Lily Pearl and The Mistress of Rosedale

"Doubt you, Ellen? Never for a moment! But my mother; how is she?"

"Sorrow-stricken, of course, but strangely resigned. There is something noble in such a grief as hers, Anna! No, you need not shrink from meeting her; she will comfort you! I see by your face, poor sufferer, that you need it! She will do you good, never fear!"

"Just step in my room for a moment, Ellen; I would not have him see me tear-stained again. I have wept so much for the last few days. You speak truly, I do need my mother, for I am very weak. Ellen, there has been more gall in the cup I have been draining than you can ever know! A darker wave has rolled over my soul than can ever lift your bark, my precious friend; but what matters it after all, when we find ourselves sinking we are led to cry out 'save or I perish?' We shall be chided some day for our faithlessness and doubtings, and it is better that we should receive it while yet on the sea, for the calm, Ellen, is peaceful after the storm." She had been bathing her face and arranging her hair while speaking, and now turned toward her companion with the old smile wreathing her lips.

"You are like your mother," and again the arm of affection drew them closer together as they proceeded to the room where the father and brother were awaiting them.

That night, contrary to the doctor's instructions, there was a long conversation in the sick man's chamber, in which he earnestly joined.

"Let it be settled, Father, that you return with Anna," he said at length. "I shall get along all right with Ellen and Mrs. Howard, with what Toby can help, I have not the least doubt; and, besides, we rebels must not be too exacting or expect too much." His eyes were upon Anna, and she knew it. Her cheeks flushed, but the great hope in her heart kept back the haunting spectre his words might otherwise have summoned.

"He is a rebel no more," she thought. His voice recalled her.

"Besides, you will be needed in the widow's home to assist and cheer. It will not be a great while before I shall be able to join you all there, for immediately on being well enough to sit up for a few hours I shall leave for the North – through my convalescence at least."

There were quick glances into each other's faces, but he was silent.

"I will do as you say, my son," was the father's conclusion, "but I fear we are tiring you. Yes, you will feel better after a rest, and to-morrow we will talk farther on the subject."

Four days afterward a solemn cortege wended its way through the little village of Glendale, bearing its dead from the station to the home of bereavement and sorrow. There were warm hand claspings, and words of sympathy and condolence, and tears, such as mothers alone can shed, when maternal love is stricken; when heart answers to heart with the sad echo of loneliness and desolation.

And so they laid Edward Pierson away upon the hillside; the first martyr in all the region on the altar of freedom!

CHAPTER XXVII.

NEW RESOLVES – AND NEW ADVENTURES

"Teach me thy way, O Lord, and lead me in a plain path, because of mine enemies. Deliver me not over unto the will of mine enemies, for false witnesses are risen up against me, and such as breathe out cruelty."

These words Lillian Belmont repeated to herself as the carriage that was bearing her away from home and early associations rolled down the highway leading to the depot, where she with her cousin Grace Stanley were to take the cars for New Orleans. Mrs. Stanley was the youngest sister of the deceased master of Rosedale, but since his death very little intimacy had been continued between the families, until Mrs. Belmont meeting the vivacious, merry-hearted Grace had conceived the idea of using her for a purpose, and so had invited her to spend a few weeks with her "morbid" cousin. All things, however, had not worked to that lady's satisfaction, as we have learned, and now with a mother's curse weighing her down the daughter had joined with David in the supplication, "lead me in a plain path." Was He leading her? The path as yet was dark and overshadowed, but she had clasped the gentle hand and the promise was, "I will never leave or forsake thee;" and with simple, childlike trust she walked forward. During the winter she had written several times to her mother, pleading she would clear away the mysteries of the past, remove the maternal edicts, so that over the debris of broken hopes and shattered ambitions they might again come together, reconciled and loving. But no response to these pleadings came to her. To be sure there were letters from loved ones telling of the early removal of her family to the city, of the visit to the Washburn's, of the sudden death of little Shady, with poor old Vina's wail of anguish, but not a word of sympathy from the heart where the maternal love lay buried.

The bugle notes of war sounded through the streets of New Orleans, and the passions of men were stirred as never before. Women too, who had quaffed only from the chalice of ease and pleasure, awoke from the lethargy of indulgence to find themselves tossing upon a sea of excitement and alarm. Lillian was interested, and for a time her own troubled life was swallowed up in the tumults that threatened the peace and harmony of the nation's life. Bustle, energy and activity were everywhere.

"What a useless, helpless thing I am!" she said to her aunt one evening as they sat alone, after the husband, who was wearied with his day's toils in the unpretentious hardware store near the wharf had retired to his room, and Grace was entertaining a friend in the parlor. "It seems to me I am suddenly aroused by a storm, and unless I run for my life shall be covered out of sight in its fury!" She laughed, but there was a seriousness in her pale face her aunt had never seen upon it before.

"I do not wonder you think yourself out in the wind," was the cheerful response, "for Grace is enough to stir up the sleepy faculties of any lover of her country. I do not know but she will 'shoulder arms' and go into the field in defence of her native land!" and the good lady laughed outright. There was a long silence, while Lillian never once removed her gaze from the dying embers in the grate as she actively traced the wanderings and leapings of her busy thoughts.

At last she said in an undertone: "Grace is very gentle considering her confederate proclivities; but has it occurred to you that I have a husband somewhere in that confusion and excitement among our enemies, as we call them?"

"O, Lillian!" and the cheerful face put on a look of serious incredulity. "You will not now certainly desire to seek out a relationship from among a people, who would, if in their power, kill or enslave us all?" Lillian's dark eyes wandered slowly to the troubled face of the speaker. "I have fully joined with my daughter in the feeling that a great wrong has been perpetrated on you, still I did hope that this terrible war would obliterate forever all such former ties and leave you free, as free as though they had never been!"

"And here I am shocking you with my heart's cry for its idol, for its tenderest loves, for the purest longings known to woman's nature! Listen to me, Aunt Sylvia, I am going north! The blow has been struck! Fort Sumter has fallen! There will be wounded hearts to bind up and wounded bodies to care for! Sorrow and lamentation will fill many homes, and the cry for help and sympathy will sound over the land. I shall get out of my life of indolence and plunge into the thickest scenes of labor!"

"Yes, Lillian, you do shock me! Why go north? If you must work, will there not be plenty of it to do among your own people? Are they not as deserving of your care and sympathy as their enemies?"

"Auntie, I have told Grace and now will tell you! Somewhere in the north I have a husband and child! Do not look at me with that spirit of incredulity peering out of your eyes, for it is no random suspicion – no new thought. My husband lives, and the letter I received last night from George St. Clair gives me the information that a 'Pearl Hamilton,' who started with a captain's commission from Pennsylvania was promoted to the position of colonel of his regiment by the entire vote of each company upon reaching Washington. This he copied from a paper for my especial benefit; and that Colonel Hamilton is my husband; my Pearl! He is true to me – our hearts are one, and the fast growing desire to go to him has, since the receipt of that letter, become full-fledged; and before communication between the two sections is entirely cut off I shall go!"

"Did not the knowledge of his notoriety help to feather the wings of love, my child?"

There was something in the tone of voice with which these words were uttered that caused the listener's face to flush with amazement and indignation.

"This from you, Auntie!" she said at last. "Look at me; remember what I have endured, realize for a moment from what I have been torn, consider the burdens that are weighing me down, and then, if it be possible, repeat the question. You do not know me! For this reason I forgive the cruel thrust! Pearl Hamilton would hold my heart as firmly and truly if he were now the humble clerk in the store where I first knew him, as an honored officer in the enemy's army!"

Mrs. Stanley took the little white hand that lay on the arm of the easy chair where Lillian was sitting and holding it in her loving clasp, said, soothingly: "My darling, I did not mean at all what I said. You are too much like your father to be guilty of such unwomanly selfishness. I was a little indignant that you should persist in keeping faith with your childhood's love, and so uttered what I did not at all feel! I cannot, however, endure the thought of your going through the enemy's lines, and if he is a soldier as you hear, he may be brought to you as a prisoner of war, when you could be more speedily reunited than if you should follow out your own wild schemes."

"Pearl is not all I have in that muddle! Did I not say a husband and child? Grace has told you that I was a mother and that my pretty Lily died and was buried; but my dear Aunt, I do not believe it! I never did believe it! Still I had not the power to combat the story that was told me! O, I have been so weak! But a letter received by my mother, and which accidentally fell into my hands, and her confusion and evident alarm as I held it before her, assured me that I was the subject of a heartless fraud and that my child lived! Ever since I have pondered how I could find her! If I knew the place where she was born; at what point on the Atlantic shore stood the romantic 'Cliff House'; where I was imprisoned those dreadful weeks, I should before this have visited it. The weird old nurse would, I am sure, tell me all, notwithstanding her bribes for secrecy!"

"Surely you do not believe all this, Lillian? No wonder the hungering of your heart has eaten the bloom from your cheek! But there must be some mistake. No matter how lofty may be a mother's ambition she could not be guilty of so vile an act!"

"Auntie, my cry for months has been 'lead me in a plain path', and I have been watching for the shadows to clear away that I might see the road, and now that my plea has been seemingly answered and the 'path' winds alone through the future mysteries so distinctly to my poor, trembling vision shall I not walk therein? Indeed, I must go! I can not sit idly here with folded hands when there is so much to be done and so many links to be gathered up! My mother well understood my inertness and worthlessness; she knew too that my pride would not long allow me to be a dependent on those upon whom I only had the claims of kinship. This, she was sure, would in time bring me in humble penitence to her feet. I cannot do this; and the other path leads me farther away from her! I must go!"

True to her conclusions, in a few days Lillian Belmont, the petted child of luxury, weak and enervated by indolence and indulgence, started alone amid the protestations and pleadings of those who loved her, en route for Philadelphia where she knew another aunt, the oldest sister of her father, would give her a hearty welcome. It was a tiresome and exciting journey. Quizzing eyes were upon her everywhere; suspicious glances were thrust at her from every side, and not until she crossed the southern lines did she settle calmly down.

Mrs. Cheevers received her as one risen from the dead. Clasping the slender form in her arms she gazed long and steadfastly into the pale face without speaking. "To think it is Lillian!" she said at last. "O, if Pearl were only here! How he has loved you my child." But tears, the first that had moistened the beautiful eyes of the stricken Lillian for many weeks, were now choking her utterance, and she lay as a weary child on the tender, sympathizing breast where her poor head was pillowed. Mrs. Cheevers had known what the longings of the mother love meant. Well did she understand the hungerings of its unsatisfied greed, and as she kissed over and over again the pure white forehead she thanked God that her brother's child could nestle so closely to her empty breast!

"You can never know how peaceful I feel!" Lillian said an hour after as they sat at a well-filled board, where she was satisfying a keener appetite than she had felt for many day. "I could fly for very joy, so light and buoyant are my spirits! I have carried a burden so long that the release seems almost oppressive!"

"Poor child!" murmured the aunt, while the masculine face opposite wore an expression of the deepest sympathy.

"And to think," he said at last, "that we should have believed for a moment what those letters contained! You will, however, do me the honor, wife, to assure our little Lillian that I never did!"

"I will do you the justice to acknowledge that if it had not been for Pearl Hamilton your guilt would never have been a whit less than my own." A merry laugh followed this remark, and when it died away Lillian asked with as much calmness as she could summon if she might be permitted to examine the letters spoken of.

"Of course you may," interposed the uncle. "Read them, every one, and then forgive your fickle relative for swallowing the absurd idea that she who could believe one of the noblest of men was heartless! But he will be around after the first three months are over, and then we shall see how this matter is to be settled! In the meantime you just rest here and grow fat, for we shall have regular news from the battle field, and he is no private! His mother is the proudest woman in this immense city to-night; and I am going to tell her that the dead is alive, and – "

"Please do not Uncle!" pleaded Lillian. "Permit me to remain secluded and unknown until – well, for the present at least. It would be so awkward to explain, and so impossible to convince. Besides, I am in my swaddling clothes yet; let me get a little stronger and firmer. I am so happy that I fear any intrusion; and shall be jealous of every interference."

"Say no more; I am not a woman, and can govern the 'unruly member' with true masculine power! Be happy, nothing shall interfere with your growth or pleasure while you remain under my roof;" and he took his hat from the rack and stepped nimbly from the house.

Weeks passed. There had been a dead calm on the Potomac which only served to agitate and stir up a greater excitement elsewhere. There were murmurings of discontent; whisperings ever so faint of rebellion in high places; there were impetuous longings and low mutterings of censure because the wheels of progress were blocked and the final consummation of overhanging difficulties was not speedily brought about; not realizing that God was marking out the path to a grand and glorious victory. How prone are human eyes to seek after their own paths and rely upon their own strength to "overcome."

But the great battle, which sent terror into thousands of hearts and homes, came at last! Men gathered upon the street corners in the great city, and quivering lips talked over the great defeat! The hearts of women pressed silently the bleeding wounds from which life-blood was ebbing, for loved ones were slain; and the dark cloud which had heretofore seemed no larger than a man's hand was covering the whole sky. Where was it all to end?

Lillian was mute but not inactive. Reports heralded the startling facts that many officers were wounded and many were killed. In the confusion and excitement, names were withheld or not yet ascertained, and three days cleared not away the uncertainties.

"I shall go to Washington on the night train," said Lillian very calmly as the little circle were talking it over at the table.

"You, my child? Pray what could you do in such a place at a time like this?"

"Please do not think me entirely worthless Uncle; I can do many things if sympathy compels me, I feel sure. Why not I, as well as others? Nurses are called for and if my hands have never learned what belongs to them, my heart has become familiar with the necessities sorrow demands. I can speak soothing words to smooth the pillow of the dying. I can give a cup of cold water if too weak to bind up a broken limb! There is work and I am going to offer myself to aid in performing it. Do not oppose me. I have passed through so many grades of opposition and contention that I have become well skilled in the art of defeating, so do not trouble yourself to combat me." She smiled, but the new resolve had left its impress on the calm, mild face, and no further opposition was raised.

We have seen her in the hospital doing the work of kindness and sympathy nobly and well. There was not one whose gentle voice could woo the sufferer into repose as could hers. Not one whose nerves were firmer when duty laid her demand upon them.

"There was a serious skirmish down the river last night," she had said to Anna Pierson during her last visit to the hospital, "and the wounded were brought in." Colonel Hamilton, however, did not arrive for two or three days, as his wounds were aggravated, being the fracture of an arm and the dislocation of the opposite shoulder, caused by the falling from his horse. A bullet had also lodged in his side at the time he was disabled, and the uncertainties of his situation barred his removal. The papers, however had not been silent, and the young nurse had learned, before his coming, of the fears entertained regarding him. How she longed to administer to his every need, while her heart shrank from the very thought of standing before him. How would he meet her? He was true, they had said; but could they read his secret thought, or be sure of the emotions beneath his calm exterior? He was noble and good, but years would deck the saddest grave with blossoms, and spread over it a rich covering of emerald brightness.

She wondered and trembled, and prayed until the day came when the stately form was carried through the long ward and laid tenderly on a neat white couch prepared for it. Then they came to her.

"This new patient we will commit expressly to your care;" said one. "He must soon be able to mount his horse again, and no one can soothe an impatient soldier back to life and activity as soon as yourself, I am told, so do your best. Let me introduce you," and the attendant turned toward the bed where Colonel Hamilton was lying.

How her knees trembled, and what a faintness came over her, yet she walked mechanically forward. "Miss, Miss," and he turned towards Lillian who was waiting for the introduction. "I think you will get along rapidly with this young lady to care for you;" and he bowed graciously. The eyes of the wounded man were fixed intently upon the pallid face before him, as the attendant walked slowly away to conclude another matter in the farther part of the ward. Neither spoke. Sixteen years had, indeed, brought changes into the face of each. He had grown handsomer and nobler, she thought. Her face had become thinner and paler, but those eyes; no, no one could mistake their lustre or beauty.

"Lillian?" he interrogated at last, with a doubtful tone, "It must be, surely it must be Lillian! – my own – my wife!"

She was beside him – her arms around his neck;

"Pearl! O, my husband! Thank God, you are mine at last! You cannot leave me now, and no one shall tear me from you."

Let us drop the veil; there are scenes too holy for intruding eyes to dwell upon.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

FLIGHT OF THE SOUTHERN SPY

Swiftly the weeks sped onward, laden with the events of the nation's disasters. Battles in the far west were being fought, and mourning and bereavements swept as a terrible wave over the land, lighted up here and there with the exultations of victory; but beneath all the waters lay deep and turbid. Mrs. Southey remained secluded for some days after her return from Alexandria. She had no doubt but her daughter had recognized her, notwithstanding her disguise, and in all probability would endeavor to hunt her out. "Would she expose me?" There was madness in the very thought, but the question would often present itself. "Yet what else could she do? Understanding, as she does, my Confederate sentiments, she cannot be at a loss in regard to my mission here," was her daily conclusion, and strongly was she tempted to fly from the city. But where could she go? To Philadelphia? She had been criticised severely from that source in regard to her treatment of that very one from whom she was now contemplating hiding herself. It would not be pleasant going there, and no other northern home was, to her knowledge, open to her.

After thinking it over, she calmly informed her hostess that she proposed to remain where she was, for the present at least, and trust the pride and natural kindness of her daughter, who she must confess had a goodly share of both these commodities.

"She would not willingly disgrace herself, nor," and she added with some hesitancy, "bring misery, perhaps death, upon her mother: at least I must rely upon all this as the lesser of the two evils."

"Then she is not wholly depraved, as you have been so willing I should believe," remarked her companion. "I thought I could not be mistaken in that face. What if you should go and throw yourself on her mercy? I can but feel sure that you would receive it."

"No, I cannot do that. And then you thought it impossible that she should recognize me. It may be so. There certainly would be a want of discretion should I wantonly expose myself without a surety of protection. The only way I can discover is to trust in Providence and wait results."

"Providence!" sneered her companion. "Meager claims have we on its friendly protection I imagine. The fact is, Mrs. Southey, we must figure this whole matter for ourselves. There seems to be considerable spunk in the plethoric old gentleman this war is stirring up, and I doubt if he would treat such as we with a great amount of gallantry if introduced to him, and, therefore, let us figure closely, and not trust to vagaries of which we know so little. It may do for a Christian like yourself, but you know that I am an outsider." This last remark was a little too cynical, and the lady to whom it was addressed arose to her feet with flashing eyes. Her companion only smiled, however, as she motioned her to be reseated.

"I beg your pardon, mon amie, I did not really think you would resent the first compliment I ever gave you," she laughed, then continued. "I have been hindering you all the time. Where were you going? Out for a walk?"

No sisters ever understood each other better than did these two women, and seldom was it that two ever despised each other more. They had met but seldom before "Mrs. Southey" came to Washington as a southern spy, but well she knew that in the home she sought she would find co-operation. In this she had not been mistaken. Her mission was carefully guarded, but her everyday life underwent careful scrutiny. Her dignity as the 'Mistress of Rosedale' was continually pierced and wounded without mercy, while she remained powerless in the hands of her tormentor. The morning scene we are chronicling was not an exceptional one; still it left the lady in a burning rage. At dinner, however, the hostess met her with many bland excuses for neglecting her so long, thus pressing the thorns deeper that were sorely goading her victim all unconsciously to other eyes. How true that the spirit of evil despises and seeks to lacerate itself when its reflection is seen in the bosom of another!

"I have an invitation for you to take an airing in the elegant turn-out of our pet senator, by the side of his queenly wife, this p.m., at four." The bustling housekeeper said this amid the superintending of the dinner arrangements. "You will go, of course, and so I told the servant who brought in the card. You are looking so pale and thin that I am sure the ride will do you good."