Part 1 (2/2)

By rights the hero-not of this story, perhaps, but the real hero-was much the handsomer of the two. It is always so in romances; and romances-good ones, that is-are the reflex of life. Such a combination of manly beauty with unshakable courage and reckless audacity was not often seen as Lacy exhibited. Sempland was homely. Lacy had French and Irish blood in him, and he showed it. Sempland was a mixture of st.u.r.dy Dutch and English stock.

Yet if women found Lacy charming they instinctively depended upon Sempland. There was something thoroughly attractive in Sempland, and f.a.n.n.y Glen unconsciously fell under the spell of his strong personality. The lasting impression which the gayety and pa.s.sionate abandon of Lacy could not make, Sempland had effected, and the girl was already powerfully under his influence-stubbornly resistant nevertheless.

She was fond of both men. She loved Lacy for the dangers he had pa.s.sed, and Sempland because she could not help it; which marks the relative quality of her affections. Which one she loved the better until the moment at which the story opens she could not have told.

n.o.body knew anything about f.a.n.n.y Glen. At least there were only two facts concerning her in possession of the general public. These, however, were sufficient. One was that she was good. The men in the hospital called her an angel. The other was that she was beautiful. The women of the city could not exactly see why the men thought so, which was confirmation strong as proofs of Holy Writ!

She had come to Charleston at the outbreak of the war accompanied by an elderly woman of unexceptional manner and appearance who called herself Miss Lucy Glen, and described herself as Miss f.a.n.n.y Glen's aunt. They had taken a house in the fas.h.i.+onable quarter of the city-they were not poor at any rate-and had installed themselves therein with their slaves.

They made no attempt to enter into the social life of the town and only became prominent when Charleston began to feel acutely the hards.h.i.+ps of the war which it had done more to promote than any other place in the land.

Then f.a.n.n.y Glen showed her quality. A vast hospital was established, and the young women of the city volunteered their services.

The corps of nurses was in a state of constant fluxion. Individuals came and went. Some of them married patients, some of them died with them, but f.a.n.n.y Glen neither married nor died-she abided!

Not merely because she stayed while others did not, but perhaps on account of her innate capacity, as well as her tactful tenderness, she became the chief of the women attached to the hospital. Many a sick soldier lived to love her. Many another, more sorely stricken, died blessing her.

In Charleston she was regarded as next in importance to the general who commanded the troops and who, with his s.h.i.+ps, his forts, his guns, and his men, had been for two years fighting off the tremendous a.s.saults that were hurled upon the city from the Union ironclads and s.h.i.+ps far out to sea. It was a point of honor to take, or to hold, Charleston, and the Confederates held it till 1865!

f.a.n.n.y Glen was a privileged character, therefore, and could go anywhere and do anything, within the lines.

Under other circ.u.mstances there would have been a thorough inquiry by the careful inhabitants of the proud, strict Southern city into her family relations.h.i.+ps; but the war was a great leveller, people were taken at their real value when trouble demonstrated it, and few questions were asked. Those that were asked about f.a.n.n.y Glen were not answered. It made little difference, then.

Toward the close of 1863, however, there was an eclipse in the general hospital, for f.a.n.n.y Glen fell ill.

She was not completely recovered, early in 1864, when she had the famous interview with Rhett Sempland, but there was not the slightest evidence of invalidism about her as she confronted him that afternoon in February.

Wounded pride, outraged dignity, burning indignation, supplied strength and spirit enough for a regiment of convalescents.

The difference between the two culminated in a disturbance which might aptly be called cyclonic, for Sempland on nearly the first occasion that he had been permitted to leave the hospital had repaired to f.a.n.n.y Glen's house and there had repeated, standing erect and looking down upon her bended head, what he had said so often with his eyes and once at least with his lips, from his bed in the ward: that he loved her and wanted her for his wife.

Pleasant thing it was for her to hear, too, she could not but admit.

Yet if f.a.n.n.y Glen had not rejected him, neither had she accepted him.

She had pleaded for time, she had hesitated, and would have been lost, had Sempland been as wise as he was brave. Perhaps he wasn't quite master of himself on account of his experience in war, and his lack of it in women, for he instantly conceived that her hesitation was due to some other cause than maidenly incert.i.tude, and that Harry Lacy, of whom he had grown mightily jealous, was at the bottom of it.

He hated and envied Lacy. More, he despised him for his weaknesses and their consequences. The two had been great friends once, but a year or two before the outbreak of the war they had drifted apart.

Sempland did not envy Lacy any talents that he might possess, for he was quite confident that the only thing he himself lacked had been opportunity-Fate had not been kind to him, but the war was not yet over. Consequently when he jumped to the conclusion that f.a.n.n.y Glen preferred Lacy, he fell into further error, and made the frightful mistake of depreciating his rival.

a.s.suming with masculine inconsistency that the half acceptance she had given him ent.i.tled him to decide her future, he actually referred to Lacy's well-known habits and bade her have nothing to do with him.

CHAPTER II

SHE HATES THEM BOTH

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