The Essential Winston Churchill Collection. Winston Churchill
of the South the marvel of the world. And well we know, whatever the sound of it, that his speech was not heroics. Nor was it love for his cousin that inspired it, save in this: he had apotheosized Virginia. To him she was the inspired goddess of the South--his country. His admiration and affection had of late been laid upon an altar. Her ambition for him he felt was likewise the South's ambition for him.
His mother, Virginia's aunt, felt this too, and strove against it with her feeble might. She never had had power over her son; nor over any man, save the temporal power of beauty. And to her mortification she found herself actually in fear of this girl who might have been her daughter. So in Virginia's presence she became more trivial and petty than ever. It was her one defence.
It had of course been a foregone conclusion that Clarence should join Company A. Few young men of family did not. And now he ran to his room to don for Virginia that glorious but useless full dress,--the high bearskin rat, the red pigeon-tailed coat, the light blue trousers, and the gorgeous, priceless shackle. Indeed, the boy looked stunning. He held his big rifle like a veteran, and his face was set with a high resolve there was no mistaking. The high color of her pride was on the cheek of the girl as he brought his piece to the salute of her, his mistress. And yet, when he was gone, and she sat alone amid the roses awaiting him, came wilfully before her another face that was relentless determination,--the face of Stephen Brice, as he had stood before her in the summer house at Glencoe. Strive as she might against the thought, deny it to herself and others, to Virginia Carvel his way become the face of the North. Her patriotism and all that was in her of race rebelled. To conquer that face she would have given her own soul, and Clarence's. Angrily she had arisen and paced the garden walks, and cried out aloud that it was not inflexible.
And now, by the car window, looking out over the endless roll of the prairie, the memory of this was bitter within her.
Suddenly she turned to her father.
"Did you rent our house at Glencoe?" she asked.
"No, Jinny."
"I suppose Mr. Brice was too proud to accept it at your charitable rent, even to save Mr. Whipple's life."
The Colonel turned to his daughter in mild surprise. She was leaning back on the seat, her eyes half closed.
"Once you dislike a person, Jinny, you never get over it. I always had a fancy for the young man, and now I have a better opinion of him than ever before. It was I who insulted them by naming that rent."
"What did he do?" Virginia demanded.
"He came to my office yesterday morning. 'Colonel Carvel,' said he, 'I hear you wish to rent your house.' I said yes. 'You rented it once before, sir,' said he. 'Yes,' said I. 'May I ask you what price you got for it?' said he."
"And what did you say?" she asked, leaning forward.
"I told him," said the Colonel, smiling. "But I explained that I could not expect to command that price now on short notice. He replied that they would pay it, or not consider the place."
Virginia turned her head away and stared out over the fields.
"How could they afford it!" she murmured.
"Mr. Brinsmade tells me that young Brice won rather a remarkable case last winter, and since then has had some practice. And that he writes for the newspapers. I believe he declined some sort of an editorial position, preferring to remain at the law."
"And so they are going into the house?" she asked presently.
"No," said the Colonel. "Whipple refused point-blank to go to the country. He said that he would be shirking the only work of his life likely to be worth anything. So the Brices remain in town."
Colonel Carvel sighed. But Virginia said nothing.
CHAPTER X. RICHTER'S SCAR
This was the summer when Mr. Stephen Brice began to make his appearance in public. The very first was rather encouraging than otherwise, although they were not all so. It was at a little town on the outskirts of the city where those who had come to scoff and jeer remained to listen.
In writing that speech Stephen had striven to bear in mind a piece of advice which Mr. Lincoln had given him. "Speak so that the lowest may understand, and the rest will have no trouble." And it had worked. At the halting lameness of the beginning an egg was thrown,--fortunately wide of the mark. After this incident Stephen fairly astonished his audience,--especially an elderly gentleman who sat on a cracker-box in the rear, out of sight of the stand. This may have been Judge Whipple, although we have no proof of the fact.
Stephen himself would not have claimed originality for that speech. He laughs now when it is spoken of, and calls it a boyish effort, which it was. I have no doubt that many of the master's phrases slipped in, as young Mr. Brice could repeat most of the Debates, and the Cooper Union speech by heart. He had caught more than the phrasing, however. So imbued was he with the spirit of Abraham Lincoln that his hearers caught it; and that was the end of the rotten eggs and the cabbages. The event is to be especially noted because they crowded around him afterward to ask questions. For one thing, he had not mentioned abolition. Wasn't it true, then, that this Lincoln wished to tear the negro from his master, give him a vote and a subsidy, and set him up as the equal of the man that owned him? "Slavery may stay where it is," cried the young orator. "If it is content there, so are we content. What we say is that it shall not go one step farther. No, not one inch into a northern territory."
On the next occasion Mr. Brice was one of the orators at a much larger meeting in a garden in South St. Louis. The audience was mostly German. And this was even a happier event, inasmuch as Mr. Brice was able to trace with some skill the history of the Fatherland from the Napoleonic wars to its Revolution. Incidentally he told them why they had emigrated to this great and free country. And when in an inspired moment he coupled the names of Abraham Lincoln and Father Jahn, the very leaves of the trees above them trembled at their cheers.
And afterwards there was a long-remembered supper in the moonlit grove with Richter and a party of his college friends from Jena. There was Herr Tiefel with the little Dresden-blue eyes, red and round and jolly; and Hauptmann, long and thin and sallow; and Korner, redbearded and ponderous; and Konig, a little clean-cut man with a blond mustache that pointed upward. They clattered their steins on the table and sang wonderful Jena songs, while Stephen was lifted up and his soul carried off to far-away Saxony,--to the clean little University town with its towers and crooked streets. And when they sang the Trolksmelodie, "Bemooster Bursche zieh' ich aus,--Ade!" a big tear rolled down the scar on Richter's cheek.
"Fahrt wohl, ihr Strassen grad and krumm Ich zieh' nicht mehr in euch herum, Durchton euch nicht mehr mit Gesang, Mit Larm nicht mehr and Sporenklang."
As the deep tones died away, the soft night was steeped in the sadness of that farewell song. It was Richter who brought the full force of it home to Stephen.
"Do you recall the day you left your Harvard, and your Boston, my friend?" he asked.
Stephen only nodded. He had never spoken of the bitterness of that, even to his mother. And here was the difference between the Saxon and the Anglo-Saxon.
Richter smoked his pipe 'mid dreamy silence, the tear still wet upon his face.
"Tiefel and I were at the University together," he said at length. "He remembers the day I left Jena for good and all. Ah, Stephen, that is the most pathetic thing in life, next to leaving the Fatherland. We dine with our student club for the last time at the Burg Keller, a dingy little tavern under a grim old house, but very dear to us. We swear for the last time to be clean and honorable and patriotic, and to die for the Fatherland, if God so wills. And then we march at the head of a slow procession