A Little Traitor to the South
Page 3
CHAPTER I
HERO VERSUS GENTLEMAN
Miss Fanny Glen's especial detestation was an assumption of authorityon the part of the other sex. If there was a being on earth to whom shewould not submit, it was to a masterful man; such a man as, ifappearances were a criterion, Rhett Sempland at that moment assumed tobe.
The contrast between the two was amusing, or would have been had notthe atmosphere been so surcharged with passionate feeling, for RhettSempland was six feet high if he was an inch, while Fanny Glen by aProcrustean extension of herself could just manage to cover thefive-foot mark; yet such was the spirit permeating the smaller figurethat there seemed to be no great disparity, from the standpoint ofcombatants, between them after all.
Rhett Sempland was deeply in love with Miss Fanny Glen. His fullconsciousness of that fact shaded his attempted mastery by ever solittle.
He was sure of the state of his affections and by that knowledge theweaker, for Fanny Glen was not at all sure that she was in love withRhett Sempland. That is to say, she had not yet realized it; perhapsbetter, she had not yet admitted the existence of a reciprocal passionin her own breast to that she had long since learned had sprung up inhis. By just that lack of admission she was stronger than he for themoment.
When she discovered the undoubted fact that she did love Rhett Semplandher views on the mastery of man would probably alter--at least for atime! Love, in its freshness, would make her a willing slave; for howlong, events only could determine. For some women a lifetime, forothers but an hour, can elapse before the chains turn from adornmentsto shackles.
The anger that Miss Fanny Glen felt at this particular moment gave hera temporary reassurance as to some questions which had agitatedher--how much she cared, after all, for Lieutenant Rhett Sempland, anddid she like him better than Major Harry Lacy? Both questions wereinstantly decided in the negative--for the time being. She hated RhettSempland; _per contra_, at that moment, she loved Harry Lacy. ForHarry Lacy was he about whom the difference began. Rhett Sempland,confident of his own affection and hopeful as to hers, had attempted,with masculine futility and obtuseness, to prohibit the furtherattentions of Harry Lacy.
Just as good blood, _au fond_, ran in Harry Lacy's veins as in RhettSempland's, but Lacy, following in the footsteps of his ancestors, hadmixed his with the water that is not water because it is fire.
He "crooked the pregnant hinges" of the elbow without cessation, many atime and oft, and all the vices--as they usually do--followed _entrain_. One of the oldest names in the Carolinas had been dragged inthe dust by this latest and most degenerate scion thereof. Nay, in thatdust Lacy had wallowed--shameless, persistent, beast-like.
To Lacy, therefore, the Civil War came as a godsend, as it had to manyanother man in like circumstances, for it afforded another and morecongenial outlet for the wild passion beating out from his heart. Thewar sang to him of arms and men--ay, as war has sung since Troia's day,of women, too.
He did not give over the habits of a lifetime, which, though short, hadbeen hard, but he leavened them, temporarily obliterated them even, bysplendid feats of arms. Fortune was kind to him. Opportunity smiledupon him. Was it running the blockade off Charleston, or passingthrough the enemy's lines with despatches in Virginia, or heading adesperate attack on Little Round Top in Pennsylvania, he always won theplaudits of men, often the love of women. And in it all he seemed tobear a charmed life.
When the people saw him intoxicated on the streets of Charleston thatwinter of '63 they remembered that he was a hero. When some of his moreflagrant transgressions came to light, they recalled some splendid featof arms, and condoned what before they had censured.
He happened to be in Charleston because he had been shot to pieces atGettysburg and had been sent down there to die. But die he would not,at least not then. Ordinarily he would not have cared much aboutliving, for he realized that, when the war was over, he would speedilysink back to that level to which he habitually descended when there wasnothing to engage his energies; but his acquaintance with Miss FannyGlen had altered him.
Lacy met her in the hospital and there he loved her. Rhett Sempland mether in a hospital, also. Poor Sempland had been captured in an obscureskirmish late in 1861. Through some hitch in the matter he had beenheld prisoner in the North until the close of 1863, when he had beenexchanged and, wretchedly ill, he had come back to Charleston, likeLacy, to die.
He had found no opportunity for distinction of any sort. There was noglory about his situation, but prison life and fretting had made himshow what he had suffered. At the hospital, then, like Lacy, he too hadfallen in love with Miss Fanny Glen.
By rights the hero--not of this story, perhaps, but the real hero--wasmuch the handsomer of the two. It is always so in romances; andromances--good ones, that is--are the reflex of life. Such acombination of manly beauty with unshakable courage and recklessaudacity was not often seen as Lacy exhibited. Sempland was homely.Lacy had French and Irish blood in him, and he showed it. Sempland wasa mixture of sturdy Dutch and English stock.
Yet if women found Lacy charming they instinctively depended uponSempland. There was something thoroughly attractive in Sempland, andFanny Glen unconsciously fell under the spell of his strongpersonality. The lasting impression which the gayety and passionateabandon of Lacy could not make, Sempland had effected, and the girl wasalready powerfully under his influence--stubbornly resistantnevertheless.
She was fond of both men. She loved Lacy for the dangers he had passed,and Sempland because she could not help it; which marks the relativequality of her affections. Which one she loved the better until themoment at which the story opens she could not have told.
Nobody knew anything about Fanny Glen. At least there were only twofacts concerning her in possession of the general public. These,however, were sufficient. One was that she was good. The men in thehospital called her an angel. The other was that she was beautiful. Thewomen of the city could not exactly see why the men thought so, whichwas confirmation strong as proofs of Holy Writ!
She had come to Charleston at the outbreak of the war accompanied by anelderly woman of unexceptional manner and appearance who called herselfMiss Lucy Glen, and described herself as Miss Fanny Glen's aunt. Theyhad taken a house in the fashionable quarter of the city--they were notpoor at any rate--and had installed themselves therein with theirslaves.
They made no attempt to enter into the social life of the town and onlybecame prominent when Charleston began to feel acutely the hardships ofthe war which it had done more to promote than any other place in theland.
Then Fanny 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. Individualscame and went. Some of them married patients, some of them died withthem, but Fanny Glen neither married nor died--she abided!
Not merely because she stayed while others did not, but perhaps onaccount of her innate capacity, as well as her tactful tenderness, shebecame the chief of the women attached to the hospital. Many a sicksoldier lived to love her. Many another, more sorely stricken, diedblessing her.
In Charleston she was regarded as next in importance to the general whocommanded the troops and who, with his ships, his forts, his guns, andhis men, had been for two years fighting off the tremendous assaultsthat were hurled upon the city from the Union ironclads and ships farout to sea. It was a point of honor to take, or to hold, Charleston,and the Confederates held it till 1865!
Fanny Glen was a privileged character, therefore, and could go anywhereand do anything, within the lines.
Under other circumstances there would have been a thorough inquiry bythe careful inhabitants of the proud, strict Southern city into herfamily relationships; but the war was a great leveller, people weretaken at their real value when trouble demonstrated it, and fewquestions were asked. Those that were asked about Fanny Glen were notanswered. It made little difference, then.
; Toward the close of 1863, however, there was an eclipse in the generalhospital, for Fanny Glen fell ill.
She was not completely recovered, early in 1864, when she had thefamous interview with Rhett Sempland, but there was not the slightestevidence of invalidism about her as she confronted him that afternoonin February.
Wounded pride, outraged dignity, burning indignation, supplied strengthand spirit enough for a regiment of convalescents.
The difference between the two culminated in a disturbance which mightaptly be called cyclonic, for Sempland on nearly the first occasionthat he had been permitted to leave the hospital had repaired to FannyGlen's house and there had repeated, standing erect and looking downupon her bended head, what he had said so often with his eyes and onceat least with his lips, from his bed in the ward: that he loved her andwanted her for his wife.
Pleasant thing it was for her to hear, too, she could not but admit.
Yet if Fanny 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 quitemaster of himself on account of his experience in war, and his lack ofit in women, for he instantly conceived that her hesitation was due tosome other cause than maidenly incertitude, and that Harry Lacy, ofwhom he had grown mightily jealous, was at the bottom of it.
He hated and envied Lacy. More, he despised him for his weaknesses andtheir consequences. The two had been great friends once, but a year ortwo before the outbreak of the war they had drifted apart.
Sempland did not envy Lacy any talents that he might possess, for hewas quite confident that the only thing he himself lacked had beenopportunity--Fate had not been kind to him, but the war was not yetover. Consequently when he jumped to the conclusion that Fanny Glenpreferred Lacy, he fell into further error, and made the frightfulmistake of depreciating his rival.
Assuming with masculine inconsistency that the half acceptance she hadgiven him entitled him to decide her future, he actually referred toLacy's well-known habits and bade her have nothing to do with him.