Chapter XLIV: After a While

Kind hearts there are, yet would the tenderest one
Have limits to its mercy; God has none.
And man’s forgiveness may be true and sweet,
But yet he stoops to give it. More complete
Is love that lays forgiveness at thy feet,
And pleads with thee to raise it. Only Heaven
Means CROWNED, not HUMBLED, when it says “Forgiven.”
—A. A. PROCTOR.

Let us reverently pass over that awful calamity of April the fourteenth, which followed so swiftly upon the winged feet of Victory, quenching all her lights of joy and of triumph in darkness and in blood. The Nation’s holy sorrow is too sacred a subject to be treated here.

I take up my story at a point of time some weeks later, when the unnatural and over-strained excitement of alternated joy and grief, triumph and despair, had in some measure subsided, and the amazed and distracted people had in some degree recovered self-possession and calmness; when the victorious legions of the army had passed in grand review before the President and all the high official dignitaries of the Union, before all the resident representatives of foreign courts, and above all, before the multitude of grateful and admiring fellow countrymen, who had gathered in millions to do honor to their patriotism, courage and devotion, and who, as they looked upon those glorious veterans, thought that if every man of the rank and file was not a commissioned officer, _nearly_ every one of them certainly deserved to be so.

Promotions were made for “gallant and meritorious conduct in the service”—that is, so far as there should be room for them. But if every private soldier of the Union could have been advanced according to his deserts, we should have had an army composed almost entirely of major generals. There were thousands upon thousands of men in the ranks, as brave, as true, as skillful, and as devoted, as many who commanded divisions and corps; and if these could not all be promoted it was only because, as I once heard a schoolboy captain demonstrate to his discontented company, “_All cannot be corporals_.” But if we cannot decorate every brave soldier with a pair of shoulder-straps, we can at least give every one of them our heartfelt honor and esteem. As for us, we never see the dear old faded blue uniform anywhere, but our hearts warm to the wearer, as we think of the marchings and fightings, by day and night, the fastings and vigils, the wounds and illnesses, the exposure to freezing cold and burning heat, and all the inconceivable sufferings incident to war which the soldier must have borne for our sakes.

But this is a digression, and we must get back to our story.

It was a few days from those of the grand review. The armies had been disbanded and sent home. The multitudes of visitors had left the city. And Washington, which had for weeks been suffering under a plethora of population, was relieved.

The parsonage, which like every other private house in Washington and Georgetown had been filled with company, was now comparatively empty.

The parlor circle consisted only of Erminie, Elfie, Brigadier General Rosenthal, Colonel Fielding and Captain Hay.

Lieutenant Colonel Mim and Captain Ethel were frequent visitors.

By this you will perceive, that all our friends of the army who had not been killed were promoted.

They were not yet mustered out of the service, and they were all on duty in Washington.

Poor young Wing was supposed to have died in one of the confederate prisons; but it was noticeable that from the time General Rosenthal learned the liberation of Miss Conyers from Castle Thunder, he ceased to mourn the untimely fate of Wing.

Britomarte was not in Washington, and no one knew exactly where she was at this time.

Immediately after her release from Castle Thunder she had written three letters—one to Justin, announcing her safety, one to Erminie to the same effect, and one to the Signora Adriana di Bercelloni. And within a week after the posting of these letters, she had left Richmond for the North. Lately she had written from New York, announcing her speedy return to Washington. This letter, which was addressed to Justin, was immediately answered by a joint one from the brother and sister, entreating Britomarte to make the parsonage her home, and to let them know exactly by what train she would arrive, that they might meet her at the station. They were now waiting her reply.

It was yet early in the day, and the gentlemen had all walked out, and Elfie was busy at her favorite pastime of decorating the drawing-room with flowers, and Erminie, having issued all her domestic orders for the day, was resting in an easy chair in her own chamber, when the sound of wheels was heard turning into the gates and rolling up the avenue towards the front of the house. It was not an unusual sound, for there had been a great number of callers within the last few weeks, so that in fact the inmates of the cottage were getting tired of them.

Elfie, pausing in the act of arranging a bouquet, uttered an exclamation of disgust and wondered why people could not content themselves at home.

Erminie, seated in her resting-chair in the privacy of her own room, hoped that the visitor might be no one whom she should be obliged to see. And she waited for the appearance of the servant to announce the name of the new comer.

But fifteen or twenty minutes passed and no servant appeared, though the carriage still remained standing before the door.

“It is some one for Elfie,” said Erminie to herself, as she sank in her chair to take her ease.

But at that moment she heard footsteps approaching the chamber, and the next instant the door was thrown open by Elfie, who, pale and faint, tottered into the chamber and sank into the nearest seat.

“Elfie! Elfie, my dear! in the name of mercy, what has happened?” exclaimed Erminie, starting up in alarm, for the least terrible of her conjectures was that some serious accident had occurred to her own brother or to Elfie’s father.

“Noth—nothing has happened! Nothing bad, I mean! All good! Oh, Erminie! how shall I tell you!” gasped Elfie, bursting into a passion of hysterical tears and sobs.

The excess of joy weeps; the excess of anguish laughs.

“What? what is this? Who came in the carriage?” breathlessly gasped Erminie, turning pale and cold, yet not with fear!

“Oh, Erminie, guess! try to guess! I am afraid to tell you! Who would you rather see of all the world?” said Elfie, trembling.

Torrents of fire and of ice alternately seemed to sweep through the system of the delicate girl, as the blood rushed to her head and receded to her heart.

“My father! It is my dear father!” she cried, as she started up and dashed from the room.

“Yes! it is he!” said Elfie.

The drawing-room door stood wide open.

Erminie flew in and was folded in the arms of her father.

He sank down on the sofa and drew her on his lap; and she dropped her head upon his bosom and wept for joy.

And he clasped her in a closer embrace, and for the first few minutes not one word was spoken between them.

Then the first syllables her lips could frame were of gratitude to Heaven.

“Thank the Lord! Oh, thank the Lord!” she said.

“Amen,” solemnly responded the Lutheran minister.

“My father! Oh, my beloved father!”

“My dear, dear child!”

“Let me look at you! Is it you indeed? Is it indeed you?” she said, raising her face from his bosom and pushing his head gently a little way from her that she might examine him at will.

“You see it is I,” he said, smiling.

“But how thin you are! oh, how thin! how wasted your dear face is! Father, you have suffered!” she said, kissing him tenderly and repeatedly.

“But my sufferings are over now, dear child,” he said.

“You have been all this while in a Confederate prison! And it will take time to restore you.”

“Yes, my child, it will take as many weeks and as many new-laid eggs to build me up as it took to restore the renowned knight of La Mancha after one of his campaigns,” said the old man, gaily.

“You suffered so much in that prison! But don’t try to tell me about it now,” she added, hastily; “tell me what I shall do for you first. Have you had a good breakfast this morning? Shall I ring for Bob to bring you a pair of slippers and get a warm bath ready for you? Which first, dear father? Oh, I am not in my right senses! I am mad with joy, or I should know what to do at once without asking you. Let me take off your boots like I used to do!”

And she would have gone down on her knees to perform this service if he had not prevented her.

“Stay, my daughter. Sit where you are for the present. On my lap. I like you here. I want to look into your face. And I want nothing more just yet.—Changed, my Minie! somewhat changed you are in these four years. Not so bright and blooming as you were; paler, thinner; but more lovely, my darling—much more lovely. Ah, I know how you have passed these years, my Minie. Even in my distant prison I heard of that young Lutheran Sister of Christ whose tender mercies were over all sufferers that came under her care—whether Rebel or Loyal. I will tell you about that presently. But now tell me: how knew you so readily that I had been in prison all this while? Who told you?”

“No one, my dear father. When I heard from Elfie that you had returned, I easily divined it. Where else should you have been living all this while, not to have come home to us? But besides that, dear father, several months ago, nearly a year ago indeed, when my brain and nervous system were in an abnormal and exalted condition from the effects of illness and drugs, I had a dream or vision in which I saw you in prison.”

“Dream? vision? My child, you surely do not attach any importance to such very natural phenomena?”

“I don’t know, I will tell you all about my strange experience some day—not now. I will only say _this_ now: that my dream left upon my mind so strong an impression of your continued existence in this world, that I was more overjoyed than surprised when Elfie came to announce your return. And now that I see you before me, and hear you admit that you were a captive confined in a Confederate prison, just as I dreamed you were, I cannot help attaching some significance to my dream.”

“A mere coincidence, my little daughter. Millions of dreams amount to nothing. But if one in a billion seems prophetic from an accidental coincidence, it is immediately set down among supernatural phenomena. Nonsense, my Minie! The wonder is, not that one dream in a billion happens to coincide with something in real life, but that nearly all of them do not. So you have been a little Sister of Charity in these years, my Minie?”

“Yes, my father; but there was really no merit in that. My heart would have broken else. I had to comfort others in order to sustain myself.”

“Did you then suffer so much, my Minie?” tenderly inquired her father.

“Not more, nor so much as many thousand women have suffered during this war. But I believe that I was weaker than others, and more ready to succumb to sorrow, if I had not kept myself up in the way I did. First there came—But I will not talk to you of these things now. Father, dear father, you know—How much do you know about Justin?” she asked after some embarrassment and hesitation.

“I know _all_ about him, my dear child. I parted with him not an hour ago, at his headquarters. I had to go there first, for there was one with me who had important business with him. On reaching the city, I and he who was with me inquired for Colonel Rosenthal’s address, and were told that General Rosenthal was at his headquarters. So we went there and spent two hours with him”

“My brother must have been—tremendously astonished and overjoyed.”

“He was, my darling. Justin is a stout man, and in the last four years he has grown stouter. But when he saw me he was nearer swooning than I ever saw a man in my life. He first arose to receive me, believing me to be a stranger, but when he recognized me he turned white as death, reeled, caught the edge of his table for support, and fell back into his seat. It was a full minute before he could recover himself and welcome me. You sustained the shock with more firmness, my Minie.”

“Because, dear father, it really was no such great shock to me. I say, as I said before, that my dream had prepared me for your return, and I was more overjoyed than surprised at it.”

“Still ‘harping’ on your dream, my darling. Never mind that. You have suffered a great deal in these four dreadful years, my poor child.”

“But I suffer no longer, dear father. I have you and I have Justin, and even my school friend, Britomarte, all safe. And I have not a sorrow in the world now,” she said gaily.

“_Not one_, my Minie?” he inquired, very significantly.

The fair, bright face was suddenly overclouded and darkened. The one unforgotten name arose to her lips. She covered her face with her hands, and burst into tears.

“I thought so. I thought so, my child. But I did not mean to torture you in vain. Hope, hope all things, my Minie,” her father said, as he drew her closer to his heart, and soothed her gently.

Presently she raised her head, and wiped the tears from her eyes saying:

“How weak and foolish I am. How wrong and thankless to weep when I should only rejoice. And I _do_ rejoice.

“Oh, my beloved father, I rejoice from the bottom of my heart, and thank the Lord from the depths of my soul that you have returned to bless us with your precious presence. I do, dear father, I do!”

“I know you do, my darling, only you would be still more joyful and thankful if there could be _one other_ by my side as loyal as I am.”

“Oh, my dear father,” said Erminie, shrinking painfully, as one who had a wound suddenly probed—“my dear father do not speak of that. Never mind me. Let us talk of yourself. Since you will not let me do anything for you but sit upon your knee, tell me, if it will not tire you to do so, how it came about that you were reported dead, and that a body was found and buried as your body, when in fact you were only taken prisoner? And above all, how did it happen that you were kept in prison so long without being exchanged, or being allowed to communicate with your family?”

“It is a long story, my child, but I will try to tell it briefly. When my regiment was at Manassas, it was desirable to ascertain the position of the enemy, and the character of his defences. My colonel knew that the general officers were very solicitous upon this point. He thought secretly to procure the information, and to surprise them with it. He proposed to me to exchange my uniform for the clergyman’s dress that I had a right to wear, and in that costume, and with a bundle of tracts in my carpet bag, to penetrate the enemy’s lines as an itinerant preacher, distribute my tracts, pick up all the information I could get, and then return to my regiment and give it to him.”

“Oh, my dear father, what a dangerous service to put you on, and at your age, too!”

“My dear, we thought my age and clerical character would be the very circumstances to save me from suspicion and arrest.”

“And so you went?”

“And so I went—myself and my colonel being only in the secret! In my character of an old itinerant preacher, I succeeded in getting within the enemy’s lines, where I distributed my tracts among the soldiers, and preached proslavery from the text, ‘_Servants obey your masters_,’ and secession from another text, ‘_Come out from among them_.’ I gained ‘golden opinions,’ and what is more, such important information in regard to the strength, position and plans of the enemy that, could I have succeeded in carrying it back to my colonel, it must have totally changed the issue of that disastrous battle of Bull Run.”

“But you were taken!” sighed Erminie.

“I was taken! I started on my return, but some circumstance, of I know not what nature, excited suspicion. I was followed, arrested, and brought back.”

“Oh, my father! oh, my dear, dear father!” exclaimed Erminie, clasping her hand.

“My child, you see me sitting here in safety; you feel my arms around you; therefore you can bear to hear some hard facts. I will tell them as shortly and plainly as possible. The result of my arrest was that I was tried as a spy and condemned to die.”

“Father! father!” exclaimed Erminie, clasping him closer, as though he were still in danger.

“Here I am, safe and well, little daughter! I owe my life to General Eastworth! His services to the cause of the Confederacy were considered very great; his influence was almost unbounded. He recognized me as soon as he saw me, and without divulging my real name, which was not yet discovered, he intervened at the proper point of time, and got my death-sentence commuted to that of imprisonment during the war. I was sent to a Confederate prison in Charleston.”

“And it was there I saw you in my dream,” murmured Erminie, but in a voice too low to attract the attention of her father, who continued:

“I verily believe that Eastworth procured me to be sent to Charleston so that he could watch over me, and mitigate the rigor of my captivity, for he himself had just been ordered on duty thither. And he has served me like a son for more than three years.”

“I am very glad to owe this deep debt of gratitude to General Eastworth,” said Erminie in a low voice.

“You will be gladder still to learn that Eastworth, like the Prodigal Son in the Scriptures, _has come to himself_!”

“Father! father! is this so? Is this really so?” gasped Erminie in a low, breathless tone, as of suspended rapture.

“It is so, my girl, or I never would have brought up his name! There is not a man in the country who mourns with a deeper sorrow over the fatal madness of the secession than does General Eastworth. And not that the cause is lost! for I feel sure that he would not only have mourned, but despaired, could it have succeeded.”

“Oh, father! father! I never expected to be so happy in this world, or scarcely even in Heaven, as you have made me with this news!” exclaimed Erminie, as a ray of almost divine joy shone through the tears that filled her eyes.

“I rejoice in your happiness, my darling child!”

“But how came this great change about, my father?”

“Who can tell that? Perhaps your tears that ever fell, your prayers that ever rose for him, were effective! Perhaps your devotion to the sufferers by this war brought a blessing on your head, and grace to him, so that he was cured of his hallucination; for it _was_ hallucination with him. The wisest and best of mortal men, Erminie, are subject to be hallucinated by some master passion. With one man it may be love; with another jealousy, hatred or revenge; with still another, avarice; and with the nobler sort of man it is, too often, ambition! With Eastworth it was ambition that warped his reason and silenced his conscience. And this was not a narrow, personal desire for his own individual aggrandizement, but a comparatively broad, unselfish aspiration, for the establishment of his own section of the country into a nation, as opposed to the whole country. In this he forgot, for a time, the interests of humanity, the interests of posterity, all bound up in the preservation, intact, of this Union.”

“But he remembers this now?”

“He remembers this now! Let me be just to Eastworth! It is _not_, I say, the failure of the cause that has brought about this change in him. I have seen a great deal of him in the last two years. This change has been gradually coming over him in all that time.”

“But, father, dear father, he has laid himself liable to heavy penalties of I know not what weight.”

“He has, my dear; but he is prepared to meet them like a man.”

“His property, his liberty, even his life is forfeit to the country, is it not?” inquired Erminie, growing pale, as for the first time she remembered his danger.

“My child, perhaps so, according to the strict letter of the law! But I do not think the people of this country will have it so! There is no reason on earth why we, the free and enlightened people of America should follow the precedent afforded us by the mingled fear and cruelty of the old world monarchies. We are too brave and strong to be vindictive and despotic.”

“But what will Eastworth do, father?”

“In the first place he will not expatriate himself. Be sure of that. He will trust himself to his country as a son to his mother.”

“And you think I have no reason to fear for him?”

“None; the names of some of the noblest among the Union officers are pledges for his future good faith.”

Erminie heaved a sigh of infinite relief, and then said:

“But we have talked so much of him and so little of yourself, dear. How was it, precious father, that you never let me know that you were living?”

“My darling, the conditions of the commutation of my sentence from death to imprisonment were that I should hold no communication whatever with my friends across the lines. Even Eastworth, who did all that was in his power to mitigate the severity of my fate, could not aid me in evading these conditions, without a breach of trust. That was why I could not write to you.”

“But I should have supposed some one of our men in the hands of the Confederate authorities as prisoners of war, might have heard of your captivity and reported it.”

“That was not likely. I was in a solitary cell, and confined under the name in which I had been arrested. No one but Eastworth knew my real name. And at my desire he kept it a secret. You heard me say just now, my dear, that the fame of the little Lutheran Sister of Christ, who ministered to the sick and wounded, whether Loyal or Rebel, had reached me even in my distant Southern prison?”

“Yes, dear father.”

“I will tell you how that was. I once had a guard that was so very kind to me, so extremely kind to me, that I one day asked him plainly why he was so. He answered that he had been a wounded prisoner in the Douglass Hospital at Washington, and that a young Union lady had saved his life by her constant attentions to him, and by bringing him nice broths, jellies, fruits, wine, tea and coffee, such as, at that time, could not be furnished to the soldiers.”

“Yes,” said Erminie, “that must have been before the Sanitary and Christian Commissions got into operation.”

“Do you remember this case, Erminie?”

“Dear father, there were so many such cases! I don’t remember this particular one.”

“He remembers you. As long as he lives he will remember you! He talked to me about you. He described your looks and manners and tone of voice. He told me your name, and said that you had lost your father in the first battle of Bull Run. He said that he should always be kind to the Union prisoners for your sake. I longed to tell him that I was your father; but I could not do so without disclosing my name, which I wished to keep a secret—which _then_ more than ever I determined to keep a secret.”

“But why, dear father?”

“Why?—For your sake more than for any other reason, my Minie!”

“For my sake!”

“Ay, ay! listen! You had mourned me as dead. Time and religion had reconciled you to your loss, and softened your sorrow. But suppose you had heard that I was living, and suffering a painful captivity in a Southern prison? Would not all your wounds have been torn open afresh, and kept open? Would not your heart have bled both day and night? Could you have done your daily duty in the hospitals with the image of your old father a captive in a Confederate prison, ever present to your mind?”

“Oh no, no, no!”

“Therefore you see I was right in keeping the secret, and I kept it religiously until the capture of Charleston.”

“That was several weeks ago?” said Erminie, interrogatively.

“By which you mean to ask why I did not hasten home immediately on being released from prison. The reason was this my Minie. Almost simultaneously with the capture of Charleston, I was seized with typhus fever. I was ill some weeks. A man of my age seldom recovers from typhus fever; and even when he does, he takes a long time to rally. As soon as I was able to travel I set out for home. General Eastworth came with me, to take care of me.”

“General Eastworth here—here in Washington!” she exclaimed, slightly starting, flushing and paling.

“Yes, my Minie, and only waiting your permission to see him.”

“Oh, how shall I meet him? how must I meet him, my father?”

“As your true heart dictates, my child.”

She bowed her head and covered her face with her hands.

“Why do you weep, my Minie?” her father asked, tenderly caressing her.

“I do not know. My heart is heavy with its burden of happiness! Oh, my father, lay your hand upon my head and pray for me!—pray for me and bless me! I am weak, and I tremble with my happiness! I am afraid—to be so happy!”

And she shivered.

He smiled and laid his hand upon her head; he prayed for her and blessed her, then he stooped and kissed her, arose and placed her gently in the chair, and leaving her alone, stole silently from the room.

When Erminie looked up her father was gone, and her lover stood in his place.

Pale, silent, sorrowful, mutilated, General Eastworth stood there, looking down upon Erminie.

Her hands flew out to meet him.

“Oh, welcome! welcome! welcome!” she exclaimed, with all her heart’s warmth welling up in the words.

“You welcome me, Miss Rosenthal! You welcome _me_?” he whispered, in tones scarcely above his breath.

“With all my heart and soul! A thousand, thousand welcomes!” she cried, with almost overpowering emotion.

“I come to you, Miss Rosenthal, to hear you confirm, if you will, the gracious words you spoke to me on your bed of illness near death, that night I came to your room at the risk of my life!”

“Then that was no dream! you were really beside me there!” she exclaimed, wonderingly.

“I was really beside you there. Did you doubt it?”

“I was so ill that night, I never could feel certain of what happened. And no one was able to assure me upon all points. But sit down! oh, sit! How pale you are! You are not fit to stand!” she said.

“No, I am more fit to _kneel to you_,” he answered mournfully.

But she arose from the great arm-chair, and with gentle force, compelled him to seat himself in it. Then she drew an ottoman forward and sat down at his knees, as she had been accustomed to do in the early days of their betrothal.

“I am so happy to have you here—oh, so unspeakably happy to have you here! I never hoped to be so happy in this world again!” she fervently exclaimed, as she placed her hand in his.

“What a welcome!” he said, as the tears rose to his eyes—his eyes that were all unused to such moisture. “What a welcome, and how unworthy I am to receive it! Do angels always welcome returning sinners so, Erminie?”

“Please do not speak of yourself so to me; to any one else you like, but not to me! I am your betrothed, and I will hear no ill of you, even from your own lips.”

“No, no, Erminie! no, no, you angel girl! I have not come to bind again upon your young life bonds that were well broken years ago! I have forfeited all right to such great happiness! All that is changed!”

“But my heart is not changed,” she murmured in a low tone, and blushing deeply.

“My sweet child! when we were first betrothed I was twenty years older than you; although, being then in perfect health, I did not seem so. And my wealth was great, my social position high, and my name honored. Since that time all is revolutionized with me.”

“But not with me; I am the same,” she murmured.

“Look at me, Erminie! See what time, toil, care, war, grief, pain, remorse have done for me. I am old and gray and broken and mutilated,” he said.

“But I love you,” she replied.

“To-day I am a poor and penniless man. To-morrow I may be an exile, or a prisoner.”

“But I love you,” she repeated.

“And see—I am maimed! I have lost my right arm! And, worse than all, I have lost it in a bad cause!”

“Poor right arm! I would I could give mine to restore it,” she said.

“And oh, Erminie! my once spotless name is stained with reproach. Could you bear to wear it?”

“Yes, for I love you! Oh, my dearest! I have but that one little phrase to answer all your words—‘I love you!’ Oh, my betrothed, I love you!”

He caught her in his arm, he strained her to his bosom, he burst into tears and wept over her as only a strong man can weep.

“And oh!” he cried, “what shall I render unto the Lord for all His loving kindness and tender mercy, in giving me this dear woman’s heart?

For only Heaven
Means CROWNED, not _humbled_, when it says ‘forgiven!’”

So these two were reconciled, and this was but the forerunner of a deeper and broader reconciliation yet to come.

General Eastworth, by the earnest invitation of Dr. Rosenthal, remained as a guest at the parsonage.

At five o’clock in the afternoon Justin came in, accompanied by Mim and Ethel. And a very pleasant dinner party closed the day.

It was very noticeable that Elfie, who had now nearly completed her first year of mourning, received young Ethel’s attentions with less of reserve than formerly.

Colonel Fielding certainly smiled on the young naval officer’s suit.

“Beyond my real esteem and admiration of the young fellow, and aside from my interest in my daughter’s happiness and well-being, I have really a selfish motive for wishing to promote this marriage,” the colonel said in explanation to Dr. Rosenthal.

“And what may that be?” smiled the doctor.

“Why, as Elfie is my only child, I naturally feel a very great reluctance to parting with her. And as Ethel will be at sea more than two-thirds of the time, Elfie will be left with me. There! am I a selfish old dog? I can not help it! The old widowed father of an only daughter is very apt to be so,” said the colonel.

The morning succeeding the domiciliation of General Eastworth at the parsonage, Erminie received a telegram from Britomarte, announcing that she would arrive by the seven P. M. train from Baltimore.

And at the appointed hour Justin and Erminie went to the station to meet her.

The train was up to time, and Britomarte was soon fondly received by the brother and sister, who took her at once to their hearts and home.