In a little while Mrs. Bloommaert came into the room, and though she was sleepy and distrait, she could not but notice the couple who stood up hand-in-hand to meet her. Sappha was eighteen years old, but her radiant face looked almost childlike in its innocent joyousness; and Leonard at her side was the incarnation of young manhood; endowed with strength and grace and beauty, and crowned with the glory of fortunate love.
Leonard wished her to understand, but she smiled away all explanations, and pretended a little worry over her long sleep, and the late hour; and there was nothing left for Leonard but to say “Good-night.” They both went to the door with him, and when he was out of sight, the door was shut and the mother said, “I must have been asleep! Your father will be here soon, Sappha. You had better go to bed. I suppose Leonard is going with the men he raised.”
“Yes, he is going.”
“He ought to be glad to go. It is good for a young man to have some experiences. Well, dear one, the day is over; and you must be tired.”
Then Sappha perceived that her mother did not wish to know authentically, what she understood clearly enough; and a little saddened by this want of sympathy, she went quietly into solitude with her joy.
The three months that followed this interview were filled with incident. New Yorkers needed no theatre; the war supplied every emotion of dismay and triumph of which the human heart is capable. “_On to Canada!_” had been the slogan at its commencement; and General Hull with over two thousand fine troops quickly took peaceable possession of the little village of Sandwich, on the Canadian shore. His first dispatches threw New York into a tumult of excitement and delight. The American flag was flying on both sides of the Niagara River, and from the grandiloquent proclamation Hull had made the Canadians, and his first dispatches, it really appeared as if Canada had fallen. But even while bells were ringing and cannons firing jubilates for this news, Hull himself had thrown out the white flag from his fort at Detroit, and surrendered the stronghold and all his forces without firing a gun. The anger and mortification of the people were in due season, however, turned into triumph; for if General Hull surrendered on the nineteenth of August, Captain Hull of the frigate _Constitution_ on the tenth of August took the British man-of-war _Guerrière_ on the coast of Newfoundland; and the news of this victory, which arrived in New York about the first of September, roused the wildest enthusiasm.
This circumstance indicates very well the progress of the war. The army operations on the Canadian frontier were everywhere disastrous to America; on the ocean her ships vindicated by constant brilliant victories the descent of her sailors from that great maritime power whose flag had braved a thousand years the battle and the breeze. There is not in all history a more splendid naval record than the United States made during these ninety days of alternate dismay and triumph. And no city felt these wonderful sea victories quite as New York did. Her great ship-yards on the East River had sent out the armed frigates and brigs, that were covering the nation, even in the eyes of her enemy, with a great and unexpected glory. The _Constitution!_ the _President!_ the _Essex!_ the _United States!_ these gallant ships had a kind of personality to New Yorkers. They had seen them grow to perfection in Christian Bergh’s and Adam Brown’s yards. They had stood godfathers at their christening, and they watched their valiant careers almost as a father watches his son’s course to a glorious success.
On the fourth of September Sappha and Mrs. Bloommaert were in Greenwich Street shopping, when they suddenly heard a wild shout of joy. “The _Constitution!_ the _Constitution!_” From mouth to mouth the two words flew like wild-fire. The whole city was roaring them. The bells clapped them out. The cannon sent them thundering over land and sea. Men meeting, though strangers, clasped hands; and women threw themselves into each other’s arms, weeping. Was there feeling enough left for a maid to be lovelorn or melancholy? Not in Sappha’s case. She gave her whole heart to rejoice with her country first, and then proudly remembered the dear youth who must at that moment be rejoicing with her.
Letters from him came more frequently than she had dared to hope. Some one available as a messenger was frequently at the Narrows fort, and Leonard never missed an opportunity. There was no restriction on this correspondence by her father and mother, though at the beginning of it the judge strongly advised restriction.
“Written words cannot be denied or rubbed out, Carlita,” he said. “I know what young men are. Suppose Leonard should show Sappha’s letters to some companion.”
“Suppose an impossibility, Gerardus.”
“Not so. A man in love is always a vain man, if his love is returned. He has conquered, and he puts on all the airs of a victor. He usually wants some one to admire and envy him, and a love letter is a visible proof of his prowess among women. I would not allow Sappha to write.”
“Then you are in the wrong, my dear one. Nothing is better for a lover than a course of love letters. It is the finest education for marriage.”
“They say so many extravagant things.”
“Very well. That is good. They get used to saying fine things, then they feel them, and ’tis no harm at all for a lover to write down his mistress ‘an angel.’ He may treat her the better for it, all their lives together.”
“So! so! Take thy own foolish way, wife. I do not forget thy dear little love notes--and ever the few leaves of sweet brier in them. I can smell it yet.”
So Sappha had her love letters, and she also wrote them. Leonard’s were like himself, frankly outspoken, full of extravagancy, both in love and war. “He loved her as never man loved before;” and she saw the words shine on the paper, and believed in them with all her soul. “He longed for those unspeakable English tyrants to come within reach of their guns, they would be sunk twenty fathoms deep in no time--then, then, then, oh, then he would fly to her, as a bird to its nest!” Love and glory mingled thus, until love took entire possession; then the conclusion was a passionate exploiting of that yearning word “_why?_” “_Why_ could they not be married when he returned? _Why_ should they wait? _Why_ did she not think as he did? _Why_ consider the war at all? _Why_ let that old tyrant of a motherland called England interfere in their happiness? _Why_ let anything? Or anybody?” There had been little parties of visitors at the Narrows, “_Why_ had she not persuaded her father and mother to sail so far with her? _Why_, in short, did she not understand that life was dreadfully dull in the fort, and that a sight of her would be heaven to him? _Why? Why? Why_ did she not love him as wildly and fondly and eternally as he loved her?”
All this exaggeration was the most beautiful truth to Sapphira. She adored her lover for the very prodigality of his pleas and protestations. It was right and proper that lovers should suffer all the pangs of separation; she was rather proud of Leonard’s wailing and complaining; and careful not to comfort it too much, by comparing it with her own. Indeed she rather affected the style of a sweet little mentor, bound to remind him that he must love honour, even before herself. And she so blended their own hopes and happiness with domestic and public affairs as to make her letters all that a daily paper might be to a man shut up in prison, or in a fort in a wilderness. Leonard saw through them, the New York he loved, the busy, hopeful people, talking, trading, singing, smoking, loving, living through every sense they had; and he felt with the keenest delight all Sappha’s sweet self-disparagements and compunctions for her own happiness and good fortune in being beloved by him.
“I cannot tell you, my own dear friend,” she wrote on the sixth of November, “how happy your assurances of affection make me. People who are very, very happy do not know how to write down their joy. I have no words but the old, old ones--I do so love you! If I but think of your name, I bless it forever. When your letters come, I kiss the seal before I open them; when I write you a letter I look love into every word I write. My father does not speak of you--oh, there is so much else for him to talk of! My mother looks only the sweet sympathy she will not utter, until my father wills it--and in that she is right, I think. Annette may suspect, but she knows nothing certainly; our secret is very much our own yet, and the dearer for it. You would say so also, if you could see and hear New York at the present time. In spite of our small deprivations, we are all very happy. The militia stationed here are having a most sociable time, and there are parades and reviews constantly in progress. The theatre is now filled every night it is open, and if only some gallant privateer, or some sailor from the ships comes in, the performance has to stop until he has been cheered to the skies. I am sorry, my dearest friend, that you did not join the navy; for just now sailors are the idols of our city--I do not mean that--oh, no! I could not bear to think of you at sea. I am counting the days and the hours now. I heard mother tell Annette that the men at the Narrows would be home for the great parade on Evacuation Day, Annette clapped her hands and said ‘then Leonard Murray will return to us; and I shall ask grandmother to give him a dinner. He will be so glad to see me,’ she added, ‘and I shall be so glad to see him.’ She put me out of calculation, and I did not mind; for if _you_ remember, what care I if all the world forgets me? It is too bad the English ships will not give you a chance of glory, we have almost forgot how to fear them. Every one is in high spirits; we have no doubt of God, nor our country, nor of our brave sailors and soldiers. And, oh, Leonard! dear, dear Leonard, I have not one doubt of you. So then I send you my heart; for I do trust you, Leonard, for all the joy that life shall bring me. Yes I do! I do! Sappha.”