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[Illustration: THE OLD MAJOR.]



The Works of E.P. Roe

VOLUME THIRTEEN

HIS SOMBRE RIVALS

ILLUSTRATED

1883




PREFACE


The following story has been taking form in my mind for several years,
and at last I have been able to write it out. With a regret akin to
sadness, I take my leave, this August day, of people who have become
very real to me, whose joys and sorrows I have made my own. Although a
Northern man, I think my Southern readers will feel that I have sought
to do justice to their motives. At this distance from the late Civil
War, it is time that passion and prejudice sank below the horizon, and
among the surviving soldiers who were arrayed against each other I
think they have practically disappeared. Stern and prolonged conflict
taught mutual respect. The men of the Northern armies were convinced,
beyond the shadow of a doubt, that they had fought men and
Americans--men whose patriotism and devotion to a cause sacred to them
was as pure and lofty as their own. It is time that sane men and women
should be large-minded enough to recognize that, whatever may have been
the original motives of political leaders, the people on both sides
were sincere and honest; that around the camp-fires at their hearths
and in their places of worship they looked for God's blessing on their
efforts with equal freedom from hypocrisy.

I have endeavored to portray the battle of Bull Run as it could appear
to a civilian spectator: to give a suggestive picture and not a general
description. The following war-scenes are imaginary, and  by
personal reminiscence. I was in the service nearly four years, two of
which were spent with the cavalry. Nevertheless, justly distrustful of
my knowledge of military affairs, I have submitted my proofs to my
friend Colonel H. C. Hasbrouck, Commandant of Cadets at West Point, and
therefore have confidence that as mere sketches of battles and
skirmishes they are not technically defective.

The title of the story will naturally lead the reader to expect that
deep shadows rest upon many of its pages. I know it is scarcely the
fashion of the present time to portray men and women who feel very
deeply about anything, but there certainly was deep feeling at the time
of which I write, as, in truth, there is to-day. The heart of humanity
is like the ocean. There are depths to be stirred when the causes are
adequate. E. P. R.

CORNWALL-ON-THE-HUDSON, _August_ 21, 1883.




CONTENTS

CHAPTER I AN EMBODIMENT OF MAY

CHAPTER II MERE FANCIES

CHAPTER III THE VERDICT OF A SAGE

CHAPTER IV WARNING OR INCENTIVE

CHAPTER V IMPRESSIONS

CHAPTER VI PHILOSOPHY AT FAULT

CHAPTER VII WARREN HILLAND

CHAPTER VIII SUPREME MOMENTS

CHAPTER IX THE REVELATION

CHAPTER X THE KINSHIP OF SUFFERING

CHAPTER XI THE ORDEAL

CHAPTER XII FLIGHT TO NATURE

CHAPTER XIII THE FRIENDS

CHAPTER XIV NOBLE DECEPTION

CHAPTER XV "I WISH HE HAD KNOWN"

CHAPTER XVI THE CLOUD IN THE SOUTH

CHAPTER XVII PREPARATION

CHAPTER XVIII THE CALL TO ARMS

CHAPTER XIX THE BLOOD-RED SKY

CHAPTER XX TWO BATTLES

CHAPTER XXI THE LOGIC OF EVENTS

CHAPTER XXII SELF-SENTENCED

CHAPTER XXIII AN EARLY DREAM FULFILLED

CHAPTER XXIV UNCHRONICLED CONFLICTS

CHAPTER XXV A PRESENTIMENT

CHAPTER XXVI AN IMPROVISED PICTURE GALLERY

CHAPTER XXVII A DREAM

CHAPTER XXVIII ITS FULFILMENT

CHAPTER XXIX A SOUTHERN GIRL

CHAPTER XXX GUERILLAS

CHAPTER XXXI JUST IN TIME

CHAPTER XXXII A WOUNDED SPIRIT

CHAPTER XXXIII THE WHITE-HAIRED NURSE

CHAPTER XXXIV RITA'S BROTHER

CHAPTER XXXV HIS SOMBRE RIVALS

CHAPTER XXXVI ALL MATERIALISTS

CHAPTER XXXVII THE EFFORT TO LIVE

CHAPTER XXXVIII GRAHAM'S LAST SACRIFICE

CHAPTER XXXIX MARRIED UNCONSCIOUSLY

CHAPTER XL RITA ANDERSON

CHAPTER XLI A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM




CHAPTER I

AN EMBODIMENT OF MAY

"Beyond that revolving light lies my home. And yet why should I use
such a term when the best I can say is that a continent is my home?
Home suggests a loved familiar nook in the great world. There is no
such niche for me, nor can I recall any place around which my memory
lingers with especial pleasure."

In a gloomy and somewhat bitter mood, Alford Graham thus soliloquized
as he paced the deck of an in-coming steamer. In explanation it may be
briefly said that he had been orphaned early in life, and that the
residences of his guardians had never been made homelike to him. While
scarcely more than a child he had been placed at boarding-schools where
the system and routine made the youth's life little better than that of
a soldier in his barrack. Many boys would have grown hardy, aggressive,
callous, and very possibly vicious from being thrown out on the world
so early. Young Graham became reticent and to superficial observers
shy. Those who cared to observe him closely, however, discovered that
it was not diffidence, but indifference toward others that
characterized his manner. In the most impressible period of his life he
had received instruction, advice and discipline in abundance, but love
and sympathy had been denied. Unconsciously his heart had become
chilled, benumbed and overshadowed by his intellect. The actual world
gave him little and seemed to promise less, and, as a result not at all
unnatural, he became something of a recluse and bookworm even before he
had left behind him the years of boyhood.

Both comrades and teachers eventually learned that the retiring and
solitary youth was not to be trifled with. He looked his instructor
steadily in the eye when he recited, and while his manner was
respectful, it was never deferential, nor could he be induced to yield
a point, when believing himself in the right, to mere arbitrary
assertion; and sometimes he brought confusion to his teacher by quoting
in support of his own view some unimpeachable authority.

At the beginning of each school term there were usually rough fellows
who thought the quiet boy could be made the subject of practical jokes
and petty annoyances without much danger of retaliation. Graham would
usually remain patient up to a certain point, and then, in dismay and
astonishment, the offender would suddenly find himself receiving a
punishment which he seemed powerless to resist. Blows would fall like
hail, or if the combatants closed in the struggle, the aggressor
appeared to find in Graham's slight form sinew and fury only. It seemed
as if the lad's spirit broke forth in such a flame of indignation that
no one could withstand him. It was also remembered that while he was
not noted for prowess on the playground, few could surpass him in the
gymnasium, and that he took long solitary rambles. Such of his
classmates, therefore, as were inclined to quarrel with him because of
his unpopular ways soon learned that he kept up his muscle with the
best of them, and that, when at last roused, his anger struck like
lightning from a cloud.

During the latter part of his college course he gradually formed a
strong friendship for a young man of a different type, an ardent
sunny-natured youth, who proved an antidote to his morbid tendencies.
They went abroad together and studied for two years at a German
university, and then Warren Hilland, Graham's friend, having inherited
large wealth, returned to his home. Graham, left to himself, delved
more and more deeply in certain phases of sceptical philosophy. It
appeared to him that in the past men had believed almost everything,
and that the heavier the drafts made on credulity the more largely had
they been honored. The two friends had long since resolved that the
actual and the proved should be the base from which they would advance
into the unknown, and they discarded with equal indifference
unsubstantiated theories of science and what they were pleased to term
the illusions of faith. "From the verge of the known explore the
unknown," was their motto, and it had been their hope to spend their
lives in extending the outposts of accurate knowledge, in some one or
two directions, a little beyond the points already reached. Since the
scalpel and microscope revealed no soul in the human mechanism they
regarded all theories and beliefs concerning a separate spiritual
existence as mere assumption. They accepted the materialistic view. To
them each generation was a link in an endless chain, and man himself
wholly the product of an evolution which had no relations to a creative
mind, for they had no belief in the existence of such a mind. They held
that one had only to live wisely and well, and thus transmit the
principle of life, not only unvitiated, but strengthened and enlarged.
Sins against body and mind were sins against the race, and it was their
creed that the stronger, fuller and more nearly complete they made
their lives the richer and fuller would be the life that succeeded
them. They scouted as utterly unproved and irrational the idea that
they could live after death, excepting as the plant lives by adding to
the material life and well-being of other plants. But at that time the
spring and vigor of youth were in their heart and brain, and it seemed
to them a glorious thing to live and do their part in the advancement
of the race toward a stage of perfection not dreamed of by the
unthinking masses.

Alas for their visions of future achievement! An avalanche of wealth
had overwhelmed Hilland. His letters to his friend had grown more and
more infrequent, and they contained many traces of the business cares
and the distractions inseparable from his possessions and new
relations. And now for causes just the reverse Graham also was
forsaking his studies. His modest inheritance, invested chiefly in real
estate, had so far depreciated that apparently it could not much longer
provide for even his frugal life abroad.

"I must give up my chosen career for a life of bread-winning,"