The Essential Winston Churchill Collection. Winston Churchill
New Englander, against whom she had been in strange rebellion since she had first seen him. His face, thinned by the summer in town, was of the sternness of the Puritan. Stephen's features were sharply marked for his age. The will to conquer was there. Yet justice was in the mouth, and greatness of heart. Conscience was graven on the broad forehead. The eyes were the blue gray of the flint, kindly yet imperishable. The face was not handsome.
Struggling, then yielding to the impulse, Virginia let herself be led on into the years. Sanity was the word that best described him. She saw him trusted of men, honored of women, feared by the false. She saw him in high places, simple, reserved, poised evenly as he was now.
"Why do you go in this afternoon?" she asked abruptly.
He started at the change in her tone.
"I wish that I might stay," he said regretfully. "But I cannot, Miss Carvel."
He gave no reason. And she was too proud to ask it. Never before had she stooped to urge young men to stay. The difficulty had always been to get them to go. It was natural, perhaps, that her vanity was wounded. But it hurt her to think that she had made the overture, had tried to conquer whatever it was that set her against him, and had failed through him.
"You must find the city attractive. Perhaps," she added, with a little laugh, "perhaps it is Bellefontaine Road."
"No," he answered, smiling.
"Then" (with a touch of derision), "then it is because you cannot miss an afternoon's work. You are that kind."
"I was not always that kind," he answered. "I did not work at Harvard. But now I have to or--or starve," he said.
For the second time his complete simplicity had disarmed her. He had not appealed to her sympathy, nor had he hinted at the luxury in which he was brought up. She would have liked to question Stephen on this former life. But she changed the subject suddenly.
"What did you really think of Mr. Lincoln?" she asked.
"I thought him the ugliest man I ever saw, and the handsomest as well."
"But you admired him?"
"Yes," said Stephen, gravely.
"You believe with him that this government cannot exist half slave and half free. Then a day will come, Mr. Brice, when you and I shall be foreigners one to the other."
"You have forgotten," he said eagerly, "you have forgotten the rest of the quotation. 'I do not expect the Union to be dissolved--I do not expect the house to fall--but cease to be divided.' It will become all one thing or all the other."
Virginia laughed. "That seemed to me very equivocal," said she. "Your rail-sputter is well named."
"Will you read the rest of that speech?" he asked
"Judge Whipple is very clever. He has made a convert of you," she answered.
"The Judge has had nothing to do with it," cried Stephen. "He is not given to discussion with me, and until I went to Springfield had never mentioned Lincoln's name to me."
Glancing at her, he surprised a sparkle of amusement in her eyes. Then she laughed openly.
"Why do you suppose that you were sent to Springfield?" she asked.
"With an important communication for Mr. Lincoln," he answered.
"And that most important communication was--your self. There, now, I have told you," said Virginia.
"Was myself? I don't understand."
Virginia puckered her lips.
"Then you haven't the sense I thought you had," she replied impatiently. "Do you know what was in that note? No? Well, a year ago last June this Black Republican lawyer whom you are all talking of made a speech before a convention in Illinois. Judge Whipple has been crazy on the subject ever since--he talks of Lincoln in his sleep; he went to Springfield and spent two days with him, and now he can't rest until you have seen and known and heard him. So he writes a note to Lincoln and asks him to take you to the debate--"
She paused again to laugh at his amazement.
"But he told me to go to Springfield!" he exclaimed.
"He told you to find Lincoln. He knew that you would obey his orders, I suppose."
"But I didn't know--" Stephen began, trying to come pass within an instant the memory of his year's experience with Mr. Whipple.
"You didn't know that he thought anything about you," said Virginia. "That is his way, Mr. Brice. He has more private charities on his list than any man in the city except Mr. Brinsmade. Very few know it. He thinks a great deal of you. But there," she added, suddenly blushing crimson, "I am sorry I told you."
"Why?" he asked.
She did not answer, but sat tapping the seat with her fingers. And when she ventured to look at him, he had fallen into thought.
"I think it must be time for dinner," said Virginia, "if you really wish to catch the train."
The coldness in her voice, rather than her words, aroused him. He rose, took one lingering look at the river, and followed her to the house.
At dinner, when not talking about his mare, the Colonel was trying to persuade Stephen to remain. Virginia did not join in this, and her father thought the young man's refusal sprang from her lack of cordiality. Colonel Carvel himself drove to the station.
When he returned, he found his daughter sitting idly on the porch.
"I like that young man, if he is a Yankee," he declared.
"I don't," said Virginia, promptly.
"My dear," said her father, voicing the hospitality of the Carvels, "I am surprised at you. One should never show one's feelings toward a guest. As mistress of this house it was your duty to press him to stay."
"He did not want to stay."
"Do you know why he went, my dear," asked the Colonel.
"No," said Virginia.
"I asked him," said the Colonel.
"Pa! I did not think it of you!" she cried. And then, "What was it?" she demanded.
"He said that his mother was alone in town, and needed him."
Virginia got up without a word, and went into Judge Whipple's room. And there the Colonel found her some hours later, reading aloud from a scrap-book certain speeches of Mr. Lincoln's which Judge Whipple had cut from newspapers. And the Judge, lying back with his eyes half closed, was listening in pure delight. Little did he guess at Virginia's penance!
Volume 4.
CHAPTER VII. AN EXCURSION
I am going ahead two years. Two years during which a nation struggled in agony with sickness, and even the great strength with which she was endowed at birth was not equal to the task of throwing it off. In 1620 a Dutch ship had brought from Guinea to his Majesty's Colony of Virginia the germs of that disease for which the Nation's blood was to be let so freely. During these years signs of dissolution, of death, were not wanting.
In the city by the Father of Waters where the races met, men and women were born into the world, who were to