The eight years in America from 1860 to 1868 uprooted1 institutions that were centuries old, changed the politics of a people, transformed the social life of half the country, and wrought2 so profoundly upon the entire national character that the influence cannot be measured short of two or three generations.
As we are accustomed to interpret the economy of providence3, the life of the individual is as nothing to that of the nation or the race; but who can say, in the broader view and the more intelligent weight of values, that the life of one man is not more than that of a nationality, and that there is not a tribunal where the tragedy of one human soul shall not seem more significant than the overturning of any human institution whatever?
When one thinks of the tremendous forces of the upper and the nether4 world which play for the mastery of the soul of a woman during the few years in which she passes from plastic girlhood to the ripe maturity5 of womanhood, he may well stand in awe6 before the momentous7 drama.
What capacities she has of purity, tenderness, goodness; what capacities of vileness8, bitterness and evil. Nature must needs be lavish9 with the mother and creator of men, and centre in her all the possibilities of life. And a few critical years can decide whether her life is to be full of sweetness and light, whether she is to be the vestal of a holy temple, or whether she will be the fallen priestess of a desecrated10 shrine11. There are women, it is true, who seem to be capable neither of rising much nor of falling much, and whom a conventional life saves from any special development of character.
But Laura was not one of them. She had the fatal gift of beauty, and that more fatal gift which does not always accompany mere12 beauty, the power of fascination13, a power that may, indeed, exist without beauty. She had will, and pride and courage and ambition, and she was left to be very much her own guide at the age when romance comes to the aid of passion, and when the awakening14 powers of her vigorous mind had little object on which to discipline themselves.
The tremendous conflict that was fought in this girl’s soul none of those about her knew, and very few knew that her life had in it anything unusual or romantic or strange.
Those were troublous days in Hawkeye as well as in most other Missouri towns, days of confusion, when between unionist and Confederate occupations, sudden maraudings and bush-whackings and raids, individuals escaped observation or comment in actions that would have filled the town with scandal in quiet times.
Fortunately we only need to deal with Laura’s life at this period historically, and look back upon such portions of it as will serve to reveal the woman as she was at the time of the arrival of Mr. Harry15 Brierly in Hawkeye.
The Hawkins family were settled there, and had a hard enough struggle with poverty and the necessity of keeping up appearances in accord with their own family pride and the large expectations they secretly cherished of a fortune in the Knobs of East Tennessee. How pinched they were perhaps no one knew but Clay, to whom they looked for almost their whole support. Washington had been in Hawkeye off and on, attracted away occasionally by some tremendous speculation16, from which he invariably returned to Gen. Boswell’s office as poor as he went. He was the inventor of no one knew how many useless contrivances, which were not worth patenting, and his years had been passed in dreaming and planning to no purpose; until he was now a man of about thirty, without a profession or a permanent occupation, a tall, brown-haired, dreamy person of the best intentions and the frailest17 resolution. Probably however the eight years had been happier to him than to any others in his circle, for the time had been mostly spent in a blissful dream of the coming of enormous wealth.
He went out with a company from Hawkeye to the war, and was not wanting in courage, but he would have been a better soldier if he had been less engaged in contrivances for circumventing19 the enemy by strategy unknown to the books.
It happened to him to be captured in one of his self-appointed expeditions, but the federal colonel released him, after a short examination, satisfied that he could most injure the confederate forces opposed to the unionists by returning him to his regiment20. Col. Sellers was of course a prominent man during the war. He was captain of the home guards in Hawkeye, and he never left home except upon one occasion, when on the strength of a rumor21, he executed a flank movement and fortified22 Stone’s Landing, a place which no one unacquainted with the country would be likely to find.
“Gad,” said the Colonel afterwards, “the Landing is the key to upper Missouri, and it is the only place the enemy never captured. If other places had been defended as well as that was, the result would have been different, sir.”
The Colonel had his own theories about war as he had in other things. If everybody had stayed at home as he did, he said, the South never would have been conquered. For what would there have been to conquer? Mr. Jeff Davis was constantly writing him to take command of a corps23 in the confederate army, but Col. Sellers said, no, his duty was at home. And he was by no means idle. He was the inventor of the famous air torpedo24, which came very near destroying the union armies in Missouri, and the city of St. Louis itself.
His plan was to fill a torpedo with Greek fire and poisonous and deadly missiles, attach it to a balloon, and then let it sail away over the hostile camp and explode at the right moment, when the time-fuse burned out. He intended to use this invention in the capture of St. Louis, exploding his torpedoes25 over the city, and raining destruction upon it until the army of occupation would gladly capitulate. He was unable to procure26 the Greek fire, but he constructed a vicious torpedo which would have answered the purpose, but the first one prematurely27 exploded in his wood-house, blowing it clean away, and setting fire to his house. The neighbors helped him put out the conflagration28, but they discouraged any more experiments of that sort.
The patriotic29 old gentleman, however, planted so much powder and so many explosive contrivances in the roads leading into Hawkeye, and then forgot the exact spots of danger, that people were afraid to travel the highways, and used to come to town across the fields. The Colonel’s motto was, “Millions for defence but not one cent for tribute.”
When Laura came to Hawkeye she might have forgotten the annoyances30 of the gossips of Murpheysburg and have out lived the bitterness that was growing in her heart, if she had been thrown less upon herself, or if the surroundings of her life had been more congenial and helpful. But she had little society, less and less as she grew older that was congenial to her, and her mind preyed31 upon itself; and the mystery of her birth at once chagrined32 her and raised in her the most extravagant33 expectations. She was proud and she felt the sting of poverty. She could not but be conscious of her beauty also, and she was vain of that, and came to take a sort of delight in the exercise of her fascinations34 upon the rather loutish35 young men who came in her way and whom she despised.
There was another world opened to her—a world of books. But it was not the best world of that sort, for the small libraries she had access to in Hawkeye were decidedly miscellaneous, and largely made up of romances and fictions which fed her imagination with the most exaggerated notions of life, and showed her men and women in a very false sort of heroism36. From these stories she learned what a woman of keen intellect and some culture joined to beauty and fascination of manner, might expect to accomplish in society as she read of it; and along with these ideas she imbibed37 other very crude ones in regard to the emancipation38 of woman.
There were also other books—histories, biographies of distinguished39 people, travels in far lands, poems, especially those of Byron, Scott and Shelley and Moore, which she eagerly absorbed, and appropriated therefrom what was to her liking40. Nobody in Hawkeye had read so much or, after a fashion, studied so diligently41 as Laura. She passed for an accomplished42 girl, and no doubt thought herself one, as she was, judged by any standard near her.
During the war there came to Hawkeye a confederate officer, Col. Selby, who was stationed there for a time, in command of that district. He was a handsome, soldierly man of thirty years, a graduate of the University of Virginia, and of distinguished family, if his story might be believed, and, it was evident, a man of the world and of extensive travel and adventure.
To find in such an out of the way country place a woman like Laura was a piece of good luck upon which Col. Selby congratulated himself. He was studiously polite to her and treated her with a consideration to which she was unaccustomed. She had read of such men, but she had never seen one before, one so high-bred, so noble in sentiment, so entertaining in conversation, so engaging in manner.
It is a long story; unfortunately it is an old story, and it need not be dwelt on. Laura loved him, and believed that his love for her was as pure and deep as her own. She worshipped him and would have counted her life a little thing to give him, if he would only love her and let her feed the hunger of her heart upon him.
The passion possessed43 her whole being, and lifted her up, till she seemed to walk on air. It was all true, then, the romances she had read, the bliss18 of love she had dreamed of. Why had she never noticed before how blithesome44 the world was, how jocund45 with love; the birds sang it, the trees whispered it to her as she passed, the very flowers beneath her feet strewed46 the way as for a bridal march.
When the Colonel went away they were engaged to be married, as soon as he could make certain arrangements which he represented to be necessary, and quit the army. He wrote to her from Harding, a small town in the southwest corner of the state, saying that he should be held in the service longer than he had expected, but that it would not be more than a few months, then he should be at liberty to take her to Chicago where he had property, and should have business, either now or as soon as the war was over, which he thought could not last long. Meantime why should they be separated? He was established in comfortable quarters, and if she could find company and join him, they would be married, and gain so many more months of happiness.
Was woman ever prudent47 when she loved? Laura went to Harding, the neighbors supposed to nurse Washington who had fallen ill there. Her engagement was, of course, known in Hawkeye, and was indeed a matter of pride to her family. Mrs. Hawkins would have told the first inquirer that. Laura had gone to be married; but Laura had cautioned her; she did not want to be thought of, she said, as going in search of a husband; let the news come back after she was married.
So she traveled to Harding on the pretence48 we have mentioned, and was married. She was married, but something must have happened on that very day or the next that alarmed her. Washington did not know then or after what it was, but Laura bound him not to send news of her marriage to Hawkeye yet, and to enjoin49 her mother not to speak of it. Whatever cruel suspicion or nameless dread50 this was, Laura tried bravely to put it away, and not let it cloud her happiness.
Communication that summer, as may be imagined, was neither regular nor frequent between the remote confederate camp at Harding and Hawkeye, and Laura was in a measure lost sight of—indeed, everyone had troubles enough of his own without borrowing from his neighbors.
Laura had given herself utterly51 to her husband, and if he had faults, if he was selfish, if he was sometimes coarse, if he was dissipated, she did not or would not see it. It was the passion of her life, the time when her whole nature went to flood tide and swept away all barriers. Was her husband ever cold or indifferent? She shut her eyes to everything but her sense of possession of her idol52.
Three months passed. One morning her husband informed her that he had been ordered South, and must go within two hours.
“I can be ready,” said Laura, cheerfully.
“But I can’t take you. You must go back to Hawkeye.”
“Can’t-take-me?” Laura asked, with wonder in her eyes. “I can’t live without you. You said——-”
“O bother what I said,”—and the Colonel took up his sword to buckle53 it on, and then continued coolly, “the fact is Laura, our romance is played out.”
Laura heard, but she did not comprehend. She caught his arm and cried, “George, how can you joke so cruelly? I will go any where with you. I will wait any where. I can’t go back to Hawkeye.”
“Well, go where you like. Perhaps,” continued he with a sneer54, “you would do as well to wait here, for another colonel.”
Laura’s brain whirled. She did not yet comprehend. “What does this mean? Where are you going?”
“It means,” said the officer, in measured words, “that you haven’t anything to show for a legal marriage, and that I am going to New Orleans.”
“It’s a lie, George, it’s a lie. I am your wife. I shall go. I shall follow you to New Orleans.”
“Perhaps my wife might not like it!”
Laura raised her head, her eyes flamed with fire, she tried to utter a cry, and fell senseless on the floor.
When she came to herself the Colonel was gone. Washington Hawkins stood at her bedside. Did she come to herself? Was there anything left in her heart but hate and bitterness, a sense of an infamous55 wrong at the hands of the only man she had ever loved?
She returned to Hawkeye. With the exception of Washington and his mother, no one knew what had happened. The neighbors supposed that the engagement with Col. Selby had fallen through. Laura was ill for a long time, but she recovered; she had that resolution in her that could conquer death almost. And with her health came back her beauty, and an added fascination, a something that might be mistaken for sadness. Is there a beauty in the knowledge of evil, a beauty that shines out in the face of a person whose inward life is transformed by some terrible experience? Is the pathos56 in the eyes of the Beatrice Cenci from her guilt57 or her innocence58?
Laura was not much changed. The lovely woman had a devil in her heart. That was all.
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1
uprooted
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| v.把（某物）连根拔起( uproot的过去式和过去分词 )；根除；赶走；把…赶出家园 | |
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wrought
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| v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的 | |
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providence
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| n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝 | |
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nether
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| adj.下部的，下面的；n.阴间；下层社会 | |
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maturity
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| n.成熟；完成；(支票、债券等)到期 | |
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awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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momentous
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| adj.重要的，重大的 | |
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vileness
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| n.讨厌，卑劣 | |
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lavish
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| adj.无节制的；浪费的；vt.慷慨地给予，挥霍 | |
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desecrated
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| 毁坏或亵渎( desecrate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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shrine
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| n.圣地，神龛，庙；v.将...置于神龛内，把...奉为神圣 | |
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12
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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fascination
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| n.令人着迷的事物，魅力，迷恋 | |
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awakening
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| n.觉醒，醒悟 adj.觉醒中的；唤醒的 | |
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harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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frailest
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| 脆弱的( frail的最高级 )； 易损的； 易碎的 | |
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bliss
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| n.狂喜，福佑，天赐的福 | |
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19
circumventing
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| v.设法克服或避免（某事物），回避( circumvent的现在分词 )；绕过，绕行，绕道旅行 | |
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regiment
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| n.团，多数，管理；v.组织，编成团，统制 | |
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rumor
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| n.谣言，谣传，传说 | |
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fortified
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| adj. 加强的 | |
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corps
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| n.(通信等兵种的)部队；(同类作的)一组 | |
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torpedo
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| n.水雷，地雷；v.用鱼雷破坏 | |
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torpedoes
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| 鱼雷( torpedo的名词复数 )； 油井爆破筒； 刺客； 掼炮 | |
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26
procure
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| vt.获得，取得，促成；vi.拉皮条 | |
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prematurely
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| adv.过早地，贸然地 | |
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28
conflagration
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| n.建筑物或森林大火 | |
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patriotic
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| adj.爱国的，有爱国心的 | |
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30
annoyances
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| n.恼怒( annoyance的名词复数 )；烦恼；打扰；使人烦恼的事 | |
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31
preyed
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| v.掠食( prey的过去式和过去分词 )；掠食；折磨；（人）靠欺诈为生 | |
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32
chagrined
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| adj.懊恼的，苦恼的v.使懊恼，使懊丧，使悔恨( chagrin的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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extravagant
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| adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的 | |
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fascinations
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| n.魅力( fascination的名词复数 )；有魅力的东西；迷恋；陶醉 | |
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loutish
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| adj.粗鲁的 | |
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heroism
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| n.大无畏精神，英勇 | |
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imbibed
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| v.吸收( imbibe的过去式和过去分词 )；喝；吸取；吸气 | |
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emancipation
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| n.（从束缚、支配下）解放 | |
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39
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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diligently
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| ad.industriously;carefully | |
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accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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blithesome
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| adj.欢乐的，愉快的 | |
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jocund
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| adj.快乐的，高兴的 | |
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46
strewed
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| v.撒在…上( strew的过去式和过去分词 )；散落于；点缀；撒满 | |
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47
prudent
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| adj.谨慎的，有远见的，精打细算的 | |
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48
pretence
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| n.假装，作假；借口，口实；虚伪；虚饰 | |
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49
enjoin
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| v.命令；吩咐；禁止 | |
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50
dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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51
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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52
idol
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| n.偶像，红人，宠儿 | |
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53
buckle
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| n.扣子，带扣；v.把...扣住，由于压力而弯曲 | |
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54
sneer
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| v.轻蔑；嘲笑；n.嘲笑，讥讽的言语 | |
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55
infamous
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| adj.声名狼藉的，臭名昭著的，邪恶的 | |
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56
pathos
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| n.哀婉，悲怆 | |
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57
guilt
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| n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责 | |
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innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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