The Light Heart

Elswyth Thane

Description

The Light Heart, the fourth installment in Elswyth Thane's Williamsburg series, covers the years 1902 to 1917.The reader enjoys these stories of the Days and the Spragues families in this saga series of novels, in successive generations, as one might the Whitecaks of Jalna series. The last novel bridged the Atlantic, with two inter-marriages, so now this next one again is set partly in Williamsburg, partly in New York, partly in London (and briefly in central Europe). This time World War I provides the background, while England of two coronations - Edward VII and George V - spans the story. Once again it is a story of the Spragues and the Days, and now their English connections; Phoebe, cousin (and niece) of Cousin Sue is heading into a situation of being "lost for love". Cousin Sue finds a way to rescue her from a childlike devotion to "poor Cousin Miles" - and sends her abroad, only to the love for Oliver, despite his engagement to the jealous Maia. So Phoebe goes back to marry her Miles and finds she can't go through with it. A war takes her back to Europe, with intention to rescue Rosalind from her German Prince - and again she finds in Oliver the same overwhelming love. 
Lovely Phoebe Sprague, of Williamsburg, Virginia, though still engaged, falls in love with Captain Oliver Campion. But in 1902, a betrothal was almost as binding as marriage? Is it too late?

Sujets

• Romance historique
• Fiction
• Romance
• Historical
• Romance contemporaine

Informations

• Publié par: Rare Treasure Editions
• Date de parution: 10 novembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781774644195
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Light Heart
by Elswyth Thane

First published in 1947
This edition published by Rare Treasures
Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
THE LIGHT HEART

by ELSWYTH THANE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

AS 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
PART ONE

PHOEBE

Williamsburg Spring, 1902

1

THE 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 some