Yankee Stranger

Elswyth Thane

Description

In this second book of the Williamsburg series Yankee Stranger, Tabitha Day, heroine of "Dawn's Early Light", re-appears on her 95th birthday, an altogether delectable and beguiling grandmother and great-grandmother. The period spans the Civil War; the setting is largely Williamsburg and Richmond, and the battlefields. The Spragues and the Days have again inter-married, and one tragedy comes out of it when young Sue and her double first cousin are forbidden permission to marry. But the story is primarily that of Cabot Murray, "Yankee stranger", journalist, war correspondent on the wrong side, and Eden - of love at first sight. Eden can forgive his profession, accept his place of birth, but when she finds him a "spy", she tries to wipe out her love. But in vein - and Cabot wins through. Delightfully drawn picture of civilian life behind the Civil War front - not too prettified but real.

Sujets

• Romance historique
• Historical
• Romance
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Rare Treasure Editions
• Date de parution: 09 novembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781774644133
• Langue: English

Extrait

Yankee Stranger
by Elswyth Thane

First published in 1944
This edition published by Rare Treasures
Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany
[e-mail]
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.
YANKEE STRANGER

by ELSWYTH THANE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

GREAT CARE HAS BEEN TAKEN THAT THE WHEREABOUTS OF the fictitious soldiers in the two armies are always subject to those of the specific regiment or commanding officer to which they have been assigned. With regard to the standing of Special Correspondents a generation before Richard Harding Davis, the following is quoted from “Four Years in Secessia,” an account of his own adventures as a “Special” by J. H. Browne, published in 1865.

“The Correspondents have figures in the casualties again and again; have been killed and wounded and captured; have perhaps had quite their share of the accidents of war…. They usually enter some officer’s mess, on taking the field; have their own horses; pay their proportion of the expenses; and live exactly as the officers do, except that they are not subject to orders…. If they have any fondness—and many of them have—for fighting, they can always be accommodated. I have more than once seen them in the field, musket in hand and frequently trying their skill as sharpshooters. They very often act as voluntary aides on the staff of general officers and have in numerous instances played a conspicuous and important part in engagements.”

Again I owe thanks to the same patient people who assisted during the research for “Dawn’s Early Light”—notably, Miss Mary McWilliams of Colonial Williamsburg, Dr. E. G. Swem, Librarian at the College of William and Mary, Mrs. F. G. King and the staff of the New York Society Library, and Mr. F. F. Van de Water. In addition, gratitude is now due Mrs. Eudora Richardson of Richmond, and Mr. Frank Browning, the latter even lending me, a stranger, valued books from his own library.

E. T. 1944

I

OCTOBER 29, 1860

I

IT WAS HER BIRTHDAY, AND SHE WAS NINETY-FIVE.

She sat at her window, looking out into the quiet street beyond the white picket fence and box hedges of the front garden; waiting, like a good child, for it to be time to dress for her party. It was a pretty street, in the soft autumn sunlight of Virginia. But Williamsburg was old too, now, it had never been the same since Thomas Jefferson made them move the capital up river to Richmond, back in 1779 when he was Governor. (To make the Legislative body safe from capture by a sea-borne army, he said, and even then the British nearly caught Jefferson.) It was lively enough for a while after Yorktown, while the French were still there. The Comte de Rochambeau had come to her wedding, and paid her French compliments while they danced. Julian had taught her such good French, and so much of it, that she missed no nuances of Rochambeau’s compliments, and found them a trifle embarrassing. All the French soldiers were very oncoming people….

She sat smiling out into the noonday sun from her big chair in the window. Her age was always quite incredible, especially to herself. It seemed only the other day that she had stood before the altar in the brick church in the Duke of Gloucester Street and heard those grave words so gently spoken—“ I, Julian, take thee, Tabitha, to my wedded wife —” And yet the wealth, the fabulous riches of life the years since then had bestowed on Tibby Mawes! Three children they had had—it was not enough, but she was so small and something went wrong when Lavinia was born—there weren’t any more after Lavinia. They had had Giles first—Julian’s son—you couldn’t ask for better than Giles. And now there was Giles’s son Ransom, and you couldn’t do better than Ransom either, if it came to that; always biddable and good-tempered, ruling his household as firmly and tactfully as ever Julian himself had done. One was very fortunate to live with a grandson like Ransom, and his wife Felicity, so truly named, and his children who were one’s own great-grandchildren….

And yet it seemed only the other day that Julian was still alive, going a little grey, but carrying himself just as tall as he had done the first day she ever saw him—only a little while since Julian’s death, swift and kind, by a fall from a new horse he had not allowed them to gentle for him. She was only sixty when Julian died, though, and they never let her forget, either, that she had had a proposal of marriage within the year. And that was more than thirty years ago….

They said that Richmond was very gay these days, in spite of all this slavery talk—abolition—secession—she could remember when it was Massachusetts that was going to secede instead of South Carolina. But who would live in Richmond when Williamsburg still sat here in the sun, a little shabby, perhaps, a little down at heel, and the lovely Palace all burnt to a shell when the troops used it for a hospital after Yorktown, and even the Raleigh not what it was—the balls they used to have in the Raleigh, and the gay dinners in the Daphne Room—the glitter was all gone to Richmond now. Archer Crabb, who had asked her to marry him before her widow’s year was out, had had a big house in Richmond and was in the Legislature and did a lot of entertaining. She supposed if she had married Archer she would be living there in Franklin Street now, with his grandchildren from his first marriage—they preferred it to their Williamsburg house, except for holidays. But one would be lonely in a big place like Richmond where one never knew who might be passing by, instead of here where everybody looked up at the window to wave, and people ran in and out all day long with flowers, or letters to read to her, or a dish of something they thought she might fancy. They said she knew the whole town by its given name, and probably she did. One wasn’t ninety-five for nothing—

“Felicity! Where are you? Eden! Somebody come here at once and tell me who this man is Sally has got by the arm! Never saw him before in my life, and she making eyes as though he was the King!”

“Whose King, Gran?” But Eden came with a swift rustle of silk to look over the high back of the chair into the street.

“They’re stopping at the gate, Dee. Is she going to bring him in?”

“Not if she can help it! She wouldn’t give Sue and me a chance at him for worlds!”

“Do you want a chance? Who is he?”

“He’s a Yankee named Cabot Murray. He is visiting President and Mrs. Ewell at the College.”

“Know anything more about him?”

“He’s very tall, dark, and handsome, with a cleft in his chin and the devil in his eye, and Sally is simply terrified that somebody will get him away from her before she can make him fall in love with her.”

“Is he likely to?”

“I don’t see why not, Gran, Sally is very pretty.”

“Not so pretty as you are, Dee.”

“Now, Gran, would you have me set my cap for a Yankee just to prove that?”

“What’s wrong with a Yankee if he’s got long legs and would make a good husband, I’d like to know?”

“That’s heresy these days! Uncle Lafe would throw him out of the house if he tried to marry Sally. Besides—I’m not sure Cabot Murray would make a good husband.”

“How long have you known him? Why have you all kept so mum about him? Why haven’t I seen him close to?”

“I don’t know him at all. There has been no reason to discuss him. And you haven’t seen him because Mrs. Ewell hasn’t brought him to call.”

“Why hasn’t she—”

“Because he’s a Yankee, no doubt, and she knows he isn’t welcome everywhere. Look—he’s going on and Sally is coming in. Now you can quiz her about him to your heart’s content.”

The tall stranger had lifted his hat and bowed over Sally’s hand, which lingered in his as she backed reluctantly away from him and through the open gate behind her. Her head turned after him while he walked down the street, very long in the leg, it is true, very broad in the shoulder and narrow in the hips, with a spring that was almost a swagger in his step.

As Eden was about to whisk away from the window she felt herself caught and held by a firm hand on her wrist.

“How do you know,” demanded her great-grandmother, “that he has the devil in his eye?”

Eden flushed.

“I can’t tell you now,” she whispered. “Later!” And she freed herself and ran out of the room to call a greeting down the stairs to her cousin Sally, and ask her to come up at once because Gran wanted to see her.

Tabitha Day, whose husband had called her Tibby and had had very long legs himself, leaned forward to catch another glimpse of the Yankee as he turned the corner towards the Duke of Gloucester Street. (Her eyesight was as good as new, except for fine print.) Young, she decided, with that walk. A horseman, with those hips. Bowed like a gentleman, hat in hand. And there was something Eden hadn’t told.

II

Sally Sprague was fair and high-bosomed and a beauty like her great-grandmother Regina. She was spoilt too. But she could not hold a candle to her cousin Eden Day, whose hair was golden red and whose eyes were greenish, and whose chin was round and sensitive and always quivered pathetically just before she cried. The hair she got from Giles, who had got it from Julian’s mother. The eyes were her grandmother Tabitha’s. The chin was Eden’s own.

Sally was still wearing a rather guilty sparkle when she came into the square white room, bright with chintz and needle-point, where Grandmother Day had lived as long as anybody could remember. In this fourth generation of Williamsburg Days, relationships were very closely knit. Sally and Eden were double first cousins, for Sally’s mother and