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_ One chilling day in November, when an icy rain was falling on the black
mud of the streets, Virginia looked out of the window. Her eye was
caught by two horses which were just skeletons with the skin stretched
over them. One had a bad sore on his flank, and was lame. They were
pulling a rattle-trap farm wagon with a buckled wheel. On the seat a
man, pallid and bent and scantily clad, was holding the reins in his
feeble hands, while beside him cowered a child of ten wrapped in a ragged
blanket. In the body of the wagon, lying on a mattress pressed down in
the midst of broken, cheap furniture and filthy kitchen ware, lay a gaunt
woman in the rain. Her eyes were closed, and a hump on the surface of
the dirty quilt beside her showed that a child must be there. From such
a picture the girl fled in tears. But the sight of it, and of others
like it, haunted her for weeks. Through those last dreary days of
November, wretched families, which a year since had been in health and
prosperity, came to the city, beggars, with the wrecks of their homes.
The history of that hideous pilgrimage across a state has never been
written. Still they came by the hundred, those families. Some brought
little corpses to be buried. The father of one, hale and strong when
they started, died of pneumonia in the public lodging-house. The walls
of that house could tell many tales to wring the heart. So could Mr.
Brinsmade, did he choose to speak of his own charities. He found time,
between his labors at the big hospital newly founded, and his
correspondence, and his journeys of love,--between early morning and
midnight,--to give some hours a day to the refugees.
Throughout December they poured in on the afflicted city, already
overtaxed. All the way to Springfield the road was lined with remains of
articles once dear--a child's doll, a little rocking-chair, a colored
print that has hung in the best room, a Bible text.
Anne Brinsmade, driven by Nicodemus, went from house to house to solicit
old clothes, and take them to the crowded place of detention. Christmas
was drawing near--a sorry Christmas, in truth. And many of the wanderers
were unclothed and unfed.
More battles had been fought; factions had arisen among Union men.
Another general had come to St. Louis to take charge of the Department,
and the other with his wondrous body-guard was gone.
The most serious problem confronting the new general--was how to care for
the refugees. A council of citizens was called at headquarters, and the
verdict went forth in the never-to-be-forgotten Orders No. 24.
"Inasmuch," said the General, "as the Secession army had driven these
people from their homes, Secession sympathizers should be made to support
them." He added that the city was unquestionably full of these.
Indignation was rife the day that order was published. Sixty prominent
"disloyalists" were to be chosen and assessed to make up a sum of ten
thousand dollars.
"They may sell my house over my head before I will pay a cent," cried Mr.
Russell. And he meant it. This was the way the others felt. Who were
to be on this mysterious list of "Sixty"? That was the all-absorbing
question of the town. It was an easy matter to pick the conspicuous
ones. Colonel Carvel was sure to be there. and Mr. Catherwood and Mr.
Russell and Mr. James, and Mr. Worington the lawyer. Mrs. Addison Colfax
lived for days in a fermented state of excitement which she declared
would break her down; and which, despite her many cares and worries, gave
her niece not a little amusement. For Virginia was human, and one
morning she went to her aunt's room to read this editorial from the
newspaper:--
"For the relief of many palpitating hearts it may be well to state that
we understand only two ladies are on the ten thousand dollar list."
"Jinny," she cried, "how can you be so cruel as to read me that, when you
know that I am in a state of frenzy now? How does that relieve me? It
makes it an absolute certainty that Madame Jules and I will have to pay.
We are the only women of importance in the city."
That afternoon she made good her much-uttered threat, and drove to
Bellegarde. Only the Colonel and Virginia and Mammy Easter and Ned were
left in the big house. Rosetta and Uncle Ben and Jackson had been hired
out, and the horses sold,--all save old Dick, who was running, long-
haired, in the fields at Glencoe.
Christmas eve was a steel-gray day, and the sleet froze as it fell.
Since morning Colonel Carvel had sat poking the sitting-room fire, or
pacing the floor restlessly. His occupation was gone. He was observed
night and day by Federal detectives. Virginia strove to amuse him, to
conceal her anxiety as she watched him. Well she knew that but for her
he would long since have fled southward, and often in the bitterness of
the night-time she blamed herself for not telling him to go. Ten years
had seemed to pass over him since the war had begun.
All day long she had been striving to put away from her the memory of
Christmas eves past and gone of her father's early home-coming from the
store, a mysterious smile on his face; of Captain Lige stamping noisily
into the house, exchanging uproarious jests with Ned and Jackson. The
Captain had always carried under his arm a shapeless bundle which he
would confide to Ned with a knowing wink. And then the house would be
lighted from top to bottom, and Mr. Russell and Mr. Catherwood and Mr.
Brinsmade came in for a long evening with Mr. Carvel over great bowls of
apple toddy and egg-nog. And Virginia would have her own friends in the
big parlor. That parlor was shut up now, and icy cold.
Then there was Judge Whipple, the joyous event of whose year was his
Christmas dinner at Colonel Carvel's house. Virginia pictured him this
year at Mrs. Brice's little table, and wondered whether he would miss
them as much as they missed him. War may break friendships, but it
cannot take away the sacredness of memories.
The sombre daylight was drawing to an early close as the two stood
looking out of the sitting-room window. A man's figure muffled in a
greatcoat slanting carefully across the street caught their eyes.
Virginia started. It was the same United States deputy marshal she had
seen the day before at Mr. Russell's house.
"Pa," she cried, "do you think he is coming here? "I reckon so, honey."
"The brute! Are you going to pay?"
"No, Jinny."
Then they will take away the furniture. "I reckon they will."
"Pa, you must promise me to take down the mahogany bed in your room.
It--it was mother's. I could not bear to see them take that. Let me put
it in the garret."
The Colonel was distressed, but he spoke without a tremor.
"No, Jinny. We must leave this house just as it is." Then he added,
strangely enough for him, "God's will be done."
The bell rang sharply. And Ned, who was cook and housemaid, came in with
his apron on.
"Does you want to see folks, Marse Comyn?"
The Colonel rose, and went to the door himself. He was an imposing
figure as he stood in the windy vestibule, confronting the deputy.
Virginia's first impulse was to shrink under the stairs. Then she came
out and stood beside her father.
"Are you Colonel Carvel?"
"I reckon I am. Will you come in?"
The officer took off his cap. He was a young man with a smooth face, and
a frank brown eye which paid its tribute to Virginia. He did not appear
to relish the duty thrust upon him. He fumbled in his coat and drew from
his inner pocket a paper.
"Colonel Carvel," said he, "by order of Major General Halleck, I serve
you with this notice to pay the sum of three hundred and fifty dollars
for the benefit of the destitute families which the Rebels have driven
from their homes. In default of payment within a reasonable time such
personal articles will be seized and sold at public auction as will
satisfy the demand against you."
The Colonel took the paper. "Very well, sir," he said. "You may tell
the General that the articles may be seized. That I will not, while in
my right mind, be forced to support persons who have no claim upon me."
It was said in the tone in which he might have refused an invitation to
dinner. The deputy marvelled. He had gone into many houses that week;
had seen indignation, hysterics, frenzy. He had even heard men and women
whose sons and brothers were in the army of secession proclaim their
loyalty to the Union. But this dignity, and the quiet scorn of the girl
who had stood silent beside them, were new. He bowed, and casting his
eyes to the vestibule, was glad to escape from the house.
The Colonel shut the door. Then he turned toward Virginia, thoughtfully
pulled his goatee, and laughed gently. "Lordy, we haven't got three
hundred and fifty dollars to our names," said he.
The climate of St. Louis is capricious. That fierce valley of the
Missouri, which belches fitful blizzards from December to March, is
sometimes quiet. Then the hot winds come up from the Gulf, and sleet
melts, and windows are opened. In those days the streets will be fetlock
deep in soft mud. It is neither summer, nor winter, nor spring, nor
anything.
It was such a languorous afternoon in January that a furniture van,
accompanied by certain nondescript persons known as United States Police,
pulled up at the curb in front of Mr. Carvel's house. Eugenie, watching
at the window across the street, ran to tell her father, who came out on
his steps and reviled the van with all the fluency of his French
ancestors.
Mammy Easter opened the door, and then stood with her arms akimbo, amply
filling its place. Her lips protruded, and an expression of defiance
hard to describe sat on her honest black face.
"Is this Colonel Carvel's house?"
"Yassir. I 'low you knows dat jes as well as me." An embarrassed
silence, and then from Mammy, "Whaffor you laffin at?"
"Is the Colonel at home?"
"Now I reckon you knows dat he ain't. Ef he was, you ain't come here
'quirin' in dat honey voice." (Raising her own voice.) "You tink I
dunno whaffor you come? You done come heah to rifle, an' to loot, an'
to steal, an' to seize what ain't your'n. You come heah when young
Marse ain't to home ter rob him." (Still louder.) "Ned, whaffor you
hidin' yonder? Ef yo' ain't man to protect Marse Comyn's prop-ty, jes
han' over Marse Comyn's gun."
The marshal and his men had stood, half amused, more than half baffled by
this unexpected resistance. Mammy Easter looked so dangerous that it was
evident she was not to be passed without extreme bodily discomfort.
"Is your mistress here?"
This question was unfortunate in the extreme.
"You--you white trash!" cried Mammy, bursting with indignation. "Who is
you to come heah 'quiring fo' her! I ain't agwine--"
"Mammy!"
"Yas'm! Yas, Miss Jinny." Mammy backed out of the door and clutched at
her bandanna.
"Mammy, what is all this noise about?" The torrent was loosed once more.
"These heah men, Miss Jinny, was gwine f'r t' carry away all yo' pa's
blongin's. I jes' tol' 'em dey ain't comin' in ovah dis heah body."
The deputy had his foot on the threshold. He caught sight of the face of
Miss Carvel within, and stopped abruptly.
"I have a warrant here from the Provost Marshal, ma'am, to seize personal
property to satisfy a claim against Colonel Carvel."
Virginia took the order, read it, and handed it back. "I do not see how
I am to prevent you," she said. The deputy was plainly abashed.
"I'm sorry, Miss. I--I can't tell you how sorry I am. But it's got to
be done."
Virginia nodded coldly. And still the man hesitated. "What are you
waiting for?" she said.
The deputy wiped his muddy feet. He made his men do likewise. Then he
entered the chill drawing-room, threw open the blinds and glanced around
him.
"I expect all that we want is right here," he said. And at the sight of
the great chandelier, with its cut-glass crystals, he whistled. Then he
walked over to the big English Rothfield piano and lifted the lid.
The man was a musician. Involuntarily he rested himself on the mahogany
stool, and ran his fingers over the keys. They seemed to Virginia,
standing motionless in the ball, to give out the very chords of agony.
The piano, too, had been her mother's. It had once stood in the brick
house of her grandfather Colfax at Halcyondale. The songs of Beatrice
lay on the bottom shelf of the what-not near by. No more, of an evening
when they were alone, would Virginia quietly take them out and play them
over to the Colonel, as he sat dreaming in the window with his cigar,--
dreaming of a field on the borders of a wood, of a young girl who held
his hand, and sang them softly to herself as she walked by his side.
And, when they reached the house in the October twilight, she had played
them for him on this piano. Often he had told Virginia of those days,
and walked with her over those paths.
The deputy closed the lid, and sent out to the van for a truck. Virginia
stirred. For the first time she heard the words of Mammy Easter.
"Come along upstairs wid yo' Mammy, honey. Dis ain't no place for us,
I reckon." Her words were the essence of endearment. And yet, while she
pronounced them, she glared unceasingly at the intruders. "Oh, de good
Lawd'll burn de wicked!"
The men were removing the carved legs. Virginia went back into the room
and stood before the deputy.
"Isn't there something else you could take? Some jewellery? "She
flushed. "I have a necklace--"
"No, miss. This warrant's on your father. And there ain't nothing quite
so salable as pianos."
She watched them, dry-eyed, as they carried it away. It seemed like a
coffin. Only Mammy Easter guessed at the pain in Virginia's breast, and
that was because there was a pain in her own. They took the rosewood
what-not, but Virginia snatched the songs before the men could
touch them, and held them in her arms. They seized the mahogany velvet-
bottomed chairs, her uncle's wedding present to her mother; and, last of
all, they ruthlessly tore up the Brussels carpet, beginning near the spot
where Clarence had spilled ice-cream at one of her children's parties.
She could not bear to look into the dismantled room when they had gone.
It was the embodied wreck of her happiness. Ned closed the blinds once
more, and she herself turned the key in the lock, and went slowly up the
stairs. _
Read next: BOOK III: Volume 6: Chapter V. The Auction
Read previous: BOOK III: Volume 6: Chapter III. The Scourge of War,
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