The Earth Trembled | Page 4

to recognize the magnitude of the struggle upon which they had entered. Among these was Major Burgoyne, and the presentiment grew upon him that he would not see the end of the conflict. When, therefore, impetuous young Wallingford urged that he might call Mary his wife before he marched to distant battlefields, the father yielded, feeling that it might be well for her to have another protector besides himself. The union was solemnized in old St. Michael's Church, where Mary's mother and grandmother had been married before her; a day or two of quiet and happiness was vouchsafed, and then came the tidings of the first great battle of the war. Charleston responded with acclamations of triumph; bells sent out their merriest peals; cannon thundered from every fort on the harbor, but Mary wept on her husband's breast. Among the telegrams of victory had come an order for his regiment to go North immediately. Not even a brief honeymoon was permitted to her.

CHAPTER II
LOVE'S AGONY
As the exaggerated reports of a magnificent Confederate victory at Bull Run continued to pour in, Major Burgoyne shared for a time in the general elation, believing that independence, recognition abroad, and peace had been virtually secured. All the rant about Northern cowardice appeared to be confirmed, and he eagerly waited for the announcement that Washington had been captured by Johnston's victorious army.
Instead, came the dismal tidings from his only sister that her husband, Captain Hunter, had been killed in the battle over which he had been rejoicing. Then for some mysterious reason the Southern army did not follow the Federals, who had left the field in such utter rout and panic. It soon appeared that the contending forces were occupying much the same positions as before. News of the second great uprising of the North followed closely, and presaged anything but a speedy termination of the conflict. Major Burgoyne was not a Hotspur, and he grew thoughtful and depressed in spirit, although he sedulously concealed the fact from his associates. The shadow of coming events began to fall upon him, and his daughter gradually divined his lack of hopefulness. The days were already sad and full of anxiety, for her husband was absent. He had scouted the idea of the Yankees standing up before the impetuous onset of the Southern soldiers, and his words had apparently proved true, yet even those Northern cowards had killed one closely allied to her before they fled. Remembering, therefore, her husband's headlong courage, what assurance of his safety could she have although victory followed victory?
Major Burgoyne urged his widowed sister to leave her plantation in the charge of an overseer and make her home with him. "You are too near the probable theatre of military operations to be safe," he wrote, "and my mind cannot rest till you are with us in this city which we are rapidly making impregnable." The result was that she eventually became a member of his family. Her stern, sad face added to the young wife's depression, for the stricken woman had been rendered intensely bitter by her loss. Mary was too gentle in nature to hate readily, yet wrathful gleams would be emitted at times even from her blue eyes, as her aunt inveighed in her hard monotone against the "monstrous wrong of the North." They saw their side with such downright sincerity and vividness that the offenders appeared to be beyond the pale of humanity. Few men, even though the frosts of many winters had cooled their blood and ripened their judgment, could reason dispassionately in those days, much less women, whose hearts were kept on the rack of torture by the loss of dear ones or the dread of such loss.
It is my purpose to dwell upon the war, its harrowing scenes and intense animosities, only so far as may be essential to account for my characters and to explain subsequent events. The roots of personality strike deep, and the taproot, heredity, runs back into the being of those who lived and suffered before we were born.
Gentle Mary Burgoyne should have been part of a happier day and generation. The bright hopes of a speedily conquered peace were dying away; the foolish bluster on both sides at the beginning of the war had ceased, and the truth so absurdly ignored at first, that Americans, North and South, would fight with equal courage, was made clearer by every battle. The heavy blows received by the South, however, did not change her views as to the wisdom and righteousness of her cause, and she continued to return blows at which the armies of the North reeled, stunned and bleeding. Mary was not permitted to exult very long, however, for the terrible pressure was quickly renewed with an unwavering pertinacity which created misgivings in