University of Virginia Library

20. CHAPTER XX.
THE AUTHOR OF THE MS. EXPLAINS SUNDRY THINGS PERTINENT
TO THIS HISTORY.

“I have endeavored in portions of the preceding pages,”
says the author of the MS., “to trace the changes of feeling
in two different persons, whose fortunes enter largely into
this narrative. In the first place, I have tried to show how
Miss Henrietta Lee—proud, high-spirited, aristocratic, and
full of well-bred contempt for every one not unmistakably
a gentleman in blood—on their first interviews, regarded
Captain Ralph Waters, the honest and high-minded soldier,
with great disdain. I have shown how she addressed him,
when she condescended to do so, with frigid coldness; resented
his easy sang froid in her presence, as a deliberate
offence; summoned all her pride of blood and rank to suppress
her audacious admirer's ease, and reduce him to his
proper place. We have seen her in repeated interviews, preserve
this coldness less and less; then complain of him,
having lost her silent disdain; then launch forth into an
obstinate, hand-to-hand encounter of wit with the soldier;
finally, begin to be amused at his unaffected nonchalance, his
martial and brilliant narratives of the campaigns he had
fought almost from his boyhood to the present hour; and
feel some anxiety to rescue her character from the imputation
of preferring the exact antipode of himself— the fop!

“Miss Henrietta Lee was, of course, not conscious of
this gradual change of feeling towards the soldier. For not
one person in ten thousand ever becomes aware of his or her
feelings until some great crisis reveals them in their strength
and power. It is a common adage, that we do not know how
much we love certain persons until we have lost them; and
this is but one instance, taken from a thousand, of the truth
of the observation I have made.

“But if Miss Henrietta Lee was not aware of her change
of feeling toward Captain Ralph Waters, she must have felt
that he was not wholly the same to her as formerly; she

must have perceived that she no longer looked upon him with
cold disdain, lordly contempt; that was no longer possible.

`She had prepared herself to encounter the rude and
offensive manners of a mere camp-soldier; a rough man, who
had won her father's friendship by relating the incidents of
the war in Europe. She had expected to find simply a disagreeable,
vulgar individual, who knew nothing of the rules
of good society, who would stumble over the chairs, commit
eternal gaucheries, make himself a nuisance and an eye-sore.
All this she had expected, and she was deceived. She found
a man who was quite cognizant of the rules of good breeding,
who bowed with the utmost grace, and with the exception
of his French expletives, was quite irreproachable.

“She did not come to this conclusion without a struggle
with herself; and she tried to say disdainfully, that all this
was affected, that he was a mere adventurer, that he was
ashamed of his origin, and wished to rise from the class in
which he was born. But the disdainful smile disappeared,
her scorn she felt was unjust; and Henrietta Lee, with her
proud, wealthy nature, never committed a deliberate injustice.
She was above that, and this sincerity of character now made
her confess to herself that in imagining Captain Waters a
mere adventurer, ashamed of his origin, and seeking to conceal
it, she was mistaken. The Captain had a score of times
taken occasion to say that he was the son of a fisherman,
with the most unaffected calmness; that he was proud of his
father and his brother; and it was very plain that this pride
and affection was not put on for the nonce, or it would never
have been spoken of so often. No; Captain Waters was
not ashamed of his lineage; he had not been bred up in the
midst of the singularly graded society of the colony; he
felt no inferiority in the presence of any one, that was plain.
The commander over him in battle was his superior—not the
citizen who wore finer clothes, and had a finer ancestry.
What Charles Waters arrived at by logic, the Captain came
to by pure instinct, and the instinct had been stronger than
the logic. No; Captain Waters was not desirous to hide his
low birth; he did not apologize for it, he did not regret it;
he regarded it as a circumstance in his life of small importance,
as long as he was the fearless soldier, the honest heart.
All this was plain to Henrietta.

“Now, when a proud nature finds that it has done injustice,
the first result is a strong reaction in opposition
to the former sentiment. The proud, brilliant mind of
Henrietta Lee had never stooped to any petty meanness, and
those who suffered from her wit and liked her least, confessed
that she had never been guilty of narrow and illiberal
things, even. Her aristocratic feeling was a portion of her
blood—uncontrollable; and this she did not regard as wrong
at all. So when she found that she had done Captain
Waters injustice she began to like him, and to laugh in
private over his amusing stories; and with the natural feeling
of her sex, to admire those martial traits of the soldier
which she had quarrelled with.

“We need not proceed at present to trace the change of
sentiment farther; in future pages of this history the reader
will perceive what further attended this young lady's revulsion
of feeling toward her admirer. I shall proceed now
to speak of my respected ancestor Champ Effingham, Esq.,
and his feelings briefly.

“I need not repeat the description of his own feelings
given by himself to his friend Mr. Hamilton, and had one
not listened to that monologue, I suppose none could fail to
have conceived a very accurate idea of this gentleman's character
from the former portion of the history. Let me then
pass at once to the first interview between himself and Miss
Clare Lee, the tender and sincere woman, whom I have given
so little space to in this narrative. His heart had experienced
a deeper emotion in that interview than he chose to confess;
he was not perfectly calm, though his long apathy had given
him the habit of suppressing every emotion with a rod of
iron. No; her soft, tender face, so full of former happiness,
and eloquent of his far golden youth, shone on him like a
bright harvest moon—full of peace, and joy, and love. His
dull blood had leaped, his stagnant heart had throbbed;
once more he experienced a sensation of that pure, delicate,
tender joy, which is never found in fiery, devouring passions.
He felt that his mad infatuation had scarcely diminished
that sentiment shrined far back in the recesses of his heart;
that the flame had not reached those depths; the MS. recording
his bright youth had not been burned; all then was
still the same: as clear as ever.

“Still he determined to avoid Clare sedulously, and for a
double reason:—first shame, and then fear. Not that my
worthy ancestor was really ashamed of his infatuation—
ashamed in the ordinary meaning of the term. I am afraid
that his headstrong nature seldom felt the sentiment. But
he experienced a rational doubt of his reception at Riverhead
by the young girl whose heart he had so cruelly tried;
whose pure, tender love, he had slighted for a wild passion.
He did not fancy playing the repentant—striking his breast
and crying mea culpâ! pity! This was quite out of the
question in the present instance with Mr. Effingham, and to
avoid all disagreeable scenes, he resolved to continue in
Virginia the resolution he had adopted on the Continent;
here as there, he would avoid all women.

“I have said that my respected ancestor's second
sentiment was fear—that is fear of himself. After that
volcano-like explosion, he dreaded his own passions; he was
perfectly well convinced that when aroused, these passions
were as fetterless as the wind; and he indulged, what seems
to me looking back now on his character, a rational fear of
his feelings.

“But Mr. Hamilton had by a word on the day of the
fox-hunt, persuaded him to conquer both these sentiments,
and enter. Then he felt that his resolution was not very
strong; that the very strength of feeling which caused him
to make those precautionary resolutions, now led him to break
them at a single word.

“He spent the day; and all that day the feeling that he
loved her still was gaining ground: he dwelt on her tender
face with pensive, drooping eyes, the faint weary smile
growing brighter as he went over the soft past; he experienced
a strange emotion of purity and gentleness in her
presence; she seemed to make the world bright for him again,
throwing a new light on the landscape of his life, like dawn
after the dim moonlight, or the white glare of snow.

“That song which he had heard her sing so often in the
past—the happy golden past, when he was young and loved
her so tenderly—came finally to complete his change of
feeling, and he knew that he loved her more than ever
—far more; more profoundly, truly, tenderly. Then, at
the same moment, he saw her giving kind glances to his

friend, and all of these glances pierced his soul; but his
face did not move, only the shadow returned. He went as
quietly as he came, speaking with his eyes only, and those
eyes asked nothing. When he lost sight of her his head
drooped.

“The evening at the hall was a great trial; it was plain
that she and Hamilton were little less than lovers—she was
so kind—he so devotedly attentive. He spoke to her but
once or twice, and then calmly and quietly; and, as we have
seen, pressed Mr. Hamilton's hand with a warmth which
indicated something more than regret at parting. Thus he
laid no claim to her heart—he felt it was gone from him.
But he could dream of her; and how he dreamt I have
related.

“These few words of comment will enable the reader to
comprehend more easily the events which follow. Though
preferring to write down what the characters of my history
said to each other, from the conviction that their traits are
most easily developed by themselves, I have thought fit to
pause here, to speak thus briefly in my own person of Captain
Waters, and my respected ancestor. I now proceed.”