CHAPTER IV
WARS AND RUMORS OF WAR
We sent our carriage down to Wallingford that evening and had my newfriend, Mr. Orme, out to Cowles' Farms for that night. He was a strangerin the land, and that was enough. I often think to-day how ready we wereto welcome any who came, and how easily we might have been deceived asto the nature of such chance guests.
Yet Orme so finely conducted himself that none might criticise him, andindeed both my father and mother appeared fairly to form a liking forhim. This was the more surprising on the part of both, since they werefully advised of the nature of his recent speech, or sermon, or what youchoose to call it, at the Methodist church, the sentiments of whichscarce jumped with their own. Both my parents accepted Orme for what hepurported to be, a minister of the gospel; and any singularity of hisconduct which they may have noticed they ascribed to his education incommunities different from our own quiet one. I remember no acrimoniousspeech during his visit with us, although the doctrine which he hadpronounced and which now and again, in one form or another, he renewed,was not in accord with ours. I recall very well the discussions theyhad, and remember how formally my mother would begin her littlearguments: "Friend, I am moved to say to thee"; and then she would goon to tell him gently that all men should be brothers, and that thereshould be peace on earth, and that no man should oppress his brother inany way, and that slavery ought not to exist.
"What! madam," Orme would exclaim, "this manner of thought in a Southernfamily!" And so he in turn would go on repeating his old argument ofgeography, and saying how England must side with the South, and how theSouth must soon break with the North. "This man Lincoln, if elected,"said he, "will confiscate every slave in the Southern States. He willcripple and ruin the South, mark my words. He will cost the Southmillions that never will be repaid. I cannot see how any Virginian canfail to stand with all his Southern brothers, front to front against theNorth on these vital questions."
"I do not think the South would fight the North over slavery alone. TheSouth loves the flag, because she helped create it as much or more thanthe North. She will not bear treason to the flag." Thus my father.
"It would be no treason," affirmed Orme, "but duty, if that flag becamethe flag of oppression. The Anglo-Saxon has from King John down refusedto be governed unjustly and oppressively."
And so they went on, hour after hour, not bitterly, but hotly, as wasthe fashion all over the land at that time. My father remained a Whig,which put him in line, sometimes, with the Northern men then coming intoprominence, such as Morrill of New England, and young Sherman fromacross the mountains, who believed in the tariff in spite of whatEngland might say to us. This set him against the Jefferson clans of ourstate, who feared not a war with the North so much as one with Europe.Already England was pronouncing her course; yet those were not days oftriumphant conclusions, but of doubtful weighing and hard judgment, aswe in old Virginia could have told you, who saw neighbors set againsteach other, and even families divided among themselves.
For six years the war talk had been growing stronger. Those of the Southrecoiled from the word treason--it had a hateful sound to them--nor havethey to this day justified its application to themselves. I myselfbelieve to-day that that war was much one of geography and of lack oftransportation. Not all the common folk of the North or of the Souththen knew that it was never so much a war of principle, as they weretaught to think, but rather a war of self-interest between two clashingcommercial parties. We did not know that the unscrupulous kings of thecotton world, here and abroad, were making deliberate propaganda ofsecession all over the South; that secession was not a thing voluntaryand spontaneous, but an idea nourished to wrong growth by a secret andshrewd commercial campaign, whose nature and extent few dreamed, eitherthen or afterward. It was not these rich and arrogant planters of theSouth, even, men like our kin in the Carolinas, men like those of theSheraton family, who were the pillars of the Confederacy, or rather, ofthe secession idea. Back of them, enshrouded forever in darkness--thenin mystery, and now in oblivion which cannot be broken--were certaingreat figures of the commercial world in this land and in other lands.These made a victim of our country at that time, even as a few greatcommercial figures seek to do to-day, and we, poor innocent fools, flewat each other's throats, and fought, and slew, and laid waste a land,for no real principle and to no gain to ourselves. Nothing is so easy todeceive, to hoodwink, to blind and betray, as a great and innocentpeople that in its heart loves justice and fair play.
I fear, however, that while much of this talk was going on upon thegalleries at Cowles' Farms, I myself was busier with the training of mypointer than I was with matters of politics. I was not displeased whenmy mother came to me presently that afternoon and suggested that weshould all make a visit to Dixiana Farm, to call upon our neighbors, theSheratons.
"Mr. Orme says he would like to meet Colonel Sheraton," she explained,"and thee knows that we have not been to see our neighbors for some timenow. I thought that perhaps Colonel Sheraton might be moved to listen tome as well as to Mr. Orme, if I should speak of peace--not in argument,as thee knows, but as his neighbor."
She looked at me a moment, her hand dusting at my coat. "Thee knows theSheratons and the Cowles have sometimes been friends and sometimesenemies--I would rather we were friends. And, Jack, Miss Grace is quitethy equal--it any may be the equal of my boy. And some day thee must bethinking, thee knows--"
"I was already thinking, mother," said I gravely; and so, indeed, I was,though perhaps not quite as she imagined.
At least that is how we happened to ride to the Sheratons thatafternoon, in our greater carriage, my father and Mr. Orme by the sideof my mother, and I alongside on horseback. In some way the visit seemedto have a formal nature.
Colonel Sheraton met us at his lawn, and as the day was somewhat warm,asked us to be seated in the chairs beneath the oaks. Here Miss Gracejoined us presently, and Orme was presented to her, as well as to Mrs.Sheraton, tall, dark, and lace-draped, who also joined us in response toColonel Sheraton's request. I could not fail to notice the quick glancewith which Orme took in the face and figure of Grace Sheraton; and,indeed he had been a critical man who would not have called her fair tolook upon.
The elder members of the party fell to conversing in theirrocking-chairs there on the lawn, and I was selfish enough to withdrawMiss Grace to the gallery steps, where we sat for a time, laughing andtalking, while I pulled the ears of their hunting dog, and rolled underfoot a puppy or two, which were my friends. I say, none could havefailed to call Grace Sheraton fair. It pleased me better to sit there onthe gallery steps and talk with her than to listen once more to thearguments over slavery and secession. I could hear Colonel Sheraton'sdeep voice every now and then emphatically coinciding with somestatement made by Orme. I could see the clean-cut features of thelatter, and his gestures, strongly but not flamboyantly made.
As for us two, the language that goes without speech between a young manand a maid passed between us. I rejoiced to mock at her, always, and didso now, declaring again my purpose to treat her simply as my neighborand not as a young lady finished at the best schools of Philadelphia.But presently in some way, I scarce can say by whose first motion, wearose and strolled together around the corner of the house and out intothe orchard.