Part 28 (2/2)
The bugle notes of war sounded through the streets of New Orleans, and the pa.s.sions of men were stirred as never before. Women too, who had quaffed only from the chalice of ease and pleasure, awoke from the lethargy of indulgence to find themselves tossing upon a sea of excitement and alarm. Lillian was interested, and for a time her own troubled life was swallowed up in the tumults that threatened the peace and harmony of the nation's life. Bustle, energy and activity were everywhere.
”What a useless, helpless thing I am!” she said to her aunt one evening as they sat alone, after the husband, who was wearied with his day's toils in the unpretentious hardware store near the wharf had retired to his room, and Grace was entertaining a friend in the parlor. ”It seems to me I am suddenly aroused by a storm, and unless I run for my life shall be covered out of sight in its fury!” She laughed, but there was a seriousness in her pale face her aunt had never seen upon it before.
”I do not wonder you think yourself out in the wind,” was the cheerful response, ”for Grace is enough to stir up the sleepy faculties of any lover of her country. I do not know but she will 'shoulder arms' and go into the field in defence of her native land!” and the good lady laughed outright. There was a long silence, while Lillian never once removed her gaze from the dying embers in the grate as she actively traced the wanderings and leapings of her busy thoughts.
At last she said in an undertone: ”Grace is very gentle considering her confederate proclivities; but has it occurred to you that I have a _husband_ somewhere in that confusion and excitement among our enemies, as we call them?”
”O, Lillian!” and the cheerful face put on a look of serious incredulity. ”You will not now certainly desire to seek out a relations.h.i.+p from among a people, who would, if in their power, kill or enslave us all?” Lillian's dark eyes wandered slowly to the troubled face of the speaker. ”I have fully joined with my daughter in the feeling that a great wrong has been perpetrated on you, still I did hope that this terrible war would obliterate forever all such former ties and leave you free, as free as though they had never been!”
”And here I am shocking you with my heart's cry for its idol, for its tenderest loves, for the purest longings known to woman's nature! Listen to me, Aunt Sylvia, I am going north! The blow has been struck! Fort Sumter has fallen! There will be wounded hearts to bind up and wounded bodies to care for! Sorrow and lamentation will fill many homes, and the cry for help and sympathy will sound over the land. I shall get out of my life of indolence and plunge into the thickest scenes of labor!”
”Yes, Lillian, you do shock me! Why go north? If you must work, will there not be plenty of it to do among your own people? Are they not as deserving of your care and sympathy as their enemies?”
”Auntie, I have told Grace and now will tell you! Somewhere in the north I have a husband and child! Do not look at me with that spirit of incredulity peering out of your eyes, for it is no random suspicion--no new thought. My husband lives, and the letter I received last night from George St. Clair gives me the information that a 'Pearl Hamilton,' who started with a captain's commission from Pennsylvania was promoted to the position of colonel of his regiment by the entire vote of each company upon reaching Was.h.i.+ngton. This he copied from a paper for my especial benefit; and that Colonel Hamilton is _my husband_; _my Pearl!_ He is true to me--our hearts are one, and the fast growing desire to go to him has, since the receipt of that letter, become full-fledged; and before communication between the two sections is entirely cut off I shall go!”
”Did not the knowledge of his notoriety help to feather the wings of love, my child?”
There was something in the tone of voice with which these words were uttered that caused the listener's face to flush with amazement and indignation.
”This from you, Auntie!” she said at last. ”Look at me; remember what I have endured, realize for a moment from what I have been torn, consider the burdens that are weighing me down, and then, if it be possible, repeat the question. You do not know me! For this reason I forgive the cruel thrust! Pearl Hamilton would hold my heart as firmly and truly if he were now the humble clerk in the store where I first knew him, as an honored officer in the enemy's army!”
Mrs. Stanley took the little white hand that lay on the arm of the easy chair where Lillian was sitting and holding it in her loving clasp, said, soothingly: ”My darling, I did not mean at all what I said. You are too much like your father to be guilty of such unwomanly selfishness. I was a little indignant that you should persist in keeping faith with your childhood's love, and so uttered what I did not at all feel! I cannot, however, endure the thought of your going through the enemy's lines, and if he is a soldier as you hear, he may be brought to you as a prisoner of war, when you could be more speedily reunited than if you should follow out your own wild schemes.”
”Pearl is not all I have in that muddle! Did I not say a husband and child? Grace has told you that I was a mother and that my pretty Lily died and was buried; but my dear Aunt, I do not believe it! I never did believe it! Still I had not the power to combat the story that was told me! O, I have been so weak! But a letter received by my mother, and which accidentally fell into my hands, and her confusion and evident alarm as I held it before her, a.s.sured me that I was the subject of a heartless fraud and that my child lived! Ever since I have pondered how I could find her! If I knew the place where she was born; at what point on the Atlantic sh.o.r.e stood the romantic 'Cliff House'; where I was imprisoned those dreadful weeks, I should before this have visited it.
The weird old nurse would, I am sure, tell me all, notwithstanding her bribes for secrecy!”
”Surely you do not believe all this, Lillian? No wonder the hungering of your heart has eaten the bloom from your cheek! But there must be some mistake. No matter how lofty may be a mother's ambition she could not be guilty of so vile an act!”
”Auntie, my cry for months has been 'lead me in a plain path', and I have been watching for the shadows to clear away that I might see the road, and now that my plea has been seemingly answered and the 'path'
winds alone through the future mysteries so distinctly to my poor, trembling vision shall I not walk therein? Indeed, I _must_ go! I can not sit idly here with folded hands when there is so much to be done and so many links to be gathered up! My mother well understood my inertness and worthlessness; she knew too that my pride would not long allow me to be a dependent on those upon whom I only had the claims of kins.h.i.+p.
This, she was sure, would in time bring me in humble penitence to her feet. I cannot do this; and the other path leads me farther away from her! I _must_ go!”
True to her conclusions, in a few days Lillian Belmont, the petted child of luxury, weak and enervated by indolence and indulgence, started alone amid the protestations and pleadings of those who loved her, en route for Philadelphia where she knew another aunt, the oldest sister of her father, would give her a hearty welcome. It was a tiresome and exciting journey. Quizzing eyes were upon her everywhere; suspicious glances were thrust at her from every side, and not until she crossed the southern lines did she settle calmly down.
Mrs. Cheevers received her as one risen from the dead. Clasping the slender form in her arms she gazed long and steadfastly into the pale face without speaking. ”To think it is Lillian!” she said at last. ”O, if Pearl were only here! How he has loved you my child.” But tears, the first that had moistened the beautiful eyes of the stricken Lillian for many weeks, were now choking her utterance, and she lay as a weary child on the tender, sympathizing breast where her poor head was pillowed.
Mrs. Cheevers had known what the longings of the mother love meant. Well did she understand the hungerings of its unsatisfied greed, and as she kissed over and over again the pure white forehead she thanked G.o.d that her brother's child could nestle so closely to her empty breast!
”You can never know how peaceful I feel!” Lillian said an hour after as they sat at a well-filled board, where she was satisfying a keener appet.i.te than she had felt for many day. ”I could fly for very joy, so light and buoyant are my spirits! I have carried a burden so long that the release seems almost oppressive!”
”Poor child!” murmured the aunt, while the masculine face opposite wore an expression of the deepest sympathy.
”And to think,” he said at last, ”that we should have believed for a moment what those letters contained! You will, however, do me the honor, wife, to a.s.sure our little Lillian that I never did!”
”I will do you the justice to acknowledge that if it had not been for Pearl Hamilton your guilt would never have been a whit less than my own.” A merry laugh followed this remark, and when it died away Lillian asked with as much calmness as she could summon if she might be permitted to examine the letters spoken of.
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