Beatrice Hallam - A Novel

PROLOGUE THE memories of men are full of old romances but thej will not speak our skalds. King Arthur lies still woundee Lord OdiL. grievously, in the far island valley of Avilyon in the misty death realm Balder the Beautiful, sought long by great Herrnoder, lives beyond Helas portals, and will bless his people some day when he comes. But when wind his King Arthur ever is to come Odin will one day horn and clash his wild barbaric cymbals through the Nordland pines as he returns, but not in our generation Balder will rise from sleep and shine again the white sun god on his world. But always these things will be Arthur and the rest are meanwhile sleeping. Romance is history the illustration may be lame the truth is melancholy. Because the men whose memories hold this history will not speak, it dies away with them the great past goes deeper and deeper into mist becomes finally a dying strain of music, and is no more remembered forever. Thinking these thoughts I have thought it well to set down here some incidents which took place on Virginia soil and in which an ancestor of my family had no small part to write my family romance in a single word, uad alsc t though following a connecting thread, a leading idea, to speak briefly of the period to which these memories, as I may call them, do attach. That period was very picturesque illustrated and adorned, as it surely was, by such figures as one seldom sees now on the earth. Often in my evening reveries, assisted by the partial gloom resulting from the struggles of the darkness and the dying firelight, I endeavor, and not wholly without success, to summon from their sleep these stalwart cavaliers, and tender, graceful dames of the far past.They rise before me and glide onward manly faces, with clear eyes and lofty brows, and firm lips covered with the knightly fringe soft, tender faces, with bright eyes and gracious smiles and winning gestures all the life and splendor of the becomes incarnate past again How plain the embroidered doublet, and the sword-belt, and the powdered hair, and hat adorned with its wide floating feather How real are the ruffled breasts and hands, the long-flapped waistcoats, and the buckled shoes And then the fairer forms they come as plainly with their looped-back gowns all glittering with gold and silver flowers, and on their heads great masses of curls with pearls interwoven See the gracious smiles and musical movement all the graces which made those dead dames so attractive to the outward eye as their pure faith ful natures made them priceless to the eyes of the heart. CHAPTER L ON a splendid October afternoon, in the year of our Lord 1763, two persons who will appear frequently in this history were seated in the great dining-room of EfEngham Hall. But let us first Ray a few words of this old mansion. Effingham Hall was a stately edifice not far from Williams- burg, which, as every body knows, was at that period the capi tal city of the colony of Virginia. The hall was constructed of elegant brick brought over from England and from the great portico in front of the building a beautiful rolling country of hills and valleys, field and forest, spread itself pleasantly before the eye, bounded far off along the circling belt of woods by the bright waters of the noble river. Entering the large hall of the old house, you had before you, walls covered with deers antlers, fishing-rods, and guw portraitsof cavaliers, and dames and children even carefu ly painted pictures of celebrated race-horses, on whose spe and bottom many thousands of pounds had been staked an lost and won in their day and generation...