University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.

Let us retrace our steps—let us go back in our
narrative, and review the feelings and the fortunes of
other parties to our story, not less important to its details,
and quite as dear in our regards. Let us seek
the temporary dwelling of the Berkeley family, and contemplate
the condition and the employment of its inmates
during the progress of the severe strife of which
we have given a partial history. Its terrors were not
less imposing to them than they were to those who had
been actors in the conflict. To the young maidens,
indeed, it certainly was far more terrible than to the
brave men, warmed with the provocation and reckless
from the impulses of strife. And yet, how differently
did the events of the day affect the two maidens—how
forcibly did they bring out and illustrate their very different
characters. To the casual observer there was
very little change in the demeanour of Janet Berkeley.
She seemed the same subdued, sad, yet enduring and
uncomplaining creature, looking for affliction because
she had been so often subjected to its pressure; yet,
from that very cause, looking for it without apprehension,
and in all the strength of religious resignation.

Not so with her more volatile companion. The terrors
of the fight, so near at hand, so novel in its forms,
and so fearful to one who never, till now, had associated
it in her thought with any other features than those of
old romance—where the gorgeousness and the glitter

the cheering music and the proud array, were contrived
to conceal the danger, if not to salve the hurts—brought
to her other and more paralyzing sensations. All her
levity departed with the approach and presence of the
reality, of which, hitherto, she had but dreamed, and
the images of which, seen through the medium of her
imagination and not her heart, had, until now, presented
her with no other forms than those of loveliness or
power. The first dread sounds of battle, the first
crash and commotion of the conflict, taught her other
feelings; and, with each reiterated shout or groan, her
emotion increased to a passion of fear that became painful
even to her companion—herself full of the warmest
apprehensions for her lover's safety, and labouring under
a true sense of the growing and gathering miseries
around her. But it is at such a moment that the true
nature of the mind—the true strength of the heart—the
spirit, and the soul, and the affections—rise into impressive
and controlling action. It was then that the majesty
of a devoted woman, conscious of all the danger,
yet not unprepared to meet it with him to whom her
heart was given, shone forth in the bearing of Janet
Berkeley. The light, thoughtless heart of Rose Duncan,
untutored and unimpressed as yet by any of the
vicissitudes of life, had few moods but what were hurrying
and of a transient nature. She was unprepared
for any but passing impressions. Her fancy had been
active always, and her heart, in consequence, had
grown subordinate. Affliction, the subduer—the modifier—she
who checks passion in its tumults, and tempers
to sedateness the warm feelings which would sometimes
mount into madness—had brought her no sober
counsels. Small, but accumulating cares, which benefit
by their frequent warnings, had never taught her to
mediate much or often upon the various sorrows, and
the many changes, as frequent in the moral atmosphere
as in the natural, which belong to life. That grave talebearer,
Time, whose legends are never wanting in their
moral to those who read, had taken no heed of her education.
That stern strengthener and impelling mistress,
Necessity, had never, in order to bring out its
resources, subjected each feeling of her heart to bondage—putting
a curb upon the capricious emotion and
the buoyant fancy. She heard of care from books—
which seldom describe it in its true features—but it was
only to regard it as a something which is to give a zest
to pleasure, by sometimes changing its aspect, as in
conserves we employ a slight bitter, in order to relieve
pleasantly the cloying insipidity of their sweet. She
had never yet seen in Sorrow the twin sister of Humanity—born
with it at its birth, keeping due pace
with it, though perhaps unseen, in its progress through
the flowery places as well as through the tangled wilderness:
clinging to it inseparably through all its fortunes—clouding
at times its most pleasant sunshine
with a look of reproof—chiding its sweetest anticipations
with the language of homily, and pressing it downward
at last to the embrace of their common mother
Earth, until even Hope takes its flight, yielding the
struggle for the present, and possibly withholding its assurance
from the future.

Thus, utterly uneducated by the heart's best tutors,
the novel terrors now before her eyes left her entirely
without support in reflection. She was convulsed with
apprehension; the fierce oaths of the hurrying troops
grated with a new form of danger upon her fancy: every
wild shout smote painfully upon her senses; and the
sharp shot, directed, as she now knew it to be, against
the bosom of a feeling and a living man, while teaching
her properly to realize the truth, totally unnerved, and
left her powerless. She shrunk upon the floor in her
terrors, as the dreadful din came to her ears, and crawled
to the window, where her cousin sat in speechless
apprehension. There, like a frightened child, she sat

clinging to the drapery of Janet, while continued sobs
and momentary exclamations betrayed her new consciousness
of danger, and her own inadequacy of
strength to contend with it.

How different was the deportment of Janet. How
subdued her grief—how unobtrusive her emotions—how
sustained her spirit—how governing her reason. She
shrunk not from the contemplation of that danger,
whose terrors her mind had long since been taught to
contemplate at a distance. Drawing her chair beside a
little window, which looked forth directly upon the scene
of battle, and scarcely in perfect security from its random
shot, she gazed upon the progress of events, and exhibited,
in comparison with Rose—who sat upon the floor
and saw nothing—but little consciousness, and certainly
no fears, of its awful terrors. Yet her emotions were
not less active, her feelings not less susceptible and
warm, than those of her companion. It was, indeed,
because her consciousness was so deep, her love so
abiding, her fears so thick and overflowing, that she had
no audible emotions. The waters of her heart were too
far down for display; it is only in the shallows that the
breakers leap up, and chafe, and murmur. They speak
not for themselves, but for the overfull and heaving
ocean that gathers, and settles, gloomily and great, in
the distance. The clamour of her cousin's fear had
spoken for hers; and yet how full of voice, how
touching the language of silence, when we know that
the full heart is running over. How thrilling is the
brief, gasping, sudden exclamation, which utters all, because
we feel that it has uttered nothing.

She sat with her hands clasped—her soul sad and
sick, but strong—her eyes intently gazing, as if they
would burst from their sockets, upon the wild scene of
confusion going on around her. And when the strife began
warmly in the first stage, and before the house was
fired—when she knew nothing of the progress of events,

and heard nothing but the sharp and frequent shot, without
knowing what had been its effect,—when the shriek
of agony reached her ears faintly from afar, and there
came no word to her to say that the wounded victim
was not the one of all in that controversy to whom her
thought and her prayer were most entirely given; it was
then that she felt the agony which yet she did not speak.
In her mind she strove to think a prayer for his success
and for his safety, and sometimes the words of aspiration
were muttered brokenly from her lips; but the
prayer died away in her heart, and the dreadful incidents
of earth, going on around her, kept back her thoughts
from God.

A terrible cry of satisfaction was uttered by the partisans
as, in the conflict, they beheld one of the defenders
of the house distinctly fall back from the window at
which he had exposed himself. The rifle had been too
quick and fatal for his escape. The sound smote upon
the senses of Janet with a new fear; and Rose, in her
childish terror, nearly dragged her from the seat.

“Father of mercies, spare him—spare them all!
Soften their hearts—let them not spill blood!” was the
involuntary prayer of Janet. “Rose, do not go on so;
do not fear; you are not in danger, dear Rose; but keep
on the floor, the shot cannot reach you there.”

“But you, Janet, you are in danger at the window;
come down, dear Janet, and sit with me. The bullets
will be sure to hit you. Come down. I'm so afraid.”

“Pull me not down, Rose; there is no danger here,
for the shot do not fly in this direction. They fly all towards
the garden, where our people are, under the trees.”

“Where? do you see them, Janet?” cried Rose, half
rising.

“Yes; bush—there!” but a cry and a shot at that
moment frightened the other to her place upon the
floor, and she sank down with renewed trepidation.

“I see them now—all of them; some stand behind

the water-oaks: and I see two crawling along under
the bushes. God preserve them! Should Barsfield
know they are there, he could kill them, for there are no
trees between them and the house: nothing but the
bushes. Oh! God—”

The exclamation startled Rose with a new terror.

“What, Janet?”

“I see him! Rash Mellichampe! I see him, and
he is mounted. The tories must see him too. Why!
oh, why will he expose himself! why does he not keep
behind the trees! He stands—he does not move!
Barsfield must soon see him now. Fly, fly, Earnest!”
and her emotion assuming the ascendency, she arose
from her chair, and motioned with her hand, and cried
with her voice, now feeble and husky from affright, as if
he, to whom it was addressed, could hear it at such a
distance.

“He hears me—he moves away! Oh, dear Ernest!
he is now behind the trees. Thank God, he is safe!”
and she sank again into her seat, and fondly believed, at
that moment, that he had heard her warnings and complied
with her entreaties. There was a pause in the
conflict. Neither shot nor shout came to their senses.

“Is it over, Janet?” cried Rose. “Have they done
fighting? I hear nothing. There is no danger now.”

“Would it were over, Rose; but I fear it is not. I
see the men watching behind the trees. Some are riding
away, and some are creeping still around the
fence. It blinds me to look; it maddens me to think,
Rose that he is there, exposed to the murderous aim
of those merciless tories, in the danger which I may not
keep him from, which I do not share with him. Pray,
Rose, pray, dearest, for the safety of our men. Pray,
for I cannot. I can only look.”

“Nor I. But how can you look? the very thought
of it is too horrible.”

“The thought of it to me is more dreadful than the

sight,” was the answer of Janet. “Months have gone
by, Rose, since I first began to think of battle and of
Mellichampe's hourly danger; and when I thought of
it then, it was far more terrible than now, when I look
upon it before me. But oh! dearest Rose, how awful
is that silence. There is no shouting—there are no
cries of blood and death, and yet they are planning
death. They are meditating how best to succeed in
slaughtering their fellow-creatures.”

“Do you see them now, Janet?”

“Yes; there, behind the trees. Look now, Rose
There is now no danger, I think.”

The more timid girl rose to survey the distant array
which she did with all the eager curiosity of childhood.
The bugle sounded.

“Ah, Rose! they are in council. See them under
the great oak yonder, to the left—there, close by the
stunted cedar?”

“I see, I see! How their swords glitter, Janet
How beautiful; how strange! And that trumpet, how
shrilly sweet, how strong and wild its notes, seeming
like the cry of some mighty bird as it rushes through the
storm. Oh, Janet, what a beautiful thing is war.”

“So is death, sometimes. Beautiful, but terrible.
Alas! that man should seek to make crime lovely!
Alas! that woman should so admire power and courage
as to forget the cruelties in their frequent employ.
God keep us! they are going to fight again.”

With a scream Rose sank again to the floor, grasping
the dress of her companion, and clinging to it with
all the trepidation of childhood.

“Ah! they lift their rifles. I see three of them that
kneel behind the trees, and they have their aim upon
something, but what I cannot see. What is it they
would shoot? They are pointed to the house, too. I
see now: two of the tories are at one window. God
help them, why do they not hide themselves?”

“Are they gone now, Janet?” asked Rose, in the
momentary silence of her companion.

“I know not; I cannot look again. Ha! the shot!
the shot!—the rifles!—they are slain!”

The sharp sudden sound of the rifles followed almost
instantly the inquiry of Rose Duncan, and the eyes
of Janet instantly turned, as under some fascination,
towards the window. The troopers were no longer to
be seen. Shuddering as with convulsion, she turned
from the window and sank down beside her more timid
companion. But her heart was too full of anxiety to
suffer her to remain long where she had fallen. The
sounds again ceased, and she ventured to rise once
more and look forth upon the prospect. She now saw
the scene more distinctly. The partisans had somewhat
changed their position, and were now nearer the
cottage. Singleton stood beneath a tree, with several
of his officers about him. The quick eye of Janet
readily distinguished her lover among them. He stood
erect, graceful and firm as ever, and she forgot her fears
—her sorrows. He was unhurt. While she looked
they moved away from the spot, and she now beheld
them making a circuit round the park so as to avoid
unnecessary exposure to the tory bullets, and approaching
the little cottage in which the family found shelter.

“Heavens! Rose, they are coming here—the officers.
What can they want? There may be some one
hurt. Yet no, it does not look so.”

“Then the fighting is over, Janet.”

“No, no, I fear not, for I see the riflemen all around
the house, and watching it closely from beneath the
trees. But here they come, the officers, and he is
among them. Go, Rose, dearest, and send my father
to meet them. I cannot. I will rather sit here and
wait until they are gone.”

The partisans sought the house the better to carry
on their deliberations. They obtained some refreshments

from Mr. Berkeley, and then proceeded to confer
on the subject of the leaguer. We have seen the
result of their deliberations, in the gift which Janet had
made to her lover of the bow and arrows. It will not
need that we dwell longer upon the event. Let us proceed
to others, in which she also had a share.