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THROUGH STAINED GLASS
A novel by
GEORGE AGNEW CHAMBERLAIN
Author of "Home"
New York Grosset & Dunlap Publishers
Copyright, 1915, by
GEORGE AGNEW CHAMBERLAIN
Published March, 1915
CHAPTER I
In 1866 the American minister at Rio de Janeiro turned from the realityof a few incongruous and trouble-breeding Kentucky colonels,slouched-hatted and frock-coated, wandering through the unfamiliarstreets of the great South American capital, and saw a nightmare. Thereis a touch of panic in the despatch which he sent to Mr. Seward at atime when both secretary and public were held too closely in the throesof reconstruction to take alarm at so distant a chimera. Agents of theSouthern States, wrote the minister, claimed that not thousands offamilies, but a hundred thousand families, would come to Brazil.
As a matter of fact, this exodus, when it took place, was so small thatit failed to raise a ripple on the social pool of the WesternHemisphere. But to the self-chosen few who suffered shipwreck andprivation, financial loss from their already depleted store, disaster totheir Utopian dreams, and a great void in their hearts where once hadbeen love of country, it became a tragedy--the tragedy of existence.
The ardor that led a small band of irreconcilables to gather theirhouseholds and their household goods about them and flee from a personaloppression, as had their ancestors before them, was destined to be shortlived. From the first, fate frowned upon their enterprise. They lookedfor calm seas and favorable winds, but they found storms and shipwreck.Their scanty resources were calculated to meet the needs of only thecrudest life, but upon the threshold of their goal they fell into thered-tape trammels of a civilization older than their own. Where theylooked for a free country, a wilderness flowing with milk and honey,which in their ignorance they imagined unpeopled, they found thesquatter had been intrenched since the Jesuit fathers and theirfollowing explored the continent four centuries before. Finally, theybelieved themselves to be the vanguard of a horde, but, once in thebreach, they found there was no following host.
Most of those who had the means reversed their flight. Others, withnothing left but their broken pride, sought aid from the government theyabhorred, and were given a free passage back in returning men-of-war.But when the reflux had waned and died, there was still a residue ofhalf a hundred families, most of whom were so destitute that they couldnot reach the coast. With them stayed a very few who were held by theirpremature investments or by a deeper loyalty or a greater pride. Amongthe latter was the head of the divided house of Leighton.
The Reverend Orme Leighton was one of those to whom the war had broughta double portion of bitterness, for the Leightons of Leighton, Virginia,had fought not alone against the North, but against the North and theLeightons of Leighton, Massachusetts.
To the Reverend Orme Leighton, a schism in the church would have meantnothing unless it came to the point of cracking heads; but a schism ingovernmental policy, which placed the right to govern one's self and ownblack chattel in the balance, found him taking sides from the first,thundering out from the pulpit, supported by text and verse, the divineright of personal dominion by purchase, and in superb contradictionvoicing the constitutional right to self-government. When the day ofwords was past, he did not wait for the desperate cry of the South inher later need. Abandoning gown and pulpit for charger and saber, he wasof the first to rally, of the last to muster out. Nor at the end of thelong struggle did he find solace in the knowledge that he had fought agood fight. To him more than the South had fallen. God had withheld hishand from the just cause, and Leighton had fought against Leighton!
It was characteristic of the Reverend Orme Leighton that the rancorwhich came with defeat was not visited upon those members of his clanwho had fought against him. But for that very reason it was all the morepoignantly directed against that vague entity, the North. Never, whilelife lasted, would he bow to the dominion of a tyranny, much more, of atyranny which, by dividing the Leightons, had in a measure forcedneutrality upon the gods.
Leighton House, Virginia, found a ready and fitting purchaser in one ofthe Leightons of Massachusetts. With the funds thus provided, theReverend Orme Leighton moved, lock, stock, and barrel, six thousandmiles to the south. He settled at San Paulo, where he bought for a songa considerable property on the outskirts of the city. He rented,besides, a large building in the center of the town, and establishedtherein the Leighton Academy. Here he labored single handed until hisworth as an instructor became known; then the sudden prosperity of theventure drove him to engage an ever-increasing staff. The academydeveloped rapidly into a recognized local institution. The firstmaterial revenue from the successful school was applied to building afitting home on the property bought for a song.
The character of this new Leighton House, which was never known asLeighton House, but acquired the name of Consolation Cottage by analogywith the Street of the Consolation near which it stood, was as differentas could well be both from the prevailing local style of architectureand from the stately colonial type dear to the heart of every Virginian.The building was long and low, with sloping roofs of flat French tiles.A broad veranda bordered it on three sides. The symmetry of the wholewas saved from ugliness by a large central gable the overhanging porchof which cast a deep and friendly shadow over the great front door andover the wide flights of steps that led down to the curving driveway.
In that luxuriant clime the new house did not long remain bare. Aclambering wistaria, tree-like geraniums, a giant fuchsia and trellisedrose-vines soon embowered the verandas, while, on the south side,English ivy was gradually coaxed up the bare brick wall. This medley ofleaf and bloom gave to the whole house that air of friendliness andhomeliness that marks the shrine of the Anglo-Saxon's household gods theworld over.
Such was the nest that the Reverend Orme built by the sweat of his browto harbor his little family, which, at the beginning of this history,consisted of himself; Ann Leighton, his wife; and Mammy, black as theace of spades without, white within.
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