[17]March 20th, 1863.
[17]March 20th, 1863.
"You meddling fool!—what can that draft do tome? I am exempt by age!"
"It is false! it is false!" cried the pseudo-Captain, driving the victim to the wall more closely than evenheknew. "You are not an exempt, and the Governor shall take care ofyou."
"It is a lie!" yelled the Colonel, now incensed beyond all recollection of time, place or auditors. "I am fifty-four!"
"Fifty-four!" There seemed to be a chorus of that compound word coming from the group of ladies; and even Judge Owen, who had been so solemnly assured that his intended son-in-law was more than twenty years younger, could not avoid joining in the astonished exclamation: "Fifty-four!"
But the climax had not yet been reached. There had long been a suspicion which almost amounted to a certainty, in the mind of Frank Wallace, with reference to one point of the gallant Colonel's personal adornment; and he was now quite enough carried away by the reckless mischief of his nature, to determine that that suspicion should be verified or disproved.
"Fifty-four?" echoed the scapegrace. "Impossible! No Commissioner will believe any such story! Look at your hair—not a thread of gray in it! Bah!" and before the Colonel could make any effectual attempt to prevent the movement, the Captain had allowed his cane to fall to the floor and made a sudden and determined grab at the head-covering of the man of exempt years. Anyeffectualattempt to prevent the movement, it has been said: he did make an attempt to prevent it, however, as with a newly-awakened consciousness of danger. The only result of this sudden throwing out of his hands and scrambling with them, was that they came in sudden and violent contact with the head-covering and facial adornments of the pseudo-Captain, and that before any one else in the room could become fully aware of what had happened, the green patch, the green spectacles and gray wig which had metamorphosed the young man were all cleared away, and the curly head and bright face of Frank Wallace, printer and mischief-maker, stood fully revealed.
But it must be recorded that at that moment no one saw him. All eyes were turned in another direction, and yet one not very far removed. The sudden and vigorous jerk of the young man, which had been so determinedly guarded against, had yet produced its effect. In his hand he held a dark mass of hair, at the moment that his own pushed-off incumbrances tumbled to the floor; and a state of affairs was revealed on the cranium of the Colonel, for which not more than one of the company, or possibly two, could have been in the least degree prepared. What Virginia would have been, if cleared of all its woods and swamps and made into fair fighting-ground, and what Virginia is, with all its woods and swamps, while the Union soldiers fight over it at so terrible a disadvantage—may fitly present the contrast between Colonel John Boadley Bancker's head as it was and as it had been supposed. Not a spear of hair on it, from forehead to spine, so far as the eye could see by gas-light; and the head one of those fearful botches of nature when not over-well instructed in her work,—with the forehead retreating like the roof of a house, and the skull coming to a dull point at the top, like the end of a gigantic cucumber, and glossy and yellow like that cucumber ripening for seed! The total baldness of the head was bad enough, under the circumstances (especially for thirty-two!) but theshapeof that head!—oh father of that man, what right had you to visit your own sins upon a succeeding generation in such a manner?
The reception of this revelation was as varied, at first, as the characters of those who received it. Frank Wallace was so astounded at the extraordinary success of his manœuvre, and at the same time at his own detection, that he dropped crutch and cane, allowed his sham wounded leg to straighten, and stood holding the wig in his hand as if he had no power to lay it down. Mrs. Owen screamed, that seeming to be the duty of hospitality when such a breach of good manners had been committed in her parlor. Josephine Harris paled, flushed, and finally fell back into a chair in such convulsions of laughter that she cried like a child. Emily Owen tried to look grave, but looked at Joe and soon followed her lead. Aunt Martha happened to have her handkerchief in her hand, and stuffed it into her mouth so tightly that she came near suffocating. Judge Owen still stood in the doorway, his face judicially severe and portentous, as if he felt that some awful desecration had been committed, for which the full severity of the criminal law could scarcely be an adequate punishment.
Not an instant, however, before the two young girls found recruits for their "forward movement." Aunt Martha's handkerchief flew from her mouth, and she laughed from cap to slipper. Mrs. Owen, thus deserted by her reserve, caught the infection and laughed still louder than Aunt Martha. Frank Wallace directly came in with a baritone which chimed well with the soprano of the young girls and the contralto of the middle-aged ladies. And Judge Owen, at last, having satisfied his judicial dignity by keeping his gravity longer than any one else, rung in with a gruff heavy bass that might have been contracted for in the damp vault of his own court-room.
There are said to be some occasions in which the highest order of eloquence is shown in total silence, and others in which the most indomitable bravery is shown by immediately running away. Certainly this was an opportunity for the display of the latter quality. Just when the laugh had fairly burst, Colonel John Boadley Bancker clapped his hand to his head, satisfied himself that the catastrophe had really occurred, then made a grab at the wig and caught it out of the hands of his tormentor, took three steps out of the room to the hat-rack in the hall, and a few more out into the bright moonlight. Napoleon had left Waterloo!
The Last Tit-bits of the Banquet—Subsequent Events in the Histories of Different Characters—A Cavalry Charge at Antietam—And the End.
When the banquet is over, whether the guests have been fully satisfied or the opposite, there may still remain a few trifles which must be discussed, if the proper respect is to be shown to each other and the entertainer. When a story is almost ended, there may still remain a fragmentary portion, perhaps not altogether worthy of attention from those who have so far followed the fortunes of the different personages involved, and yet impossible to ignore without manifesting a disregard of the whole entertainment. To that stage this narrative has reached, and all that remains is a hasty grouping together of those closing events for which all that have preceded them would seem to have been intended by the fates that overruled them.
It will be remembered that Josephine Harris, when first recovered from the disappointment of Richard Crawford's absence from the city, penned a letter and mailed it to Niagara, giving him a rapid detail of all that she had been doing in his behalf—of events at West Falls—and of the absolute necessity that he should at once apply some of his marvellously recovered strength to the purposes of a journey thither. That letter, which should have reached Niagara as soon as the travellers themselves, suffered the fate of many-letters that are sent upon matters of life and death with the magic word "haste" in the lower left-hand corner; and was not delivered at the Cataract House until Saturday morning. Perhaps it was quite as well that the detention had occurred on the road, for by that means the partially-recovered invalid was spared two excitements in one day, which might have seriously prostrated him.
Even as it was, the shock was a sudden and hazardous one, to a system no more thoroughly restored than Richard Crawford's. He received that letter on Saturday morning, with several others from the city, and went up to his own room to read them. From prudential reasons, Bell, on the disappearance of Marion Hobart, had taken the vacated room, adjoining that of her brother; and when he had been for a few moments alone after his return from the hotel "post-office," she was startled by what seemed to be a groan issuing from his room. Instantly running to the door and tapping, when she entered she found him sitting on the side of the bed, white as the counterpane that covered it, and breathing heavily. She flew at once to his side, applied the restoratives at hand, and had the joy of seeing him almost instantly recover breath and voice. Then it was that she observed that he held a letter in his hand, and that letter he tendered her. She read, and her own excitement was scarcely less than that of her brother. Now for the first time she understood the strange words with reference to the destinies of her family, which had been uttered by the sybil, and which had done so much to change the very nature of, her womanhood. And what a revelation was here to her, of the mental torture which Richard must have experienced through all his long hopeless illness—of the uncomplaining patience with which he had borne what must have seemed to him the crushing out of all the best hopes of his life—of the murderous depravity which could exist in the heart of one connected with her by the dear ties of blood, and daily taken by the hand and trusted—and of the singular character of that young girl whom she had observed so much and known so little, and to whose efforts seemed to be owing all this happiness budding and blossoming out of the ashes of past misery.
An hour restored the equanimity of Richard Crawford, though several would be needed before he could recover all the strength of which he had been temporarily deprived by the shock. But joy does not kill, like grief; nor does it even enervate for any long period. Only a little time elapsed before the steadfast lover, to whom the promise of joy was again open after so long an obscuration, decided that he must and would be strong enough to ride to Utica that night and to West Falls on Sunday morning. He could not be allowed to go alone, and of course Bell, who would not dissuade him, had no alternative but to accompany him With a few words of apology to Walter Harding, for thus making a last break into what would otherwise have been a pleasant sojourn of some days at the Falls, and leaving him entirely alone,—but with the explanation that family affairs of the gravest importance demanded their presence in the neighborhood of Utica,—they left Niagara on Saturday afternoon, slept a portion of the night at Utica, and reached West Falls on Sunday morning, the Twelfth—a week from that eventful Sunday on which the destinies of the whole Crawford family seemed to have been played for, lost and won, in the little parlor of Aunt Betsey Halstead.
It is an old story which can never be told over half so well as it can be acted—that of the meeting of lovers who have been once estranged by wrong or misunderstanding. It was a trying moment when Mary Crawford, altogether ignorant of the time of his coming, even if he would ever again come at all,—was called to meet the man whom she had so wronged and misunderstood. But how to perform the rites of reconciliation, is one of the sublime mysteries which Nature teaches when she gives us the other holy lessons of love; and who doubts that the cousin-lovers clasped each other more fondly, and with a better knowledge of what each was worth to the other, in the meeting embrace of that Sunday morning, than they might ever have done during their whole lives if the tongue of slander and the hand of injustice had not come temporarily between them?
Their connection with this narration closes here. Poor old John Crawford is yet living, though dying daily with weakness and the gradual wearing away of the very power of life. Mary Crawford is a wife, and has been since Wednesday, the twenty-sixth of November, 1862, on which day—the day preceding the annual Thanksgiving—Richard Crawford religiously believes that he repaid himself for all by-gone wrongs and misunderstandings. For some cause, with which his past sufferings and his changed domestic relations may have had more or less to do, he has never yet joined the army of which he has always been thinking with a longing desire. His pen has not been idle, even in his happiness—may not that have donehisappointed work? It need scarcely be said that the friendship between the people of the big house on the hill, and those of the little Halstead house in the village, though for a time interrupted by pride and neglect, has since been more warmly cemented than ever before,—and that when little Susy marries the engineer, as she will probably do before the summer closes, there will be no warmer prayers put up for their happiness, than those uttered by two who have trodden the same path but a little while before them.
We have not chosen to depict the storm which followed the sudden departure of Colonel John Boadley Bancker from the house of Judge Owen, near the Harlem River. That therewasa storm, is undeniable—such a storm as the burly Judge had (and still retains) the faculty of getting up at the shortest notice. One of those blind, indiscriminate storms, which having no justice have no direction, and which consequently hurt no one, though they offend all. Frank Wallace, for daring to play such a masquerade in his house and offend a guest—Josephine Harris, for being an accessory before or after the fact, to the plot (the pompous man never knew which)—Emily for having been always a disobedient daughter and a disgrace to the family, this event being another of the abundant proofs thereof—Mrs. Owen and Aunt Martha for daring to live in the same house where such things were about to occur, without preventing them, whether they knew of the arrangement or not,—all received their share in this blast of denunciation; and yet, strangely enough, all survived it, and not one even quitted the house in disgust.
Colonel John Boadley Bancker has never since entered the house or held any intercourse with its inmates. He would quite as soon, we suspect, change places with Driesbach and tame a few tigers and hyenas for exhibition, as trust himself once more to the tender mercies of people whodetected and laughed at him. If he prays (which is doubtful) he prays first to be delivered from the wiles and machinations of a demon in petticoats named Joe Harris. He does not wear shoulder-straps or a blue uniform. He has not been drafted, and probably will not be, even in the new eight-hundred-thousand levy. He is said to be still speculating, and making money; and there have been rumors that he is looking for a "job" in the operations of the Harbor-Defence Commissioners of the City of New York.[18]But as those Commissioners are well known to be beyond the reach of those evil influences which have made other operations of the war a little costly beyond their return,—he cannot do otherwise than fail in this instance.
[18]March 21, 1863.
[18]March 21, 1863.
Frank Wallace has not been banished the house of Judge Owen, since that memorable night of July. He visits it, even takes Emily to the theatres, and is neither insulted nor interrupted. It is supposed that the Judge did not rule him out of the house, because he believed it to be of no use, holding that a man who had begun to come in disguise might continue the game if not allowed to come openly, and that to keep him out he would be obliged to remain at home all the time himself, and keep a sharp eye on the supposed milkman, the baker, the butcher, and even the man who carried in the coal.
It may be that after this lapse of time, the Judge even tolerates the scapegrace. Emily does, it is very evident, and as she has never since swerved in her warm friendship with the wild girl who arranged the masquerade, she is not at all likely to recede from her old position or to marry otherwise than as she pleases. The Judge had better reconsider his old decision, gracefully, for he is certainly overruled by that "full bench" consisting of Emily herself (Mrs. Owen reserving her opinion), Josephine Harris and Aunt Martha; and Frank Wallace will "take judgment" some day before he is aware of it, in the shape of pretty Emily Owen!
This is not a clergyman's or a county clerk's record of marriages, and it is a matter of regret that we cannot carry out the system inaugurated by Southworth and followed by Wood, of marrying off all the couples at the close of the relation, even down to the footman and the kitchen-girl. If we put themen trainfor that pleasant consummation, shall it not be held sufficient?
It would have been one of the pleasantest tasks of this narration to marry Walter Lane Harding, merchant and good fellow, to Bell Crawford, much more worthy to be his wife than when she was leaving the couch of her sick brother, with the gallant Colonel of the Two Hundredth as her attendant, in search of a peculiar shade of red ribbon. But Harding is a man of mercantile regularity of idea, and not even a novelist can move him more rapidly thanhechooses. He left Niagara on the Monday following the departure of Bell Crawford and her brother on Saturday, but business may have had more to do with his return to this city than any outsider can know. He has since been very much in her society, and friends believe that they are sincerely attached to each other. It is highly probable that they will be at Kittatinny or the White Mountains together, during the summer; and a marriage between them, which is one of the eventual certainties, may take place at a moment when it is least expected by others, but when they (the parties most deeply interested, after all) happen to fancy that the time has come for such a culmination of the pleasant acquaintance. Walter Harding, meanwhile, has forsaken none of his old ways, and finds the same pleasure as of old, in the street, in the country or at places of intellectual amusement, in the company (when he can manage to light upon that ever-busy person) of his friend and companion Tom Leslie.
It has already been said, in a previous chapter, that Tom Leslie and John Crawford left the Cataract House within an hour after the discovery of the abduction of Marion Hobart, taking carriage into Canada. Perhaps neither of the two knew precisely what was his motive in the pursuit, except the one before named—curiosity. If Crawford felt that he had a duty to the young Virginian girl, and some claim upon her, under the bequest of her dying grandfather, he was yet fully satisfied that she had left with her own consent, and that she was now where he could take no legal steps to reclaim her from any false position in which she might have placed herself. Leslie had, and knew that he had, no right whatever to meddle with the movements of the suspicious parties, except that he might have obtained some description of Columbus' right bydiscovery. However, the reasons being what they might, the fact was patent—they were now in full chase of a will-of-the-wisp of most magnificent dimensions.
There was not much difficulty, on enquiry, to find that the carriage they were following (Leslie remembered that this was thesecondcarriagehehad followed, in that connection) had taken the road to St. Catharine's; and thither the pursuers posted. Parties who bore the description of those they named—one large, dark man and one very small lady—had taken refreshments at the principal hotel there, two hours before; and then they had apparently gone on to Toronto. They followed to Toronto. Some hours were spent at Toronto, in discovering that they had taken the rail to Montreal. The pursuers followed to Montreal, and late at night, on the day following the departure from Niagara, were at Donnegana's Hotel. No concealment had here been considered necessary by the fugitives, whatever they might have practised before; and on the register of Donnegana's, Leslie found an entry of the names of "Dexter Ralstonand wife!"
"Phew!" he said, calling the attention of Crawford to the book, "they have been rapid. All my suspicious were correct, as usual. There never was such a match; but they have now acquired a legal right to remain together, even if there was power to separate them otherwise. They are married!"
"The d—l they are!" said John Crawford, leaning over to examine the register. "True enough! Then my guardianship is ended, with a witness. But isshehis wife? Is it Marion Hobart, or may he not have been married before?"
"No, said Leslie," remembering the picture, "she and no other."
They had not been aware that they were speaking loudly enough to be easily overheard; but as the last words were spoken a well-known voice sounded behind them, and Tom Leslie, as he turned, saw Dexter Ralston, cigar in mouth, coming up from the door.
"You were speaking of my wife, gentlemen," he said, as he bowed to Leslie. "Well, what of her?"
"If your wife is Marion Hobart," said John Crawford, turning, "we were speaking ofmy ward, entrusted to my guardianship by her grandfather, her last surviving relative, on his death-bed, and stolen away by you from the Cataract House yesterday."
The words of Crawford were somewhat loud, and the face of the Virginian flushed, though the office of the hotel was almost deserted and probably no one but themselves understood what was being uttered. "Stolenis a hard word," he said, after a moment, "but if you are John Crawford, who brought Marion Hobart safely away from Glendale, in Virginia, you are licensed to say almost anything."
Tom Leslie spoke.
"Where shall I meet you next, Ralston?"
"That depends upon where you follow me," said the Virginian, in a tone of dignified pleasantry which came near bringing the blood to Leslie's cheek as it had lately been brought to that of the Virginian. The journalist shook off the feeling, however, and laughed.
"Well, wehavefollowed you, of course," he said—"perhaps playedspyupon you. But if I am not mistaken, I saw you playing very nearly the same game on Goat Island and at the Cataract."
The Virginian echoed the laugh.
"Fairly hit back," he said. "Ihaveplayed the spy, more than once. Who has not, I wonder?"
"What are you to-night?" asked Leslie, with a marked banter in his tone. "It is none of my business, of course, here on Canadian ground, but the other day, on Goat Island, you were—"
"A loyal American," answered Ralston, interrupting him. "To-night, and on Canadian ground, I am a loyalVirginian, true to my own State, first, last and forever."
"By George! I thought so all the while!" said Leslie, though there was certainly no anger in his tone. (It is a matter of doubt whether within the preceding few days that young man had not found himself so pleasantly situated in some regards, as to be incapable of becoming very easily vexed, even for the sake ofpatriotism).
"We differ on the national question, and I suppose conscientiously," said Ralston. "I hold the extreme doctrine of State Rights, and you that of centralization. I am a rebel—you are a loyalist. All right—don't let us quarrel, especially as we have been friends and as you are certainly a jolly good fellow and Ioughtto be."
"I ought to hate you and wish for your extermination," said Leslie, in the same frank tone; "and if I heard you professing the same sentiments at the St. Nicholas I should certainly help send you to Fort Lafayette. And yet I rather like you, in spite of the fact that I believe you have been concerned in some of the nests of secession in New York, through which the enemy—that's your friends!—obtained knowledge of all that was going on at the North."
"Never nearer right in your life!" said the Virginian. "In fact you are more nearly correct than even you imagine. One of the reasons why the Union cause can never succeed, is that the 'rebellion,' as you call it, has emissaries among you in every class of society, from the club-house to the brothel. You will scarcely believe, even with your experience, how society is getting mixed up! I found Kate F——, the daughter of one of my rich old neighbors, seduced and lured away from home, the inmate of one of those houses I have just named; and as I could do nothing better to relieve her just then, I employed her forthe cause. To-night she is asleep in this house, my wife's servant. You wouldn't trust her, would you?—I would. But you need not suppose that the machinery is all worked among the lower classes. Don't trust the brown-stone houses too far! We had a brown-stone house up-town, until not many days ago—"
"Yes, on East 5— Street, not far from the Eastern Dispensary," said Leslie, breaking in upon the Virginian in turn; "and another on Prince Street, and—"
"Oh, you seem to know a good deal about it," said Ralston, trying to keep up his tone of banter, but his voice showing that he was really a little surprised. "And yet I do not think that you can be altogether behind the curtain after all. The worst foes of what you call the 'Union cause' have not been those who declared themselves secessionists. Some of your leading officials, it may be pleasant to you to know, are as arrant 'rebels' as even Virginia can furnish; and with them and the correspondence carried on through their offices, we have worked more effectively than in almost any other way."
"Yes," said Leslie, looking steadily at Ralston, and with a wicked smile peeping out from under his moustache. "Yes—not only local officials, but Congressmen, judging by the conversation that you held with the Honorable —— ——, under the arches of the Capitol, the night before Lincoln's inauguration."
"What!" cried the Virginian, for once surprised out of his equanimity. "The d—l! You know that?" Then he laughed and grew placid again. The instant after he held out his hand to Leslie. "Leslie, you are keener than I thought, and perhaps it is just as well that we are not to play against each other any more. I am going to Europe by the next steamer from Quebec. It is late—I must go to bed. Let me say good-bye."
"To Europe?" asked Leslie. "Eh? oh! more ships, cotton and tobacco loans, I suppose."
"No!" said Ralston, and his voice sunk into a low tone of concentrated bitterness, very different from the manner he had recently displayed. "No! I am going to Europe to reside. I am done with the Confederate cause, though I hate the Federal as much as ever. It wasVirginiaI was striving for, not to change the despotism of Lincoln to another and a worse under Jeff Davis. That is enough—once more good night and good-bye!"
"Stop!" said John Crawford, who had stood very near during all this conversation, but taken no part in it. "You have yet a word or two to answer tome. I charged you, a few moments ago, with the abduction of a lady left to my care and under my solemn oath to protect her, by her last living relative. I know there is no law here in my behalf; but as amananswering to aman, what have you to say to this?"
"Her last living relative?" said the Virginian, as if he had heard nothing else of the words addressed to him. "Humph! as I said before, if you are John Crawford, my wife and myself both owe you much, and perhaps you are entitled to be satisfied before you go. Come up-stairs with me a moment, and you shall see what foundation there is for your words."
He led the way from the office of the hotel, through the hall and up a broad flight of steps to the next floor, the two friends following. Turning to the left he tapped with his knuckles on the door of one of the private parlors. There was no answer from within. He tapped again, and still there was no answer. He turned the knob of the door and peeped within, then opened the door a little wider and beckoned to Leslie and Crawford.
"Look!"
The two companions looked within. Two of the burners of the chandelier dependent from the ceiling were lit, and a flood of softened light from the ground-shades filled the apartment. On a sofa at the left sat the red woman of the Rue la Reynie Ogniard, red no longer now, but with the matchless beauty of her face displayed as it had been for a moment when Tom Leslie saw her unmasked at the house on Prince Street. But her dark hair lay all dishevelled; and in the eyes, that seemed to be looking down with a fixed and almosthungryexpression of love that could never gaze enough, there were traces of late weeping. At her feet, on a low ottoman, half sat and half knelt Marion Hobart—or she who had so lately borne that name—her blonde hair thrown back from her brow, and her eyes looking up with an answering expression of yearning affection that would need years to satisfy. She was in white, and around her waist were thrown the arms of the other, holding her in a clasp of agonized force and intensity. Neither seemed to be aware that others were near—apparently neither had heard the knock or the opening of the door—for the time they seemed to be alone upon earth. A moment Leslie and Crawford gazed upon this picture: then Ralston closed the door again.
Leslie, who had for an instant started and trembled when the picture met his view, as he had never failed to do in the presence of that marvellous woman, uttered no word as the door closed.
"Well?" asked John Crawford, to whom nothing had as yet been revealed.
"You do not understand," said the Virginian. "I think that your friend sees farther. I married Marion Hobart yesterday, at Toronto. You said that you held a right over her by the bequest of her last living relative—her grandfather: I tell you that I have to-night restored her to a dearer relative, in whose arms she lies——"
"Hermother," said Leslie, the two words breaking from his lips as if involuntarily.
"Her mother? Oh Lord!" broke out John Crawford, surprise completely overmastering him.
"Her mother—a French lady by birth, and something of whose character you know, Leslie. Her mother, the repudiated wife of Charles Hampden Hobart, from whom Marion has been separated since childhood, and to whom you unwittingly, and I of my own will, have just given her back. Have I a right to her, now? Are you satisfied?"
"Yes," said John Crawford. "My duty is done, though I should rather have seen it end differently. Good-night!"
"Good-night and good-bye!" said Tom Leslie, holding out his hand. Dexter Ralston shook it, bowed to Crawford, and entered the parlor, closing the door behind him, The two companions descended the stairs; and so closed Tom Leslie's long adventure, which it must be confessed that he had not brought to quite so practical an end as that reached by his female counterpart in another direction. But then who ever heard of a man managing a mystery or an intrigue with the same effective dexterity as a woman, or making as much good or evil out of it in the end?
Tom Leslie left Montreal almost as suddenly as he had arrived there, in company with John Crawford. He reached New York still in company with the Zouave. His re-union with Joe Harris took place at that auspicious time when the comedy at Judge Owen's had just come to a conclusion; and one can very well imagine what a clatter of tongues and a ringing of merry laughter there must have been in the parlor of Mrs. Harris's cozy little house, as the two compared notes since their separation at Utica, and as each revealed what had yet been necessarily kept hidden from the other. Mrs. Harris, good soul, listened to the two rattle-pates on that first evening, and laughed as merrily as either; but after a time the good lady stole away, perhaps to her early bed; and then, strangely enough, the merriment soon ceased, and they were silent. Were their voices only for others, and did eye speak to eye, lip to lip, and heart to heart, when they were alone together? One who knew both passed them closely by without being observed, and arrived at that impression, when they had stolen away from Mrs. Harris and the Ocean House at Newport, a month later, on the night of the full moon of August, and were sitting silent together, on the almost deserted piazza of the Stone Bridge House, at the extreme north end of Rhode Island, and under the shadow of Mount Hope, looking at the moon shining in placid beauty on the still waters of the East River, and thinking of Indian canoes and the romance of old history, as the little boats of the pleasure-seekers glided in and out among the wooded islands, and the shouts of merriment rung out ever and anon on the night air from lips that were bubbling over with enjoyment.
And this brings us to a matter of no slight embarrassment. If this narration has a heroine (which may be held as a matter of doubt) that heroine is Josephine Harris, the wild, impulsive, loving girl, ever ready for help or mischief, whose madcap pranks have played so important a part in the fortunes of all. And if we have not been all the while entirely without a hero, Tom Leslie, the journalist, cosmopolitan, lover of nature, and strange mixture of boyish gayety and manly experience, must supply that important place. The meeting of these two oddities has been narrated, and their lives have seemed to blend together from that moment; and yet the strange spectacle has been presented, of two who are talking always and on all subjects, saying no word of love to each other that reaches the pen of the narrator. There is one long pressure of the hand on the first day of their meeting—one long, confiding pressure, in which the two palms might almost grow together; and that is all. Thenceforth they belong to each other, and yet without a single question openly asked or answered. If the narrator should be asked, Why this reticence?—he might not be able to explain the restraint which holds his hand. They love each other dearly—so dearly that the blotting out of one from existence would be leaving that existence a blank to the other, for so many weary months and years that the very heart would grow sick at contemplating the long expanse of bereavement yet to be travelled over.
But they are not married? No. Months have passed over them, since each knew each so thoroughly that often the one speaks the unbreathed thought of the other; and yet they are not married. When will that marriage vow be spoken? To-morrow? Next year? Never? Who knows, except God in heaven? Perhaps there is something in this strange, wild, wayward love, between two who may not dream of any reward beyond its existence, too sacred even for its words to be recorded if they should fall upon the ear or enter the mind of the romancer. Neither of them, perhaps, could attract a love beside: neither of them might value another love, if it should come at any call. Both of them will be Pariahs from the caste of hard propriety, while the world lives or they exist. Both will chatter, laugh, weep at times, fill unacknowledged places in the world, and weave unreal romances of loving mischief in real life. And yet, married or unmarried, they rest in each other—rest, in the truest and holiest sense of that sacred word which almost encompasses heaven. Absent, they will wish for each other: together, they will sometimes forget the blessing that has been conferred, to remember it again some time through sobs and kisses. And here let the record close.
No—let the record bear one more important suggestion. If they do marry, for the protection of society let conspicuous labels be pinned on the backs of their children: "Don't let these little people get into any chance for mischief."
John Crawford, the Zouave, returned to New York within the succeeding three days. Among the first of his researches in the city, was one as to the state of the bank-account of Marion Hobart. The account was closed—every dollar had been drawn, by check under her own hand, and the fact gave only another proof that her abduction had been accomplished without much violence, if not indeed with her own connivance.
John Crawford rejoined the Advance Guard in October, and has since shared in all the perils and glories of that gallant corps. He is still a private—it may be because no commission has offered on such terms as a true man could accept; and it may be because he believes the true romance and glory of war to lie with thesoldier, and not theofficer—the danger of the lonely picket-guard and the song and story of camp and bivouac, supplying a fresh and glorious excitement to which the superior must always remain a stranger.
From the moment when Colonel Egbert Crawford left West Falls so suddenly, and took his way Southward by the cars of the New York Central road on that Sunday evening of July, he seems to have passed away entirely from the course of this narration. Let it not be supposed that he has passed away from memory or that these closing words can be complete without a knowledge of his subsequent movements.
It has been seen how calmly, to all outward appearance, the baffled and detected man bore the knowledge of his ruin.Ruin, because nothing less was involved in the failure of his plans. He had long been embarrassed in money affairs, and for months before his business as a Tombs lawyer had been falling away under that worst of all cankers—neglect. The hand of Mary Crawford would have satisfied his heart, and her fortune would have repaired the weakness of his own. Failing both, he was hopelessly bankrupt. The Two Hundredth Regiment was a failure, and he had known the fact for weeks. Perhaps he had never believed that it would be otherwise. At all events, as may have been suspected from his forced submission to the unpardonable insolence of the Adjutant, he had been deceiving the authorities as to the number and condition of the regiment, and applying to his own use sums that might need to be some day strictly accounted for. The previous word will bear repetition—this event in his life was absolute ruin.
Some men commit suicide under such circumstances. Others make one more and a still greater departure from the path of honesty, and victimizing all whom they can influence by the holiest of pleas and the most sacred claims of friendship, flee away to bury their shame among strangers. A few find such positions the turning-points in their lives, and thenceforward develope some startling virtues which almost redeem the lamentable past.
Egbert Crawford had proved himself a villain, even as the world goes. He had trampled upon the dearest ties of blood, and been a constructive murderer, only withheld from the actual crime by circumstances over which he had no control. He had murdered character, and would have murdered the happiness of a poor, weak, unoffending woman, who had the double claim of youth and of kindred blood, demanding consideration at his hands. He had trifled with the public service and defrauded the government, as too many others were and have since been doing on every hand—draining his Mother Country of her life-blood in her very hour of need, and so aiding to commit that most deadly and horrible of crimes—matricide. Could this man still have one virtue remaining? Let this be seen.
He reached New York on Monday night, after a stay of a few hours at Albany. What he did at the latter place has never been known and perhaps will never be. On Tuesday, for an hour, he was at Camp Lyon, and some of the other officers saw him walking backward and forward, on the piazza of the hotel, in conversation with the Adjutant. Once or twice their voices were heard to rise louder than good-feeling would have allowed, though the words they uttered were not caught by any listener. Were they haggling, as robbers have been known to do after successful operations in plundering, over the division of the spoils? At nightfall the Colonel returned to the city, and Camp Lyon and the Two Hundredth Regiment saw him no more.
The morning papers of a day or two after announced that the Two Hundredth Regiment, which seemed to have been lagging in the way of recruits, for a few days before, had been abandoned as a separate organization and would be consolidated with the One Hundred and Ninety-ninth, then in the course of successful formation at a camp within half a mile of its disbanded rival. With this addition, the One Hundred and Ninety-ninth would be full and able to leave within a week. The Colonel of the Two Hundredth, it was added, had accepted a commission on staff-service, and had already left for the seat of war.
All this Was true, except so much of it as was mere speculation for the future. Whether the One Hundred and Ninety-ninth did profit by the consolidation and move within the week—whether any money, and if so how much, was received by those who "sold out" the Two Hundredth—and whether the One Hundred and Ninety-ninth (notincluding Lieut. Woodruff, who threw up his commission in disgust) entered and honored the service, or was yet frittered away by the gross mismanagement of those in command,—all these are matters that have no connection whatever with the present relation. The gist of the newspaper paragraph was true—the consolidation of the two regiments had been effected, and Colonel Egbert Crawford had left Now York for Washington, on staff-service.
When he left his legal office on the day of his departure for Washington, he carried with him a package the shape of which none could mistake. It contained a sword. So much any eye could see. But no eye could see what lay beneath. It has been more than once indicated that so far as an evil man could love purely, Egbert Crawford really loved the little cousin for whom he was playing so unfairly. Sword-factories had sprung up, since the breaking out of the war, along the little streams which emptied into the Mohawk, through the Oneida Valley; and some of them kept up the clink of the trip-hammers and the whirr of the emory-wheels that shaped and polished sword-blades, not far from West Falls. One day, in June, while his star seemed to be so certainly in the ascendant in the family of John Crawford, Mary and himself had visited one of those factories. Impressed by the intelligence of his remarks on the manufacture, and perhaps willing to curry favor with the commander of a regiment just going into the field, the superintendent of the sword-factory had presented the officer with a splendid plain light-cavalry sabre with its brazen hilt and heavy steel scabbard—a most deadly and effective weapon, upon which one could depend in battle almost as well as upon the best blade forged in Damascus. That sword Mary had carried home in her own hands, presenting it to him afterwards, in a moment of good feeling, with a playful word of confidence in his valor, which he had never forgotten. That blade, hallowed by the little hand of Mary Crawford which had once pressed its hilt, was the one which he carried with him that day as he left his office for no imaginary "field," but one of bloody reality.
Would he have been superstitious enough to connect the fact with his own past or future fate, had he known that Aunt Synchy, the old Obi woman of Thomas Street, was that very day lying dead on the floor of her miserable room, having had a dose of one of her own insidious poisons administered in her tea by Master Jeffy, who had become almost too much of an expert in the art,—because she would not allow him the extravagance of a whole penny to buy a top?
Josephine Harris, painfully correct in her general estimation of the character of Egbert Crawford, had pronounced him, in addition to his other vices, "a coward," and "amounting to nothing, as a soldier, except his shoulder-straps and sword-belts." She "did not believe that he would ever go to the war." How very easily, seeing one half the truth, we can overleap too much intervening space and falsify the remaining half! Egbert Crawforddid"go to the war," and under such circumstances that his "shoulder-straps" and "sword-belts" counted for very little in comparison with himself. Three days after he left New York, he joined the army at Harrison's Landing, as a volunteer aid-de-camp to any officer who needed rough-riding and sharp fighting. He was a dashing rider—thanks to the education received many years before in the country, and the steadiness with which he had since kept up the habit of riding, at an expenditure of time and money which he could ill afford. He bore excellent endorsements from Albany and New York, and he had lately held a commission as Colonel. Besides these advantages, Hooker saw something in the dark face of the lawyer—something in the set lips and clouded brow, which while it might not have commanded confidence in the selection of an agent to be specially trusted in matters of delicate issue, told that there was desperation andfight. He joined the staff of that General, with the honorary rank of Captain.
Then followed that terrible blunder which removed the Army of the Potomac from the James River, unloosed the grasp of the Federals from the very throat of the rebel power, and re-opened the Pandora's Box of incursion which had been almost closed by the investiture of Richmond. Then followed the still more terrible blunder of the appointment of Pope to the leading command, and the commencement of that chain of disasters which culminated in the disgraceful retreat of the Union forces towards Washington, after the second battle of Bull Run, on the twenty-ninth of August—a retreat which was only checked by the momentary return of the "young Napoleon" from his temporary Elba, and a demoralization which was only forgotten when the Potomac army, once more re-organized under the old commander, moved up into Maryland to break the threatened invasion of the Middle States.
The young aid-de-camp proved himself a man and a soldier, however raw and unaccustomed, in the removal from Harrison's Landing and the disastrous fights of Pope's campaign; but there was little opportunity, indeed, for dash amid demoralization. And so matters passed rapidly on until the morning of Antietam. One of the captains of General Pleasanton's cavalry fell at Sharpsburg, leaving a vacancy which that gallant officer filled, by General Hooker's consent, with his volunteer aid-de-camp. Mary Crawford's cavalry sabre had at last found its true field, though he had worn it through all, instead of the more showy regulation blade, when on staff duty.
Antietam had begun to thunder, though the height of that terrible battle, which up to this time[19]divides with Malvern Hill and Shiloh the fearful honor of being the most destructive of any fought on the American continent, had not yet been reached. One hundred and twenty thousand of the Union troops held the eastern bank of Antietam Creek, ready to cross and complete the expulsion of the rebels from Maryland, while it was believed that not less than two hundred thousand of the rebels held the high lands opposite. The slaughter of the day was fairly commencing. Pleasanton held the upper of the three bridges over the Creek, that at the Hagerstown road, over which Hooker was sweeping forward to make his crossing. He had been ordered by Hooker to hold his position without fail and at all hazards. The rebels seemed to be in heavy force on the heights behind and farther up the creek, and evidently they were prepared to make a desperate resistance to the crossing of Hooker. The position of the cavalry was a painful one. Hooker seemed slow in coming, and shot and shell kept continually dropping among them, knocking from their saddles one and another of the brave fellows who were so chafing with impatience and inaction. At length, and just at the moment when the head of Hooker's column appeared from behind the woods on the other side, a squadron of rebel horse, two or three hundred strong, came into view, down the creek and a little behind, on a low plateau which stretched from it towards the hills. The advance guard came pricking in at the same moment. Pleasanton, who had been anxiously observing the advance of Hooker, caught a word behind him and turned. As he did so, and saw the rebel cavalry, he caught the word repeated.
"Damnation!"
"Who spoke?" asked the General.
"I!" answered Captain Crawford, commanding the right company, and consequently very near the commander.
"And what did you mean?" asked Pleasanton.
"My word was not for your ear, General, of course," said the young officer. "What I meant was that it was a shame that Hooker was coming just at this moment, and that we could not have a brush with those rebels on horseback, yonder."
"Eh?" said the General. "What consequence?"
"This," answered Crawford. "They brag of the rebel cavalry—they say that we havenone. I should like to try them, if not more than two to one."
"Good!" said Pleasanton. "The right feeling, though a little imprudent. You are a young officer, Captain Crawford, but they tell me you have dash, and that sounds like it. Dash is what we want, if we can only have steadiness with it. Your eyes are younger than mine—how many of those rebels are there?"