Who Won the Pretty Widow: A Confederate's Story of the Confederacy. Ii

A CONFEDERATE’S STORY OF THE CONFEDERACY.

II.

CHAPTER V.

MISTRESS and maid both slept, but when the gray of morning came, they were up, anxious and observant Did you. hear or see anything, Lucy, after I went to sleep?” asked the widow.

“ Seed de fire ; yond’ ’t is now. See de red ? Spec dey done burnt de barn,” said the colored girl.

“ No! it is more likely the house. Well, let it go. I am very thankful. Can we go out now, do you think ? ” said Lucy.

“ S’pos’n’ I see,” said the maid ; but going, she soon returned with news that the figures and horses of the ruffians were still to be seen in the yard and grounds. It was twelve o’clock before they ventured cautiously out, and, avoiding the smoking ruins of Malvoisee, Lucy’s dwelling, sought shelter at the Bucks, the Shandy place. They were very hungry, and, while the maid rummaged about for food and cooking-vessels in a bachelor’s kitchen, Lucy strolled into her mother’s old room. It was used apparently as a bedroom. There were pantaloons slung over the bed-post, a boot and some old crutches in one corner, a violin-case on a table, and above the mantel-piece a small, vigorous sketch of a female head. Lucy took it to the light. It was the face of a middle-aged lady with a mild, sweet face, that must have been very pretty once and was lovely even now. She placed it carefully back in its place, and then, a-tiptoe, opened the violincase. Loose papers were scattered over the instrument, and she picked up one sheet. It was the commencement of some verses, — love-verses, too. “ Whom does John Shandy write love-verses to?” she asked herself, when her eye caught something that looked as if it might be another sketch. She picked the papers up, for there were several, and stepped smiling to the light. She started. It was her own fair face ; there was no mistaking it. “The eyes are too large,” said Lucy to herself, softly, “ and the lashes too long, and it is altogether too pretty, but — ” Rut she felt there might have been a time when she looked like that. How did John Shandy see it ? Had he eyes to see what might have been behind what was ? She looked further, they were all the same. She blushed, for she had a thought that she knew to whom John Shandy wrote love-verses. But a familiar and irregular step startled her, and she hastily restored the sketches. It was John Shandy, she knew, and she waited a moment to recover her composure. She heard him enter the adjoining chamber and throw himself into a chair, crying in agony, “ O my darling, my darling, why did I go away, why did I leave you ! ” and then bursting into threats of vengeance on the bandit, that made her tremble. It would not do to meet him now. Black Lucy must first break the news of her safety, and she stole out of the room. After the good news was conveyed to him, they met, and the propriety of that meeting would have pleased even your fastidious taste, madam.

Lucy resolved upon a line of affectionate, sisterly conduct towards John Shandy after this ; but there are some wilful men, not subject to the most wisely planned treatment. John Shandy was one of these, and Lucy’s notable plan for his peace and happiness fell through. He brought her, a few days later, the news of the capture of the bandit and his gang by the officer detailed, at his request, for the purpose, and things resumed their old way.

Mr. Melden came back, and Mrs. Melden came back. The mother’s account of her son’s valor and sufferings in Lucy’s behalf was positive eloquence, and Lucy spoke her little speeches of gratitude ; she was very good at little speeches, and the teafights went on, as usual. It vexed John Shandy, and he spoke about it in a way that irritated the little widow. She “didn’t care what the gossips said was she to be deprived of the comforts of religion, and the society of that good man, her preserver ? She was her own mistress; widowhood, she said, with tears in her eyes, gave her at least that privilege for all it had taken, and she would do as she pleased. So John Shandy left her, believing she would finally marry the Rev. Mr. Melden.

The preacher was in love, — the mildest infantile form of the pleasing epidemic ; but still he had it. “ I do think, mother,” he had said,—“I do think she prefers me. I’ve half a notion to speak.”

“ Make it a whole notion,” said the mother, stoutly. “ Of course, she’s got to marry somebody, and who else is there for her to prefer ? Of course, she’s got to marry,” persisted the widow, indignantly, for she too had been a widow and had married a second time, and she regarded Lucy’s continued widowhood as rank treason to a pet theory of her own. This was, that widows must marry. Maids might remain single, but it was the first duty of widowhood, she had chapter and verse for it, to be comforted, and how else could they be comforted ? It would be wicked to refuse, and she did not think Lucy was wicked.

So Mrs. Melden would not take tea with her “sweet little friend” that evening, but prayerfully commended her son to Lucy’s hospitable care; and her son had a duty to perform he only half liked. He was pledged to make premeditated love, a task hard enough to a braver man. He brought it in awkwardly, though he thought very skilfully, by reference to her recent danger, and having, at last, spoken his mind, got a mild and humble refusal. He persisted, until Lucy replied to a shaft from the maternal quiver, on the duty of marriage : “ If I must marry, I will marry a man, and a brave man, like poor Victor.”

“ Good heavens ! Mrs. Shandy, I will not speak of my own courage, but you heard what my mother said,” answered he.

“ Yes,” said she, “ but I have thought more of what you said. When I called to you, in the hands of that wretch, you replied that you were a minister of the gospel. As I said, if I must marry, I want a man for a husband. Had there been in your place even poor John Shandy — ”

But she was not allowed to express an opinion of what her cousin would have done under the circumstances.

“ John Shandy ! ” said the preacher ; “ why, you do not compare me to that lame man ? ”

“ No,” said Lucy, “ I never saw but one man to compare to John Shandy, — my husband, his cousin Victor.”

“ Then you are going to marry John Shandy ? ” said the mortified suitor, indignantly.

“That is just what is none of your business,” said the little widow, plumpIy. “ I will be glad to see you as a friend or pastor, but never come to me as you have done this evening, or to renew this subject.”

The Rev. Mr. Melden was suppressed ; and Lucy had offended and convinced each of two rivals that she intended to marry the other. Mrs. Melden had charge of this new piece of gossip, and managed it skilfully. “John Shandy was a dissipated little cripple, and almost a MURDERER for that wicked woman ; and now she was going to marry him ! Well, perhaps it was the best thing she could do. Leon,” she added, thankfully, “had escaped her toils providentially.”

While these events occurred something was told to John Shandy that greatly excited and disturbed him. The soldier who had brought the news of poor Victor Shandy’s last words was clerking for McCandless at the village store. This had kept him apart from John Shandy, but they were old schoolmates, and sometimes met. On a late occasion the veteran referred to the prevailing rumor in the village.

“ Well, Tris,” said he, borrowing a nickname from a pleasant old book now almost out of date, “ how’s the Widow Wadman ? ”

“ Dry up that,” said Shandy.

“ O, I ’m agreeable ! Poor Vic. I wonder how he ’d like it,” said the soldier, not at all agreeably.

“ Poor Victor,” repeated Shandy, trying to change the conversation. “It was strange, that misprint of 'W. Sanders’ for ‘V. Shandy,’ in the list of killed.”

“Never saw it,” said the other, curtly ; “knew Bill Sanders, though ; tall fellow, red hair, but gamy, eh ! Salty, very. Why, now I think, Bill was shot at the same place, but not the same day; me an’ Vic was knocked over next day.”

“ why, was there a ‘ W. Sanders ’ in Victor’s company, a sergeant? None of us knew it!” exclaimed John Shandy, excitedly.

“ Of course not; joined us at Vicksburg, I told you ; a regular fire-eater,” said the soldier.

“No! you did not tell me,” said Shandy. “ Did you see Victor after his death ? ” he inquired.

“ How could I ? ” was the reply ; “ fainted, and, when I come to, sawbones had me, taking off this other fellow.” And he kicked up the footless stump.

“ Then Victor may be alive yet,” said Shandy. “ Was his name in the list of killed, do you know ? ” he asked.

“ Hardly ; never saw no list; just pegged off home, soon as I could toddle,” said the soldier.

“ But, Bob,” urged Shandy, “ then he may be alive yet. It is possible for him to be alive, you know.”

“ Yes, if a man can live with a gallon of grape-shot in his body. Ugh ! he was mashed all to pieces. O, he’s dead, poor fellow, you bet! Besides, you never heard from him since,” said the veteran.

“ That certainly does look like you are right. But there was a negro boy, Floyd, went with Victor, and he has never come back,” said Shandy.

“ A nigga. O, they petered out fust fiah ! That’s no sign,” said the veteran.

“ Yes,” urged Shandy, “ but when they petered out, they petered back home. The blacks do that more than the whites. This one may have stayed, and taken up his master.”

“ Not likely, not at all likely,” said the soldier, familiar with the negro character. “ Poor Vick’s drawn his last ration. No doubt of her being a widow, if that’s what you ’re at. Why, I heard his last words.”

But John Shandy saw a doubt that excited him. “ I will find it out, ’ thought he, “ if I search every battlefield.” And so, leaving his companion, and cogitating the plans for a thorough investigation, he sought his fair cousin.

“ Lord, Mass John,” said her maid, “ whar ye been all dis time ? Nobody don’t come now ; miss done kicked de preacher.”

“ Kicked the preacher ! ” said Shandy.

“Yes, done guv him de sack; I heered it myself. Da’s miss, now,” continued the maid.

“ Cousin,” said Shandy, “ I offended you, and you were right to rebuke me.”

“ Cousin John, you are the only friend and protector I have in the worid, and you were right to speak as you did. But Mr. Melden is gone, and will come no more, at least as you thought he came before.”

John Shandy reflected. His cousin, then, had no thought of marrying again, and there was no need of revealing his doubts, that would probably end only in renewed sorrow and disappointment.

“ Cousin,” he said, “ I am going to take a little trip ; it may not be a little one, and I wish to know what money you have.”

“ O, heaps ! Where are you going ? Will you need some ? ” said Lucy.

“ None for myself; let me see it,” said he.

She brought her treasures, — vouchers of the Confederate government, certificates of the cotton loan, Confederate treasury notes, and a small sum in gold and silver.

John Shandy sighed when he saw how small a sum the last was. “ I will take these,” said he, referring to the notes and securities, “ and try to exchange them. I have sold the sugar to Mr. Isaacs. He will pay you tomorrow, when he removes it.”

He was going, but she asked, “Will you tell me where you are going ? ”

“Well, no; I may be disappointed. It is a duty I alone can do,” said he.

Lucy reflected. John Shandy had an only sister living in Tennessee. It must be on her account. As he did not choose to speak directly, she would inquire no more ; but, meaning a kindness, she said, “Well, John, come back as soon as you can, and if you bring any one with you, you know how welcome she will be.” John started. “You see I have guessed your great secret; you know I have a little bird. Well, give her my love,” And then they parted for the time.

John wondered what his cousin was at, for a few moments. “ Pshaw,” said he, “she thinks I am going to get married.” And he dismissed the subject.

In the afternoon he handed her fifty dollars in gold, the proceeds of as many hundreds in Confederate securities. “ I had to sell to McCandless,” said he, “and he skinned you. Isaacs will pay you four hundred and fifty, in cash or draft, for the sugar, in the morning.”

She followed him out, and hung about him. Would he be sure and come back soon ? She would pray for him and his speedy return. And, yes, she put up her lips and kissed him, as he stooped from the saddle.

“Yes,” thought he, “ when I return, I will bring you a protector or offer you one.” And he was gone.

CHAPTER VI.

THE reader will understand how the months rolled into years, as these events progressed to the last annual season of a wasting war. And now the evil days drew on, and narrowed around the little widow. Her maid would announce, “ Uncle Reuben and Aunt Sarah done gone ” ; or, “ George and Lucy done gone, miss ” : for her slaves were leaving her. Soon none remained but Lucy and her maid ; and the crops were wasting in the fields.

She soon found she would have none to gather. The negroes would cut down the green cane in broad day, and the worm consumed the cotton. Her purse began to want filling. Careless in expenditure from habit, she had negligently permitted the sum put in her hands by John Shandy to diminish. Still she had Mr. Isaacs’s draft for four hundred and fifty dollars, and she felt easy. She took it out, and observed that it was on McCandless. She disliked this man exceedingly; but she admitted that he was, perhaps, the only person in the neighborhood who could honor a draft for such an amount. She prudently resolved, however, that the money itself was better than McCandless’s credit, and she took advantage of an occasional visit of old Mr. Sambre’s to get the order cashed. She was explaining its purport to him, when he spoke. He “clone done business thata-way before. McCandless must pay, or he would bring the paper back.” And he left on his errand.

He soon returned. “ Well, Mr. Sambre,” said she, “did you get the money ? ”

“ O yes, ma’am ; no trouble about that,” said the old man.

Lucy breathed freer as she took the package and opened it. She knew them at once by the numbers, — her own Confederate notes. She had sold them to McCandless at a cent per cent, and they came back to her dollar for dollar.

There was no redress, nothing but to sit down and endure. It was all her resources gone at one swoop. Her plantation was ruined, her money all gone. She must look out for a living. She could teach music and drawing. Nobody would learn, or could pay for such accomplishments. All Lucy’s little graces were useless. She tried a little school, but her patrons could not pay. She tried, and did get a little sewing ; and, yes, she assisted black Lucy at the wash-tub.

One day old Mr. Sambre met the poor little woman staggering under a heavy sack. “ Bless my soul, Lord bless my soul. Ma’am, gimme that; what is it ? ” said he.

“ It’s very heavy,” said Lucy ; “it’s potatoes. I did n’t know potatoes could be so heavy. I bought them to feed Lucy and myself, and they will last such a little while. We do eat so much ! ”

Another time Lucy and the black girl sat over their Lenten fare. “ Tellee what, missis, I done seed a bee-tree goin’ out to wash dis mornin’,” said the girl.

“ A bee - tree going out to wash ! Why, Lu, what is that?” asked Lucy, wondering.

“I don’t mean de tree; it’s I’se gwine to wash, and seed de tree,” said the other.

“ O, that! ” said Lucy. “ Well, what of it ? ”

“A heap of it,” answered the maid ; “dat tree done chock full o’ honey, ef we could git it.”

“ Ah ! ” sighed Lucy, “ but how ? ”

“ Chop down de tree ; s’pos’n’ le’s try; honey’s mighty good, even wid taters,” said the other.

“ Well, I am willing,” said her mistress, “ but I don’t know how to chop, do you ? ”

“ Chop wood for de kitchen fire,” said the black. “You jes come, an’ I ’ll show ye how.”

They did go. They worked at the tree all morning. “ How hacked and ugly it looks ! ” said Lucy, pausing to rest. “I do believe it’s fatter than when we began. Lucy, this tree grows faster than we cut.”

“ No ! it don’t, it durs n’t. I wish lightnin’ done strike it,” said the negress, pausing. “ S’pos’in’ we try ef it won’t break now,” she continued, after a look.

It was very unpromising, but, with united strength, they propped up a stout sapling, and bore against the lever with all their strength. The tree swayed and cracked. They cheered and panted and pushed, and with a cloud of dust the tree broke, not at the cut, but its rotted roots, and fell with a crash.¹ Lucy sat down, exhausted as she was, and laughed till she cried, but they got the honey.

As the season advanced cotton-picking begun, and it was a harvest for this little Robinson Crusoe and her woman Friday. They were paid in kind, fifty cents on the hundred pounds, and the two earned perhaps a dollar a day. If the pay was In cotton, the country merchant skinned it, in exchange for groceries, but it was sometimes in vegetables, meat, or meal. The dealings with the store took Lucy to her old enemy McCandless in the village, and there she met with the soldier clerk, Bob Asa. Bob was kind in his way, giving Lucy shockingly partial bargains, and one day, when she was out of work, suggested that McCandless wanted cotton-pickers, and paid well. “ He will not see you ; his overseer manages it all, and I do the paying,” said he, persuasively. Lucy was reluctant, but needs must, and so she and her black companion went to the work. Bob was, for once, mistaken. That day, by accident, McCandless did come out and saw the widow. Poverty had not deepened the soft lines of that delicate face, or distorted the light, active figure. She was fair to look upon, this Ruth gleaning in the cotton, and McCandless was quite willing to enact Boaz. He was of a selfish but emotional nature, and very tender of himself over the death of his poor, hardworked wife. He began his attentions with sufficient skill. Cotton, like other natural products, is governed by the soil, and in the same field it will boll out beautifully or be sparse, according to the nourishment furnished. Observing Lucy and her companion to be toiling on the meagre side of the patch, he changed them to the more luxuriant slope, but did not that day address the mistress. The next day he did refer to his late loss, similar to her own, and shed a few tears ; for McCandless thought it hard to lose his wife in the harvest season, and Lucy gave the man credit for a better nature than he possessed.

He came afterwards daily and tried to get up an intimacy. The cottonpicking occupied several weeks, and when it ended another task offered. The Lanfranc and Shandy sugar was famous in those old days, a brand commanding the best market. This was due to the care observed in its boiling, and the just promptitude in removing the mass from the kettles at the true granulating point. Lucy had, in her way, learned all this, and the year previous had made all the sugar of the plantation. It was conceded, by black and white, that she had no equal in this delicate operation, and McCandless desired her services. She refused plumply at first, as it was a task requiring unintermitting attention day and night ; but when McCandless proposed to wagon the cane to the Lanfranc sugar-mill, still unimpaired, Lucy, with proviso and exception, consented.

She made Bob Asa her lieutenant in this work, and kept him about as a sort of guard ; but he could not, nor could she, altogether keep off McCandless, who inclined more and more to the part of Boaz as this Ruth shrank from that cast for her. Good-natured and coarse, he still had some of the Irish native wit and sentiment under the rough husk, and it flowered out in the reluctant sunshine of the widow’s charms. As she spoke civilly and gently to him, with the courtesy of her sex and breeding, the selfish vanity of the man took hope.

The evening the work was finished it rained heavily. McCandless drove up in a handsome new close carriage, with an ugly hand sprawling over the panel, which he was kind enough to inform Lucy was the “ arrums of the ould McCandless famuly.” She declined, however, to be enclosed in such “ arrums,” and preferred walking. But he had not brought the money ; “ Wud the leddy jist stip in ; it was as aisy as her own swate ways, to be sure,” and they would “ rowl down to the shtore for the cash, an’ she should go home like in her own carruge, as in ould times.”

Lucy was vexed. She was determined to have this money down, and it was too late to walk. But she would not ride alone with McCandless. “ Get in, Captain Asa,” she said to her bodyguard, and in the Confederate stepped, very coolly and leisurely, while the Irishman looked blank at this sudden snapping of his little network plot.

He was not a man, however, to be easily repulsed, and the same evening he called at the widow’s shelter. He was refused admittance at first, but, pleading “business,” at length was received. The widow stood holding by the sitting-room door, facing him, with a letter which she had, apparently, been interrupted in reading, in the other hand. It was the attitude of one who expected to answer a question or two before closing the door on the speaker, and resuming a previous, more important occupation. If it was premeditated, it was a quiet stroke of genius. It demoralized the enemy, so to speak.

He was excited. There was a purpose, not thoroughly defined, in his mind to win the widow, and on that night. He struggled against the conscious scowl growing on his face at the sight of the thoroughly defensible position, and slipped into his brogue and blarney: “ Sure how can a swate crature be so crule as to shtand widh her purty fate, an’ his hear-rut an’ her sarvent askin’ her to warrum it in her boo-som.”

The enemy did not even show her colors to this assault.

“ What is your business ?” she said ; “ I am engaged.”

“Sure an’ that’s me business; for ye to be ingaged to be marrid; to meself, I mane.” He saw her face chill and harden and her nostrils quiver at this assault, and he again changed. “ It’s alone ye are here, loike a burred in its cage, an’ it’s poor ye are ; the little penny is soon gone, bad luck to the same, and sorra a bit more to fade thim roses an yer chakes. It wud deloigbt Terry McCandless to presarve the same ; to take the purty burred out o’ the cage and set it free in his arrums, with a carruge of its own to roide in, to be sure.”

“ You may be jesting or drunk, sir, but this house is no place for you,” said the widow, only angry as yet.

“ Divil a bit has touched my lips, barrin’ a mouthful to yer health and for luck, widdy. If it’s the gossoon Pathrick, sure an’ he can go to the school, or to the Divil, for the matther of that; and if it’s manes, sure an’ I’m rich, and plaze the pigs, ef the war goes an, it’s more the richer I ’ll be ; spake, an’ we’ll have the praist at wanst. Hear to raison,” he continued, pushing in as the widow drew back ; “divil a bit can ye live like this; ye must marry, and be dad ye shall marry me,” he said, boldly and persistently. “For betther or for wurrus, them’s the wurruds ; take me for luve, or be dad for hate, as you loike, but it’s take me you shall.” And he looked more brutal as the dark instincts of his nature grew into his face.

“Wretch ! do you think me without protection ? Who should know better than you that God provides an avenger for the widow. This letter is from John Shandy. He is coming. Villain, will you dare to wait till he hears of this insult ? ”

The animal in him quailed before the high-spirited Southern beauty, threatening that fierce Southern law of personal redress whose deadly certainty he knew.

“ Be gorra, thin, marm, an’ I nivir heard before it was an insult to ask a lady to marry,” he growled, remonstrating.

“ Such asking would be an insult from crowned king or ragged beggar, and from you,'—your very presence has been an insult.” And she slammed the door on his retreating face, bolted it, and sat down trembling with excitement.

Lucy had threatened this man with John Shandy’s coming; but the letter Lucy held, though speaking of his return, did it obscurely, and set no period. She thought of this the next day, and, consulting with her maid, she resolved to offer a room to the lame soldier.

He gladly accepted the offering; and poor Bob Asa being, in this way, so near such a brilliant, intoxicating light, must need flicker in the flame a little, poor moth !

“Why, Captain Asa,” said the indignant widow, “ I am ashamed of you.

I thought you were my friend. I asked you to come on purpose, and now you must go and talk to me just like other men.”

“ Flanked, by George ! ” said the discomfited soldier. “ Dog on it, Mrs. Shandy, I thought you’d like it.”

“ But I don’t, you see. I dislike it very much ; and you must n’t do so any more,” said the widow, sharply.

“ Curse the luck ! ” said the soldier ; “ I thought you hankered after me. Black Lucy told me so, any how.”

“ Black Lucy is a goose ; don’t you be one. You see, I don’t hanker for you. I don’t hanker, as you call it, for anybody. I am a sort of little Southern Confederacy that wants to be let alone, and I wanted you to be my soldier,” the little widow replied.

The illustration pleased Bob, and as he promised “ not to do so any more,” they got on quite contentedly for a while.

But the sure heavy weight was slowly, slowly coming down. As a man heaves a huge block up with an effort and holds it, you admire the stiffened sinews, the development of muscle in the energy of will and force bent to the elaborate task. But watch the sturdy lifter ! Slight, imperceptible quivers shake the muscles ; the frame quivers, the smile of triumph fades into doubt. The huge block has done nothing; has remained dumb, quiet, oppressive. It has put out no effort against that great will force, that gallant and graceful play of fibre and muscle ; it just weighs and weighs, with a silent, unalterable law, downward, downward.

So I have thought poverty sometimes lies, huge, misshapen, and ponderous, on a gallant soul. We cannot look and admire, for we see the vital force must yield to a weight beyond its strength. So, on poor Lucy the great volume of existence settled more and more heavily.

There was no more cotton-picking, no more sugar-making. Then the Federal Army came in. The ravages of the negroes, bad enough before, became unendurable, destructive. She had to give up her little garden ; it was plundered of its vegetables before they were ripe. Her “ soldier,” as she had called Asa, had been forced to sacrifice his situation or to leave the widow’s. Poor fellow, he too had to surrender to the burden beyond his strength. As it was inculcated industriously by their new masters that a common-school education included all the moral virtues, Lucy attempted a little school among those who had been her servants. It was not Bible lessons or the pure morals of a Saviour they wanted. A, B, C, included it all, and these Lucy undertook to teach.

Let any young New England girl, just ventured from a quiet,loving home into the hard world to teach, recall that charge given her, where ignorant and vulgar patrons thought the meagre sums doled out gave them a right to censure and dictate ; and let her imagine the coarseness and impertinence hugely exaggerated upon a grosser ignorance, and she will realize some of poor Lucy’s trials. The tuition fees were in food, the coarse food of the negroes themselves, and it was grudgingly given. It was slowly starving and slowly killing her, when black Lucy, her maid, broke it up. Lucy thanked her and lay down quietly to die.

But, teaching the blacks, she had become known to some Federal officers having to do with the same poor material ; and the evening black Lucy ordered the pupils to “ cl’ar out and nebber come back da no mo’,” two Federal soldiers inquired for lodgings at the widow’s house.

CHAPTER VII.

LUCY’S new boarders were an elderly and a young man, father and son. The elder was a grave, quiet man, having some semi-civil, semi-military duties. The son was a brisk, romping fellow of twenty-one or two, full of spirits. It amused Lucy to hear the crisp, cool syllables, so different from the broad, soft vowels and Southern intonation. He would laugh over his college scrapes, his “doing the faculty” out of his diploma by enlisting, his loves and his hates, in a perfectly frank, humorous manner, willing indifferently to be laughed with or laughed at, so she laughed. He would tell how his father enlisted “just to be near him,” with tears, and then bubble over with some ridiculous flirtations of the wateringplaces. He courted the widow, of course, in a week ; wrote quite scholarly sonnets to her, and laughed and protested and talked about “ the little Yankee girl he was going home to marry when the war was over.” It was the champagne of love, iced ; but in icing it was tempered in its more intoxicating qualities.

One day he found the widow sad over a letter. He did what a Southerner would have avoided, by asking her “ what was the matter.”

“ Only a letter from a lady who thinks I am rich, and wants to live with me as housekeeper, poor thing. She says her son was slain in the same battle Victor, my husband, was, and it seems to confirm poor Victor’s death. If Malvoisee had a roof, she would be welcome, but it has none for me to offer poor Mrs. — Sanders is the name.”

“ Malvoisee ? ” said the officer ; “ it’s the burned place next here; was it yours ? ”

“ Yes, it is mine,” said the widow. “ Why ? ”

“ O, I ’m so sorry, it was sold for delayed taxes this morning ; a fellow, McCandless, below here, bought it,” said the lieutenant.

“ It was the widow’s home. Do you call that making war, Mr. Endicott ? ”

The soldier winced. “ I don’t like it,” he said ; “but war is war, and the government tries to get paid so as to pay its army.”

“ That is, my place was sold to get money for the government to pay those who slew my husband, for the slaying. Does your Bible say anything about seething a kid in its mother’s milk, Lieutenant ? ” said the widow, very softly.

The lieutenant was silent. “ Hang it, it’s all lost for that rascal, McCandless. I ’ll block him. I will see the governor and General -, and have the thing stopped.” But the generous youth was not permitted to carry out his act of chivalrous justice, nor to speak to father or friend in the matter. The unseen shadow that walks beside us all and watches its opportunity was drawing near, and as he talked his winding-sheet was high up on the throat. The Confederates still hung a cloud in the distance, occasionally throwing out a tongue of flame and destruction. That evening, on rumors of such a raid, young Endicott gathered a force of scouts and started to reconnoitre. About three o clock in the afternoon, the two parties, Federal and Confederate, encountered in a little field in sight of the house. Each party was small, numbering twenty or thirty, but the conflict was short and desperate. Young Endicott fell, and his friends were retreating slowly on the house, when the elder Endicott came up with reinforcements, and the Confederates, in turn, fell back.

The poor young man was brought into the widow’s room. She had suffered, as the reader knows, by the war, but it had never before dashed its actual red surf over her threshold. Yet shocked as she was, all feeling gave way in sympathy for the agonized father.

He only walked up and down, up and down, repeating the passionate words of the Hebrew king, “ O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom ; would I had died for thee ! O Absalom, my son, my son ! ” over and over again, wrenching his hands all the time, and walking up and down, up and down.

It was with difficulty he was so far soothed as to be removed, while the last soldierly attentions were paid by the young man’s comrades. He was laid to rest in the little widow’s flowergarden, and the next day the father was calmer. He said to his hostess, with a great sob that contradicted his words, in the language of the heroic king, “ I will mourn no more. I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.”

With a sad difference the old ways returned, but not to him. He was changed and broken. An old man before, the blow had aged him greatly, and he loved to spend his leisure with the poor, lonely little widow. He spoke of his son and then of his wife gone before, and told his life story, of a long love and a late marriage with his first love, and of her death ; then of his enlisting, to be near his son. In her sympathy, the poor old man found comfort, and she came to regard him, this alien enemy, with something of filial solicitude. They were useful to one another, these two people lonely in the world. The little money for his board supplied the table, and he assisted in her garden and gave her protection.

When the peace came, it brought no peace here. The sound was a mockery to them. “ I will return to you, my child,” said he, “ some day.”

But Lucy only said, “ I know you think so, but you will not. I seem to be enclosed in a charmed circle of sorrow. When I was a foolish girl I had many lovers, who all went away vowing to return. They never came. So father and mother crossed the dark river. Then my uncle went, and never returned. Then I won my Victor, and my charmed circle became sacred ; but he, too, went to his duty, and never came back to me. After that I had a noble, true friend who went to bring his sister to us, but he has passed the charmed circle and will never return. You think you will return, but you cannot. The fatal circle is about me and cannot be passed.”

He was very much affected. “ Sit down,” said he, taking her hand ; “ I am an old man and must speak; first, some sad news, and then some other. words, meant to be kind, my child; believe me, meant to be kind. Tell me, is this yours, this place where you live ? ”

“No,” said Lucy, “it is my cousin’s, John Shandy’s. My place, Malvoisee, has been taken away from me.”

“ Alas, yes,” said the old man; “and, my poor child, this too has been sold for delayed taxes. One McCandless bought it. Is he a friend ? Will he — ”

“ No ! he is my hard enemy. Now, indeed, is all shelter gone,” sobbed the widow.

“No, my child, not all. Hear me. I am an old man, and past the years of lovers. I will speak plainly. I offer you a home ; I ask you, will you be my daughter, under the name of wife ? If I was a rich man, I might do better for you, if you would let me, but I am not. I can only take you with me, and guard you under the name of wife ; but you shall be my daughter, only my poor widowed daughter; and I am a weak, old man with no other ties.” And he was silent. After a while he said, “ I will leave you now, my child, to think over what I have said. You know it is sincere ; you know I mean to be kind.”

“I know you are kind,” said Lucy, extending her hand. “ I will think about it.” And they parted.

She did think of it. She reviewed the past, and saw how fate had narrowed around her. She thought of John Shandy and his love, his goodness to her. It was a crown to her, and something to be very proud of; but her husband’s image arose before her, vivid with dear associations ; and as the bounty of his manly love flowed through the channels of recollection, old hopes and feelings and expressions flowered up in the kindly moisture. She loved her husband yet, deeply, purely, tenderly, with all the passion of a wife’s first love. She loved no one else. The very thought of so loving another was pain, even were it John Shandy. Poor John Shandy !

But this other? She knew without argument, it was different, and knew what the relation would be better than he who offered it. She knew that he was and would be truly all he said. She knew, too, what her part must be. She would be his nurse. She would have the care of him ; and there would be irksome duties and hard trials, but she would never be his wife, never be called so by him ; she would only be his daughter. She saw that future plainly as in a glass.

There are periods, crises in life, which almost every one can recall, when some innate power acts that is not the reason of logic with cause and effect, nor the discriminating judgment, weighing alternatives. It is neither advocate nor judge. It reveals : it does not argue. We see pictured as in a mirror a Iar future, as if we had lived it. We know, without an effort or reason, but as of recollection, just what events and feelings are to follow from a defined course. It leaves no room for doubt or argument. Judgment only comes in to determine which we will accept.

So it was with Lucy. She saw herself as the nominal wife, the actual daughter and nurse, of old Mr. Endicott. She saw what that life was, that it was not one of ease. She saw years of drudgery, of care, of exceeding patience. She saw the waning age of an old man growing captious, irritable, complaining, and selfish. She saw herself in his house, bearing all, suffering all, in irksome care and silence. She saw a household, sufficient but narrow ; hopes, feelings, sentiments, all starved into that existence, and bounded by an old and broken man’s narrow economies. She saw years and customs growing on her, and crushing old ways of thought and speech, and knew that she would be altogether different, — different even in herself and to herself, a sad and soured old woman who had missed all the flower of life.

What else ? She would live alone. Her life would be her own. Bearing all this cark and care of another, she would bear none of her own. She would be the living, loving wife of Victor Shandy, with no presumptuous image to thrust between her and that dear nourishing sweetness of her existence, her love for her dead husband. But the other alternative ? No prophetic clairvoyance was needed here. If she refused the offer, she saw the future in the past, the last bitter year. She knew she had courage, and the will to work, the slave of this cruel body, if she could find the work to do. She could not plough or chop wood or wash ; and these comprehended the demands of that impoverished neighborhood. Her accomplishments, in that barren spot, were like Robinson Crusoe’s gold : it would buy nothing, it was useless. If she stayed she might teach school, teach the negro children, be the patient, insulted drudge of these poor, ignorant slaves, drunk with new, misunderstood freedom. As all the memory of that sickening endurance and final failure crawled like a loathsome worm over her, she shuddered and brushed it away. It was not the will to do, but the power to do, was in question ; and she knew that power was not in her.

Lucy was a brave woman. She had fought the good fight. She had been patient and even cheerful under trials that would have snapped a steel less fine and finely tempered than her own, but Lucy was too wise and too brave not to know and to face the truth. She did not pretend that she could not preserve a sordid existence, at the gates of starvation, by herself, in this corner, but it would be at the expense of degradation to her womanhood, to that preserving purity sustained by womanly occupations. It would cost too much. So this little soldier was prepared to surrender her sword. Not because she was unwilling to fight, but because she saw fighting would not gain what she desired and struggled for. It would only be a species of suicide.

She gave a last sad thought to poor John Shandy. Never in her life did she love and honor him more than when, in this final crisis of life, she weighed his wishes with her power to grant. She knew that she could not marry John Shandy, as she might marry this old man, giving nothing of what he asked in exchange. She knew, if she married him, she ought to give, and he ought to ask, a whole, undivided, wifely love ; that it would be a lie to marry him, denying him this. And so, gently and tenderly loving him the more in her tears, she put him away in her thought, and sorrowed for him as for a dear, dead friend. Poor John Shandy!

So she sat in the twilight singing, very low, a strange, old melody she had not recalled for years. It was her own story, the story of a brave woman conquered, and she whispered it softly, —

Mr. Endicott came in. He looked troubled. “ Have you thought, my child ? Have you thought of any other way I can help you ? ”

“ No, none; none by which I can help you in return,” said the widow, softly.

“ Ah ! well, when you please, you can tell me. Never mind,” he said, as the widow made an effort to speak.

“ There, let me have my way ; to-morrow ? Well, I have news for you; good news — ”

But a noise startled them, and black Lucy came running in, stumbling, and screaming. “ Lord, miss,” said she, “Floyd’s done come; Mass John’s done come.” And she fell in a fit. No need of announcement. The grave, handsome face and figure of Victor Shandy rose above his cousin’s, upon whose shoulder one hand, half embracing, lay lightly as he stood in the doorway. “ It is Victor ; it is my husband. O Victor, Victor ! ” and the brave, over-tired little wife fell in his arms.

The two, John and Victor Shandy, had spoken first to old Mr. Endicott, who had come up from his quarters in the village to break the news of her husband’s return to his wife ; but youth and impatience, as we know, had anticipated the slow, hesitating old man’s action. It was as well. Joy does not kill.

Victor Shandy’s story must be recorded. Taken up by Floyd, and a prisoner, he was exchanged, after Ids recovery, and enlisted in a different regiment; was wounded in the retreat from Petersburg, and found by John Shandy sick and heart-broken over a rumor of his wife’s marriage. The failure of their frequent letters, mutually written each other, was an occurrence too frequent at that period, in the South, to need explanation or comment. The colored boy, Floyd, to Bob Asa’s intense disgust and incredulity, had actually stood by his master to the last; nay, stands by him yet, with a wife to help him who is quite reconciled to “ dat nigga’s” not having “done got hisself killed ” ; and they are the servants of Victor and Lucy Shandy, and call them Mars Vic and Miss Lucy.

The pretty widow is won. Is there any more to tell ? McCandless is prospering after his kind, in purse and its respectability ; and as man, like water, finds his level, he is probably now, or soon will be, in Congress. Is that all?

No. The moon is setting, and sending its long, slant glories through the trees, bringing out the broad galleries of rebuilt Malvoisee in the clear obscure. The child of the old love listens silently at his knee to the soft, melancholy flow of the violin ; for John Shandy is playing. A light wind bears the odors of flowers, like incense, from the garden ; and Lucy listens in her chamber, silently, in tears, as the harmony of “ Auld Robin Gray ” floats sofdy in. She thinks of the poor old man to whom Heaven was kind, in taking him home from a lonely world, and her heart fills with old memories and trials of that sad time. But the music flows on, flows on, in sweeter curves and changes. Sad old plantation airs, with stories of a way of tenderness in life that shall be no more forever, melt from the strings and mingle with the rustle of the leaves. The music sobs like the spirit of the past, about the galleries and deserted cabins. No more that melodious charm will call troops of happy, wondering black faces, from nooks and recesses of the old cabins, to linger entranced at the spell.

But John Shandy plays on. Snatches of old dreams and of an old delight, idealized and purified above the earth, faints in the tender symphonies. The old love has grown and softened into a precious feeling, that belongs to no one on earth, and yet is not all the creation of that tender, loving heart. Born in heaven and nourished on the bounty of a sweet, unselfish nature, it floats on the long, soft swells and cadences, rising musically, tenderly, in lengthened undulations to its home. As the disk of the setting moon grows broader and broader in the foliage, and the shadows darken around its eclipse, the soft clear voice breaks out, in a sweet old hymn, to the according violin. Does it associate itself with the sympathies and heroes of a Lost Cause, mingled with the devout inspiration of a loving and relying heart ?

And the last faint glimmer of the setting moon is gone, and all is dark.

Will Wallace Harney.