Unsuspected and astounding as the revelation was to Clarence, its strange reception by the conspirators seemed to him as astounding. He had started forward, half expecting that the complacent and self-confessed spy would be immolated by his infuriated dupes. But to his surprise the shock seemed to have changed their natures, and given them the dignity they had lacked. The excitability, irritation, and recklessness which had previously characterized them had disappeared. The deputy and his posse, who had advanced to the assistance of their revealed chief, met with no resistance. They had evidently, as if with one accord, drawn away from Judge Beeswinger, leaving a cleared space around him, and regarded their captors with sullen contemptuous silence. It was only broken by Colonel Starbottle:—
“Your duty commands you, sir, to use all possible diligence in bringing us before the Federal judge of this district—unless your master in Washington has violated the Constitution so far as to remove him, too!”
“I understand you perfectly,” returned Judge Beeswinger, with unchanged composure; “and as you know that Judge Wilson unfortunately cannot be removed except through a regular course of impeachment, I suppose you may still count upon his Southern sympathies to befriend you. With that I have nothing to do; my duty is complete when my deputy has brought you before him and I have stated the circumstances of the arrest.”
“I congratulate you, sir,” said Captain Pinckney, with an ironical salute, “on your prompt reward for your treachery to the South, and your equally prompt adoption of the peculiar tactics of your friends in the way in which you have entered this house.”
“I am sorry I cannot congratulate YOU, sir,” returned Judge Beeswinger gravely, “on breaking your oath to the government which has educated and supported you and given you the epaulettes you disgrace. Nor shall I discuss 'treachery' with the man who has not only violated the trust of his country, but even the integrity of his friend's household. It is for that reason that I withhold the action of this warrant in so far as it affects the persons of the master and mistress of this home. I am satisfied that Mr. Brant has been as ignorant of what has been done here as I am that his wife has been only the foolish dupe of a double traitor!”
“Silence!”
The words broke simultaneously from the lips of Clarence and Captain Pinckney. They stood staring at each other—the one pale, the other crimson—as Mrs. Brant, apparently oblivious of the significance of their united adjuration, turned to Judge Beeswinger in the fury of her still stifled rage and mortification.
“Keep your mercy for your fellow-spy,” she said, with a contemptuous gesture towards her husband; “I go with these gentlemen!”
“You will not,” said Clarence quietly, “until I have said a word to you alone.” He laid his hand firmly upon her wrist.
The deputy and his prisoners filed slowly out of the courtyard together, the latter courteously saluting Mrs. Brant as they passed, but turning from Judge Beeswinger in contemptuous silence. The judge followed them to the gate, but there he paused. Turning to Mrs. Brant, who was still half struggling in the strong grip of her husband, he said,—
“Any compunction I may have had in misleading you by accepting your invitation here I dismissed after I had entered this house. And I trust,” he added, turning to Clarence sternly, “I leave you the master of it!”
As the gate closed behind him, Clarence locked it. When his wife turned upon him angrily, he said quietly,—
“I have no intention of restraining your liberty a moment after our interview is over, but until then I do not intend to be disturbed.”
She threw herself disdainfully back in her chair, her hands clasped in her lap in half-contemptuous resignation, with her eyes upon her long slim arched feet crossed before her. Even in her attitude there was something of her old fascination which, however, now seemed to sting Clarence to the quick.
“I have nothing to say to you in regard to what has just passed in this house, except that as long as I remain even nominally its master it shall not be repeated. Although I shall no longer attempt to influence or control your political sympathies, I shall not allow you to indulge them where in any way they seem to imply my sanction. But so little do I oppose your liberty, that you are free to rejoin your political companions whenever you choose to do so on your own responsibility. But I must first know from your own lips whether your sympathies are purely political—or a name for something else?”
She had alternately flushed and paled, although still keeping her scornful attitude as he went on, but there was no mistaking the genuineness of her vague wonderment at his concluding words.
“I don't understand you,” she said, lifting her eyes to his in a moment of cold curiosity. “What do you mean?”
“What do I mean? What did Judge Beeswinger mean when he called Captain Pinckney a double traitor?” he said roughly.
She sprang to her feet with flashing eyes. “And you—YOU! dare to repeat the cowardly lie of a confessed spy. This, then, is what you wished to tell me—this the insult for which you have kept me here; because you are incapable of understanding unselfish patriotism or devotion—even to your own cause—you dare to judge me by your own base, Yankee-trading standards. Yes, it is worthy of you!” She walked rapidly up and down, and then suddenly faced him. “I understand it all; I appreciate your magnanimity now. You are willing I should join the company of these chivalrous gentlemen in order to give color to your calumnies! Say at once that it was you who put up this spy to correspond with me—to come here—in order to entrap me. Yes entrap me—I—who a moment ago stood up for you before these gentlemen, and said you could not lie. Bah!”
Struck only by the wild extravagance of her speech and temper, Clarence did not know that when women are most illogical they are apt to be most sincere, and from a man's standpoint her unreasoning deductions appeared to him only as an affectation to gain time for thought, or a theatrical display, like Susy's. And he was turning half contemptuously away, when she again faced him with flashing eyes.
“Well, hear me! I accept; I leave here at once, to join my own people, my own friends—those who understand me—put what construction on it that you choose. Do your worst; you cannot do more to separate us than you have done just now.”
She left him, and ran up the steps with a singular return of her old occasional nymph-like nimbleness—the movement of a woman who had never borne children—and a swish of her long skirts that he remembered for many a day after, as she disappeared in the corridor. He remained looking after her—indignant, outraged, and unconvinced. There was a rattling at the gate.
He remembered he had locked it. He opened it to the flushed pink cheeks and dancing eyes of Susy. The rain was still dripping from her wet cloak as she swung it from her shoulders.
“I know it all!—all that's happened,” she burst out with half-girlish exuberance and half the actress's declamation. “We met them all in the road—posse and prisoners. Chief Thompson knew me and told me all. And so you've done it—and you're master in your old house again. Clarence, old boy! Jim said you wouldn't do it—said you'd weaken on account of her! But I said 'No.' I knew you better, old Clarence, and I saw it in your face, for all your stiffness! ha! But for all that I was mighty nervous and uneasy, and I just made Jim send an excuse to the theatre and we rushed it down here! Lordy! but it looks natural to see the old house again! And she—you packed her off with the others—didn't you? Tell me, Clarence,” in her old appealing voice, “you shook her, too!”
Dazed and astounded, and yet experiencing a vague sense of relief with something like his old tenderness towards the willful woman before him, he had silently regarded her until her allusion to his wife recalled him to himself.
“Hush!” he said quickly, with a glance towards the corridor.
“Ah!” said Susy, with a malicious smile, “then that's why Captain Pinckney was lingering in the rear with the deputy.”
“Silence!” repeated Clarence sternly. “Go in there,” pointing to the garden room below the balcony, “and wait there with your husband.”
He half led, half pushed her into the room which had been his business office, and returned to the patio. A hesitating voice from the balcony said, “Clarence!”
It was his wife's voice, but modified and gentler—more like her voice as he had first heard it, or as if it had been chastened by some reminiscence of those days. It was his wife's face, too, that looked down on his—paler than he had seen it since he entered the house. She was shawled and hooded, carrying a traveling-bag in her hand.
“I am going, Clarence,” she said, pausing before him, with gentle gravity, “but not in anger. I even ask you to forgive me for the foolish words that I think your still more foolish accusation”—she smiled faintly—“dragged from me. I am going because I know that I have brought—and that while I am here I shall always be bringing—upon you the imputation and even the responsibility of my own faith! While I am proud to own it,—and if needs be suffer for it,—I have no right to ruin your prospects, or even make you the victim of the slurs that others may cast upon me. Let us part as friends—separated only by our different political faiths, but keeping all other faiths together—until God shall settle the right of this struggle. Perhaps it may be soon—I sometimes think it may be years of agony for all; but until then, good-by.”
She had slowly descended the steps to the patio, looking handsomer than he had ever seen her, and as if sustained and upheld by the enthusiasm of her cause. Her hand was outstretched towards his—his heart beat violently—in another moment he might have forgotten all and clasped her to his breast. Suddenly she stopped, her outstretched arm stiffened, her finger pointed to the chair on which Susy's cloak was hanging.
“What's that?” she said in a sharp, high, metallic voice. “Who is here? Speak!”
“Susy,” said Clarence.
She cast a scathing glance round the patio, and then settled her piercing eyes on Clarence with a bitter smile.
“Already!”
Clarence felt the blood rush to his face as he stammered, “She knew what was happening here, and came to give you warning.”
“Liar!”
“Stop!” said Clarence, with a white face. “She came to tell me that Captain Pinckney was still lingering for you in the road.”
He threw open the gate to let her pass. As she swept out she lifted her hand. As he closed the gate there were the white marks of her four fingers on his cheek.
For once Susy had not exaggerated. Captain Pinckney WAS lingering, with the deputy who had charge of him, on the trail near the casa. It had already been pretty well understood by both captives and captors that the arrest was simply a legal demonstration; that the sympathizing Federal judge would undoubtedly order the discharge of the prisoners on their own recognizances, and it was probable that the deputy saw no harm in granting Pinckney's request—which was virtually only a delay in his liberation. It was also possible that Pinckney had worked upon the chivalrous sympathies of the man by professing his disinclination to leave their devoted colleague, Mrs. Brant, at the mercy of her antagonistic and cold-blooded husband at such a crisis, and it is to be feared also that Clarence, as a reputed lukewarm partisan, excited no personal sympathy, even from his own party. Howbeit, the deputy agreed to delay Pinckney's journey for a parting interview with his fair hostess.
How far this expressed the real sentiments of Captain Pinckney was never known. Whether his political association with Mrs. Brant had developed into a warmer solicitude, understood or ignored by her,—what were his hopes and aspirations regarding her future,—were by the course of fate never disclosed. A man of easy ethics, but rigid artificialities of honor, flattered and pampered by class prejudice, a so-called “man of the world,” with no experience beyond his own limited circle, yet brave and devoted to that, it were well perhaps to leave this last act of his inefficient life as it was accepted by the deputy.
Dismounting he approached the house from the garden. He was already familiar with the low arched doorway which led to the business room, and from which he could gain admittance to the patio, but it so chanced that he entered the dark passage at the moment that Clarence had thrust Susy into the business room, and heard its door shut sharply. For an instant he believed that Mrs. Brant had taken refuge there, but as he cautiously moved forward he heard her voice in the patio beyond. Its accents struck him as pleading; an intense curiosity drew him further along the passage. Suddenly her voice seemed to change to angry denunciation, and the word “Liar” rang upon his ears. It was followed by his own name uttered sardonically by Clarence, the swift rustle of a skirt, the clash of the gate, and then—forgetting everything, he burst into the patio.
Clarence was just turning from the gate with the marks of his wife's hand still red on his white cheek. He saw Captain Pinckney's eyes upon it, and the faint, half-malicious, half-hysteric smile upon his lips. But without a start or gesture of surprise he locked the gate, and turning to him, said with frigid significance,—
“I thank you for returning so promptly, and for recognizing the only thing I now require at your hand.”
But Captain Pinckney had recovered his supercilious ease with the significant demand.
“You seem to have had something already from another's hand, sir, but I am at your service,” he said lightly.
“You will consider that I have accepted it from you,” said Clarence, drawing closer to him with a rigid face. “I suppose it will not be necessary for me to return it—to make you understand me.”
“Go on,” said Pinckney, flushing slightly. “Make your terms; I am ready.”
“But I'm not,” said the unexpected voice of the deputy at the grille of the gateway. “Excuse my interfering, gentlemen, but this sort o' thing ain't down in my schedule. I've let this gentleman,” pointing to Captain Pinckney, “off for a minit to say 'good-by' to a lady, who I reckon has just ridden off in her buggy with her servant without saying by your leave, but I didn't calkelate to let him inter another business, which, like as not, may prevent me from delivering his body safe and sound into court. You hear me!” As Clarence opened the gate he added, “I don't want ter spoil sport between gents, but it's got to come in after I've done my duty.”
“I'll meet you, sir, anywhere, and with what weapons you choose,” said Pinckney, turning angrily upon Clarence, “as soon as this farce—for which you and your friends are responsible—is over.” He was furious at the intimation that Mrs. Brant had escaped him.
A different thought was in the husband's mind. “But what assurance have I that you are going on with the deputy?” he said with purposely insulting deliberation.
“My word, sir,” said Captain Pinckney sharply.
“And if that ain't enuff, there's mine!” said the deputy. “For if this gentleman swerves to the right or left betwixt this and Santa Inez, I'll blow a hole through him myself. And that,” he added deprecatingly, “is saying a good deal for a man who doesn't want to spoil sport, and for the matter of that is willing to stand by and see fair play done at Santa Inez any time to-morrow before breakfast.”
“Then I can count on you,” said Clarence, with a sudden impulse extending his hand.
The man hesitated a moment and then grasped it.
“Well, I wasn't expecting that,” he said slowly; “but you look as if you meant business, and if you ain't got anybody else to see you through, I'm thar! I suppose this gentleman will have his friends.”
“I shall be there at six with my seconds,” said Pinckney curtly. “Lead on.”
The gate closed behind them. Clarence stood looking around the empty patio and the silent house, from which it was now plain that the servants had been withdrawn to insure the secrecy of the conspiracy. Cool and collected as he knew he was, he remained for a moment in hesitation. Then the sound of voices came to his ear from the garden room, the light frivolity of Susy's laugh and Hooker's huskier accents. He had forgotten they were there—he had forgotten their existence!
Trusting still to his calmness, he called to Hooker in his usual voice. That gentleman appeared with a face which his attempts to make unconcerned and impassive had, however, only deepened into funereal gravity.
“I have something to attend to,” said Clarence, with a faint smile, “and I must ask you and Susy to excuse me for a little while. She knows the house perfectly, and will call the servants from the annex to provide you both with refreshment until I join you a little later.” Satisfied from Hooker's manner that they knew nothing of his later interview with Pinckney, he turned away and ascended to his own room.
There he threw himself into an armchair by the dim light of a single candle as if to reflect. But he was conscious, even then, of his own calmness and want of excitement, and that no reflection was necessary. What he had done and what he intended to do was quite clear, there was no alternative suggested or to be even sought after. He had that sense of relief which comes with the climax of all great struggles, even of defeat.
He had never known before how hopeless and continuous had been that struggle until now it was over. He had no fear of tomorrow, he would meet it as he had to-day, with the same singular consciousness of being equal to the occasion. There was even no necessity of preparation for it; his will, leaving his fortune to his wife,—which seemed a slight thing now in this greater separation,—was already in his safe in San Francisco, his pistols were in the next room. He was even slightly disturbed by his own insensibility, and passed into his wife's bedroom partly in the hope of disturbing his serenity by some memento of their past. There was no disorder of flight—everything was in its place, except the drawer of her desk, which was still open, as if she had taken something from it as an afterthought. There were letters and papers there, some of his own and some in Captain Pinckney's handwriting. It did not occur to him to look at them—even to justify himself, or excuse her. He knew that his hatred of Captain Pinckney was not so much that he believed him her lover, as his sudden conviction that she was like him! He was the male of her species—a being antagonistic to himself, whom he could fight, and crush, and revenge himself upon. But most of all he loathed his past, not on account of her, but of his own weakness that had made him her dupe and a misunderstood man to his friends. He had been derelict of duty in his unselfish devotion to her; he had stifled his ambition, and underrated his own possibilities. No wonder that others had accepted him at his own valuation. Clarence Brant was a modest man, but the egotism of modesty is more fatal than that of pretension, for it has the haunting consciousness of superior virtue.
He re-entered his own room and again threw himself into his chair. His calm was being succeeded by a physical weariness; he remembered he had not slept the night before, and he ought to take some rest to be fresh in the early morning. Yet he must also show himself before his self-invited guests,—Susy and her husband,—or their suspicions would be aroused. He would try to sleep for a little while in the chair before he went downstairs again. He closed his eyes oddly enough on a dim dreamy recollection of Susy in the old days, in the little madrono hollow where she had once given him a rendezvous. He forgot the maturer and critical uneasiness with which he had then received her coquettish and willful advances, which he now knew was the effect of the growing dominance of Mrs. Peyton over him, and remembered only her bright, youthful eyes, and the kisses he had pressed upon her soft fragrant cheek. The faintness he had felt when waiting in the old rose garden, a few hours ago, seemed to steal on him once more, and to lapse into a pleasant drowsiness. He even seemed again to inhale the perfume of the roses.
“Clarence!”
He started. He had been sleeping, but the voice sounded strangely real.
A light, girlish laugh followed. He sprang to his feet. It was Susy standing beside him—and Susy even as she looked in the old days!
For with a flash of her old audacity, aided by her familiar knowledge of the house and the bunch of household keys she had found, which dangled from her girdle, as in the old fashion, she had disinterred one of her old frocks from a closet, slipped it on, and unloosening her brown hair had let it fall in rippling waves down her back. It was Susy in her old girlishness, with the instinct of the grown actress in the arrangement of her short skirt over her pretty ankles and the half-conscious pose she had taken.
“Poor dear old Clarence,” she said, with dancing eyes; “I might have won a dozen pairs of gloves from you while you slept there. But you're tired, dear old boy, and you've had a hard time of it. No matter; you've shown yourself a man at last, and I'm proud of you.”
Half ashamed of the pleasure he felt even in his embarrassment, Clarence stammered, “But this change—this dress.”
Susy clapped her hands like a child. “I knew it would surprise you! It's an old frock I wore the year I went away with auntie. I knew where it was hidden, and fished it out again with these keys, Clarence; it seemed so like old times. Lord! when I was with the old servants again, and you didn't come down, I just felt as if I'd never been away, and I just rampaged free. It seemed to me, don't you know, not as if I'd just come, but as if I'd always been right here, and it was you who'd just come. Don't you understand! Just as you came when me and Mary Rogers were here; don't you remember her, Clarence, and how she used to do 'gooseberry' for us? Well, just like that. So I said to Jim, 'I don't know you any more—get!' and I just slipped on this frock and ordered Manuela around as I used to do—and she in fits of laughter; I reckon, Clarence, she hasn't laughed as much since I left. And then I thought of you—perhaps worried and flustered as yet over things, and the change, and I just slipped into the kitchen and I told old fat Conchita to make some of these tortillas you know,—with sugar and cinnamon sprinkled on top,—and I tied on an apron and brought 'em up to you on a tray with a glass of that old Catalan wine you used to like. Then I sorter felt frightened when I got here, and I didn't hear any noise, and I put the tray down in the hall and peeped in and found you asleep. Sit still, I'll fetch em.”
She tripped out into the passage, returning with the tray, which she put on the table beside Clarence, and then standing back a little and with her hands tucked soubrette fashion in the tiny pockets of her apron, gazed at him with a mischievous smile.
It was impossible not to smile back as he nibbled the crisp Mexican cake and drank the old mission wine. And Susy's tongue trilled an accompaniment to his thanks.
“Lord! it seems so nice to be here—just you and me, Clarence—like in the old days—with nobody naggin' and swoopin' round after you. Don't be greedy, Clarence, but give me a cake.” She took one and finished the dregs of his glass.
Then sitting on the arm of his chair, she darted a violet ray of half reproach and half mischievousness into his amused and retrospective eyes. “There used to be room for two in that chair, Klarns.”
The use of the old childish diminutive for his name seemed to him natural as her familiarity, and he moved a little sideways to make room for her with an instinct of pleasure, but the same sense of irresponsibility that had characterized his reflections. Nevertheless, he looked critically into the mischievous eyes, and said quietly,—
“Where is your husband?”
There was no trace of embarrassment, apology, or even of consciousness in her pretty face as she replied, passing her hand lightly through his hair,—
“Oh, Jim? I've packed him off!”
“Packed him off!” echoed Clarence, slightly astonished.
“Yes, to Fair Plains, full tilt after your wife's buggy. You see, Clarence, after the old cat—that's your wife, please—left, I wanted to make sure she had gone, and wasn't hangin' round to lead you off again with your leg tied to her apron string like a chicken's! No! I said to Jim, 'Just you ride after her until you see she's safe and sound in the down coach from Fair Plains without her knowin' it, and if she's inclined to hang back or wobble any, you post back here and let me know!' I told him I would stay and look after you to see you didn't bolt too!” She laughed, and then added, “But I didn't think I should fall into the old ways so soon, and have such a nice time. Did you, Clarence?”
She looked so irresponsible, sitting there with her face near his, and so childishly, or perhaps thoughtlessly, happy, that he could only admire her levity, and even the slight shock that her flippant allusion to his wife had given him seemed to him only a weakness of his own. After all, was not hers the true philosophy? Why should not these bright eyes see things more clearly than his own? Nevertheless, with his eyes still fixed upon them, he continued,—
“And Jim was willing to go?”
She stopped, with her fingers still lifting a lock of his hair. “Why, yes, you silly—why shouldn't he? I'd like to see him refuse. Why, Lord! Jim will do anything I ask him.” She put down the lock of hair, and suddenly looking full into his eyes, said, “That's just the difference between him and me, and you and—that woman!”
“Then you love him!”
“About as much as you love her,” she said, with an unaffected laugh; “only he don't wind me around his finger.”
No doubt she was right for all her thoughtlessness, and yet he was going to fight about that woman to-morrow! No—he forgot; he was going to fight Captain Pinckney because he was like her!
Susy had put her finger on the crease between his brows which this supposition had made, and tried to rub it out.
“You know it as well as I do, Clarence,” she said, with a pretty wrinkling of her own brows, which was her nearest approach to thoughtfulness. “You know you never really liked her, only you thought her ways were grander and more proper than mine, and you know you were always a little bit of a snob and a prig too—dear boy. And Mrs. Peyton was—bless my soul!—a Benham and a planter's daughter, and I—I was only a picked-up orphan! That's where Jim is better than you—now sit still, goosey!—even if I don't like him as much. Oh, I know what you're always thinking, you're thinking we're both exaggerated and theatrical, ain't you? But don't you think it's a heap better to be exaggerated and theatrical about things that are just sentimental and romantic than to be so awfully possessed and overcome about things that are only real? There, you needn't stare at me so! It's true. You've had your fill of grandeur and propriety, and—here you are. And,” she added with a little chuckle, as she tucked up her feet and leaned a little closer to him, “here's ME.”
He did not speak, but his arm quite unconsciously passed round her small waist.
“You see, Clarence,” she went on with equal unconsciousness of the act, “you ought never to have let me go—never! You ought to have kept me here—or run away with me. And you oughtn't to have tried to make me proper. And you oughtn't to have driven me to flirt with that horrid Spaniard, and you oughtn't to have been so horribly cold and severe when I did. And you oughtn't to have made me take up with Jim, who was the only one who thought me his equal. I might have been very silly and capricious; I might have been very vain, but my vanity isn't a bit worse than your pride; my love of praise and applause in the theatre isn't a bit more horrid than your fears of what people might think of you or me. That's gospel truth, isn't it, Clarence? Tell me! Don't look that way and this—look at ME! I ain't poisonous, Clarence. Why, one of your cheeks is redder than the other, Clarence; that's the one that's turned from me. Come,” she went on, taking the lapels of his coat between her hands and half shaking him, half drawing him nearer her bright face. “Tell me—isn't it true?”
“I was thinking of you just now when I fell asleep, Susy,” he said. He did not know why he said it; he had not intended to tell her, he had only meant to avoid a direct answer to her question; yet even now he went on. “And I thought of you when I was out there in the rose garden waiting to come in here.”
“You did?” she said, drawing in her breath. A wave of delicate pink color came up to her very eyes, it seemed to him as quickly and as innocently as when she was a girl. “And what DID you think, Klarns,” she half whispered—“tell me.”
He did not speak, but answered her blue eyes and then her lips, as her arms slipped quite naturally around his neck.
The dawn was breaking as Clarence and Jim Hooker emerged together from the gate of the casa. Mr. Hooker looked sleepy. He had found, after his return from Fair Plains, that his host had an early engagement at Santa Inez, and he had insisted upon rising to see him off. It was with difficulty, indeed, that Clarence could prevent his accompanying him. Clarence had not revealed to Susy the night before the real object of his journey, nor did Hooker evidently suspect it, yet when the former had mounted his horse, he hesitated for an instant, extending his hand.
“If I should happen to be detained,” he began with a half smile.
But Jim was struggling with a yawn. “That's all right—don't mind us,” he said, stretching his arms. Clarence's hesitating hand dropped to his side, and with a light reckless laugh and a half sense of providential relief he galloped away.
What happened immediately thereafter during his solitary ride to Santa Inez, looking back upon it in after years, seemed but a confused recollection, more like a dream. The long stretches of vague distance, gradually opening clearer with the rising sun in an unclouded sky; the meeting with a few early or belated travelers and his unconscious avoidance of them, as if they might know of his object; the black shadows of foreshortened cattle rising before him on the plain and arousing the same uneasy sensation of their being waylaying men; the wondering recognition of houses and landmarks he had long been familiar with; his purposeless attempts to recall the circumstances in which he had known them—all these were like a dream. So, too, were the recollections of the night before, the episode with Susy, already mingled and blended with the memory of their previous past; his futile attempts to look forward to the future, always, however, abandoned with relief at the thought that the next few hours might make them unnecessary. So also was the sudden realization that Santa Inez was before him, when he had thought he was not yet halfway there, and as he dismounted before the Court House his singular feeling—followed, however, by no fear or distress—was that he had come so early to the rendezvous that he was not yet quite prepared for it.
This same sense of unreality pervaded his meeting with the deputy sheriff, at the news that the Federal judge had, as was expected, dismissed the prisoners on their own recognizances, and that Captain Pinckney was at the hotel at breakfast. In the like abstracted manner he replied to the one or two questions of the deputy, exhibited the pistols he had brought with him, and finally accompanied him to a little meadow hidden by trees, below the hotel, where the other principal and his seconds were awaiting them. And here he awoke—clear-eyed, keen, forceful, and intense!
So stimulated were his faculties that his sense of hearing in its acuteness took in every word of the conversation between the seconds, a few paces distant. He heard his adversary's seconds say carelessly to the deputy sheriff, “I presume this is a case where there will be no apology or mediation,” and the deputy's reply, “I reckon my man means business, but he seems a little queer.” He heard the other second laugh, and say lightly, “They're apt to be so when it's their first time out,” followed by the more anxious aside of the other second as the deputy turned away,—“Yes, but by G-d I don't like his looks!” His sense of sight was also so acute that having lost the choice of position, when the coin was tossed, and being turned with his face to the sun, even through the glare he saw, with unerring distinctness of outline, the black-coated figure of his opponent moved into range—saw the perfect outline of his features, and how the easy, supercilious smile, as he threw away his cigar, appeared to drop out of his face with a kind of vacant awe as he faced him. He felt his nerves become as steel as the counting began, and at the word “three,” knew he had fired by the recoil of the pistol in his leveled hand, simultaneously with its utterance. And at the same moment, still standing like a rock, he saw his adversary miserably collapse, his legs grotesquely curving inwards under him,—without even the dignity of death in his fall,—and so sink helplessly like a felled bull to the ground. Still erect, and lowering only the muzzle of his pistol, as a thin feather of smoke curled up its shining side, he saw the doctor and seconds run quickly to the heap, try to lift its limp impotence into shape, and let it drop again with the words, “Right through the forehead, by G-d!”
“You've done for him,” said the deputy, turning to Clarence with a singular look of curiosity, “and I reckon you had better get out of this mighty quick. They didn't expect it; they're just ragin'; they may round on you—and”—he added, more slowly, “they seem to have just found out who you are.”
Even while he was speaking, Clarence, with his quickened ear, heard the words, “One of Hamilton Brant's pups” “Just like his father,” from the group around the dead man. He did not hesitate, but walked coolly towards them. Yet a certain fierce pride—which he had never known before—stirred in his veins as their voices hushed and they half recoiled before him.
“Am I to understand from my second, gentlemen,” he said, looking round the group, “that you are not satisfied?”
“The fight was square enough,” said Pinckney's second in some embarrassment, “but I reckon that he,” pointing to the dead man, “did not know who you were.”
“Do you mean that he did not know that I was the son of a man proficient in the use of arms?”
“I reckon that's about it,” returned the second, glancing at the others.
“I am glad to say, sir, that I have a better opinion of his courage,” said Clarence, lifting his hat to the dead body as he turned away.
Yet he was conscious of no remorse, concern, or even pity in his act. Perhaps this was visible in his face, for the group appeared awed by this perfection of the duelist's coolness, and even returned his formal parting salutation with a vague and timid respect. He thanked the deputy, regained the hotel, saddled his horse and galloped away.
But not towards the Rancho. Now that he could think of his future, that had no place in his reflections; even the episode of Susy was forgotten in the new and strange conception of himself and his irresponsibility which had come upon him with the killing of Pinckney and the words of his second. It was his dead father who had stiffened his arm and directed the fatal shot! It was hereditary influences—which others had been so quick to recognize—that had brought about this completing climax of his trouble. How else could he account for it that he—a conscientious, peaceful, sensitive man, tender and forgiving as he had believed himself to be—could now feel so little sorrow or compunction for his culminating act? He had read of successful duelists who were haunted by remorse for their first victim; who retained a terrible consciousness of the appearance of the dead man; he had no such feeling; he had only a grim contentment in the wiped-out inefficient life, and contempt for the limp and helpless body. He suddenly recalled his callousness as a boy when face to face with the victims of the Indian massacre, his sense of fastidious superciliousness in the discovery of the body of Susy's mother!—surely it was the cold blood of his father influencing him ever thus. What had he to do with affection, with domestic happiness, with the ordinary ambitions of man's life—whose blood was frozen at its source! Yet even with this very thought came once more the old inconsistent tenderness he had as a boy lavished upon the almost unknown and fugitive father who had forsaken his childish companionship, and remembered him only by secret gifts. He remembered how he had worshiped him even while the pious padres at San Jose were endeavoring to eliminate this terrible poison from his blood and combat his hereditary instinct in his conflicts with his school-fellows. And it was a part of this inconsistency that, riding away from the scene of his first bloodshed, his eyes were dimmed with moisture, not for his victim, but for the one being who he believed had impelled him to the act.
This and more was in his mind during his long ride to Fair Plains, his journey by coach to the Embarcadero, his midnight passage across the dark waters of the bay, and his re-entrance to San Francisco, but what should be his future was still unsettled.
As he wound round the crest of Russian Hill and looked down again upon the awakened city, he was startled to see that it was fluttering and streaming with bunting. From every public building and hotel, from the roofs of private houses, and even the windows of lonely dwellings, flapped and waved the striped and starry banner. The steady breath of the sea carried it out from masts and yards of ships at their wharves, from the battlements of the forts Alcatraz and Yerba Bueno. He remembered that the ferryman had told him that the news from Fort Sumter had swept the city with a revulsion of patriotic sentiment, and that there was no doubt that the State was saved to the Union. He looked down upon it with haggard, bewildered eyes, and then a strange gasp and fullness of the throat! For afar a solitary bugle had blown the “reveille” at Fort Alcatraz.
Night at last, and the stir and tumult of a great fight over. Even the excitement that had swept this portion of the battlefield—only a small section of a vaster area of struggle—into which a brigade had marched, held its own, been beaten back, recovered its ground, and pursuing, had passed out of it forever, leaving only its dead behind, and knowing nothing more of that struggle than its own impact and momentum—even this wild excitement had long since evaporated with the stinging smoke of gunpowder, the acrid smell of burning rags from the clothing of a dead soldier fired by a bursting shell, or the heated reek of sweat and leather. A cool breath that seemed to bring back once more the odor of the upturned earthworks along the now dumb line of battle began to move from the suggestive darkness beyond.
But into that awful penetralia of death and silence there was no invasion—there had been no retreat. A few of the wounded had been brought out, under fire, but the others had been left with the dead for the morning light and succor. For it was known that in that horrible obscurity, riderless horses, frantic with the smell of blood, galloped wildly here and there, or, maddened by wounds, plunged furiously at the intruder; that the wounded soldier, still armed, could not always distinguish friend from foe or from the ghouls of camp followers who stripped the dead in the darkness and struggled with the dying. A shot or two heard somewhere in that obscurity counted as nothing with the long fusillade that had swept it in the daytime; the passing of a single life, more or less, amounted to little in the long roll-call of the day's slaughter.
But with the first beams of the morning sun—and the slowly moving “relief detail” from the camp—came a weird half-resurrection of that ghastly field. Then it was that the long rays of sunlight, streaming away a mile beyond the battle line, pointed out the first harvest of the dead where the reserves had been posted. There they lay in heaps and piles, killed by solid shot or bursting shells that had leaped the battle line to plunge into the waiting ranks beyond. As the sun lifted higher its beams fell within the range of musketry fire, where the dead lay thicker,—even as they had fallen when killed outright,—with arms extended and feet at all angles to the field. As it touched these dead upturned faces, strangely enough it brought out no expression of pain or anguish—but rather as if death had arrested them only in surprise and awe. It revealed on the lips of those who had been mortally wounded and had turned upon their side the relief which death had brought their suffering, sometimes shown in a faint smile. Mounting higher, it glanced upon the actual battle line, curiously curving for the shelter of walls, fences, and breastworks, and here the dead lay, even as when they lay and fired, their faces prone in the grass but their muskets still resting across the breastworks. Exposed to grape and canister from the battery on the ridge, death had come to them mercifully also—through the head and throat. And now the whole field lay bare in the sunlight, broken with grotesque shadows cast from sitting, crouching, half-recumbent but always rigid figures, which might have been effigies on their own monuments. One half-kneeling soldier, with head bowed between his stiffened hands, might have stood for a carven figure of Grief at the feet of his dead comrade. A captain, shot through the brain in the act of mounting a wall, lay sideways half across it, his lips parted with a word of command; his sword still pointing over the barrier the way that they should go.
But it was not until the sun had mounted higher that it struck the central horror of the field and seemed to linger there in dazzling persistence, now and then returning to it in startling flashes that it might be seen of men and those who brought succor. A tiny brook had run obliquely near the battle line. It was here that, the night before the battle, friend and foe had filled their canteens side by side with soldierly recklessness—or perhaps a higher instinct—purposely ignoring each other's presence; it was here that the wounded had afterwards crept, crawled, and dragged themselves, here they had pushed, wrangled, striven, and fought for a draught of that precious fluid which assuaged the thirst of their wounds—or happily put them out of their misery forever; here overborne, crushed, suffocated by numbers, pouring their own blood into the flood, and tumbling after it with their helpless bodies, they dammed the stream, until recoiling, red and angry, it had burst its banks and overflowed the cotton-field in a broad pool that now sparkled in the sunlight. But below this human dam—a mile away—where the brook still crept sluggishly, the ambulance horses sniffed and started from it.
The detail moved on slowly, doing their work expeditiously, and apparently callously, but really only with that mechanical movement that saves emotion. Only once they were moved to an outbreak of indignation,—the discovery of the body of an officer whose pockets were turned inside out, but whose hand was still tightly grasped on his buttoned waistcoat, as if resisting the outrage that had been done while still in life. As the men disengaged the stiffened hand something slipped from the waistcoat to the ground. The corporal picked it up and handed it to his officer. It was a sealed packet. The officer received it with the carelessness which long experience of these pathetic missives from the dying to their living relations had induced, and dropped it in the pocket of his tunic, with the half-dozen others that he had picked up that morning, and moved on with the detail. A little further on they halted, in the attitude of attention, as a mounted officer appeared, riding slowly down the line.
There was something more than the habitual respect of their superior in their faces as he came forward. For it was the general who had commanded the brigade the day before,—the man who had leaped with one bound into the foremost rank of military leaders. It was his invincible spirit that had led the advance, held back defeat against overwhelming numbers, sustained the rally, impressed his subordinate officers with his own undeviating purpose, and even infused them with an almost superstitious belief in his destiny of success. It was this man who had done what it was deemed impossible to do,—what even at the time it was thought unwise and unstrategic to do,—who had held a weak position, of apparently no importance, under the mandate of an incomprehensible order from his superior, which at best asked only for a sacrifice and was rewarded with a victory. He had decimated his brigade, but the wounded and dying had cheered him as he passed, and the survivors had pursued the enemy until the bugle called them back. For such a record he looked still too young and scholarly, albeit his handsome face was dark and energetic, and his manner taciturn.
His quick eye had already caught sight of the rifled body of the officer, and contracted. As the captain of the detail saluted him he said curtly,—
“I thought the orders were to fire upon any one desecrating the dead?”
“They are, General; but the hyenas don't give us a chance. That's all yonder poor fellow saved from their claws,” replied the officer, as he held up the sealed packet. “It has no address.”
The general took it, examined the envelope, thrust it into his belt, and said,—
“I will take charge of it.”
The sound of horses' hoofs came from the rocky roadside beyond the brook. Both men turned. A number of field officers were approaching.
“The division staff,” said the captain, in a lower voice, falling back.
They came slowly forward, a central figure on a gray horse leading here—as in history. A short, thick-set man with a grizzled beard closely cropped around an inscrutable mouth, and the serious formality of a respectable country deacon in his aspect, which even the major-generals blazon on the shoulder-strap of his loose tunic on his soldierly seat in the saddle could not entirely obliterate. He had evidently perceived the general of brigade, and quickened his horse as the latter drew up. The staff followed more leisurely, but still with some curiosity, to witness the meeting of the first general of the army with the youngest. The division general saluted, but almost instantly withdrew his leathern gauntlet, and offered his bared hand to the brigadier. The words of heroes are scant. The drawn-up detail, the waiting staff listened. This was all they heard:—
“Halleck tells me you're from California?”
“Yes, General.”
“Ah! I lived there, too, in the early days.”
“Wonderful country. Developed greatly since my time, I suppose?”
“Yes, General.”
“Great resources; finest wheat-growing country in the world, sir. You don't happen to know what the actual crop was this year?”
“Hardly, General! but something enormous.”
“Yes, I have always said it would be. Have a cigar?”
He handed his cigar-case to the brigadier. Then he took one himself, lighted it at the smouldering end of the one he had taken from his mouth, was about to throw the stump carelessly down, but, suddenly recollecting himself, leaned over his horse, and dropped it carefully a few inches away from the face of a dead soldier. Then, straightening himself in the saddle, he shoved his horse against the brigadier, moving him a little further on, while a slight movement of his hand kept the staff from following.
“A heavy loss here!”
“I'm afraid so, General.”
“It couldn't be helped. We had to rush in your brigade to gain time, and occupy the enemy, until we could change front.”
The young general looked at the shrewd, cold eyes of his chief.
“Change front?” he echoed.
“Yes. Before a gun was fired, we discovered that the enemy was in complete possession of all our plans, and knew every detail of our forward movement. All had to be changed.”
The younger man now instantly understood the incomprehensible order of the day before.
The general of division continued, with his first touch of official formality,—
“You understand, therefore, General Brant, that in the face of this extraordinary treachery, the utmost vigilance is required, and a complete surveillance of your camp followers and civilians, to detect the actual spy within our lines, or the traitor we are harboring, who has become possessed of this information. You will overhaul your brigade, and weed out all suspects, and in the position which you are to take to-morrow, and the plantation you will occupy, you will see that your private quarters, as well as your lines, are cleared of all but those you can vouch for.”
He reined in his horse, again extended his hand, saluted, and rejoined his staff.
Brigadier-General Clarence Brant remained for a moment with his head bent in thoughtful contemplation of the coolness of his veteran chief under this exciting disclosure, and the strategy with which he had frustrated the traitor's success. Then his eye caught the sealed packet in his belt. He mechanically drew it out, and broke the seal. The envelope was filled with papers and memorandums. But as he looked at them his face darkened and his brow knit. He glanced quickly around him. The staff had trotted away; the captain and his detail were continuing their work at a little distance. He took a long breath, for he was holding in his hand a tracing of their camp, even of the position he was to occupy tomorrow, and a detailed account of the movements, plans, and force of the whole division as had been arranged in council of war the day before the battle! But there was no indication of the writer or his intentions.
He thrust the papers hurriedly back into the envelope, but placed it, this time, in his breast. He galloped towards the captain.
“Let me see again the officer from whom you took that packet!”
The captain led him to where the body lay, with others, extended more decently on the grass awaiting removal. General Brant with difficulty repressed an ejaculation.
“Why, it's one of our own men,” he said quickly.
“Yes, General. They say it's Lieutenant Wainwright, a regular, of the paymaster general's department.”
“Then what was he doing here?” asked General Brant sternly.
“I can't make out, sir, unless he went into the last advance as a volunteer. Wanted to see the fight, I suppose. He was a dashing fellow, a West Pointer,—and a Southerner, too,—a Virginian.”
“A Southerner!” echoed Brant quickly.
“Yes, sir.”
“Search him again,” said Brant quietly. He had recovered his usual coolness, and as the captain again examined the body, he took out his tablets and wrote a few lines. It was an order to search the quarters of Lieutenant Wainwright and bring all papers, letters, and documents to him. He then beckoned one of the detail towards him. “Take that to the provost marshal at once. Well, Captain,” he added calmly, as the officer again approached him, “what do you find?”
“Only this, sir,” returned the captain, with a half smile, producing a small photograph. “I suppose it was overlooked, too.”
He handed it to Brant.
There was a sudden fixing of his commanding officer's eyes, but his face did not otherwise change.
“It's the usual find, General. Always a photograph! But this time a handsome woman!”
“Very,” said Clarence Brant quietly. It was the portrait of his own wife.