Necromancy in a Thunder-Storm—A very Improper "Joining of Hands"—Bell Crawford's Eyes, and other Eyes—Two Pictures in the Dusseldorf—A Thunder-Clap and a Shriek—The Red Woman without a Mask.
It was perhaps four o'clock in the afternoon when the trio of fortune-seekers reached the door that had been designated by the advertisement as No. — Prince Street; and the fiery heat that had been pouring down during all the earlier part of the day was somewhat moderated by heavy clouds rising in the West and skimming half the upper sky, indicating a thunder-storm rapidly approaching. Perhaps Tom Leslie thought, as he approached the door sacred to the sublime mysteries of humbug, of the appropriateness of thunder in the heavens and lightning playing down on the beaten earth—provided heshouldfind the mysterious woman of the Rue la Reynie Ogniard, who had succeeded in giving to his frank and bold spirit the only shock it had ever received from the powers of the supernatural world. Perhaps he felt that for whatever was to come—melancholy jest or terrible earnest—the bursting roar of the warring elements would be a fitting accompaniment, to lend it a little dignity in the one event and to distract the overstrained attention in the other.
Perhaps he was even a little theatrical in his fancies, and remembered the crashes of sheet-iron thunder and the blinding blaze of the gunpowder lightning, that always accompanied the shot-cylinder rain when Macbeth was seeking the weird sisters for the second time—when the fearful incantations of "Der Freischutz" were about to be commenced—or when the ever-ready demon was invoked by Faust, the first printer-devil. If he had any of these fancies he was in a fair way of being accommodated; for casting a glance up at the heavens as they approached the house, he saw that the obscurity was becoming still denser; and more than once, above the rumble of the carts and omnibuses that made Broadway one wide earthquake of subterranean noises, he caught a far-off booming that he knew to be the thunder of the advancing storm, already playing its fearful overture among the mountains of Pennsylvania.
His companions were too much absorbed by the novelty of their errand, and a little expressed apprehension on the part of Bell that if the rain came on and the carriage should not be ready at the exact moment when it was wanted, her costly summer drapery might run a chance of being wetted and disordered,—to make any close examination of the outside of the building at the door of which Leslie rang; and indeed they had not the same reason for remarking any peculiarities. Leslie saw that it was certainly the same at which Harding and himself had stood two nights before—that the tree (histree, for had he not "hugged" it?—and who shall dare, in this proper age, to "hug" what is not his own?)—that the tree stood in the relation he remembered, to the window—and that at that window the same white curtain was visible, though not swept back, and now covering all the sash completely. He almost thought that he could distinguish the flag in the pavement on which he must have struck the hardest when tumbling down from the tree, and his vivid imagination would not have been much surprised to see a slight dint there, such as may be made on a tin pot or a stovepipe by the iconoclastic hammer in the hand of an exuberant four-year-old.
On one of the lintels of the door, as he had not noticed on the previous visit, was a narrow strip of black japanned tin, with "Madame Elise Boutell" in small bronze letters, of that back-slope writing only made by French painters, and which can only be met with, ordinarily, in the French cities or those of the adjacent German provinces. It seems unlikely that any particular attention should have been paid to the latter unimportant detail at that moment; but the detail was reallynotan unimportant one. Among the half-working amusements of his idle hours in youth, Leslie had indulged in a little amateur sign-painting, and he boasted that he could distinguish one of the cities of the Union from any other, by the styles of the signs alone, if he should be set down blindfold in the commercial centre, and then allowed the use of his eyes. In the present instance, by the use of his quick faculty of observation, he saw that the lettering of the sign was no American imitation, but really French. The deductions were that it had been done in Paris—that it had been used there—that "Madame Elise Boutell" had used it for the same purpose there. Was not here a corroboration of the theory of the Rue la Reynie Ogniard?
All these observations, of course, had been made very briefly—in the little time necessary for Bell Crawford finally to congratulate herself that the ribbons of her hat would at least be sheltered by the house for a time, and for Joe Harris to remark what a dirty and tumble-down precinct Prince Street seemed to be, altogether. By this time, the ring was answered and the door opened by a neatly dressed negro girl, who seemed to have none of the peculiarities of the race except its color, and of whom Leslie asked:
"Madame Boutell? Can we see her?"
"If Monsieur and Mesdames will have the goodness to step into this room," was the reply of the servant, opening the door of the parlor, "Madame Boutell will have the honor of receiving them in a few moments."
"Aha!" said Leslie to himself, as they entered the room, the door closed and the negro-girl disappeared. "Aha! 'Monsieur' and 'Mesdames,' besides being marvellously correct in her speech and polite enough for a French dancing master! All this looks more and more suspicious."
"Nothing so very terrible here," remarked Josephine Harris, at once addressing her attention to some excellent prints, commonly framed, hanging on the wall. "Some of these pictures are very nice, and as I could throw away the frames, I should not much mind hooking them if I had a good opportunity."
"But the piano is shockingly out of tune," remarked Bell, who had immediately commenced a listless kind of assault on that ill-used indispensable of all rooms in which people are expected to wait.
"Bell, for conscience sake leave that piano alone! You have nearly murdered the one at home, and I do not see why you should be the enemy of the whole race!" was the complimentary reply of Josephine, which caused Bell, with a little pout on her lip, to leave the piano and commence tapping the cheap bronzes on the mantel with the end of her parasol, by way of discovering whether they were metal or plaster.
Just then there were steps in the hall, the outer door opened, and Joe, running suddenly to the window, was enabled to catch a glimpse through the blinds, of a gentleman and a lady passing down the steps from the door and walking hurriedly towards Broadway. The next moment the door from the hall opened, and the negro girl, stepping within, said:
"Madame Boutell will have the honor to receive Monsieur and Mesdames, if they will be so good as to ascend the stairs."
"Now for it," said Joe, touching Leslie's arm with a little bit of shudder, real or affected, and speaking in a tone so low that it seemed designed only for his ear and flattered that male person's vanity amazingly. "Now for it!—I have never been anywhere near the infernal regions before, to my knowledge, and you must take care of us!"
"I willtry—Miss Harris—may I not say Josephine?" was the reply of Leslie, who, though he had said very little in that direction, kept his eyes pretty closely on the wild female counterpart of himself, and was really getting on somewhat rapidly towards an entanglement.
The apartment into which the seekers after information (ornoinformation) were ushered, was reached by ascending an old-fashioned stair, through a hall not very well lighted, even in a summer afternoon; and when they entered it they found it to be one of two, divided by a red curtain which dropped to the floor and supplied the place of a door. No necromantic appliances were visible in the room; and with the exception of a table, three or four chairs and a carpet more or less worn, it was without articles of use or ornament. Motioning the party to chairs, which only Bell accepted, the negro attendant said:
"Will Monsieur and the ladies enter Madame's private room together, or singly? Madame does not often receive more than one at once, but will do so for this distinguished company, if they wish?"
"Ahem!" said Leslie, involuntarily pulling up his collar at the words "distinguished company," while "Good gracious—how did they know thatwewere coming?" was the exclamation of Joe, to Bell,sotto voce.
"Oh, let us all go in together," said Bell, who probably had less suspicion of a secret that could possibly be awkward of disclosure, in her own breast, than either of her companions.
"No, I think not," said Joe. "You may have nothing to conceal, Bell, but I have—lots of things; and though I may be willing to have the French woman drain me dry, like a pump, I do not know that I shall offeryouthe same privilege."
"No, on the whole, decidedly not," said Leslie. "Of course, ladies, there is really nothing for the most timid to fear; and even if there were, the two others will be in the room immediately adjoining. Decidedly, if you are both willing, each had better tempt fate alone."
"And who will go in first, then?" asked Bell.
"Humph!" said Joe, "thereisa grave question. The decrees of fate must not be tampered with, and the wrong one going in first might send those 'stars' on which the witch depends, into most alarming collision."
"Easily arranged," said Leslie, drawing a handful of coin from his pocket, handing one of the pieces to each of the girls, and retaining one himself. "As fate is the deity to be consulted, let fate take care of her own. The one who happens to hold the piece of oldest date shall take the first chance, and the others will follow according to the same rule. I have settled more than one important question of my life in this manner, and I have an idea that they have been settled quite as satisfactorily as they could have been by any exercise of judgment."
"Eighteen hundred and fifty-two," said Bell, looking at the date on her coin. "Eighteen hundred and fifty-seven," said Joe, paying the same attention to the one she held. And "Eighteen hundred and sixty-one—only last year!" said Leslie, jingling the coins in his hand and then dropping them back into his pocket,—from which (par parenthese) they were so soon and so effectually to disappear, with all others of their kind, in the turning of exchanges against us and the general derangement of the currency of the country.
"You are first, Bell, you see!" said Joe, "and I hope you will be able to take the fiery edge off the teeth of the dragon before I get in to him."
"AndIam the last, you perceive!" said Leslie. "The last, as I always have been where women were concerned—too late, and of course unsuccessful."
There may have been no positive reason for the slight flush which crossed the face of Josephine Harris at that moment, or for the conscious look of pleasure that danced for an instant in her eyes; and yet there may have been a thought of true happiness at the assurance which the last words of Leslie conveyed, that he was an unmarried man and had been, so far, near enough heart-whole for all practical purposes. If the latter should even have been true, she need not have flushed a second time at recognizing the feeling in herself; for most certainly those apparently light words of Tom Leslie had been, so to speak, shot at her, with a determined intention of feeling ground to be afterwards trodden.
"Madame is waiting your pleasure," said the negro girl, who had remained standing near the curtain all this while, but too far distant to catch many of the words passing between the three visitors, which had all been uttered in a low tone.
"Ah, yes, we have kept her waiting too long, perhaps," said Leslie, "and who knows but the fates may be the more unkind to us for the neglect of their priestess." He was really not very well at his ease, but somewhat anxious to appear so, as all very bashful people can fully understand, when they remember the efforts they have sometimes made to appear the most impudent men in creation. Tom Leslie was not in the slightest degree bashful, and so the comparison fails in that regard; but he was more than a little nervous at the certainty which he felt of once more meeting the "red woman," and for that reason he wished to seem the man with no nerves whatever.
"It is my turn—I will go in," said Bell Crawford, rising from her chair and following the negro attendant within the curtain, which only parted a little to admit her and then swept down again to the floor, giving no glimpse to the two outsiders of what might be within.
The sky had now grown perceptibly darker, though it was still some hours to night; and at the moment when Bell Crawford entered the inner room of the sorceress the gathering thunder-storm burst in fury. The thunder was not as yet peculiarly heavy, and the flashes of lightning had often been surpassed in vividness; but the rain poured down in torrents and the gust of wind, which swept through the streets set windows rattling and doors and shutters banging at a rate which promised work for the carpenters. The two windows of the room looked out upon the street, though through closed blinds; and whether intentionally or inadvertently, the two in waiting drew two chairs to one of the windows, very near together, and sat there, watching the dashing rain and listening to the storm. Had there been any possibility of hearing the words spoken in the adjoining room, that possibility would now have been entirely destroyed by the noise of the storm; and whatever of curiosity either may have felt for the result of Bell's adventure, was rendered inefficient for the time. Meanwhile, something else was working of quite as much consequence.
Chances and accidents are very curious things; and those who have no belief in a Supreme Being who brings about great results by apparently insignificant agencies, must have a very difficult time of it, in reconciling the incongruous and the inadequate. Holmes, the merriest and wisest of social philosophers (when he does not run mad on the human-snake theory, as he has done in "Elsie Venner") very prettily illustrates the opposite, as to how the agency which moves the great may also perform the little, in
"The force that wheels the planets round delights in spinning tops,And that young earthquake t'other day was great on shaking props;"
but the opposite may be illustrated more easily, and is certainly illustrated much oftener. Not only may
"A broken girth decide a nation's fate,"
in battle; but a gnawing insignificant rat may sink a ship, and one contemptible traitor be able to disseminate poison enough to destroy a republic; while the question of whether Bobby does or does not take his top with him to school to-day, may decide whether he does or does not wander off to the neighboring pond to be drowned; and Smith's being seen to step into a billiard-room may decide the question of credit against him in the Bank discount-committee, and send him to the commercial wall, a bankrupt. That glance of unnecessary and unladylike scorn which Lady Flora yesterday cast upon a beggar-woman who accidently brushed against her costly robes on Broadway, may have lost her a rich husband, who would otherwise have been deceived until after marriage, as to her real character; and the involuntary act of courtesy of John Hawkins, stooping down to pick up the dropped umbrella of a common woman with a baby and two bundles, in a passenger-car, may make him a friend for life, worth more than all he has won by twenty-five years of hard-working industry and honesty.
In this point of view there are no "little things;" and probably he is best prepared for all the exigencies of coming life, who is ready to be the least surprised at finding a dwarfed shrub growing up from an acorn, and a mighty tree springing from the proverbial "grain of mustard seed."
Not to be prolix on this subject—let us remember one capital illustration—that of the clown and his two pieces of fireworks. No matter in what pantomime the scene occurs, as it may do for any. The clown approaches the door of a dealer in fireworks, finds no one on duty in the shop, enters, and comes out laden with pyrotechnic spoils. He takes a small rocket, fires it, and is knocked down, frightened and stunned by the unexpectedly-heavy explosion. But he recovers directly, and determines to try the experiment over again. There is one immense rocket among the collection he has brought out—one almost as long as himself and apparently capable of holding half a barrel of explosive material. He shakes his head knowingly to the audience, indicative of the fact thatthisis something immense and that he is going to be very careful about it. He sticks it up in the very middle of the stage, secures a light at the end of a long pole, and touches it off with great fear and trembling. The explosion which follows is exactly that of one Chinese fire-cracker; and the comically disappointed face which the clown turns to the audience is precisely the same that each individual of that audience is continually turning to another audience surrounding him, when the great and small rockets of his daily life go off with such disproportionate effect.
Perhaps it was chance that not only produced the previous circumstances of that day, but so ordered that Bell Crawford should be the first to vacate the outer room, leaving that extraordinary couple alone together. Perhaps it was chance that led them to take seats beside each other at the window, when they might so easily have found room to sit with some distance between them. Perhaps it was chance that made the lightning flash in long lines of blinding light across the sky, and sent the thunder booming and crashing above the roofs of the houses, producing that indefinable feeling that needed companionship—that "huddling together" which even the terrible beasts of the East Indian jungles show in the midst of the fearful tornadoes of that region. Perhaps it was chance that, after a moment or two of silence, induced Tom Leslie, without well knowing why he did it, to lay his open palm on his knee, and to look for a moment with a glance of inquiry, full in the eyes of the young girl who sat at his right, as if to say: "There is my open hand—we have known each other but a little while—dare you layyourhand in it?" Perhaps it was chance that made the young girl return the steady glance—then drop her eyes with so sad a look that tears might easily have been trembling under the long lashes,—color a little on cheek and brow, as if some tint of the sunrise flush had for a moment rested upon her face—then slowly reach over her right hand and let it drop and nestle into the one ready to receive it. Perhaps all these things were chance: well, let them be so set down—such "chances" are worth something in life, to those who know how to embrace them!
What have we here? Two persons who had spoken to each other for the first time, only a few hours before, and who had since held marvellously little conversation, now sitting hand in hand, their soft palms pressed close together, and every pulse of the mental and physical natures of both thrilling at the touch! Exceedingly improper!—exceedingly hurried!—exceedingly indelicate! Modesty, where were you about this time? If we have gone so fast already, how fast may we go by-and-bye? Alas, they are living people whom we have before us—not cherubim and seraphim; and they do as they please, and act very humanly, in spite of every care we can take of their morals. They have not said one word of love to each other, it is true; but the mischief seems to have been done. Nothing may have been said, in the way of a promise of marriage, capable of being taken hold of by the keenest lawyer who pleads in the Brown-Stone building; but we are not sure that ever tongue spoke to ear, or ever lip kissed back to lip, so true and enduring a betrothal as has sometimes been signed in the meeting of two palms, when not a word had been spoken and when neither of the pair had one rational thought of the future.
Suddenly and without warning the curtain between the two rooms moved. How quickly those two hands drew apart from each other, as if some act of guilt had been doing! If any additional proof was wanting, of something clandestine (and of course improper!) between the parties, here it was certainly supplied. People never attempt to deceive, who have not been playing tricks. Well-regulated and candid people, who do everything by rule, never start and blush at any awkwardcontretemps, never have any concealments, but tell everything to the outer world. Privacy is a crime—all sly people are reprobates. Wicked Tom and erring Joe!—what a gulf of perdition they were sinking into without knowing it!
The curtain not only moved but was drawn aside, and out of it stepped Bell Crawford. She walked slowly and deliberately, like one in deep thought, and without a word crossed the room towards the point where her two friends were sitting. Something in her face brought them both to their feet. What was that something? She had been absent from them for perhaps ten minutes—certainly not more than a quarter of an hour; and yet change enough had passed over her, to have marked the passage of ten twelve-months. The face looked older, perhaps sadder, more like that of her brother, and yet less querulous, more womanly, better and more loveable. Something seemed to have stirred the depths of her nature, of which only the surface had been before exposed to view. The revelation was better than the index. She was capable of generous things at that moment, of which she had been utterly incapable the hour before. It was probable that she could never again dash all over town in the search for a yard of ribbon of a particular color: her next search was likely to be a much more serious one.
The first glance at her face, and the marvellous change there exhibited, wrought in so short a time, not only puzzled but alarmed Josephine Harris. She could not see where and in what feature lay the change, any more than she could realize what could have been powerful enough to produce it. Tom Leslie may have been quite as much alarmed; but his older years and wider experience, conjoined with the feelings with which he had come to that house, made it impossible that he should be so much puzzled. He saw at once that the marked change was in theeyes. In their depths (he had before remarked them, that day, as indicating a nature a little weak, purposeless and not prone to self-examination)—in their depths, clear enough now, there lay a dark, sombre, but not unpleasing shadow, such as only shows itself in eyes that have been turnedinward. We usually say of a man whose eyes show the same expression: "That man has studied much," or, "he has suffered much," or, "he is aspiritualist." By the latter expression, we mean that he looks more or less beneath the surface of events that meet him in the world—that he is more or less a student of the spiritual in mentality, and of the supernatural in cause and effect. Such eyes do not stare, they merely gaze. When they look at you, they look at something else through you and behind you, of which you may or may not be a part.
Let it be said here, the occasion being a most inviting one for this species of digression,—that the painter who can succeed in transferring to canvas that expression ofseeing more than is presented to the physical eye, has achieved a triumph over great difficulties. Frequent visitors to the old Dusseldorf Gallery, now so sadly disrupted and its treasures scattered through twenty private galleries where they can only be visible to the eyes of a favored few,—will remember two instances, perhaps by the same painter, of the eye being thus made to reveal the inner thought and a life beyond that passing at the moment. The first and most notable is in the "Charles the Second fleeing from the Battle of Worcester." The king and two nobles are in the immediate foreground, in flight, while far away the sun is going down in a red glare behind the smoke of battle, the lurid flames of the burning town, and the royal standard just fluttering down from the battlements of a castle lost by the royal arms at the very close of Cromwell's "crowning mercy." Through the smoke of the middle distance can be dimly seen dusky forms in flight, or in the last hopeless conflict. Each of the nobles at the side of the fugitive king is heavily armed, with sword in hand, mounted on heavy, galloping horses, going at high speed; and each is looking out anxiously, with head turned aside as he flies, for any danger which may menace—not himself, but the sovereign. Charles Stuart, riding between them, is mounted upon a dark, high-stepping, pure-blooded English horse. He wears the peaked hat of the time, and his long hair—that which afterward became so notorious in the masks and orgies of Whitehall, and in the prosecution of his amours in the purlieus of the capital—floats out in wild dishevelment from his shoulders. He is dressed in the dark velvet short cloak, and broad, pointed collar peculiar to pictures of himself and his unfortunate father; he shows no weapon, and is leaning ungracefully forward, as if outstripping the hard-trotting speed of his horse. But the true interest of this figure, and of the whole picture, is concentrated in the eyes. Those sad, dark eyes, steady and immovable in their fixed gaze, reveal whole pages of history and whole years of suffering. The fugitive king is not thinking of his flight, of any dangers that may beset him, of the companions at his side, or even of where he shall lay his perilled head in the night that is coming. Those eyes have shut away the physical and the real, and through the mists of the future they are trying to read the great question offate! Worcester is lost, and with it a kingdom: is he to be henceforth a crownless king and a hunted fugitive, or has the future its compensations? This is what the fixed and glassy eyes are saying to every beholder, and there is not one who does not answer the question with a mental response forced by that mute appeal of suffering thought: "The king shall have his own again!"
The second picture lately in the same collection, is much smaller, and commands less attention; but it tells another story of the same great struggle between King and Parliament, through the agency of the same feature. A wounded cavalier, accompanied by one of his retainers, also wounded, is being forced along on foot, evidently to imprisonment, by one of Cromwell's Ironsides and a long-faced, high-hatted Puritan cavalry-man, both on horseback, and a third on foot, with musquetoon on shoulder. The cavalier's garments are red and blood-stained, and there is a bloody handkerchief binding his brow, and telling how, when his house was surprised and his dependants slaughtered, he himself fought till he was struck down, bound and overpowered, still hurling defiance at his enemies and their cause, until his anger and disdain grew to the terrible height of silence and he said no more. He strides sullenly along, looking neither to the right nor the left; and the triumphant captors behind him know nothing of the story that is told in his face. The eyes fixed and steady in the shadow of the bloody bandage, tell nothing of the pain of his wound or the tension of the cords which are binding his crossed wrists. In their intense depth, which really seems to convey the impression of looking through forty feet of the still but dangerous waters of Lake George and seeing the glimmering of the golden sand beneath,—we read of a burned house and an outraged family, and we see a prophecy written there, that if his mounted guards could read, they would set spurs and flee away like the wind—a calm, silent, but irrevocable prophecy: "I can bear all this, for my time is coming! Not a man of all these will live, not a roof-tree that shelters them but will be in ashes, when I take my revenge!" Not a gazer but knows, through those marvellous eyes alone, that the day is coming when hewillhave his revenge, and that the subject of pity is the victorious Roundhead instead of the wounded and captive cavalier!
Not all this, of course, was expressed in the eyes of Bell Crawford as she stood before her two companions under the circumstances just detailed; but it scarcely needed a second glance to tell the keen man of the world that the eyes and the brain beneath them had both been taught something before unknown. He thought what might possibly have been the expression of his own eyes, on a night so many times before alluded to, could he but have seen them as did others; and if he had before held one lingering doubt of the personality of the woman whose presence she had just quitted, that doubt would have remained no longer. Itwasthe "red woman," beyond a question. For just one moment another thought crossed his mind, founded upon that "union of hands" so lately consummated. Should he permitherto be subjected to the same influences? And yet, why not? The good within her could not be injured, either by sorcery or super-knowledge—either by the assumption or the possession on the part of the seeress, of information beyond that of ordinary mortality and altogether out of its pale. Hewouldpermit her to undergo the same influences, even as in a few moments he would submit to them himself.
Josephine Harris, in the time consumed by all these reflections running through the mind of Leslie, had not yet recovered from her surprise at the altered expression on the face of her friend—an expression, oddly enough, that pleased her better than any she had ever before observed there, and yet frightened her correspondingly.
"Dear Bell," she said, anxiously, and using a word of endearment that had been very rare between them, spite of their extreme intimacy.—"What has happened? What have you seen? Are you sick? Your eyes frighten me—they seem so sad and earnest!"
"Do they?" said Bell, forcing a smile that was really sad enough, but better became her face than many expressions that had before passed over it. "Well, Josey, to tell you the truth, I have seen some strange things, of which I will tell you at another time; and I have been thinking very deeply. Nothing more."
"You have seen nothing frightful—dreadful—terrible?" the young girl asked, with an unmistakable expression of anxiety upon her face.
"Nothing terrible, though something very strange," was the reply of Bell. "Nothing that you need fear."
"Oh,Iam not afraid!" answered Joe, with an assumption of bravery that she probably felt to be a sham all the while. "I believe it is my turn now. Dear me, how heavy that thunder is! Try and amuse yourselves, good people, while I 'follow in the footsteps of my illustrious predecessor'!" and with an affectation of gaiety that was a little transparent, she obeyed the summons of the black girl who at that moment made her appearance again outside the curtain, and followed her within.
Bell Crawford dropped into one of the chairs that stood by the window, and leaned her head upon her hand, in an attitude of deep thought. Leslie did not attempt to speak to her at that moment, either aware that such a course could only be painful to her, or too much absorbed in the remembrance of the other who had just passed within the curtain, to wish to do so. He walked the floor, from one side to the other of the room, the sound of his heel falling somewhat heavily even on the carpeted floor, and his head thrown forward in such a position that when he threw his glance on a level with his line of vision it came out from under his bent brows. The rain seemed to beat heavier and heavier outside, and dashed against the windows with such force as to threaten to beat them in; and successive discharges of thunder, accompanied with constant flashes of fierce lightning, crashed and rumbled among the house-tops and seemed to be at times actually booming through the room, immediately over their heads.
In this way some fifteen minutes passed, seeming almost so many hours to the young man, whatever they may have appeared to the young girl who sat by the window, so absorbed by her own thoughts that she scarcely heard the muttering thunder or saw the blinding flashes of the lightning.
Suddenly there was a louder and fiercer crash of thunder than any that had preceded it—a crash of that peculiar sharpness indicating that it must have struck the very house in which they heard it; and this accompanied by one of those terribly intense flashes of lightning which seemed to sear the eyeballs and play in blue flame through the air of the room,—then followed by a heavy dull rumbling shock and boom like that of a thousand pieces of artillery fired at once, rocking the building to its foundation and threatening to send it tumbling in ruins on their heads. Tom Leslie involuntarily put his hands to his eyes, to shut out the flash, and Bell Crawford, at last startled, sprung from her chair; but both were worse startled, the very second after, by a long, loud, piercing shriek, in the voice of Josephine Harris, that burst from the inner room and seemed like some cry extorted by mortal pain or unendurable terror.
Both rushed towards the curtain, at once, but Leslie in advance—both with the impression that some dreadful catastrophe connected with the lightning must have occurred. But just as Leslie laid his hand upon the curtain to draw it aside, it was dashed open from within, and Josephine Harris literally flung herself through it, still shrieking and in that deadly mortal terror which threatens the reason. She seemed about to fall, and Tom Leslie stretched out his arms to receive her. She half fell into them, then rolled, nearer than described any other motion, into those of Bell Crawford; and almost before Leslie could quite realize what had occurred, she lay with her head in Bell's lap, the extremity of her terror over, uttering no word, but sobbing and moaning like a little child that had been too severely dealt with and broken down under the blow.
Tom Leslie's hand, it has been said, was on the curtain, to remove it. He released it for the instant, to look after the welfare of the frightened girl; but when he saw her lying in Bell's lap another feeling became paramount even to his anxiety for her safety, and he grasped the curtain again and dashed through into the inner room.
As he had expected, the red woman of the Rue la Reynie Ogniard stood before him, presenting the same magnificent outline of face and the same ghastly redness of complexion that she had shown at such a distance of time and place. In her hand was a white wand, glittering like silver, with some bright and flashing colorless stone at the end. Her dress, as he then remembered, had been red when he saw her in Paris, and no relief to her ghastly color had been shown, except in the mass of dark hair sweeping down her shoulders. Now her tall and stately form was wrapped in black, against which her cloud of dark hair was unnoticed. Leslie had not observed, at any time during the absence of either of the two girls, any odor of smoke or any appearance of it creeping out from the curtain into the room; but now, as he looked, he saw white wreaths of vapor circling near the ceiling and fading away there; and he realized at once, with the memory of the past in mind, what had been the form in which the images were presented, producing so startling an effect on both.
At the moment when he entered, the black girl was just disappearing through what appeared to be a small door opening out of the room upon the landing of the stairs, and ordinarily concealed by the sweeping drapery of dark cloth that was looped around the entire apartment. Whether the attendant was carrying away any of the properties that might have been used in the late jugglery, he had, of course, no means of judging. The sorceress herself, at the moment when he broke in upon her, was apparently advancing from the little table at which she had been standing, partially within the sweep of the hangings, towards the dividing curtain. At sight of the intruder she stopped suddenly and drew her tall form to its full height, while such a flash of anger appeared to dart from her keen eyes as would have produced a sensible effect on any man less used to varying sensations than the cosmopolitan journalist.
"What do you want?" she asked, and the words came from her lips with the same short hissing tone that he so well remembered, creating the impression that there must be a serpent hidden somewhere in the throat and hissing through what would otherwise be the voice.
"What sorcery have you practised upon that poor girl, to drive her into this state of distraction, red fiend?" was the answering question, bold enough in seeming, though Tom Leslie, asked in regard to the matter to-day, would undoubtedly acknowledge that he had felt far less tremor when under the heaviest play of the Russian cannon at Inkermann, than when throwing this sharp taunt into the teeth of the sorceress.
"Nothing but whatyouhave seen and endured!" was the reply, made in the same tone as before. "I have shown them the truth, and the truth is terrible. It is murder and ruin in their own households—it is battle and death around those they love—it is desolation and destruction to the land! Go!—those who cannot witness my power without blenching, should never seek me; andyoublench like those sick girls—I have seen you blench before?"
"Seenme?" echoed Leslie.
"Seenyou!" was the fierce reply of the sorceress. "Fool! do you think I cannot penetrate that thin disguise—that old man's hair and those false wrinkles? You were younger-looking, eighteen months since, in another land where the eagle screams less but tears its enemies more deeply with its talons!"
"Iwas," answered Leslie, carried beyond himself. "I remember the Rue la Reynie Ogniard, and I acknowledge your fearful power, though I know not if it comes from heaven or hell! But tell me—who areyou, so magnificently beautiful, and yet so—so—" and here (a rare thing for him,) the voice of Tom Leslie faltered.
"So horribly hideous, you would say," broke in the sorceress. "Stay! you have said one word that touches the woman within me. You have recognized my beauty as well as my terror. Look for one instant at what no mortal eye has seen for years or may ever see again! Look!"
Tom Leslie started, nay, staggered—for no other word can express the motion—back towards the door, infinitely more surprised than he had been on the night of his first adventure with the sorceress. She held something in her hand, but that could only be seen afterwards: for the moment his eyes could only behold that marvellous face. If the Sons of God when they intermarried with the beautiful daughters of clay, left any descendants behind them, certainly that face must have belonged to one of the number. No longer ghastly red, but almost marble white, with the hue of health yet mantling beneath the wondrous transparent skin, and every line and curve of beauty such as would make the sculptor drop his chisel in despair—with a lip that might have belonged to Juno and a brow that should have been set beneath the helmet of Athena—with the glorious dark eye fringed with long sweeping lashes and the wealth of the dark brown hair swept back in masses of rippled and tangled shadow that caught and lost the eye continually,—what a perfect vision of high-born beauty was that face, the patent of nobility coming direct from heaven!
And what was that which she held in her hand, and the removal of which had produced so wonderful a transformation? One of those masks of dark red golden wire, so fine as to be almost impalpable, and wrought by fingers of such cunning skill that while it concealed the natural skin of the face, every lineament and even every sweep and dimple was copied, as if the moulder had been working in wax—the eye looking through as naturally as in the ordinary face, and even the very play of the lips permitted. That strange red light which had seemed to permeate the whole face and affect even the eyes, had merely been the red metallic glitter of the gold, leaving little work for the imagination to complete a picture fascinating as unnatural.
"Great God!—can such beauty be real?" broke out Leslie, when he had gazed for one instant on the splendid vision before him. "Matchless, peerless, glorious woman! Let me come nearer! Let me look longer on God's master-work, if I even die at the sight!"
Here was the faithful lover of Josephine Harris half an hour before,—and in what a situation! Oh man, man, what an eye for miscellaneous beauty is that with which your sex is gifted! All Mormons at heart, it is to be feared, however a more self-denying canon may be observed perforce! It is not certain that Tom Leslie would have run away with his new divinity, had the chance been offered at that moment; and it is not certain that he wouldnothave done so. Very fortunately, the opportunity was wanting. Very fortunately, too, the storm had not yet ceased altogether, and the two ladies in the other room were likely to be too busy in restoring and being restored, to hear very clearly what was going on within.
"Back!" said the sharp voice of the sorceress, at the impassioned tone of the last words and that clasping of the hands which told that the subject might be kneeling the next moment. "Back! No nearer, on your life! I have not the power of life and death, but I may have the power of happiness and misery. Go!—or wish that you had done so, till the very day you die!"
Her arm was stretched out with a queenly gesture, at once of warning and command. Tom Leslie obeyed, with such an effort as one sometimes makes in a forced arousing from sleep. He took one more glance at the motionless face and form, then dashed through the curtain and let it fall behind him. Joe Harris had partially recovered from her excitement, and sat beside Bell, with her face on the latter's shoulder. She roused herself and even attempted a laugh with some success, when the voice of Leslie was heard; and if for one instant the allegiance of the young man had wavered in the presence of the unnatural and the overwhelming, there was something in that bright, clear, good face, only temporarily shadowed by her late excitement, calculated to restore him at once to thought and to truth.
With the heavy crash of thunder which had accompanied if it had not caused the fright of the young girl, the storm seemed to have culminated and spent itself; and by this time the rain had nearly ceased. Not a word passed between the three as to what had occurred to either—any conversation on that subject was naturally reserved for another place and a later hour. The black girl came out again from behind the curtain and received with a "Thank you, Monsieur!" and a curtsey the half eagle which dropped into her hand. Leslie left the ladies alone for a moment, ran down to the door and found a carriage; and in a few moments, without further adventure, the three were on their way up-town, the journalist to return again to his evening avocations, after accompanying the two, whose disordered nerves he scarcely yet dared trust alone, to their place of destination.
If during that ride the hand of Josephine Harris, a little hot and feverish from late excitement, accidentally fell again into his own and rested there as if it rather liked the position—whose business was it, except their own?
A Peep at Camp Lyon and the Two Hundredth Regiment—Discipline and the Dice-Box—How Seven Hundred Men Can Be Squeezed into Three.
"I am going to West Falls again in a few days—that is, if we do not get orders for Washington," Colonel Egbert Crawford said, speaking to his cousin, a few chapters back, as may be remembered. By which he meant, of course, if he meant anything, that the Two Hundredth Regiment, with the raising of which he had been charged by Major-General Governor Morgan, was in a high state of discipline as well as fully up to the maximum in numbers, and burning to go down to the field of carnage and revenge the deaths of those foully slaughtered by rebel hands.
It may be interesting to know exactly whatwasthe condition of the Two Hundredth Regiment, at that exact time—how many it numbered—what was its proficiency in drill—what was the appearance of the camp at which it was quartered—and how laboriously Colonel Crawford was engaged in bringing it up to the highest standard of perfection for citizen soldiery. For this purpose, it will be well to look in at the encampment, with the eyes of some persons from the city who visited it on Sunday the 29th of June—the very day on which McClellan, from sheer lack of troops, abandoned the White House, necessarily destroying so much valuable property, losing for the time the last hope of the capture of Richmond, and falling back on the line of the James River.
The Two Hundredth Regiment lay at "Camp Lyon," (as it may be designated for the purposes of this chronicle)—a locality on Long Island, a few miles eastward from the City Hall of Brooklyn, and easily accessible by one of the lines of horse-cars running from Fulton Ferry. It had been some two months established; recruiting for the regiment was said to be going on very rapidly; "only a few more men wanted" was the burden of the song sung in the advertising columns of the morning papers; rations for some seven hundred men were continually furnished for it, by the Quartermaster's Department; the Colonel made flattering reports of it every day or two, to the higher military authorities in the city, and at least once a week to the still higher authorities at Albany; and a political Brigadier-General was reported to have gone down and reviewed it, once or twice, coming back eminently satisfied with its numbers, discipline and performances.
The visitors from the city, who, having no other connection whatever with the progress of this story, may be fobbed off with the very ordinary names of Smith and Brown,—reached the camp at about four o'clock on that Sunday afternoon, having waited until that late hour in the day for the purpose of avoiding the noon-tide heat, and being anxious to be present at the evening drill, which was supposed to take place in the neighborhood of six o'clock. An acquaintance of theirs, an officer in the Two Hundredth, one Lieutenant Woodruff, had several times invited them to "run down to camp and see him before he went away," promising to do the honors of the encampment in the best manner compatible with the duties of a "fellow busy all the time, you know."
Alighting from the vehicle, Smith and Brown found the camp stretching before them, scarcely so picturesque as they had anticipated, but with enough of the military air about its green sod and conical tents, to make it rather varied and pleasing to a couple of "cits" who had not looked upon the extended army pageant around Washington, or seen anything more of war than could be observed in a turn-out of the First Division on the Fourth of July. On a broad level, stretching back for a quarter of a mile from the railroad-track, and terminating in a strip of noble oak woods, the tents of the encampment were pitched, forty or fifty in number, not too white and cleanly-looking, even at a distance, and decidedly dingy and yellow when brought to a nearer view. Some attempt had been made at forming them into lines, with regular alleys between; the hospital-tent at some distance in the rear, distinguished by a yellow flag hanging listlessly from a pole in front; and the Colonel's large round tent or marquee prominent in the centre, a small American flag before it, doing its best to wave in the slight sea air that came in over the Long Island hills. Groups of soldiers, variously disposed, dotted the space between the tents or sat at the doors, chatting with male or female civilians, or their own wives and daughters, who had run down to see them as an amusement for Sunday afternoon; while sentinels paced backward and forward along certain lines and offered an uncertain amount of inconvenience to those who wished to traverse the camp-grounds in one direction or another.
Smith and Brown, looking for Woodruff and finding it a matter of some difficulty to discover him, paced up and down among the tents, wherever the sentinels permitted, looking in at the doors of those canvas cottages and observing the humors which denoted that the occupants had been the possessors of plenty of time for other purposes than drill, however proficient they might have become in that military necessity. Scarcely one of the alleys between the rows of tents but had its street-name, stuck up on a piece of chalked or charcoaled board at the entrance—from the ambitious "Broadway" to the aristocratic "Fifth Avenue" and the doubtful "Mercer Street." Many of the tents bore equally significant inscription, from the "City Hall" (where some scion of an alderman probably made his warlike abode), to the "Astor House" and "St. Nicholas" (where perhaps some depreciated son of snobbery was known to have his quarters), and the "Hotel de Coffee and Cakes," suggestive of inmates from the less pretentious precincts of the city. Within the tents, as Smith and Brown took the liberty of looking in, a variety of spectacles were discovered. Straw seemed to be an almost universal commodity—quite as indispensable there as in pigpens or railroad-cars; and next to straw, perhaps battered trunks and very cheap pine tables predominated. Greasy kettles and dishes could be discovered just under the flap of the tent, in many instances; and here and there a tent would be passed, emitting odors of rancid grease, stale tobacco and personal foulness, not at all appetizing to visitors unfamiliar with the gutters of Mackerelville or the hold of a ship in the horse-latitudes.
In some of the tents the men were asleep on the tables, in others on the trunks, in still others on the straw. In a few Smith and Brown saw soldiers drinking; in others, in positions suggestive of being very drunk, had they found them elsewhere than in a well-regulated camp; in still others playing cards for pennies, furtively behind the flaps of the tent or openly in the vicinity of the door. They caught fragments of broad oaths from a few, and snatches of obscene stories from a few others; and taken altogether, the impression of the Two Hundredth being in a high state of discipline or a very excellent sanitary condition, was not strongly forced upon their minds. This impression was not strengthened, when, being directed by one of the sentries to the hospital-tent as a place where they might be likely at that moment to find Lieutenant Woodruff,—they failed to discover him there, but did not fail to discover one corporal keeping guard in that sanitary domicil, so drunk that he was asleep and so drunkenly abusive when they woke him that they were glad to permit him to fall back again into his beastly slumber.
At length they found Lieutenant Woodruff, who had just returned from escorting another party of friends to the cars, on their way back to town. He seemed glad to see them, though not enthusiastic in his demonstrations—invited them to the tent in which he messed with some brother officers—and they took that direction for a rest after their hot promenade.
Somewhat to the apparent mortification of Woodruff, when they reached the tent none of the brother officers to whom he had promised to introduce his friends, were to be found; but they had left their traces behind them. Two or three empty bottles and as many uncleaned glasses lay about the table, and the remains of spilt liquor wetted and stained the boards of the seats, while a very dirty pack of cards, half on the table and the remainder on the ground, showed that the officers were not only a little unscrupulous as to the character of their Sunday amusements, but equally indifferent as to the cleanliness of the tools with which they performed the arduous labors of old-sledge, euchre and division-loo. Woodruff cleared away the debris from the table, and flung it into one corner with some petulance which did not escape the notice of his visitors. Finally part of a box of bad cigars was introduced, and among the fumes engendered by those indispensable "weeds," a little conversation followed.
"Well, when do you get off?" asked Smith, who had been very anxious to come on that Sunday, instead of waiting for the next, under the impression that the regiment might move at any time and thus deprive them of the visit. He had been led to suppose so, partially from conversations with Woodruff in the city, and partially by the statements in the newspapers, before alluded to, made with reference to this and other "favorite regiments."
"Get off!" answered Woodruff, with no concealment of the vexation in his tone. "Humph! well, I think we shall need to get on a little faster, before we get off at all!"
"Not full yet, eh?" asked Brown.
"Notexactly," was the answer of the Lieutenant, with a satirical emphasis on the second word which indicated that some other would have been quite as well in place.
"Why, I thought you were!" said Smith. "The papers had you up to seven hundred some time ago, and with all your big posters and advertisements and the large bounties offered, you ought to be bringing them in very rapidly."
"Yes, I suppose so!" answered Woodruff. "Weoughtto do a good many things in this world, that we do not find it convenient to do. Weoughtto have been full, and off to Washington, a month ago, and would have been, if there had been any management."
"Why you speak as if you were discouraged and dissatisfied," said Brown, "and not at all as you talked to us when in the city a few days ago."
"No, probably not," answered the Lieutenant. "Well, the fact is, boys, that I have been lying to you like—(and here he used a very hard word not necessary to be recorded.) We haveallbeen lying; but to you, at least, I mean to make a clean breast of it. I did not suppose you would come down, and while you kept at a distance I thought we might as well keep up a good reputation. Now that you are here, you have not half an eye if you do not know that 'Camp Lyon' is a humbug, and that there is no discipline or anything else in it thatshouldbe here. I am going to get out of it, if I can with any honor."
"What is the matter?" asked Smith, very much disappointed, and very much discouraged at the key which the situation of Camp Lyon seemed to offer to the corresponding situation of many others of the crack recruiting stations depended upon for filling up the reduced ranks of the army.
"What is the matter? Everything!" said Woodruff, fairly launched out in an exposure of the abuses of the recruiting service, for which he had not before had a fair andsafeopportunity. "Half the men are good for nothing, and almost all the officers worse. We could get along with worthlessmen, and perhaps make soldiers of them, if we only had officers worth their salt. Field or line, there is not one in three that knows when a 'shoulder-arms' is correctly made; and there is no more attempt at either study or practice than there would be if we were a hunting party encamped in the Northern woods. Commissions have been issued to anybody supposed to possess some political influence; and subordinate commissions have been promised by the higher officers to any one who offered to bring in a certain number of rapscallions or pay down a certain sum of money. Those who are not drunken, are lazy; and the men know about as much of wholesome discipline as a hog knows of holy-water. I have tried to do a little better with some of the squads of my own company; but I think that complaints have been made that I 'overworked' the men, and I have fallen into decidedly bad odor with the good people up at the big house yonder."
"And who arethey?" asked Brown, wofully ignorant of the details of recruiting in 1862. "And what are they doing up at the 'big house,' as you call it?"
"Eh? you haven't been in there, have you?" said Woodruff. "Come along then, and see. Of course you know that I must refer to our gallant Colonel and the other leading officers at the head of the regiment; and of course you are not so green as not to know that the big house beyond the railroad track, there, is a tavern. Come along and let us see what Colonel Crawford and the rest of them happen to be doing; and by the time that is over we shall have our 'evening parade,' which you must certainly see before you go home."
Escorted by the Lieutenant, the two citizens took their way to the "big house"—a hotel standing on the north side of the railroad track and very near it—a wooden building of two stories, with a piazza in front and at the east end, and flanked by a row of horse-sheds indicating that there was some dependence made upon the patronage of fast drivers stopping there on race days or when trotting was peculiarly good on the pike or the plank. Before the house paced two sentries, with muskets at the shoulder, though what they were guarding was not so clear, as every one passed who wished to do so, whether in uniform or citizen's dress. Behind the corner of the piazza, eastward, an officer was leaning back in his chair against the clap-boards, with his hat over his eyes and apparently asleep; and a few feet from him a sergeant, distinguishable by three dingy stripes on his arm that should have been laid upon his back, was toying, not too decently, with a woman whose looks and manners both proclaimed her one of the "necessary evils" of a modern community.
"Do they allow such actions as that—right here in public, and in the very presence of the officers?" asked Smith, whose education had possibly been a little neglected in some other particulars, as Brown's had been in the details of the military profession.
"Guess so!" was the significant reply of Woodruff. "Come up stairs!" and the party passed on. As they did so, they looked through a door to the left, and saw a bar of unplaned boards extending the whole length of a spacious room, with half a dozen attendants behind it and as many beer kegs and whiskey decanters pouring out their contents. Mingled with here and there a civilian, the whole front of the bar was full of soldiers, all apparently drinking, and drinking again, and drinking yet again, nibbling cheese, crackers and smoked-beef meanwhile, apparently to keep up the necessary thirst. "Fire and fall back!" seemed to be a military axiom not always observed by the rank and file of the Two Hundredth, as many of them kept their places and went on with their guzzling, with a determination worthy of a much better cause. But it was occasionally observed, after all, for there were a few who had been overcome by the heat of the bibulatory conflict, and who had relapsed into partial helplessness in chairs around the walls; and there were others who began to stagger and talk thickly at the counter, growing obscure and maudlin in their oaths, and shaking hands altogether too often, indicating the sleepy stage as very soon to follow.
As the two friends and their conductor passed up-stairs, they noticed two officers in somewhat loud conversation, not far from the landing and near the door of a side-room, on the handle of the door of which one of them held his hand a portion of the time. Without any effort, some of the words of their conversation could easily be heard; and Smith and Brown, who had no more than the average of that creditable delicacy which hears nothing intended only for other ears, caught some words which will bear setting down here as affording an additional clue to the state of discipline.
"That," said Woodruff, giving Smith a nudge as they came to the head of the stairs, speaking in a low tone, and pointing to the taller of the two men, who stood with his side-face presented at the moment,—"that is Colonel Crawford; and the other, the shorter man, is Captain Lowndes, who has been recruiting for the regiment at the Park. If I was in better odor with the Colonel, I would introduce you; but come on."
Smith and Jones didnot"come on" at the instant, and what they caught from the two officers was the following:
"Notonein a week?" asked the Colonel, in a tone mingling surprise and anger. "Not one? D—n it!"
"I am sorry to say, not one," was the reply of Captain Lowndes. "They nearly all sing the same tune, however."
"Well, it won't do forus, you know!" said the Colonel. "Another review, and by some officer who was not a d—d lawyer blockhead, might be awkward!" Colonel Crawford either forgot, at that moment, that he had any connection with the legal profession, or he chose to ignore the fact; and it is not to be supposed that his subordinate reminded him of it. "We must have a paragraph in the to-morrow morning," he went on, naming an influential daily, "giving the regiment another 'blow.' If it does not get us any recruits, it will at least make the thing look better at Albany. Hum—where's Dalton?"
"The Adjutant went to Boston yesterday," was the response of Lowndes. "Said he had business, though as he had a girl with him when he stepped on board the boat, I suspect his business was rather personal."
"D—n him!" muttered the Colonel, between his teeth. Then louder, to Lowndes: "I thought I told you to request him, if you saw him, not to leave the city again without permission fromme! It seems youhaveseen him; and why were my orders not obeyed?" The Colonel spoke now with great dignity, and drew himself up so that the eagles on his shoulder-straps were at least half an inch higher than when he was squatted down into easy position.
"Your orderswereobeyed," answered the Captain. "Ididtell him."
"And what did he say?" asked the Colonel, lifting his eyebrows with some appearance of interest.
"He said," replied the Captain, enunciating his words very clearly, as if he had no objection to their producing their full weight on his superior—"That Colonel Egbert Crawford might go to h-ll, and he would go to Boston."
"Did he?—d—n him!" said the Colonel, who seemed to have a small bottle of profanity lately uncorked, or one that he certainly was not in the habit of uncorking in the presence of those on whom he wished to produce a different impression.
"Yes he did," answered the Captain. "He said a little more. Perhaps you would like to havethat, while I am at it?"
"That?—yes, out with the whole of it!" spoke the Colonel, with another oath which need not be recorded here as any additional seasoning.
"He took occasion to remark, where the lady who was with him could hear it," Lowndes went on—"that he didn't care a d—n for you, and that you dare not make a complaint against him at Albany, a bit more than you dare jump into a place that is even hotter than the weather is here to-day."
"Did he—the infernal hound!" broke out the Colonel, his dark brows literally corrugated with rage. "I'll teach him whether Idareor not, before I am forty-eight hours older!" But either therewassomething behind the curtain, or Colonel Egbert Crawford was a man of most angelic temper, for the moment after he broke out into a laugh that was not of the most musical order and said: "Oh, well—Dalton is a pretty good fellow, after all, and perhaps the next Adjutant would be a worse one for the regiment."
With these words Colonel Egbert Crawford passed into the side room by the door of which he had been standing, while Captain Lowndes touched his hat to him very slightly and went on to the larger room towards which the others were proceeding. As the Colonel swung back the door, Smith caught a very quick glance within, and saw a table, with bottles, a pack of cards, a couple of dice-boxes, and four or five persons seated, lounging and smoking. The party appeared to him as if they might have been interrupted in a little harmless Sunday afternoon amusement, and as if they were only waiting for the return of the Colonel to the room, to renew that amusement in a very pleasant and effective manner. That impression was not removed by his hearing, after he had passed through the open door into the other room, a suspicious sound like the rattling of dice and another sound very like the chinking of coin, proceeding from the smaller apartment.
Smith and Brown found very little in the officers' room, dignified by the name of "regimental headquarters," demanding particular record. There were two red pine tables set together and forming a counter, behind which the regimental officers were supposed to be located; and on the end of the tables nearest the front of the house was a small desk, with pigeon-holes, at which, by the same fiction, the Adjutant was supposed to be always sitting, performing the arduous duties of his office. Supported by nails in the ceiling were two flag-staffs, their butts shaped to fit the muzzles of short rifles, and from the upper end of each depending one of the "guidons" of the regiment, gorgeously blue in color and lettered in shaded gold—understood to be the gift of certain ladies who properly appreciated the talents and devotion of the officers and the hopeful prospects of the regiment under formation. Behind the tables was a mantel; and on it stood two decanters partially filled with liquor, a plate of crackers and another of cheese. A Lieutenant was seated at the Adjutant's desk, engaged in filling up blank leaves-of-absence for each in turn, of a disorderly crowd of twenty or thirty soldiers who pressed forward from the door to receive them. Two or three of this crowd presented former leaves, to have them extended. One of these was refused, the Lieutenant laboring under some sort of impression that a private who had been three weeks under enlistment, and absent all that time on leave, would not become very proficient in drill unless he spent at least one week at the encampment before marching. The wronged man did not appear to take the refusal very much to heart, however: he merely remarked to one of the others, loud enough for the Lieutenant to have heard if he had been very observant, that "he didn't care two cusses for the leave: he would go off when he liked and stay as long as he liked, and he should like to see anybody smart enough to stop him."
At the mantel, taking a quiet drink with half a dozen civilian friends who had been admitted behind the tables, stood a tall, soldierly-looking man, pointed out by Woodruff as Lieut. Colonel Burns. Unaccountably, he wore no straps on the shoulder, his blue blouse looking as if it was thrown on for use instead of show, and his whole demeanor that of a man who, if opportunity should only be given him, would be a soldier. He had his sword-belts at the waist, however, and also wore his sword, as if he had some indefinite idea that something would thereby be gained in anappearanceof efficiency for the regiment.
"Have you seen almost enough?" asked Lieutenant Woodruff, of the two citizens.
"Quite enough!" said both in a breath.
"Well, time is just up," said the Lieutenant. "And in good time comes the drum-beat for evening parade. Come along, and see what it is like. I must leave you, but you can see the display without me."
A couple of snare-drums were rattling somewhere among the tents, and the shrill notes of a light infantry bugle sounded. Lieut. Colonel Burns buckled his sword belts a little tighter and straightened himself to a soldierly bearing, as he left the room with his friends. A sergeant took down the guidons, and all, except the one Lieutenant at the desk and two or three soldiers who did not consider the call as of sufficient consequence, followed them down to the parade-ground in front of the camp. Col. Egbert Crawford seemed to be like the two or three soldiers named, and not to consider the call of consequence enough to demand any attention on his part; for he did not, at least during the stay of Smith and Brown, emerge from the privacy of the inner room or make any movement to superintend the "dress parade."
That "dress parade" completed the experience of Smith and Brown; and it completed, at the same time, their knowledge of the numbers and efficiency of the Two Hundredth Regiment that was "almost ready to march." In squads of from ten to twenty-five, the soldiers gathered from their slovenly tents, until the observers could count something more than two hundred. Then by squads and afterwards in what was intended as a "regimental formation," they went through a series of marchings, countermarchings and facings, with about the proficiency which would be shown by the same number of entirely raw recruits, and with the same proportion of the most obvious blunderings that used to be exhibited by the "slab-companies" at the "general trainings" or "general musters" in the country sections, when a lamentable caricature upon military spirit was kept up, in the years following the War of 1812.
Not a musket was to be seen in the hands of one of these men, except the few sentries. They "had not been furnished," as the explanation was sure to be given afterwards when the regiment was discovered to be an undisciplined mob! They would probably not be "furnished" until just at the moment when the regiment should be forced to move, and then they would be put into hands liable to be called on to use them in battle within a week—those hands knowing no more of the management of the deadly instrument of modern warfare, than so many Sioux or South Sea Islanders might have known of watch-making or extracting the cube-root.
And yet with these men, and in this manner, the armies of the republic were being recruited; and on the deeds in arms wrought by these men, possibly in the very first conflict into which they were rushed like huddled sheep, the eyes of the military nations of Europe were to be turned with anxious interest. They were to fight, too, against a race of men to whom deadly weapons had been familiar from childhood, and who would consequently make soldiers, to the full extent of their capability, with one-half the training which was to these Northern men an absolute necessity! Is it any wonder that we have occasionally met with a Bull Run or a Second Field of Manassas, with this shameful waste of our opportunities and our war-material?
Smith and Brown left "Camp Lyon," before the completion of the "dress parade," with a him consciousness of being painfully disenchanted in a very important particular.
"Do you know, Smith" said Brown, as they were rolling along in the car, homeward—"that I doubt whether there are three hundred men in that regiment, absentees and all—instead of seven hundred as the papers report?"
"Humph," said Smith, "it seems to be all a humbug together! But I wonder what becomes of the extra pay issued to seven hundred men, when there are only three hundred entitled to receive it? And I wonder what becomes of all the extra rations that are drawn for them every day? Somebody must be making something out of it—eh? I wonder if there are any more regiments in the same condition?"
"Probably!" said Brown. Whereupon the two citizens fell into a very deep and silent train of thought, leaving us no additional speech to record.
Other people than Smith, at about that time, felt like propounding the same queries as to the disposition of extra pay and rations. Some of those queries, whichhavebeen propounded, have not yet been answered. When they are, if that happy period ever arrives, we may know something more of the channels and sluices through which the wealth of the richest nation on the globe has ebbed away, leaving such inconsiderable results to show for the expenditure.
And yet Colonel Egbert Crawford, visiting the city two hours afterwards, and dropping in at two or three favorite resorts of men who talked horse, war and politics, on his way to the house of his cousin,—bore himself bravely under his weight of uniform, and more than once threw in a pardonable boast over the services he was rendering the country, the sacrifices he was making, and the rapid growth and efficiency of the Two Hundredth Regiment.
"All brass is not fashioned and moulded in foundries, where men do swelter like to those standing in the flames of the fiery furnace," says an old writer, Arnold of Thorndean, "but much of it doth become shaped in the human countenance."