The Light Heart

A
S USUAL
most of the research for this book was done at the New York Society Library, with the aid of Mrs. F. G. King and the obliging staff. Again Miss May Davenport Seymour of the Museum of the City of New York took time and trouble, and Miss Mary McWilliams at Williamsburg
continued
to be helpful. I am also indebted to what looks like half the British Army, including Major C. B. Ormerod of the British Information Services, Brigadier-General H. S. Sewell, Major Noel George, and an anonymous Blue (Royal Horse Guards) who supplied most comprehensive answers to a list of questions forwarded through the kindness of Lt. General Sir Charles Lloyd. In London, Miss Daphne Heard and Mr. Derrick deMarney went to untold trouble to find for me the contemporary books and periodicals which I could not go there and hunt for myself.

In case some younger readers feel that too much hindsight had gone into the handling of the First German War, I must add that to read the editorials, political speeches, and private correspondence of the years immediately before and after August 4th, 1914, is pretty staggering. Almost all of it could just as well have been written at any time just before or after September 3rd, 1939. The last Emperor of Germany said practically everything Hitler ever said—and said it better. Hitler invented nothing—not even the German character.

E. T.
1947

Williamsburg
Spring,
1902

T
HE mocking-bird woke her, singing in the mulberry tree. outside her window.

She lay still, drowsy and at peace, listening to the babel of birdsong, which was full of the spring rapture of courtship. With the private satisfaction of the well-informed, she picked out the separate notes as Miles had taught her to do—the sweet
q-q-q
of the cardinal, the silvery boiling-over of the Carolina wren, the double metronome of the quail, the catbird mocking the mocking-bird—and the mocking-bird himself outdoing them all. The early morning hours in a Virginia garden were almost too noisy to be musical, she decided comfortably.

Gradually the small sounds of the awakening household formed their own familiar pattern. First there was the creak of the verandah door beneath her window as Uncle Micah, the coloured butler, opened it to the soft April air—and the brisk sound of cushions being plumped up in the cane furniture, and the swish of a damp broom on the matting. From the kitchen came a cosy smell of wood smoke and coffee, and the clink of kettles and cutlery. She heard the squeak of the windlass in the well and the gush of water from the wooden bucket into a pail—and a burst of half-suppressed laughter from one of the darky
maids. Uncle Micah was the sober kind of clown, and always had them giggling with his straight-faced jokes. He was himself the last to consider his remarks funny, and even seemed a little hurt sometimes, as though he had been misunderstood—but he would have been disappointed if nobody laughed….

Phoebe stretched herself in bed and smiled at the recollection of some of Uncle Micah’s past jokes, which had become part of the family sage. The old coloured man was a real wit in his way, and was indulged accordingly. Mother brought him up a bit short now and then, but Mother was raised a Yankee. Father tried not to let on sometimes, but you could see that Uncle Micah tickled him. Between Father and Uncle Micah there were mutual memories no one else could share now, except Cousin Sue Day—like after the battle at Fort Magruder just outside Williamsburg back in ’62, when the Confederate Army retreated through the town, leaving its wounded behind, and Father was missing. Micah had gone down to the battlefield with Cousin Sue that night and they found Father wounded and pinned beneath the body of his horse. Micah’s older brother, who was Father’s bodyservant, was lying dead near by—killed by a Yankee bullet while he tried to reach his master with a fresh mount, and the horse he rode found its way home alone. Micah and Cousin Sue had brought Father back safe to the Days’ house across the way, just one jump ahead of the Yankees. It was only thanks to Micah and Cousin Sue that Father had kept the use of his right arm, everybody said. And because his. brother Judah was dead at his post, young Micah was promoted to be Father’s bodyservant himself, and had pretty well run the Sprague household ever since, especially now that Mammy had got so old….

Delilah, who was Micah’s youngest daughter, came in softly with the hot water. She broke into a broad smile when she saw that Phoebe was awake and said it was a fine mawnin’—and went softly out again, the gentle clink of the polished brass hot-water cans following her from door to door around the big central hall at the top of the stairs.

Phoebe turned over on her back and her thoughts dwelt lovingly on her father, who was the most exciting and the handsomest man she had ever seen, and Phoebe was
twenty-one
this month. Father had been a captain of cavalry when Lee surrendered at Appomattox, but everybody called him Colonel now, perhaps because of his thick white hair, left long to the top of his collar in the back, and the old-fashioned black stock and frilled white shirt he wore with a frock coat and light trousers. Father was a lawyer, the best on the Peninsula, and lawyers had an answer for everything. Father said, “That’s not the point,” or “That isn’t evidence, my dear,” with a glint in his eye that held you right down to plain facts and dissolved a family argument into helpless laughter.

A door opened across the hall, where her parents slept, and her mother’s light voice spoke on the threshold of their room. “Sedgie—don’t forget Leah’s medicine.” His reply was
inaudible
to Phoebe, but Mother laughed, and the door closed and her feet ran down the stairs. Mother moved like a girl still, and weighed no more than she had when she was married, and she laughed a lot. Mother was the happiest person Phoebe knew. She entered each new day as though it was Christmas and would be full of presents. That was because she was so tremendously in love with Father, even now, at their age—in love so that it showed—showed enough almost to embarrass you, if you were their grown-up daughter. Of course
everybody
was more or less in love with Father; even Leah, the darky cook, who was taking medicine for her rheumatism, and to whom he was a sort of embodiment of God. (You couldn’t let Leah have the bottle or she’d take it all at once, hoping for quicker results, as she had done before and made herself violently ill. So now they kept the bottle in Father’s room and doled out to her one dose at a time.)

Even Cousin Sue Day, it sometimes seemed to Phoebe, was in love with Father….

Phoebe lay still and contemplated Cousin Sue with affection. Cousin Sue wrote books. That is, she wrote books which got
published regularly and brought in a lot of money. Well, not enough money, really, to run that big house and pay the doctor’s bills for Great-uncle Ransom, who was eighty-seven. But quite a lot of money, all the same, just for writing. Phoebe was trying to learn to write books too, but nobody knew that except Cousin Sue, and of course Miles. Cousin Sue was never too busy to read the grubby little manuscripts Phoebe took her every so often, and to make the most brilliant suggestions, and she had promised to send one to her own publisher as soon as they got it good enough. You could always show Cousin Sue anything, tell her anything, without embarrassment. She would never laugh at you, and she always had time. That summer a few years ago when she went to England with Cousin Eden Murray for the Jubilee it was like being without an arm or a leg till they got her back again. The day she came home Father took her right into his arms, hard, in front of everybody—he didn’t kiss her, he just held her, as though she was a child he had almost lost, and then he let her go and made some kind of joke, and nobody seemed to think twice about it. But Phoebe had thought about it many times. Cousin Sue had never married, though she must have had lots of chances. Could that be because Father had married a Yankee girl? Phoebe often wondered how it would feel if the man you wanted married somebody else and left you empty and alone. Would you take second best? Apparently Cousin Sue would not. What if Miles married somebody over there in
Charlottesville
….

The door of her parents’ room opened again and closed at once, briskly—that was Father—tall, quick, graceful, full of a youthful vitality that stimulated and cheered the most
downhearted
beholder. Almost simultaneously Fitz’s door opened too, and she heard her father and brother greet each other heartily, and their crisp footsteps went down the staircase together. Fitz’s wife, Gwen, had to stay in bed till noon, since her baby had come too soon and died. They said she lost it because she had been a dancer ever since she was a small child
and had injured herself. Fitz had brought her back with him from New York four years ago, just before he went to the war in Cuba, and the family weren’t sure at first what she would be like, being an actress. But she was beautiful and sweet, and even Mother was glad now that Fitz had married her. And she was so in love with Fitz….

Phoebe sighed impatiently. There it was again. Father and Mother, Fitz and Gwen—everybody had somebody except herself—and Cousin Sue, who had only Great-uncle Ransom and three darky servants in that big house. Cousin Sue was a spinster. Phoebe wondered if at that age she too would be left over, looking after somebody old, being kind to somebody else’s children. Well, unless Miles …

She didn’t want to marry anybody but Miles, did she? Miles was Cousin Dabney Day’s son, and lived at Charlottesville, where both he and his father worked at the University, Cousin Dabney as a professor and Miles doing odd jobs of tutoring until he could get on the faculty somewhere. Phoebe had been in love with Miles all her life. At least—there hadn’t ever been anybody
but
Miles. And then, that awful year when they all went to the war in Cuba, Miles saw Virginia Murray at a family reunion and suddenly went right out of his mind.

Virginia was a cousin too, in a complicated sort of way, but the Murrays lived in New York. Virginia’s mother was Cousin Sue’s sister Eden, and her father was the brother of Phoebe’s own mother—a Yankee, and the wealthy owner of a NewYork newspaper—the same paper Fitz was working for when he was up North and met Gwen. Virginia, who had spent half her life abroad anyway, eventually married an Englishman and settled down in Gloucestershire. But Miles didn’t seem to forget her. And he hadn’t been well since Cuba, he seemed only half alive, and had recurrent attacks of the fever he had got there. Maybe it wasn’t Virginia any more, maybe it was all just the fever, but Miles was letting the years slip by, and while he was a
wonderful
friend and they liked all the same things and read all the same books, Miles just didn’t propose. Phoebe sighed again,
and buried her face in the pillow, while the mocking-bird yelled his head off in the mulberry tree. It was spring in the Tidewater, and even the birds were in love….

I must get up, Phoebe thought, or I’ll have to ring for more hot water, and breakfast will be going in. But she lay still, wishing. She lay and thought about Miles, and his
unaccountable
behaviour now that Virginia was married to the
Honourable
Archie Campion and had had a baby a month ago. Virginia had never looked at Miles anyway. Virginia was always a flirt. But her brother Bracken when he came down to Williamsburg with their mother to spend Christmas last year and bring his new wife—English too—Bracken had said
Virginia
was heels over head in love with Archie and had been ever since the Jubilee Summer. So there wasn’t anything in it for Miles. There never had been. But Virginia was awfully pretty, and the Murrays had lots of money, and she had
wonderful
clothes…. Poor Miles had been dazzled, that’s all it was. Virginia always made you feel like the little brown hen, with rather ruffled feathers. It wasn’t surprising, was it, that Miles had been smitten. But need he go on—moping? Couldn’t he do with something else now? And did anybody ever want to be second best?

Phoebe turned over on her back again and scowled at the ceiling. Suppose Miles asked her tomorrow. Well, the next time he came to Williamsburg, which would be in about a week’s time, for her birthday. (The family always came to birthdays, from any negotiable distance, and there was always a party.) Suppose Miles did propose—next week. Would she say Yes?

Yes. She would. It was April again, and life sped by. And she had never dreamed of marrying anybody but Miles.

And yet—that look in her mother’s eyes for Father—the way Fitz carried Gwen up and down the stairs since the baby, both of them laughing, with her arm tight around his neck—would that sort of thing ever happen to her with Miles? They all seemed to have such fun together—her father and mother—Fitz and Gwen—Cousin Bracken Murray and his English
Dinah when they were here last Christmas. Phoebe asked herself if she and Miles, married, would ever carry on like that, for anyone to see—so lightheartedly loving, so confident of each other, so
brazen
—so enviable.

Poor Miles, he would never be as much fun as Father, of course—but then, who was? Miles was very good-looking—tall, as all the men in the family were tall, Days, Murrays, and Spragues—excessively thin now, even for a Day, and on account of the fever his hair too was getting a little thin—so kind, so gentle, so patient if you were stupid, so ready to forgive if you were thoughtless. But that tender foolery, that shameless joy, that
shine
the rest of them seemed to have—would Miles do that for her? Would marriage with her do that for Miles? Wouldn’t Miles perhaps limber up a bit if they were married? It wasn’t Miles’s fault, was it, that he had got fever in Cuba and it had hung on ever since, and probably always would. All the same, she couldn’t help wondering—was it treason?—if when they brought Father back half dead from the battlefield at Fort Magruder it had ever occurred to anyone to say Poor Sedgwick. And she thought not.

I really must get up this minute, Phoebe told herself, and did so, and washed in tepid water as a penance for her tardiness, and went down late to breakfast, and kissed everybody all round the table, and asked Fitz how Gwen was feeling today, and said she was going over to Cousin Sue’s right after
breakfast
, and Mother said Remember to take her back that crochet pattern I borrowed, and Father said Give her my love—he always said that, didn’t he, when somebody went to see Cousin Sue, though he saw her himself nearly every day—and Fitz said Tell her I’ll be over later on….

When they rose from the table Phoebe ran back up to her room to get her newest manuscript and stopped to read it through again, and had to rewrite a page. By the time she got to Cousin Sue’s it was nearly ten, and there in the
drawing-room
was Cousin Bracken Murray from New York, and nobody even knew he was coming.

B
RACKEN
had had a fairly sleepless night on the train and was feeling his years, which were all of thirty-two. Since the death of his father during the war in Cuba, Bracken had come to grips with things pretty suddenly, as the man of the family and the owner of one of New York’s better evening newspapers. The newspaper was simple. He had been practically raised in the office and had gone to work as a leg-man when he left Princeton. But the family—that was a man-size job.

His father had always run the family without visible effort, ever since he married Eden Day in Williamsburg at the end of the War Between the States. Even though Cabot Murray was a Yankee, the Williamsburg family had leaned on him from the beginning, almost before he became a part of it. He had all the money in the world and the war had crippled finances in the South, but that was not what made him valuable in the eyes of the clan. He had what the men who had recently been in Cuba called savvy. He knew what was what. He never dithered. And he got his way. Sometimes he had to buy it, but he always got it. He was worldly-wise, high-handed, hard-hitting, and utterly lovable. Beside him, his admiring son had always felt pretty small potatoes. And then quite suddenly Cabot Murray died and it was all up to Bracken.