t from Charleston,” he was saying. “I got it in Washington.”

“Th-thank you.” Eden took the parcel in her cold little fingers and opened it rather fumblingly. Embedded in white satin inside a jeweller’s case which was marked with the famous name of Galt lay a silver filigree bouquet-holder with an inlaid mother-of-pearl handle.

“Merry Christmas, Eden,” he said gently while she stared at it.

“It’s—the loveliest one I ever saw, but—” Her eyes sought Gran’s, and his voice cut in decisively.

“But mother would never allow me to accept jewellery from a gentleman,” he finished for her.

“Nonsense,” said Tibby Day. “It’s not to wear. No more than my fan, that is. Of course she can accept it.”

“Gloves wear out,” he explained, looking savage and sulky. “Sweets get eaten up. Flowers fade. Books pall. That’s the list of acceptable presents, isn’t it? I wanted this one to be something more permanent, I guess. It is for your gay times, Eden—mind you carry it while you’re waltzing, won’t you?”

She looked up at him helplessly.

“But we have no gift for you,” she mourned.

“Ah, but we have.” Tibby Day laid down the fan and rose from her chair and took a polished wooden box a little longer and deeper than a book but no wider from a table by the window and carried it back to where Cabot stood and put it in his hands. “It came from England with my husband in 1774. It held his pens and the penknife and the ink and the sand-box. Since you are a writer too, you will find it convenient when you are travelling, as he did. I want you to have it.” Thus magnificently did she erase from him the stigma of journalism. Moved beyond speech, he was too wise to attempt to refuse so precious a gift. He bent and kissed the hands that gave it. “And now tell us what’s in the other parcel,” she commanded, returning to her chair with a resolute matter-of-factness.

“Bonbons for Myrta from Gautier’s,” he replied, striving also for lightness. “They are all done up separately in silver paper with lace and

artificial flowers, and are very highly regarded by my sister Melicent, so I thought—”

“Myrta will be quite beside herself,” remarked her grandmother gently.

“I think we won’t give them to her just now. I’m glad to see that you are soft-hearted enough to make your little sister a present sometimes, Mr.

Murray.”

“She had been ill,” he said defensively before he thought, and then caught the gleam in her eyes and grinned. “I guess she nearly died of surprise, at that. But after I had been here and seen how this family treats its young, I—well, I felt sort of sorry for her. Not that she’s any Susannah,” he added, glancing up at them under his brows. “I took a good look at her the last time I was home, and good Lord, I never saw a plainer child!”

“She probably only wants bringing out,” said Susannah’s grandmother.

“If you took a little interest in her it might make all the difference. Are they teaching her properly?”

“I haven’t an idea. She goes to a little day school, I believe, and is learning to play the piano and sing Home Sweet Home. I found that rather funny, as my father can’t bear the sound of music, and so she has to do her practice scales when he is out of the house.”

“That’s very odd,” she remarked, treading carefully now that she was on the trail again. “I never heard before of a man who hated music. Has he any reason?”

“Well, yes, he has a reason.” The words fell coldly one by one, as though he forced himself to utter them against his will. “You see, his first wife, who was my mother, ran away with a tramp violinist.”

There was a silence in the room. Then she said slowly:

“Melicent is her child—not the housekeeper’s.”

“How did you know?”

“In my bones.”

“Sent back to us when she died. Named for her, not out of sentiment, but to remind us both, my father and me, of the perfidy of women. I am only just beginning to see how wrong he is to take it out on poor Melicent. I’ve just suddenly realized that the child of my mother’s shame is a human being like the rest of us. She can thank you for that—and Eden here—and young Susannah.”

“Does she know why she has been punished all her life?”

“No. At least I don’t think she does. She was only a few weeks old when she came to us. She has always called the housekeeper Mother, But her eagerness to learn music—that must come from him. If my father knew, he would stamp it out of her. I felt like doing it myself.”

“No, no.” She laid a quick hand on his sleeve. “Let her have the music if she wants it. She will need it. Be kind to her. Because you can be kind, you know, when you like. Never let her know the rest. That is—if she is fond of the woman who stands in her mother’s place.”

“They seem to get on all right together. I guess they have to. They’ve nobody else.”

“And your father—can’t he ever forgive—?”

“I sometimes think my father is a little mad,” he said briefly. “I suppose in his place I should be.”

“Yes,” she nodded, and her fingers moved caressingly, soothingly on his sleeve, as though she had forgotten they were there. “Yes, I can see that.

But it’s hard on the child. It’s been hard on you too. I can see that.”

“On the contrary, I have always considered it a useful lesson,” he said steadily. “You see, I can remember my mother quite well. And she wasn’t the kind of woman you would expect it of. She was as sweet and honest to look at as—as your grandson’s wife. Not so beautiful, of course. But not—

not a light woman, you would have said.”

“Now you’re talking like a New Englander,” she took him up sharply.

“How do you know what drove her? How old were you when she went?”

“About twelve.”

“And was she happy, before he came by? Was she cherished, was there laughter in the house, and was she made to feel that it could not get along without her?”

He looked surprised, a little shocked.

“My father was devoted to her. He says himself he had never looked at another woman.”

She made a small derisive sound.

“That’s the wrong end of the poker,” she said. “If a man has married the right woman for him, the more he sees of other women the better he likes his own.”

Cabot looked still more surprised.

“I never thought of it quite that way before,” he admitted.

“You have a lot to learn about women, Mr. Murray.”

“Yes,” he agreed humbly. “I begin to think so.” His eyes sought Eden’s, and she gave him a small, brave smile with her heart in it.

“You have come to the right place, though,” Tibby Day consoled him.

“Eden can teach you how to trust a woman.”

He shot her one of his quick, suspicious glances, and then relaxed as though resigning himself to her mind-reading.

“It is useless to go on saying that this is the most extraordinary family I ever saw,” he sighed. “I suppose you felt it in your bones too that I am in love with Eden—but why you are not going to raise Cain about it is still beyond me.”

“I don’t say that Ransom won’t raise Cain about it,” she qualified at once. “But I’m on your side, for whatever that is worth.”

“That is mighty good of you, ma’am.” He looked down at his strong, fine hands knotted in front of him. “But I have already told Eden that she must try to forget me. Anyway, it’s out of your control now. Just as I was leaving Richmond they gave me a telegram from Washington. Those fools at Charleston have fired on Fort Sumter.”

“Ah’s me!” cried Tibby Day. “What will that mean?”

“My dears, it means that I have come to say goodbye,” he said very gently. “Virginia is sure to secede now. The South is going to try to take Washington with an army. The North will meet them more than half-way.

All hell is loose, that’s what it means. But I had to see you both once more before it starts.”

“Are you—going to fight?” Eden got out faintly, for most of all she had to know what war would mean to this man whose life was more important to her than all the garrison at Sumter.

“I’m a Special Correspondent,” he told her grimly. “Unless I get fired for coming here today instead of camping in that telegraph office at Richmond, it will be my job to write this war, not fight it.”

“Shall you—does that mean you will be under fire?”

“Naturally. Would you have me report a battle with my feet on a desk in the Trenton office?”

“What will Anderson do?” brooded Tibby Day. “Will they all be killed at Sumter?”

“It seems likely, if they try to shoot it out. Anderson has about sixty men, and Beauregard has about seven thousand roundabout Charleston, armed and spoiling for a fight. Fort Sumter was designed for a garrison of six hundred and fifty, and its strong side is towards the sea. Sumter is no good if the rest of the harbour is held by an enemy. It points the wrong way.”

“I knew his father,” she brooded.

“Whose father? Anderson’s?”

She nodded.

“Dick Anderson was one of Lafayette’s aides at Yorktown. My husband liked him. He came to dinner at the Raleigh. Such a little time ago,” she sighed. “How have things gone so wrong? What will Lincoln do about it?”

“I think Lincoln will put his foot down, as he threatened to do last February when I saw him in New York. He is convinced that to abandon United States property now to insurgents on any plea whatever of necessity would be misconstrued by the very element he is trying to control. He is prepared to fight the South to prevent national destruction.”

“Won’t it come to the same thing in the end?”

“Not if the North wins.”

“Even then, he can’t force the South to be friends.”

“He hopes to force them to come to their senses first of all, I think. But I am afraid, from what I have heard in Richmond, that once the bloodshed actually begins, Virginia is bound to secede. Which is one of the reasons that Charleston is yelling for blood.”

“Then you won’t be safe here,” Eden said. “You must leave at once.”

“Oh, I’ll get kicked out of Richmond very soon now,” he agreed.

“What’s more, you won’t be allowed to speak to me at all, once war is declared.”

“Must you go back to Richmond?”

“To-night.”

“But—at Charleston they tried to—” Her lips quivered.

“Tried to hang me, yes. May I have the loan of Dabney to Richmond as a bodyguard?”

“Oh, please don’t joke about it, why can’t you go straight back to Washington?”

“And hide behind a printing-press? For shame, Eden, your brothers are going to be in this thing, you know. Are you going to try to hustle them to the safest place there is—or is it only that you think a Yankee is a mollycoddle?”

“Don’t tease her, Mr. Murray, she’s never seen a war and it frightens her.

It frightens me, and I’ve seen two or three. You’ll be allowed to carry arms, I suppose, even if you are not in the ranks?”

“I don’t know what my status as correspondent will be. Except for a few men who went to the Crimea for the London newspapers, nobody has ever reported a war before as I would like to. I’ve been working on it in Washington for weeks, and I think I can get a Staff appointment which will give me leeway in the field and some usefulness as well. You see, ma’am, I believe in the power and the freedom of the Press. I believe that reporting a war, or a political convention, is a solemn responsibility. Our free educational system is teaching a great mass of people to read. Well, then, it seems to me we ought to be damned careful, begging your pardon, what we hand out to them for a penny or two, to read. Newspapers are being read like the word of God by millions—and who writes them? A collection of cranks and paid agitators and down-at-heel hacks with an occasional genius like Greeley or Wise, and even then they have an axe to grind. I say the whole system is wrong. I say we want a corps of trained, educated, decently paid observers to write our newspapers. Men with a policy, certainly, but not crackpots or political henchmen or brilliant bums. And it looks as though I’m going to have a chance to justify my ideas on a rather large scale, pretty soon. But you can see, can’t you, that it’s not going to make me very popular in this section of the country from now on, if I am attached as a Special Correspondent to the Northern Army!”

“But I’m still on your side,” insisted Tibby Day, smiling at him confidently, and he laughed and took her two hands in his.

“God bless you, ma’am! If I could only believe that nothing would ever change that, no matter what comes! Can you manage never to think of me as an enemy, even in the midst of a bitter war?”

“War isn’t going to make you any different.”

“War always makes a difference. For one thing, I can’t lay claim to Eden as things are now.” He shut his teeth on it resolutely. “I shall be with the wrong army, God knows where. I can’t even ask her to wait for me till it’s

over, in the circumstances—I expect to be in it, up to my neck, from now on, and my chances of coming out of it whole enough to be worth waiting for are—not very good. It’s bad enough, what a woman must endure in a war, if her man is on the same side as her brothers.” His grip on the frail hands in his was that of a man in pain. “I’m trying to do the right thing for Eden, no matter what it costs me now—so maybe I ought to say, never let her be an old maid on my account, will you.”

“Eden would like to say,” broke in a rather decided voice on their left,

“that she is sick of being talked about as though she was somewhere else, or had gone stone deaf. And this is the third time you have refused yourself in my name, Mr. Murray, without giving me a chance to say No on my own account, and I’m getting a little sick of that too!”

His sombre face broke all up into laughter, and he rose suddenly, seeming to fill the quiet room with the magnetic masculine vitality they both found so irresistible.

“Oh, God in heaven, sweetheart, don’t go back on it now and say you’ll have me after all!” he cried, as though he had again gracefully accepted a dismissal, and she looked up at him defiantly, her chin out.

“Gran will bear witness,” she said steadily, though her hands were cold and shaking, and her heart beat thickly, “that you behave very much like a man who is frightened to death he will be accepted before he can get out of the house!”

His laughter went as though she had struck him a blow—surprise, anger, humiliation, and a kind of incredulous pain brought the dark blood surging up to his hair, so that the small scar stood out livid on his temple, and the old harsh lines settled deep around his arrogant lips. Before he could speak, Tibby Day stood up with a soft rustle of lilac-grey silk.

“It is time you learned that you will never get any thanks for trying to cheat a woman of tears she has a right to shed,” she informed him severely.

“If Eden was as old as I am, she would be able to see that you have tried to spare her. That was vour mistake, Mr. Murray. I am going to leave you to retrieve it in your own way now.” She swept royally towards the door. “I promise not to listen at the keyhole, but I must warn you I’ll come back in five minutes.” With the knob in her hand she turned on him again where he stood motionless, towering, apparently paralysed, in the middle of the

room. “Don’t you be afraid of her,” she advised sternly. “And don’t forget, either, that no war lasts forever.”

The latch clicked behind her.

II

Thirty seconds of their five minutes went by in silence before he moved.

Then in what seemed a single stride he was across the space between them and had lifted Eden by the shoulders out of her chair so that she stood against him, shaking and weak, feeling the sharp bite of his fingers as part of a new delight, her eyelids down against the blinding nearness of his searching gaze. As usual, he said the last thing she looked for.

“How old are you, Eden?”

“I’m—nearly eighteen,” she announced stoutly.

“Oh, God help me, that’s too young! It’s robbing the cradle for sure!”

His lips came down on her cheek, travelled upward gently and spoke in her hair. “Never say I didn’t try to do the right thing for once, my darling—and never doubt it was killing me with every breath I drew!”

“Gran’s not so young,” she whispered, and her cheek found his and rested there, warm and confiding, and he felt her smile. “Gran always knows what’s best for me.”

His arms crept round her slowly, and then tightened with a sudden crushing possessiveness which made her gasp.

“You’re trembling,” he discovered, and she felt the labour of his heart.

“Eden, I’m a clumsy sort of fool, what makes you think I can ever make you happy?”

“Perhaps because you can make me so miserable,” she murmured, and he eased his hold a little to try and see her face.

“When have I ever done that?”

“When I thought you might never come back to Williamsburg.”

“Lord knows I tried not to. But only for your sake, Eden, not because I didn’t want you.”

She caught at his shoulders with both hands, giving herself more completely into his embrace, as her confidence grew a little with the knowledge of her own power to move him, believing blissfully that now he could never frighten or confuse her again.

“Hereafter you will not lie to me for my own good,” she commanded.

“How could I be better off thinking you didn’t love me than—”

“But I told you that I loved you!” he interrupted roughly.

“Not like this,” she insisted, nestling, and he shook with laughter while his arms cradled her.

“You’re a very forward young woman, Eden,” he remarked with delight.

“No really nice girl takes to love-making quite so fast.”

“How do you know?” she murmured, holding to his shoulders, her face against his shirt ruffle and cravat. “Would you really have gone away and left me to love you forever all alone?”

“Will you, Eden? Will you love me forever?”

“And a day,” she promised solemnly, and he found her chin with his fingers and tipped back her head to his kiss.

She was still in his arms when the latch turned slowly, and they stood apart, unembarrassed but grave, as Eden’s grandmother re-entered the room.

“Well, now you have done it,” Cabot told her accusingly. “What becomes of us now?”

“Ransom has just come in downstairs,” she said. “He’s heard about Fort Sumter.”

“But has he heard about Eden, that’s the question,” Cabot remarked.

“Well, yes—I did mention it.”

“I suppose he’s waiting on the stairs with horse pistols?”

“He’s in the drawing room with Felicity. I think you had better go and speak to them.”

“Yes, I think I had.” Instinctively his fingers sought his cravat in a nervous gesture.

“Eden will stay here with me. You must tell her goodbye now.” She picked up the flat wooden box from the table where he had laid it, and handed it to him with a smile. “And don’t be forgetting your gift, either.

God bless you, Cabot Murray.”

He looked down at her, so small, so straight, in the spreading lilac-grey gown.

“Let’s not say goodbye,” he said. “Let’s just say—good night.” She received his kiss on her cheek, and turned away towards the window, while he kissed Eden once more and backed away from her to the door. “You’ll

hear from me now and then, no matter what happens,” he promised. “Even after I leave Richmond, I’ll find some way to communicate—”

“We can wait,” said Tibby Day. “I had to wait, when I was Eden’s age.”

Cabot took the stairs nimbly and brought up against the drawing room door with a feeling of schoolboy panic. Suppose they threw him out. They had every right to. Suppose they forbade even letters. Suppose—if it was a long war—they talked her into marrying some one else…. After having screwed himself up for months to live without her, the idea of losing her was now completely intolerable.

“Come in,” said Ransom, and the Yankee stepped over the threshold.

Felicity sat with a bit of white work in her hands, and Ransom had placed himself behind her chair.

“Yes,” Cabot said at once in answer to their eyes. “I want to marry Eden.

How it happens that she is willing I don’t pretend to know, but that’s the way it is.”

“If this news about Sumter is true,” said Ransom slowly, “we may be in for a long war.”

“I think that is very probable, sir.”

“And we shall find ourselves on opposite sides, I’m afraid.”

“I’m afraid so, sir.”

“Your intention is to wait till it is over before you marry Eden?”

“I am simply unable to make any plans at all until I have returned to Richmond and learned what the next few days will bring forth, sir. If the whole country doesn’t catch fire from Charleston, I would—would hope to take Eden with me to Washington, where I spend most of my time now. As to—finances,” he struggled on against their silence, “I can truthfully say that she will be very comfortable. My father owns the Trenton Enquirer besides his steel mill interests, and I am his only heir. I am at present on salary as Special Correspondent. I live at Willard’s Hotel. Of course, if things should go radically wrong in Washington I could always send Eden to my father’s house in Trenton. It is much admired as a residence, though she might find it a trifle gloomy.”

Ransom nodded, his face impassive.

“Then you wish to consider that an engagement exists between you and Eden,” he said, picking his words.

“If you—with your consent, sir.” Their blank, studious courtesy seemed to baffle and infuriate him. “Oh, I know you don’t like the idea, and I can’t say I blame you!” he cried, looking black and badgered again. “I know I’m not what you’d choose for her! I wouldn’t have chosen myself for her! I’ve lived an odd sort of life, maybe, and I wasn’t raised to behave the way you’re accustomed to, ma’am, where women are concerned. My father hates them all, with some reason, and until I came here I guess I never saw much need to argue with him about that. I don’t really know much about them, first hand—any kind of women. I tried to stay away from Williamsburg, I tell you, but I had to see Eden again. The best thing to be said for me is that I want her so much more than any other man possibly could, that I should try just that much harder to make sure she’s happy with me, if anyone can be happy in the times that are ahead of us. Will you make an effort to believe that, sir?”

“We shall try not to stand in your way if Eden loves you, Mr. Murray,”

said Ransom politely. “But I would be very grateful if you would wait just a little while until we can see the result of this Charleston business.”

“If I did what I liked, I’d take her with me today,” Cabot assured them patiently. “But if I am sent straight into the field with the Army she will be better off here with you than alone in Washington, and she’s going to stay here, till we know.”

Ransom seemed to breathe a little easier.

“You are very considerate,” he murmured, and Cabot stared at him resentfully.

“Considerate?” he repeated. “And why in God’s name shouldn’t I be considerate of the woman I love? I’m not an Apache, sir, that woos by capture, even if I am a Yankee!”

“You must forgive us, Mr. Murray,” said Felicity, speaking for the first time, “but it comes as rather a shock to lose our eldest daughter to a man who—who is after all a stranger. We don’t want to seem unfriendly, but you must admit, Mr. Murray s that we know very little about you—”

“I admit all that, ma’am. I come from the wrong part of the country, and I’ve had a lot of wrong ideas. There’s one thing I’m proud of, though—

Eden’s grandmother trusts me. And you know as well as I do, she’s a hard one to fool!”

Ransom smiled tardily.

“You’re right about that,” he conceded, as the street door banged and Dabney arrived in the drawing room. He stopped short at sight of Cabot.

“Good Lord, here you are again!” he cried, staring. But he held out his hand with a grin, and Cabot took it gratefully.

“You’ll never be rid of me now,” he said. “I’ve just asked permission to marry Eden,”

Dabney took it without blinking.

“Well, it’s a relief to me you don’t want Gran instead,” he remarked.

“We couldn’t spare her. I suppose you’ve all heard about Sumter?”

“Yes. I’m starting back to Richmond at once. Eden thinks you should come along to protect me.”

Dabney laughed and examined the scar critically.

“Marked you, didn’t they! Why Richmond, just now?”

“Convention still sitting,” Cabot reminded him briefly. “Secret session.

Secession. War.”

“Yankee journalist, rope, and lamp-post!” Dabney added cheerfully. “I can’t spend my life getting you out of town, you know! Got other things to do now.”

“Thanks, I’ll manage this time.”

Dabney turned to his parents, his hand resting on Cabot’s shoulder.

“This fellow’s a Yankee,” he said casually, but with purpose. “You don’t like Eden marrying a Yankee, do you? Neither do I. But all the same, she’s picked herself a man, I can promise you that. And you may as well give in gracefully, because he’ll have her anyhow!”

III

Fort Sumter surrendered on the fourteenth, with no bloodshed except one soldier killed and several injured in an accidental explosion of ammunition during the final salute by the garrison to the flag. Anderson and his men were allowed to embark for New York, and the South celebrated this initial victory with no apparent thought of the consequences of the war entered on so lightheartedly.

On the next day Lincoln’s call for seventy-five thousand volunteers “to suppress combinations and cause the laws to be duly executed” had a slightly sobering effect. To demand of Virginia her quota of eight thousand

troops was in the eyes of men like Lafayette Sprague a fatal blunder on the President’s part—and yet, as Ransom reasonably pointed out, to omit Virginia’s name from the roll call of loyal States would have been to accuse her prematurely of intention to secede. Lincoln’s proclamation gave the Southern forces mustered at Charleston and other points twenty days to

“disperse and return peaceably to their respective abodes”. This was taken to mean that he would wait till May fifth before putting the Federal Army in motion to invade the seceded territory.

Confronted with the bitter choice of furnishing troops to be used against sister Southern States or refusing point blank to do so, the Virginia Convention announced Secession on the eighteenth, and there were wild demonstrations of delight in the streets of Richmond, and a general rush to join the Richmond Greys and the Light Infantry Blues by young men of wealth and family who were all followed into the ranks by their faithful coloured body servants. “On to Washington!” was a battle cry heard everywhere.

The cadets from the Virginia Military Institute were sent to Richmond to act as drillmasters, under the command of Major Thomas Jackson, a veteran of the Mexican War who was their professor of natural science and the theory of gunnery. Louise wrote that Fauquier was among them, carrying himself like a fighting cock in his smart uniform with inches added to his chest measurement—and that it was a both comic and touching sight to see burly, bearded volunteers from the back country diligently marching, wheeling, and tossing muskets about at the shrill but patient commands of striplings whose voices had hardly changed. Every train brought more recruits and ill-equipped companies to Richmond, she said, until the whole countryside roundabout the city had become one vast encampment dotted with white tents.

On the twenty-second of April Colonel Lee came to Richmond to see the Governor—having refused the command of the Federal Army by handing in his resignation. That same night he went to bed at the Spotswood Hotel a rather lonely and oppressed general in charge of the military and naval stores of Virginia. And the following morning he opened a modest office with neither adjutant nor clerk in the Post Office building. The Richmond Dispatch said of him with enthusiasm— His reputation, his acknowledged ability, his chivalric character, his probity, honour and—may we add to his

eternal praise—his Christian life and conduct make his name a very tower of strength.

A delicate situation was created by the fact that Virginia was not yet a member of the Confederacy established at Montgomery. Virginia had come out on a point of honour only, with no real grievance of her own. But she was aware that by that magnificent gesture she offered herself as a battleground on the way to Washington, and that an alliance with the States to her rear would be necessary.

The first collision was expected at Harper’s Ferry, where a handful of Virginia volunteers had driven out the Federal garrison and now held a wolf by the ears. The Institute’s Major Jackson was soon promoted to a colonelcy and sent off to take charge there. At Norfolk, too, the volunteers were in perilous possession of the harbour and shipyards. But all Williamsburg was speculating anxiously about Fortress Monroe, the only piece of Virginia soil left in Federal hands. An informal armistice existed there now, as the Yankee garrison under Butler was too powerful to be tackled by volunteers, but sooner or later Beauregard would try to come up from Norfolk, or Lincoln would attempt to send reinforcements by way of Hampton Roads. And so Virginia began to build a battery at Yorktown, and a defensive line was to be drawn from there across the Peninsula to the James River, running just east of Williamsburg.

“It’s like having Cornwallis on the march again,” said Tibby Day. And then she sighed, “Young Robert Lee will have his hands full.”

Young Robert Lee was fifty-four, with the narrow hips and flat legs of the cavalryman, and he rode the dragoon seat with long stirrups. He had seen thirty-two years of army service, and a Washington wit had recently remarked that God had had to spit on his hands to make Bob Lee. His brown eyes were kind and laughing, and he had a modest gallantry which won the hearts of women. His wife, always an invalid, had remained behind at Arlington when he came to Richmond.

Lafe presented himself at the little office in the Post Office building and was taken on as a sort of amateur aide, reporting as punctually as Lee every morning for the vexatious office work of organizing an army. Louise and Sally sent back to Williamsburg for clothes and possessions they had not expected to need and settled in at the Spotswood for an indefinite stay.

On May third, two days before Lincoln’s deadline, Virginia sent out a call for volunteers over eighteen. And Sedgwick refused to go.

There was a terrible scene in the Spragues’ room at the Spotswood, with Louise and Sally in tears, Lafe in a ranting rage, and Sedgwick white and determined, reiterating his fantastic decision to return to Williamsburg, where his existence need not be a daily humiliation to his parents, and resume his reading for the Law.

Fauquier had made things worse by his indignation at being required by his father to remain at the Institute at least for the term. Dabney put the lid on it by arriving in Richmond in search of more active duty than drilling with the volunteer company at Williamsburg, and promptly got himself assigned to Colonel Magruder, who was directing the artillery around Richmond. Lafe cried out in haste that he would rather see his only son dead than a coward, and Sedgwick departed on the river steamer for Williamsburg branded a disgrace to the family, uncertain for the first time in his life of a welcome even from Sue. If Sue turned gainst him too there would be nothing left, he told himself defiantly, but to go North and join the army which was fighting to preserve the Union. And that would mean, if he survived, a lifetime of exile.

He found Williamsburg aflame with Virginia patriotism. Even the College was closing for the duration of the war, as nearly all of its students and professors were entering the Confederate Army. President Ewell himself, always an outspoken opponent of Secession, had now put his State before his country and was organizing a regiment of infantry for the Peninsula.

Sedgwick reached Williamsburg late in the evening, and Sue received him just as usual, with a family kiss and a frank expectancy of the gift he produced for her—a small silver music box which played L’Elisire d’Amour. Sue was enchanted with it, and kissed him again for gratitude.

Then they ran upstairs to play L’Elisire d’Amour for Gran, who was already in bed, and Eden heard and joined them, and soon he said a quite normal good night and went home to England Street with no mention made of why he had left Richmond.

He had to have it out with Sue, though, before he could rest. He had to know if Sue thought he was a coward. Their favourite ride was down to Jamestown, where they often picnicked near the broken brick tower of the

old church, with the tide lapping at the edge of the grassy bank while they ate.

And so they set off the next morning with sandwiches and fruit and cakes wrapped up in white napkins in Sedgwick’s saddlebags, and they left Judah, his body servant and groom, behind.

It was a delicious May day full of fragrance and bird song. Sue wore a brown velveteen riding habit with a green scarf on her postillion hat, and sat her mare Philomel with easy grace. Sedgwick rode a strutting bay named Cherry, horse and man moving together as one creature with one will between them.

They took the turning which led left of the College and plunged into deep pine woods just outside the town, great trees arching black above their heads in the spring sunshine. They chattered of this and that as they rode, avoiding the thing that lay heavy between them, until they came out into the Back River swamp and splashed across the ford to the Island. Near the church they dismounted, and Sedgwick unslung the saddle-bags and left the horses to graze, and followed her to their usual spot under a big tree near the water. He spread a saddle-blanket for them to sit on, and it was all as it had been a hundred times before, until Sue said with a sigh:

“Thank heaven they haven’t started digging yet. Father says they are going to raise fortifications somewhere around here.”

“Oh, Lord, even on the Island?” He laid himself wearily at full length, his face hidden on the crook of his arm. “What a world!” he groaned. “Sue, I’m a blot on the family escutcheon, did you know?”

“Uncle Lafe never said that!” she protested.

“Your Uncle Lafe put it plainer. He said he wished I was dead.”

“Oh, Sedgie, he didn’t!”

“Well, it came to the same thing. Sue, do you think I’m a coward?”

“No!” She sat very straight, looking out across the water.

“Well, then, what do you think, Susannah? It’s rather hard to tell today.”

His voice came muffled, he would not look at her.

“Sedgie, I like Mr. Murray too, but—couldn’t you do what they want and—and just trust to luck you won’t ever have to shoot him?”

“It isn’t just shooting Cabot Murray I’m objecting to, you little idiot. It’s going against the President—against the nation George Washington and our grandfathers sweat blood to build for us—”

“But if the Yankees are going to want things all their own way all the time—”

“The Yankees are no worse than the South Carolinians and the Alabamans and the Mississippians about that! They’re all acting like spoilt, selfish children, Sue—if we behaved like that in the nursery Mammy came down on us like a ton of bricks and spanked it out of us! People have got to learn to get on together, give and take, respect each other’s rights. If they couldn’t do that there wouldn’t be any family life, nor any happy marriages.

States can learn the same thing if they try. It’s only because the wrong people got together in Congress and started twisting each other’s tails, and then the newspapers chipped in and started calling everybody names, and then the Abolitionists put in their oar—and pretty soon everybody was fighting mad and had said a lot of things they couldn’t back down on, and then Anderson played the fool in the name of duty, and Bang! bang! we’ve got a war on! It’s all so silly, can’t you see how useless it is?”

“It hasn’t really turned into a war yet.”

“You’d think it had if you saw Richmond!”

“Nobody’s been killed. There haven’t been any battles. Maybe it will all peter out the way it does when our family starts a fight.”

“It ought to work like a family, but Lincoln isn’t strong enough to knock people’s heads together. There’s nobody strong enough to do that.”

“Not even you, Sedgie. So it doesn’t do any good for you to try.”

“Then you want me to join the army just like all the rest of them,” he said, lying very still.

“I want you to do whatever you think is right, Sedgie, but—”

“But?”

“If only you could do something that isn’t fighting, while you feel this way—just something that would satisfy them, like Uncle Lafe working in Lee’s office!”

“And have them all dead sure I’m afraid to face gunfire?” He sat up, tight-lipped, very calm, and smoothed his hair with a familiar gesture that pinched her heart. “All right, Susannah. If that’s the way you look at it, I’ll join the army. But not the army they think. I’ll go North and fight with the Yankees to keep the United States of America united until they grow up and learn how to behave!”

“Sedgwick!” she cried incredulously. “You c -couldn’t!”

“They can’t stop me. And they can’t think much less of me than they do now.”

“But, Sedgie, if you did a thing like that they’d never let you come home again!”

“That wouldn’t matter to me very much if I got killed.”

“You mustn’t get killed. I couldn’t live if I couldn’t ever see you again!”

She broke off with a gasp, her eyes brimming, her lips aquiver.

“Sue—”

“Oh, Sedgie, I—”

“sue—”

They stared at each other, breathless, while revelation dawned through fright and doubt, dawned relentlessly, overwhelmingly, until their hands caught and clung—while their eyes still held, wide and wondering, and slowly he raised himself and slid along the blanket towards her, her hands in his. And then he knelt above her, breathing rather quickly, seeing all over again the bright beauty of her hair, her steadfast hazel eyes, her petal skin and the odd, dimpled mouth with its full lower lip…. But now she was his, she couldn’t live without him, she said so, she belonged to him, to love and to cherish…. All these years, all their lives, she had been his, and it was only today with the creeping shadow of war across them that he had discovered it, and she was lovely, lovelier than anyone else in all Virginia, and she was his, to have and to hold…. His arms went round her and their lips met.

Then he sat holding her above his heart, unable to see beyond the thing that had happened to them. He took off her hat and touched her springing hair with possessive joy, he commanded her to smile so he could kiss the dimple set askew so near her lips, he kissed her hands and spread them on his own big palms, marvelling at their delicate shape—till she told him, laughing, that he had seen her before.

“Never,” he whispered. “Never in all my born days before! It’s love at first sight, Susannah.” And he hid his face against her neck so that she squirmed and squealed softly because his eyelashes tickled.

For a little while longer, because they were so young and had never been in love before, they forgot the war, and all it meant to them. And suddenly they were hungry, and ate their lunch zestfully, gazing with shining, happy

eyes above the sandwiches, kissing between courses, feeding each other the best bits of everything.

And then she sighed.

“Well,” she said, for she was always the more practical of the two,

“Well, what now?”

“Whatever will be easiest for you, I will do,” he promised simply.

“You mean you want me to decide?”

“No, that’s not fair. I can decide, I think. I will go to Richmond and join the first regiment I come to. That will settle everything, won’t it?”

“Will it?” she wondered, frowning.

“You won’t have to be ashamed of the man you’re going to marry, anyway.”

“I couldn’t be ashamed of you, Sedgie, it isn’t that. But—if you go North to the other army, I’ll have to run away to go with you, and we’d never see Gran again, and—they’d take on worse even than they did about Eden’s wanting to marry a Yankee, because you’re a Virginian to start with

—”

“Honey, I won’t go North, I promise. I’ve given that up.”

“You mean—just because—?”

“Just because I love you, Sue. I couldn’t do that to you, I realize that now. You come first—I’m not going to do anything that will make things harder for you.”

The dimple showed.

“Makes me feel very important,” she said.

“You’re important, all right, honey, and don’t you forget it. Just that much of you”—he measured off an inch of her forefinger—“is more important to me than the whole State of Virginia.”

He laid her hands, palms upward, against his face, and she sat looking down at his bent head, a little disturbed in her soul that he should fling away his principles and his convictions quite so heedlessly for her sake. Mr.

Murray, for instance, seemed not to have altered his chosen course a single degree because of Eden. Of course Mr. Murray was a Yankee. Virginia men, she had heard, were more considerate. She did not know that their grandfather St. John had firmly set aside his own headstrong Tory Regina and served for four long years with Washington before she humbled herself and forgave him. But it troubled Sue just the same, as it would have

troubled Gran, that Sedgwick could put his love before everything else, to make of himself with a graceful gesture her slave and bondsman—but that was just the way the Sprague blood ran in him, wild and quixotic and afire.

It troubled her that she had turned him, without even trying, down the very road he had hitherto flatly refused to take—just because any other course on his part would make things more difficult for her. Dimly she was aware that to Cabot Murray—as to St. John Sprague in his day—no woman was worth the sacrifice of his convictions. But with Sedgwick she came first. It made her feel important, yes—but it made her feel humble too, and responsible. It was very sobering.

“I think,” she said while his face was still between her hands, “I think you’d better not do anything at all just yet. Let’s wait and see what happens.

We needn’t tell them right away.”

“Not tell them?” He left a kiss in each of her palms and closed her fingers on it very gently. “I’d burst if I had to keep it to myself! We’ll tell them to-night, as soon as we get back. And we’ll have to be starting, look at the sun!”

She submitted thoughtfully to being lifted to her feet, she watched in silence while he folded the blanket and readied the horses, she allowed his arms to close round her where she stood beside Philomel waiting to mount.

“Kiss me,” he whispered, jealous of her thoughts, and she raised her face to him obediently. Long moments passed. “I thought maybe you’d forgotten how,” he murmured gratefully.

“Let’s tell Gran first,” she said. “I’d rather.”

IV

But they never got past the drawing room door.

Dabney had come home again, resplendent in a new uniform and sword, a lieutenant under Magruder, who was coming to establish headquarters at Yorktown. Everyone was excited and pleased that the Peninsula was to have Magruder, because that meant that headquarters would be gay—he was a bachelor famous for the parties he gave, and Dabney would be able to get home on furlough with no trouble at all now, and so on and so forth.

At last Eden took Dabney away to tell Gran the news, and that left Sedgwick and Sue alone in the drawing room with Ransom and Felicity.

They exchanged glances, Sue nodded doubtfully, and Sedgwick cleared his throat.

“You’ll be pleased to know, sir, that I have changed my mind. I’ll go down to Yorktown with Dabney tomorrow and see if they’ll take me on there.”

“Oh, Sedgwick, I’m so glad!” cried Felicity warmly, and Ransom laid his hand on Sedgwick’s shoulder and said with affection, “Good boy! It will be a great relief to your father!”

“He’s got no one to thank for it but Sue,” Sedgwick told them with a touch of his old defiance. “I still don’t see any sense in this beastly war. But I want to marry Sue, and I can’t have her heckled on my account.”

Ransom’s hand dropped from Sedgwick’s shoulder and his startled glance flew to meet his wife’s waiting eyes. For a moment they looked at each other as though caught in a sort of paralysis, then at some sign from her Ransom spoke.

“But that’s impossible,” he said quietly.

“Oh, but Father, he’s going to join the army now!” Sue pointed out eagerly. “He said he’d join the first regiment he came to. That makes it all right, doesn’t it?”

“My dear, you don’t seem to realize—you and Sedgwick are cousins.”

She looked at him uncomprehendingly.

“Well, so are you and Mother.”

“You and Sedgwick are first cousins twice over, Sue. And that’s too close a relationship for marriage. Surely you knew that, Sedgwick, what are you thinking of?”

Sedgwick passed a hand dazedly across his eyes.

“I—hadn’t thought about that,” he said. “I—forgot.”

“But I don’t see—” Sue began, and something in his beaten attitude and hidden face struck her with panic. She pulled the hand away from his face and held it in both hers protectively, and then, with a sob of rage and fear turned on her parents fiercely. “Why can’t you all let Sedgie alone!” she cried. “If it isn’t one thing it’s another! First he’s got to go into the army, and now he mustn’t marry me! I’ll marry him anyway tomorrow, if he wants me to! I’ll run away with him up North, and never come back here again! You and Mother are happy together, you married the person you

wanted to, you can’t stop me, I belong to Sedgie, I won’t ever have anybody else, you know I can’t live without him—”

She leaned against him, sobbing, and Felicity came to her pityingly, her arms outstretched, and was gently warded off by Sedgwick.

“Let me handle this,” he said. “Please go away, both of you, and let me handle it.”

But Ransom in his father’s dismay at Sue’s anguish interfered.

“You had better go now, Sedgwick,” he said, and took Sue from him into the circle of his own arm. “I think it would be better if you didn’t try to say goodbye. Now that you have decided to do as your father wishes, perhaps it would be better, too, if you went back to Richmond instead of to Yorktown with Dabney.”

“You mean I’m not to see Sue again, sir?”

“Not for a while. You are both too young to make a tragedy of this. You and Sue have been devoted playmates, I know, but some day you will find another girl who was meant to be your wife.”

Sedgwick drew in his breath.

“I don’t want another girl, sir. I wouldn’t trade the right to see Sue every day for all of Solomon’s wives!”

“You think that now, of course. I have no intention of forbidding you to see Sue, but I think you would be wise to leave it for a little while until you are both—calmer.”

Sedgwick looked piteously from Ransom to Felicity and saw no relenting. He stepped close to Sue and turned her face up to his with a hand under her chin.

“Goodbye, honey—it’s not forever, you know. Don’t cry, now—if you love me, don’t cry.”

Ignoring Ransom, he bent and kissed her cheek, and left the house with the taste of her tears on his lips. They were wrong, he was sure, not to let him talk to her and try to make her understand. He could have dried up her tears, he knew, and brought her some measure of self-control and comfort, if only they had let him talk to her alone. As it was, she might make herself ill with grieving, and he wouldn’t be there. They were wrong, he told himself angrily, swinging down the street, blind to greetings on either side, wrong to behave as though he couldn’t be trusted to look after Sue. All her life he had known better than anybody else what was best for her. Why,

they even used to ask his advice about her presents and her musts and her must-nots. Try to make Sue see that she ought to work harder at her music, they would say to him—she plays better than anybody else in the family, you tell her you’d like her to learn La Gondola by heart, she’ll do it for you.

Or—Show Sedgwick the story you wrote, Sue, they would say to her, with a glance at him to ensure his praise, rather inclined to believe him when he said it was every bit as good as anything Maria Edgeworth ever wrote. For years he had always had the last word on anything with regard to Sue, and now they turned him out as though he was a leper, just when she needed him most. They were wrong….

When he reached the house in England Street he realized that he had left Cherry in Ransom’s stable yard, Still in a sort of trance, he shouted for Judah and told him to fetch Cherry home. And then, as he climbed the stairs to his own room and banged the door behind him, the numbness of shock went off like an anaesthetic and he began to swear at himself. For a long time, while daylight faded and lamps were lit downstairs and the long mahogany dining-table was carefully laid with silver and glass and lace and English china for his solitary supper, he walked up and down behind the closed door, cursing himself with a wealth of epithet, invective, and imagery which would have done credit to the great St. John himself. For he, who loved Sue more than ever man loved woman before, had been such a blind, stupid, selfish this-and-that and so-and-so as to forget— forget, mind you—the close blood tie which was the family tradition and pride. He, whose sole excuse for living was to see that nothing made Sue unhappy or afraid, had done her irreparable harm by failing to see in time and guard against her own love for him. There were no words bitter enough for his opinion of himself, though he found and employed a great many blistering terms far short of the ideal.

By the time Judah knocked on his door to say that supper was waiting, Sedgwick’s anger at himself had faded into an agony of anxiety about Sue and how she would weather the grief, which he, in his criminal idiocy, had allowed her to encounter. Still wearing his riding-boots and plain linen stock, he descended to the dining-room and sat alone at one end of the shining table pretending to eat the meal which was as painstakingly served as thought he whole family and a brace of guests had been present. It was commented on in the kitchen, however, that he was only pecking at his food

to-night, and surreptitious peeks were taken at him through the door of the butler’s pantry. Hadn’t changed his clothes—didn’t speak a word to nobody

—didn’t even know what was on his plate—not like him—sickening for something, and his ma away in Richmond—?

When he left the table he returned at once to his room. At nearly midnight Judah went up to ask if he hadn’t rung, and found his master seated idly in an armchair staring at the wall. In all that time Sedgwick had found no solution, no alleviation, of the situation for which he held himself responsible.

V

Back in Ransom’s drawing room they were doing the best they could to bring their darling to reason, and to convince her that it was impossible for her to be ever anything but friends with Sedgwick. When Dabney and Eden came down from Gran’s room and discovered her tears with surprise and questions, and had to be told the cause, she fled from them all, up to the bedroom she and Eden shared, and flung herself across the bed, too exhausted now even for tears. If only they could have got to Gran first—

then maybe no one else would have had to know….

Eden found her there some time later, and helped her to undress and tucked her into bed with silent sisterly tact, and brought her some supper on a tray, and made everybody let her alone.

Sue lay still while darkness fell, trying to think again, trying to see her way ahead into bleakness. Sedgwick was gone, or would be in the morning.

He wouldn’t be allowed even to say goodbye before he went away to the army, and he might be killed. Suppose she never saw Sedgwick again. What point would there be to living in a world without Sedgwick to talk to and laugh with and confide in? Because even if they couldn’t live together as husband and wife, so long as he wasn’t killed, so long as he was still there in England Street as he had always been, there would be some sort of life to go on with. Even if some day he married somebody else, as her father said he must do, if ever he was to have a family of his own—well, even then she could see him, see his children, even if they weren’t hers too. But— I don’t want another girl, Sedgwick had cried at that mention of his marriage to

somebody else. Did that mean that he would deny himself forever on account of her?

Feeling sick and feverish and thick in the throat from crying, she tried to see ahead for Sedgwick, who mustn’t have a maimed, one-sided sort of life just because of loving her. Perhaps if she wasn’t there to remind him, perhaps if he couldn’t see her every day—? She might go to Aunt Louise in Richmond—but they were sending Sedgwick there. There was Aunt Lavinia in Charleston, but probably they wouldn’t want her, with the war and all. Perhaps she ought to go clean away, as far as Europe, so that Sedgwick would forget her and be happy. She and Eden had always dreamed of going to Europe some day with their parents, but the war had spoilt that too. There wasn’t anywhere she could go, because of the war, and so long as he could see her every day Sedgwick would never marry somebody else and be happy….

When Eden came to bed and the light was out, Sue turned gratefully into her arms. Still Eden said nothing about Sedgwick—just held her close and stroked her aching head with cool, loving fingers, and Sue clung closer and cried a little more, but not for Sedgwick now, because it had come to her, lying there in the dark, what she could do for him—she cried because she loved Eden so much, best of all her family except perhaps Gran, and because of what she had decided she must do. And at last she fell into a heavy sleep against Eden’s shoulder, and did not rouse again till she heard Eden moving about next morning and Mammy came in to hook her up.

For a moment Sue lay with her eyes shut, wondering what hurt so, and why she was so ill. Then she remembered. Remembered everything. Lying motionless, she went over her plans for to day, and they seemed to her as sound as they had done the night before—if only she had not got to move to begin on them, if only she could rest a while, if only she need never move again…. Well, it wouldn’t take long, once she started.

“May I stay in bed today?” she asked Eden, for that was part of her plan, and Mammy came and felt of her head and said she had fever, and bathed her swollen, smarting eyes in cool water, and said she would bring up some breakfast on a tray. “I think I’m going back to sleep,” she told them, passive under Mammy’s ministering hands. “I’ll ring for breakfast when I want it.

Please just let me rest a while, alone.”

It worked. They tiptoed away. And when she was sure they would all be at breakfast she rose quickly and scrambled into her clothes and put on the velveteen riding-habit, which luckily buttoned down the front, and fled down the stairs like a shadow and out to the stables.

There she found only Micah, the fourteen-year-old horse boy, as she had hoped, and she got him to saddle Philomel for her.

“No, you can’t come with me,” she said firmly when she had mounted.

“Sedgwick is waiting for me in England Street—I’m late.”

She left Micah staring after her, his none too adequate mind bemused by his faithful darky instinct that something was very wrong. He was further upset when he observed, by a private system of crawling and peeping, that she turned away from England Street and rode off towards the College, alone.

“Done tol’ me a lie,” Micah ruminated. “Didn’ look right, neither. Peak-ed, kinda. Marse Sedgwick have a fit.” He pondered the last idea unhappily.

“Yassuh, Marse Sedgwick sho’ nuff gimme the debbil effen he knowed I let her ride off by herself like dat.” He sighed philosophically. “Well, reckon I got to go tell him.”

Having once made up his mind, he lost no more time about getting to England Street, where he found his brother Judah, who was Sedgwick’s body servant, polishing his master’s boots in the sun outside the kitchen door.

“Whereat Marse Sedgwick, Jude?”

“Nem you mind, he fit to be tied dis mawnin’, I cain’ do nothin’ right, seems like. Hey, best you don’ go near him till he’s et breakfast—”

But Micah kept on doggedly with Judah protesting at his heels, all the way upstairs to Sedgwick’s room, where the door stood ajar. Micah knocked on it apologetically.

“Marse Sedgwick—”

“All right, chuck my boots inside and get out of here!”

Micah pushed the door an inch wider and put his head in. Sedgwick was shaved and brushed and immaculate, just exchanging his dressing-gown for his coat. His feet were still in slippers.

“It’s me, Marse Sedgwick.”

“Hullo, Micah, what do you want?”

“I was thinkin’, suh, best you know ’bout Miss Susannah right away, suh.”

“What about her? Is she ill?”

“She done gone.”

“Gone where?”

“Search me, suh, she done tol’ me a lie.”

“Make sense, Micah, what are you talking about?”

“Miss Susannah. She done tol’ me she gwine meet you yere, nen she rid off alone, up College way, like she been ont fer.”

“Alone?”

“She lie to me, Marse Sedgwick—she say you gwine ride wid her.”

Sedgwick snatched his boots from Judah’s hand.

“Saddle Cherry,” he said. “Hurry up.”

Judah fled stablewards.

Sedgwick knew, with the second sight he had for all that concerned Sue, that she had gone back to Jamestown. He knew also that he had no time to lose. And while he put Cherry along the road breakfastless at top speed he knew, against his will and praying that he was wrong, what she meant to do.

All because they had sent him away in such a hurry yesterday. All because they tried to keep her from him, as though he could not be trusted any more. If anything happened to her now, if he was too late, it would be their fault for not being able to see that no one could handle it but him. It would be their fault. But that would not bring Sue back from the river at Jamestown.

He came to the ford and saw that she had crossed it. Cherry was labouring now, but Sedgwick forced him on. Philomel was grazing by the church. He flung himself out of his saddle and ran on across the green turf, afraid to call, his footsteps cushioned in the grass.

Beyond the big tree where they had sat the day before he saw her, up to her knees in the water, the strong ebb tide already dragging at her heavy riding skirt, so that she stumbled as she walked steadily out in to the river.

The first sound she heard was the splash of his feet through the water behind her, and then she was caught in his arms, lifted, and carried back to shore. She heard him say, “Susannah, I could wring your neck!” and then she fainted.

When she came to she was lying on the grass and Sedgwick had wrung out her skirt and taken her shoes off and was mopping at her stockinged feet with his handkerchief. He looked round and saw that her eyes were open.

“Well!” he said severely. “What good did you think that would do?”

She felt very tired. She felt as though she had died and gone to heaven, because the sun was warm on her face, and Sedgwick was here beside her, and she didn’t even care if he was going to be cross. She only wanted to lie still and look at him like waking up from a nightmare.

He sat down beside her and took off his boots—with difficulty—and emptied the water out of them and squeezed water out of the toes of his socks and then pulled his boots back on—also with difficulty. She did not know he was fighting his way back, second by second, from an engulfing nausea of horror which had left him cold and shaking inside and with only just enough commonsense to tell him that now was his chance to deal with this thing once and for all, and for God’s sake not to bungle it. If he let her know how he felt, if he gave way to his need to hold her warm and dry and safe in his arms and sob out his relief at having been in time, he would not be able to hold things steady for her at their parting. He could tell by looking at her that she had cried herself sick already. He was determined that there would be no more tears for Susannah today. He sat tugging at his boots, his face rigid with the effort for self-control, waiting till he dared trust himself to speak, lining up in his mind the things he had devised for her comfort during the sleepless night.

Finally she could bear what she supposed was his angry silence no longer.

“How did you know where I was?” she inquired in a small voice.

“You lied to Micah. He was so outraged that he came straight to me and told on you.”

“Are you awfully mad at me, Sedgie? I thought I was doing the best thing.” She raised herself on one elbow earnestly. “I thought if it wasn’t for me you’d look at other girls and—one of them would be all right for you and—you’d be happy with her.”

“Well, you thought wrong,” he said rudely, choking back his pity and tenderness for her sake. “Any time I’m happier with you drowned in the river, I belong in the Asylum.”

“Reckon I got kind of mixed up,” she sighed, for it didn’t seem such a good idea after all, lying here in the sun with Sedgwick sitting beside her.

“That was because they wouldn’t let us talk,” he said. “I knew you were mixed up, I stayed awake all night trying to think what I could do about it, I was even going to try and write you a letter.”

“This is better, isn’t it?”

“Only by the grace of God!”

“What are we going to do, Sedgie? How are we going to bear it?”

“We’re going to forget that yesterday ever happened,” he said firmly.

“We’re going to go on exactly as we were, being friends, and cousins, and never think of anything more, just as we never had before yesterday. We’re not going to grieve, Sue, and feel as though our lives are over. You’re only sixteen, after all. Maybe, if we don’t kill ’em all off in the war, you’ll done cotch yourself a Yankee some day, like Eden!”

“Oh, no! Don’t joke about it, Sedgie!”

“I’m not joking, honey. I’m only trying to find a way out of this thing.”

“What did they mean about children?” she asked him, frowning.

“Couldn’t we have any?”

“We could have them, honey—but it wouldn’t be fair to them.”

“Would they be queer?”

He tried to laugh, managed to keep from reaching for her.

“They might not all be idiots, I don’t say that, but it’s taking a risk for them, and we have to think of their children, too, and the ones after that. It’s bad for the line, we’ve had all the inbreeding we can stand. There was your Grandmother Annabelle too, you know, she was half Sprague.”

“They all do what they like but us,” she said rebelliously.

“It was all right for them. And we don’t want anyone to say anything like that about us a generation from now, do we? I’m going away now, it’s what they want—next time you see me I’ll be all got up in a uniform like Dabney’s! It will be easier for me, because I’ll be camping out and dodging bullets—but you must keep busy too, don’t give yourself time to think till by and by it won’t hurt so bad. After all, it’s only one short day we have to forget—”

“I’d rather have had that day than all the rest of my life put together!”

“No,” he said, wincing. “Let’s not think of it like that. We must let it go, Sue—all of it—as though it never happened. That’s the best way. If I’d had

any sense it wouldn’t have happened. And if you’re going to be unhappy on my account I hope they shoot me quick, I deserve it!”

She raised a puzzled face to him, blinking in the sunlight.

“Sedgie, you’re so strange—don’t you mind?”

That was nearly too much for him.

“Child, it’s the end of the world for me, you know that. But I should have saved you from it, somehow. I should have found some way—”

“Some way to keep me from loving you? You’d have had to start the day I was born!”

He could not answer that, and got to his feet and reached down a hand to pull her up.

“Let’s go back,” he said. “I’ll try and get you into the house without their knowing.”

“My shoes—”

He knelt and put them on for her. It took him quite a while. His face was white when he rose.

“Come on,” he said, and led the way to where the horses grazed. In silence he locked his hands to make a step to help her to mount and gave her the reins. Then he paused, looking up at her, leaning with one hand on the pommel and one on Philomel’s rump. “I wasn’t really cross with you,”

he said rather jerkily. “It was just that you gave me the fright of my life.

Will you promise me solemnly never to try and do such a thing again?”

“I promise,” she whispered. “Whatever happens, if we both live to be a hundred, we’ll go through it together.”

Without another word he turned away from her and mounted Cherry.

As they rode back under the tall dark pines, they met a company of volunteers and a squad of Negroes with shovels and pick-axes and wagons full of timber and bricks—on the way to begin the fortifications at Jamestown.

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