"'He has just ridden off yonder.' I pointed toward the cloud of dust east and north of us.
"'Split your throats, boys! General Beauregard has just sent me to thePresident to welcome him with the news that the Yankees are licked andflying in all directions! Not a man of them can escape. GeneralLongstreet is on their rear at Centreville.'
"There were deafening, crazy shouts; hats, canteens, even muskets, were flung in the air, and the wounded, lying on the ground, were struck by some of these things as they fell, in a cloud, about them. The shouts grew louder and louder, they rose and fell, far, far away right and left. Everybody embraced everybody else. Men who had been limping and despondent before broke into wild dances of joy. Everybody wanted to go toward the field of battle now, but a provost guard filed down the road presently, and in a few minutes I saw a sight that made tears of rage and shame blind me. Whole regiments of blue-coats came at a quick-step through the dusty roadway, the rebel guards prodding them brutally with their bayonets. The fellows near me, who had been running from the fight, set up insulting cheers and cat-calls.
"'Did you'ns leave a lock of your hair with old Mas'r Lincoln?'
"'Come down to Dixie to marry niggers, have ye?' and scores of taunts more insulting and obscene. Our men never answered. They were worn and dusty. They had no weapons, of course, for the first thing the rebels did was to search every man, take his money, watch, studs, even his coat and shoes, when they were better than their own. Hundreds of our men were in their stocking-feet, or, rather, in their bare feet, as they tramped wearily through the burning sand and twisted roots. I heard one of the rebels near me, an officer, say that the prisoners were all going to the junction to take the cars. President Davis had ordered that they should be marched through the streets of Richmond to show the people of the capital the extent of the victory. Then the thought flashed into my head that if our army had been captured, my best chance of finding Jack would be to follow to Richmond and watch the blue-coats. I easily slipped among the prisoners, came to the city and saw every man that went to Castle Winder. But no one that I knew was among them, and I made up my mind that Jack had escaped. I saw Wesley Boone's father and sister at the Spottswood House yesterday, but I was too late to catch them, and, when I asked the clerk at the desk, be said they had taken quarters in the town—he didn't know where."
"That's a fact," Olympia exclaimed; "they left Washington before us. I wonder if they found Wesley?"
"I don't know," Dick continued, "The officers were brought in a gang by themselves, and I didn't see them. Well, I hung about the town, visiting all the places I thought it likely Jack might be, and then I joined a cavalry company that belonged to Early's brigade, at Manassas. I was going there with them this morning to get back to our lines and find Jack, when I saw the paragraph inThe Examiner, telling of your coming and whereabouts."
"What an intrepid young brave you are, Dick!" Olympia cried, as the artless narrative came to an end.
"What a cruel boy, to leave his family and—and—run into such dreadful danger!" Merry expostulated.
"What a devoted boy, to risk his life and liberty for our poor Jack!" Mrs. Sprague said, bending forward to stroke the tow-head. The carriage passed down the same road that Jack had gone the day before, whistling sarcasms at his keeper. At Harrison's Landing there was a delay of several hours, and the impatient party wandered on the shores of the majestic James—glittering, like a sylvan lake, in its rich border of woodland. The sun was too hot to permit of the excursion Dick suggested, and late in the afternoon the wheezy ferry carried them down the lake-like stream. On every hand there were signs of peace—not a fort, not a breastwork gave token that this was in a few months to be the shambles of mighty armies, the anchorage of that new wonder, the iron battle-ship; the scene of McClellan's miraculous victory at Malvern, of Grant's slaughtering grapplings with rebellion at bay, of Butler's comic joustings, and the last desperate onslaughts of Hancock's legions. The air, tempered by the faint flavor of salt in the water, filled the travelers with an intoxicating vigor, lent strength to their jaded forces, which, while tense with expectation, could not wholly resist the delicious aroma, the lovely outlines of primeval forest, the melody of strange birds, startled along the shore by the wheezy puffing of the ferry. There were cries of admiring delight as the carriage ran from the long wooden pier into the dim arcade of sycamore and pine, through which the road wound, all the way to Rosedale. Then they emerged into a gentle, rolling, upland, where cultivated fields spread far into the horizon, and in the distance a dense grove, which proved to be the park about the house. The coming of the carriage was a signal to a swarm of small black urchins to scramble, grinning and delighted, to the wide lawn. There was no need to sound the great knocker; no need to explain, when Rosalind, hurrying to the door, saw Olympia emerging from the vehicle. They had not seen each other in four years, but they were in each other's arms—laughing, sobbing—exclaiming:
"How did you know? When did you come?"
"Jack, Jack! Where is he? How is he?"
"Jack's able to eat," Rosa cried, darting down to embrace Mrs. Sprague, and starting with a little cry of wonder as Aunt Merry exclaimed, timidly:
"We're all here. You've captured the best part of Acredale, though you haven't got Washington yet."
"Why, how delightful! We shall think it is Acredale," Rosa cried, welcoming the blushing lady. "And—I should say, if he were not so much like—like 'we uns,' that this was my old friend, the naughty Richard," she said, welcoming the blushing youth cordially. (Dick avowed afterward, in confidence to Jack, that she would have kissed him if he hadn't held back, remembering his unkempt condition.) Mamma and Olympia were shown up to the door of Jack's room, where Rosalind very discreetly left them, to introduce the other guests to Mrs. Atterbury, attracted to the place by the unwonted sounds. When presently the visitors were shown into Vincent's room, Jack called out to them to come and see valor conquered by love; and, when they entered, mamma was brushing her eyes furtively, while she still held Jack's unwounded hand under the counterpane. Master Dick excited the maternal alarm by throwing himself rapturously on the wounded hero and giving him the kiss he had denied Rosalind. Indeed, he showered kisses on the abashed hero, whose eyes were suspiciously sparkling at the evidence of the boy's delight. He established himself in Jack's room, and no urging, prayer, or reproof could induce him to quit his hero's sight.
"I lost him once," he said, doggedly, "and I'm not going to lose him again. Where he goes, I'm going; where he stays, I'll stay—sha'n't I, Jack?"
"You shall, indeed, my dauntless Orestes; you shall share my fortunes, whatever they be."
He insisted on a cot in the room, and there, during the convalescence of his idol, he persisted in sleeping—ruling all who had to do with the invalid in his own capricious humor, hardly excepting Mrs. Sprague, whom he tolerated with some impatience. Letters were dispatched northward to relieve the anxiety of Pliny and Phemie, as well as the Marshes. But it hung heavily on Jack's heart that no trace of Barney had been found. Advertisements were sent to the Richmond papers, and he waited in restless impatience for some sign of the kind lad's well-being.
"Well, Jack, this isn't much like the pomp and circumstance of glorious war," Olympia cried, the next morning, coming in from an excursion about the "plantation," as she insisted on calling the estate, attended by Merry, Rosa, and Dick. "I never saw such foliage! The roses are as large as sunflowers, and there are whole fields of them!"
"Yes; I believe the Atterburys make merchandise of them."
"But who buys them about here? They seem to grow wild—as fine in form and color as our hot-house varieties. Surely they are not bought by the colored people, and there seems to be no one else—no other inhabitants, I mean."
"Oh, no; they are shipped North in the season for them; but I don't think the family has paid much attention to that branch of the business of late years. Their revenues come from tobacco and cotton. Their cotton-fields are in South Carolina and along the Atlantic coast."
"And are these colored people all slaves?" Her voice sank to a whisper, for Vincent's door was ajar.
"Yes, every man jack of them. Did you ever see such merry rogues? They laugh and sing half the night, and sing and work half the day."
"They don't seem unhappy, that's a fact," Olympia said, reflectively, "but I should think ownership in flesh and blood would harden people; and yet the Atterburys are very kind and gentle. I saw tears in Mrs. Atterbury's eyes, yesterday, when mamma was sitting here with you."
"Yes," Jack said, unconsciously, "women enjoy crying—"
"You insufferable braggart, how dare you talk like that? Pray, what do you know about women's likes and dislikes?"
"Oh, I beg pardon, Polly; I'm sure I didn't mean anything—I was taking the minor for the major. All women like babies; babies pass most of their time crying; therefore women like crying."
"Well, if that is the sum of your college training, it is a good thing the war came—"
"What about the war? No treason in Rosedale, remember!" Vincent shouted from the next room. "You pledged me that when you talked war you would talk in open assembly." The voice neared the open doorway as he spoke. The servant had moved the invalid's cot, where Vincent could look in on Jack.
"There was really no war talk, Vint, except such war as women always raise, contention—"
"I object, Jack, to your generalization," Olympia retorted. "It is a habit of boyishness and immaturity.—He said a moment ago" (she turned to Vincent) "that women loved crying, and then sneaked out by a very shallow evasion."
"I'll leave it to Vint: All women love babies; babies do nothing but cry; therefore, women love crying; there couldn't be a syllogism more irrefutable."
"Unless it be that all women love liars," Vincent ventured, jocosely.
"How do you prove that?"
"All men are liars; women love men; therefore—"
"Oh, pshaw! you have to assume in that premise. I don't in mine. It is notorious that women love babies, while you have only the spiteful saying of a very uncertain old prophet for your major—"
"Whose major?" Rosa asked, appearing suddenly. "I'll have you to know, sir, that this major is mamma's, and no one else can have, hold, or make eyes at him."
"It was the major in logic we were making free with," Jack mumbled, laughing. "I hope logic isn't a heresy in your new Confederacy, as religion was in the French Constitution of '93?"
Rosa looked at Olympia, a little perplexed, and, seating herself on the cot with Vincent, where she could caress him furtively, said, with piquant deliberation:
"I don't know about logic, but we've got everything needed to make us happy in the Montgomery Constitution."
"Have you read it?" Jack asked, innocently.
"How insulting! Of course I have. I read it the very first thing when it appeared in the newspapers."
"Catch our Northern women doing that!" Jack interjected, loftily. "There is my learned sister, she doesn't know the Constitution from Plato's Dialogues."
"Indeed, I do not; nor do I know Plato's Dialogues," Olympia returned, quite at ease in this state of ignorance.
"Wherein does the Montgomery Constitution differ from the old one?" Jack asked, looking at Vincent.
"I'm blessed if I know. I've read neither. I did read the Declaration of Independence once at a Fourth-of-July barbecue. I always thought that was the Constitution. Indeed, every fellow about here does! You know in the South the women do all the thinking for the men. Rosa keeps my political conscience."
"Well, then, Lord High Chancellor, tell us the vital articles in the Montgomery document that have inspired you to arm Mars for the conflict, plunge millions into strife and thousands into hades, as Socrates would have said, employing his method?" Jack continued derisively.
"Our Constitution assures us the eternal right to own our own property."
"Slaves?"
"Yes."
"No one denied you that right, so far as the law went, under the old; it was only the justice, the humanity, that was questioned. The right would have endured a hundred years, perhaps forever, if you had kept still—"
"Come, Jack, I won't listen to politics," Olympia cried, with a warning look.
"No, the time for talk is past; it is battle, and God defend the right!"Rosa said, solemnly.
"And you may be sure he will," Jack added, softly, as though to himself.
"But we've got far away from the crying and the babies," Vincent began, when Jack interrupted, fervently:
"Thank Heaven!"
"You monster!" the two girls cried in a breath.
"No, I can't conceive a sillier paradox than 'A babe in the house is a well-spring of joy.' A woman must have written it first. Now, my idea of perfect happiness for a house is to have two wounded warriors like Vincent and me, tractable, amiable, always ready to join in rational conversation and make love if necessary, providing we're encouraged."
"Really, Olympia, your Northern men are not what I fancied," Rosa cried, with a laugh.
"What did you fancy them?"
"Oh, ever so different, from this—this saucy fellow—modest, timid, shy; needing ever so much encouragement to—to—"
"Claim their due?" Jack added, slyly.
"Well, there is one that doesn't require much encouragement to claim everything that comes in his way," Rosa retorts, and Olympia adds:
"And to spare my feelings you won't name him now."
"Exactly," said Rosa.
"How touching!" exclaimed Vincent.
"I left all my blood to enrich your soil, or I'd blush," replied Jack.
"Oh, no; it won't enrich the soil; it will bring out a crop of JohnnyJump-ups, a weed that we don't relish in the South," retorted Rosa.
"Ah, Jack, you're hit there!—Rosa, I'm proud of you. This odious Yankee needs combing down; he ran over us so long at college that he is conceited in his own impudence," and Vincent exploded in shouts of laughter.
"I fear you're not a botanist, Miss Rosa. It's 'Jack in the pulpit' that will spring from Northern blood, and they'll preach such truths that the very herbage will bring the lesson of liberty and toleration to you."
"What is this very serious discussion, my children?" Mrs. Atterbury said, beaming sweetly upon the group. "I couldn't imagine what had started Vincent in such boisterous laughter; and now, that I come, Mr. Jack is as serious as we were at school when Madame Clarice told us of our sins."
"Jack was telling his, mamma, and that is still more serious than to hear one's own," Vincent said, grinning at the moralist.
"But, to be serious a moment, I have written to my old friend General Robert Lee, of Arlington, about Miss Perley. I know that he will grant her permission to take Richard home with her, and the question now is whether it is safe to let them go together alone?" Mrs. Atterbury addressed the question to Olympia, making no account of Jack.
"Oh, let us leave the decision until you get General Lee's answer. If they get the message in Acredale that Dick is safe and sound, I don't see why they need go back before we do. I shall be able to travel in a few weeks. If the roads were not so rickety I wouldn't be afraid to set out now," Jack answered.
"Impossible! You can't leave for a month yet, if then," Vincent proclaimed, authoritatively. "I know what gunshot wounds are: you think they are healed, and begin fooling about, when you find yourself laid up worse than ever. There's no hurry. The campaign can't begin before October. I'm as anxious to be back as you are, but I don't mean to stir before October. Perhaps you think it will be dull here? Just wait until you are strong enough to knock about a bit; we shall have royal rides. We'll go to Williamsburg and see the oldest college in the country. We'll go down the James, and you shall see some of the richest lands in the world. We'll get a lot of fellows out from Richmond and have our regular barbecue in September. We wind up the season here every year with a grand dance, and Olympia shall lead the Queen Anne minuet with mamma's kinsman, General Lee, who is the President's chief of staff."
"This doesn't sound much like soldiering," Jack said, dreamily.
"No. When in the field, let us fight; when at home, let us be merry."
"A very proper sentiment, young men. We want you to be very merry, for you must remember the time comes when we can't be anything but sad—when you are away and the night of doubt settles upon our weak women's hearts." It was Mrs. Atterbury who spoke, and the sentence seemed to bring silence upon the group.
Meanwhile, all the inquiries set on foot through the agency of the Atterburys failed to bring any tidings of Barney Moore. It suddenly occurred to Jack that the poor fellow was masquerading as a rebel in the bosom of some eager patriot like Mrs. Raines and he reluctantly consented to let Dick go to Richmond to investigate. Perhaps Mrs. Raines might know where the wounded men were taken that had come with him. Some of the stragglers could at least be found. The advertisement asking information concerning a wounded man arriving in Richmond with himself was kept in all the journals. But Merry wouldn't consent to let Dick go on the dangerous quest without her. She would never dare face her sisters if any mishap came to the lad, and though Vincent put him under the care of an experienced overseer, and ordered the town-house to be opened for his entertainment, the timorous aunt was immovable.
"You must go and call on the President, Miss Merry. He receives Thursdays at the State House. Then you'll see a really great man in authority, not the backwoods clowns that have brought this country into ridicule—such a man as Virginia used to give the people for President," Rosa said in the tone a lady of Louis XVIII's court might have used to an adherent of the Bonapartes.
"Ah, Rosa, we saw a gentle, tender-hearted man in Washington—the very ideal of a people's father. No one else can ever be President to me while he lives," Olympia said, seriously.
"Lincoln?" Rosa asked, a little disdainfully.
"Yes, Abraham Lincoln. We have all misunderstood him. Oh if you could have seen him as I saw him—so patient, so considerate: the sorrows of the nation in his heart and its burdens on his shoulders; but confident, calm, serene, with the benignant humility of a man sent by God," Olympia added almost reverently. "It was he who came to our aid and ordered the rules to be broken that our mother might seek Jack."
Rosa was about to retort, but a warning glance from Vincent checked her, and she said nothing.
"I say, Dick, don't try to capture Jeff Davis or blow up the Confederate Congress, or any other of the casual master strokes that may enter your wild head. Remember that we have given double hostages to the enemy. We have accepted their hospitality, and we have made ourselves their guests," Jack said, half seriously, as the young Hotspur wrung his hand in a tearful embrace.
"Above all, remember, Mr. Yankee, that you are in a certain sense a civilian now; you must not compromise us by free speech in Richmond," Rosa added.
"Ah, I know very well there's none of that in the South: you folks object to free speech; they killed poor old Brown for it; that's what you made war for, to silence free speech," Dick cried hotly, while Merry pinched his arm in terror.
Dick began his campaign in the morning with longheaded address. He visited the prison under ample powers from General Lee—procured though Vincent's mediation. There were a score of the Caribees in Castle Winder, and to these the boy came as a good fairy in the tale. For he distributed money, tobacco, and other things, which enabled the unfortunates to beguile the tedious hours of confinement. The prisoners were crowded like cattle in the immense warehouse in squads of a hundred or more. They had blankets to stretch on the floor for beds, a general basin to wash in, and for some time amused themselves watching through the barred windows the crowds outside that flocked to the place to see the Yankees, and, when not checked by the guards, to revile and taunt them.
Dick was enraged to see how contentedly the men bore the irksome confinement, the meager food, and harsh peremptoriness of the beardless boys set over them as guards. Most of the prisoners passed the time in cards, playing for buttons, trinkets, or what not that formed their scanty possessions. Dick learned that all the commissioned officers of the company with Wesley Boone had been wounded or killed in the charge near the stone bridge. Wesley had been with the prisoners at first. He had been struck on the head, and was in a raging fever when his father and sister came to the prison to take him away. No one could tell where he was now, but Dick knew that he must be in the city, since there were no exchanges, the Confederates allowing no one to leave the lines except women with the dead, or those who came from the North on special permits.
Then he visited the provost headquarters, and was shown the complete list of names recorded in the books there; but Barney's was not among them. At the Spottswood Hotel, the day after his coming, he met Elisha Boone, haggard, depressed, almost despairing. Dick had no love for the hard-headed plutocrat, but he couldn't resist making himself known.
"How d'ye do, Mr. Boone? I hope Wesley is coming on well, sir."
Boone brought his wandering eyes down to the stripling in dull amazement.
"Why, where on earth do you come from? How is it you are free and allowed in the streets?"
"Oh, I am a privileged person, sir. I am looking up Company K. You haven't heard anything of young Moore, Barney, who lives on the Callao road south of Acredale?"
"No, my mind has been taken up with my son"; his voice grew softer. "He is in a very bad way, and the worst is there is no decent doctor to be got here for love or money; all the capable ones are in the army, and those that are here refuse to take any interest in a Yankee."
The father's grief and the unhappy situation of his whilom enemy touched the lad; forgetting Jack's and Vincent's warning, Dick said, impulsively:
"Oh, I can get him a good doctor. We have friends here." He knew, the moment he had spoken the words, that he had been imprudent—how imprudent the sudden, suspicious gleam in Boone's eye at once admonished him.
"Friends here? Union men have no friends here. There are men here with, whom I have done business for years, men that owe prosperity to me, but when I called on them they almost insulted me. If you have friends, you must have sympathies that they appreciate."
Dick knew what this meant. To be a Democrat had been, in Acredale, to be charged with secret leanings to rebellion. He restrained his wrath manfully, and said, simply:
"An old college friend of Jack's has been very kind to us."
"Us? I take it you mean the Spragues. They are stopping with Jeff Davis,I suppose? It's the least he could do for allies so steadfast."
"You shouldn't talk that way, sir. Every man in the Caribees, except old Oswald's gang, is a Democrat, but they are for the country before party."
"Yes, yes, it may be so—but, the North don't think that way. Well, I'm going to Washington to see if I can't get my boy out of this infernal place, where a man can't even get shaved decently."
"And Miss Kate, Mr. Boone, where is she?"
"She is nursing Wesley, poor girl. She is having a harder trial than any of us; for these devilish women fairly push into the sick-room to abuse the North and berate the soldiers that fought at Manassas."
"I should like to call on Wesley—if you don't mind," Dick said, hesitatingly.
"I shall be only too glad; and I'll tell you what it is, Richard, if you'll make use of your friends here, to get Kate and Wesley some comforts, some consideration, I'll make it worth your while. I'll see that you do not have to wait long for a commission, and I'll pay you any reasonable sum so soon as you get back North."
Dick restrained his anger under this insulting blow, perceiving, even in the hotness of his wrath, that the other was unconscious of the double ignominy implied in dealing with soldiers' rewards as personal bribes, and proffering money for common brotherly offices. It was only when Jack commended his astuteness, afterward, that Dick realized the adroitness of his own diplomacy.
"Thank you, Mr. Boone. I shouldn't care for promotion that I didn't win in war; and, as for money, I shall have enough when I need it. But any man in the Caribees shall have my help. Under the flag every man is a friend."
"True. Yes; you are quite right. Kate will be very glad to see you."
They walked along, neither disposed to talk after this narrow shave from a quarrel. Boone led the way to the northern outskirts of the city, until they reached a dull-brown frame building, back some distance from the street. A colored woman, with a flaming turban on her head, opened the door as she saw them coming up the trim walk lined with shells and gay with poppies, bergamot, asters, and heliotrope.
"This woman is a slave. She belongs to the proprietor of the hotel who refused to receive Wesley. It was a great concession to let him come here, they told me. But the poor boy might as well be in a Michigan logging camp, for all the care he can get. But I'm mighty glad I met you. I know you can help Kate while I am gone. I hated to leave her, but I can do nothing here, and unless Wesley is removed he will never leave this cussed town alive. I sha'n't be gone more than ten days."
Kate had been called by the turbaned mistress, and came into the room with a little shriek of pleasure.
"O, Richard, what a delightful surprise! Have you seen your aunt? Ah! I am so glad; she must be so relieved! And Mr. Sprague—have they found him?"
Dick retailed as much of the story as he thought safe, but he had to say that the Spragues were all with the Atterburys in the country.
"How providential! Ah, if our poor Wesley could find some such friends! He is very low. He recognizes no one. Unless papa can get leave to take him North—I am afraid of the worst. Indeed, I doubt whether he could stand so long a journey. You must stay the day with us. I am so lonely, and I dread being more lonely still when papa leaves this evening."
Dick remained until late in the afternoon, sending word to Merry, who came promptly to the aid of the afflicted. The next day Dick left his aunt at the cottage with Kate, and warning them that he should be gone all day, and perhaps not see them until the next morning, he set off for Rosedale, where he told Jack Kate's plight. Vincent heard the story, too, and when it was ended he said, decisively:
"Jack, we must send for them. It would never do to have the story told in Acredale that you had found friends in the South—because you are a Democrat, and Boone was thrust into negro quarters because he is an abolitionist."
It was the very thought on Jack's mind, and straightway the carriage was made ready, with ample pillows and what not. Dick set out in great state, filled with the importance of his mission and the glory of Jack's cordial praises. He was to stop on the way through town and carry the Atterbury's family physician to direct the removal. When he appeared before Kate, with Mrs. Atterbury's commands that she and her brother should make Rosedale their home until the invalid could be removed North, the poor girl broke down in the sudden sense of relief—the certainty of salvation to the slowly dying brother. The physician spent many hours redressing the wounds. Gangrene had begun to eat away the flesh of the head above the temple, and poor Wesley was unrecognizable. He was quite unconscious of the burning bromine and the clipping of flesh that the skillful hand of the practitioner carried on. When the little group started on the long journey, the invalid looked more like himself than he had since Kate found him. The drive lasted many hours. Wesley was stretched in an ambulance, Kate sitting on the seat with the driver, the physician and Dick following in the carriage. Merry went back to the city house, where her nephew was to return as soon as Wesley had been delivered at Rosedale. Her charge placed in the hands of the kind hostess, Mrs. Atterbury, Kate broke down. She had borne up while her head and heart alone stood between her brother and death; but now, relieved of the strain, she fell into an alarming fever. A Williamsburg veteran, who had practiced in that ancient college town, since the early days of the century, took the Richmond surgeon's place, and the gay summer house became, for the time, a hospital.
Meanwhile the rebel provost-marshal had simplified Dick's task a good deal. An order was issued that all houses where wounded or ailing men were lying should signalize the fact by a yellow flag or ribbon, attached to the front in a conspicuous place. Thus directed, Dick walked street after street, asking to see the wounded; and the fourth day, coming to a residence, rather handsomer than the others on the street, not two blocks from Mrs. Raines, Jack's Samaritan, he found a wasted figure, with bandaged head and unmeaning eyes, that he recognized as Barney.
"We haven't been able to get any clew as to his name or regiment. The guards at the station said he belonged to the Twelfth Virginia, but none of the members of that body in the city recognize him. You know him?"
"Yes. He is of my regiment," Dick said, neglecting to mention the regiment. "I will send word to his friends at once and have him removed."
"Oh, we are proud and happy to have him here. Our only anxiety was lest he should die and his family remain in ignorance. But, now that you identify him, we hope that we may be permitted to keep him until his recovery."
It was a stately matron who spoke with such a manner, as Dick thought, must be the mark of nobility in other lands. He learned, with surprise, that the Atterbury physician was ministering to Barney, though there was nothing strange in that, since the doctor was the favorite practitioner of the well-to-do in the city. That night he wrote to Jack, asking instructions, and the next day received a note, written by Olympia, advising that Barney be left with his present hosts until he recovered consciousness; that by that time Vincent would be able to come up to town and explain matters to the deluded family. The better to carry out this plan, Dick was bidden to return to Rosedale, and thus, six weeks after the battle and dispersion, all our Acredale personages, by the strange chances of war, were assembled within sight of the rebel capital, and, though in the hands of friends, as absolutely cut off from their home and duties as if they had been captured in a combat with the Indians.
In the latter days of September, the life at Rosedale was but a faint reminder of the hospital it had seemed in August. The young men were able to take part in all the simple gayeties devised by Rosa to make the time pass agreeably. Wesley was still subject to dizziness if exposed to the sun, but Jack and Vincent were robust as lumbermen. Mrs. Sprague and Merry sighed wearily in the seclusion of their chambers for the Northern homeside, but they banished all signs of discontent before their warm-hearted hosts. There was as yet no exchange arranged between the hostile Cabinets of Richmond and Washington. Even Boone's potent influence among the magnates of his party had not served him to effect Wesley's release nor enabled him to return to watch over the boy's fortunes. There was no one at Rosedale sorry for the latter calamity outside of Wesley and Kate. I believe even she was secretly not heart-broken, for she knew that her father would be antipathetic to the outspoken ladies of Rosedale.
There had been an almost total suspension of military movements East and West. Both sides were straining every resource to bring drilled armies into the field, when the decisive blow fell. In his drives and walks about the James and Williamsburg, Jack saw that the country was stripped of the white male population. The negroes carried on all the domestic concerns of the land. In these excursions, too, he marked, with a keen military instinct, the points of defense General Magruder, who commanded the department, had left untouched. He wondered if the Union arms would ever get as far down as this. If they did, and he were of the force, he would like to have a cavalry regiment to lead! Vincent was to rejoin his command at Manassas in October. Jack looked forward to the event with the most dismal discontent. To be tied up here, far from his companions; to seem to enjoy ease, when his regiment was indurating itself by drills, marches, and the rough life of the soldier for the great work it was to do, maddened him.
"I give you fair warning, Vint, if an exchange isn't arranged before you leave here, I shall cut stick: the best way I can."
"Good! How will you manage? It's a long pull between here and our front at Manassas. How will you work it? Just as soon as you quit the shelter of Rosedale, you are a suspect. Even the negroes will halt you. If you should make for Fortress Monroe, you have all of Magruder's army to get through. You would surely be caught in the act, and then I could do nothing for you. You would be sent to Castle Winder, and that isn't a very comfortable billet."
Some hint of Jack's discontent, or rather of his vague dream of flight, came into Dick's busy head, and when one day they were tramping down by the James together, he said, owlishly:
"I say, Jack, when Vincent goes, let us clear out!"
"I say yes, with all my heart, but how can it be done? We are more than forty miles from the nearest Union lines. Whole armies are between us. Any white man found on the highway is questioned, and if he can't give a clear account of himself is sent to the provost prison. You remember the other day, when we left the rest to go through the swamp road near Williamsburg, we were hailed by a patrol, and if Vincent hadn't been within reach we would have been sent to the provost prison. Even the negroes act as guards."
"Don't be too sure of that. I've been talking to some of them. They are 'fraid as sin of the overseers, but you notice they shut up all the negroes in their own quarters at night, don't you? If they were all right, why should they do that?"
"Good heavens! you haven't been trying to make an uprising among the Rosedale servants, Dick? Don't you know that no end of ours could justify that? These people have been like brothers—like our own family to us. It would be infamous—infamous without power in the language for comparison—if we should requite their humanity by stirring up servile strife. I should be the first to take arms against the slaves in such revolt, and give my life rather than be instrumental in bringing misery upon the Atterburys."
"Oh, keep your powder dry, Jack! I never dreamed of stirring 'em up. What I mean is, that they are all restless and uneasy. They have an idea that 'Massa Linculm' is coming down with a big army to set them free. Many of them want to fly to meet this army. Many, too, would almost rather die than leave their mistress. None of them—but the very bad ones—could be induced under any circumstances to lift their hands against the family or its property."
"I should hope not—at least through our instrumentality. The time must come when they will leave the family, for the one call only and in one way; that is, by cutting out slavery root and branch. However, that's for the politicians to manage; all we have to do is to stand by the colors and fight."
"I don't see much chance of standing by the colors here," Dick retorted, wrathfully. "If you'll give me the word, I'll arrange a plan, and, as soon as Vincent goes—we'll be off."
"I'm not your master, you young hornet; I can't see what you're doing all the time. All I can do is to approve or reject such doings of yours as you bring me to decide on."
Dick's eyes sparkled. "All right, I'll keep you posted, never fear."
They were a very jovial group that prattled about the long Rosedale dining-table daily now, since every one was able to come down. The house was furnished in the easy unpretentiousness that prevailed in the South in other days. Cool matting covered all the floors, the hallways, and bedchambers. The dining-room opened into a drawing-room, where Kate and Olympia took turns at the big piano. The day was divided, English fashion, into breakfast, luncheon, dinner, and supper, the latter as late as nine o'clock in the night. Jack being unprovided with regimentals, Vincent wore civilian garb, to spare the "prisoner" (as Jack jocosely called himself) mortification. Gray was the "only wear" obtainable in Richmond, Mrs. Atterbury enjoying with gentle malice the rueful perplexities of her prisoner guests, Jack, Wesley, and Richard, as they surrounded the board in this rebel attire.
"I shall feel as uncertain of myself when I get back to blue, as I do in chess, after I have played a long while with the black, changing to white. I manoeuvre for some time for the discarded color," Jack said, one evening.
"Oh, you'll hardly forget in this case," Rosa said, saucily; "it is for the blacks you are manoeuvring constantly."
Jack looked up, startled, and glanced swiftly at Dick. Had that headstrong young marplot been detected in treason with the colored people? No. Dick met his glance clear-eyed, unconstrained. The shot must have been a random one.
"I think you do us injustice, Miss Rosa," Wesley said. "I, for one, am not interested in the blacks. All I want is the Union; after that I don't care a rush!"
"I protest against politics," Mrs. Atterbury intervened, gently. "When I was a girl the young people found much more interesting subjects than politics."
Rosa: "Crops, mamma?"
Vincent: "A mistress's eyebrow?"
Dick: "Some other fellow's sister?"
Olympia: "Some other girl's brother?"
Mrs. Sprague: "Giddy girls?"
Merry: "Bad boys?"
"Well, something about all of these," Mrs. Atterbury resumed, laughing. "I don't think young people in these times are as attached to each other as we used to be in our day—do you, Mrs. Sprague?"
"I don't know how it is with you in the South; but we no longer have young people in the North. Our children bring us up now—we do not bring them up."
"That accounts for the higher average of intelligence among parents noted in the last census," Olympia interrupts her mother to say.
"There, do you see?" Mrs. Sprague continues, with a smile, and in a tone that has none of the asperity the words might imply. "No reverence, no waiting for the elders, as we were taught."
"It depends a good deal, does it not, whether the elders are lovers?"Vincent asked, innocently.
"Oh, don't look at me, Mrs. Sprague, for support or sympathy. Vincent is your handiwork; he was formed in the North. He is one of your new school of youth; he is Southern only in loyalty to his State. For a time I had painful apprehensions that that, too, had been educated away."
"It was his reason that kept him faithful there," Rosa ventured, and catches Vincent dropping his eyes in confusion from the demure glances of Olympia.
"Oh, no; pride. A Virginian is like a Roman, he is prouder to be a citizen in the Dominion than a king in another country," Mrs. Atterbury says, with stately decision. "No matter where his heart may be," and she glanced casually at Olympia, "his duty is to his State."
"Politics, mamma, politics; remember your young days. Talk of kings, courts, romance, madrigals—but leave out politics," Rosa cried, remonstratingly.
"Let's turn to political economy. How do you propose disposing of your tobacco and cotton this year?" Jack asked, gravely.
"We are under contract to deliver ten thousand bales at Wilmington to our agent," Vincent replied. "As for tobacco, we expect to sell all we can raise to the Yankee generals. We have already begun negotiations with some of your commanders who are too good Yankees to miss the main chance."
"You're not in earnest?" Jack cried, aghast.
"As earnest as a maid with her first love."
"But who—who—is the miscreant that degrades his cause by such traffic?"
"Oh, if you wait until you learn from me, you'll never be a dangerous accuser. I learn in letters from friends in the West that all the cotton crop has been contracted for by men either in the Northern army or high in the confidence of the Administration. You see, Jack, we are not the Arcadian simpletons you think us. This war is to be paid for out of Northern pockets, any way you look at it. We've got cotton and tobacco, you must have both; you've got money, we must have that. What we don't sell to you we'll send to England."
All at the table had listened absorbedly to this strange revelation, andJack rose from the table shocked and discouraged.
Olympia seated herself at the piano, and, slipping out, as he supposed, unseen, Jack strolled off into the fragrant alleys of oleander and laurel. Dick, however, was at his heels. The two continued on in silence, Dick trolling along, switching the bugs from the pink blossoms that filled the air with an enervating odor.
"I say. Jack, I've found out something."
"What have you found out, you young conspirator?"
"Wesley Boone's trying to get the negroes to help him off."
"The devil he is!"
"Yes. Last night I was down in the rose-fields. Young Clem, AuntPenelope's boy, was sitting under a bush talking with a crony. I heardhim say, 'De cap'n'll take you, too, ef you doan say noffin'. He guvPompey ten gold dollars.'
"'De Lor'! Will he take ev'ybody 'long, too, Clem?'
"'Good Lor', no! He's goin' to get his army, and den he'll come an' fetch all de niggahs.'
"'De Lor'!'
"Trying to get closer, I made a rustling of the bushes, and the young imps shot through them like weasles before I could lay hands on them. Now, what do you think of that?"
"If it is only to escape, all right; but if it is an attempt to stir up insurrection, I will stop Wesley myself, rather than let him carry it out!"
"Wouldn't it be the best thing to warn Vincent? It would be a dreadful thing to let him go and leave his poor mother and sister here unprotected."
"Let me think it over. I will hit on some plan to keep Wesley from making an ingrate of himself without bringing danger on our benefactors."
Kate was dawdling on the lawn as the two returned to the house. Jack challenged her to a jaunt.
"Where shall it be?" she asked, readily, moving toward him. "The garden of the gods?"
"The garden of the goddesses, you mean, if it is the rose-field."
"That's true; a god's garden would be filled with thorns and warlike blossoms."
"I don't know; a rose-garden grew the wars of the houses of York andLancaster."
"Do you remember the scene in Shakespeare where Bolingbroke and Gaunt pluck the roses?"
"Quite well. There is always something pathetic to me in the fables historians invent to excuse or palliate, or, perhaps it would be juster to say, make tolerable, the stained pages of the past. It is brought doubly nearer and distinct by this miserable war, and the strange fate that has fallen upon us—to be the guests of a family whose hopes are fixed upon what would make us miserable if it ever happened."
"It never will. That's the reason I listen with pity to the childishvauntings of these kind people. They have, you see, no conception of theNorthern people—no idea of the deep-seated purpose that moves theStates as one man to stifle this monstrous attempt."
They walked on in silence a few paces, and Kate continued: "I don't know how you feel, Mr. Sprague, but I am wretched here. I feel like a traitor, receiving such kindness, treated with such guileless confidence, and yet my heart is filled with everything they abhor. It is not so hard for you, because you and Vincent have been close friends. He has made your house his home, but I certainly feel that Wesley and I should go elsewhere, now that he is able to be about."
"Does Wesley feel this—this embarrassment?"
"Passionately. He said, last night, he felt like a sneak. He would fly in an instant, if he could see any possible way to our lines."
"Pray, Miss Boone, tell him to be very circumspect. I know the Southern nature. When they give you their heart they give entirely. But the least sign of—of—distrust will turn them into something worse than indifference. We may see our way out soon. Caution Wesley against any act—any act"—he emphasized the words—"that may lead these kind people to think that he doesn't trust them, or that he would take advantage of servile insurrection to gain his liberty. Of course, they know that we are all restive here; that we shall be even more impatient when Vincent goes—but they could not understand any surreptitious movement on our part, to enable us to get away."
He hoped that, if she were in Wesley's confidence, she would understand his meaning. But she gave no sign. She assented with an affirmative movement of the head, and they walked through the fragrant paths, plucking a rose now and then that seemed more tempting than its fellows. At the end of the field of roses a Cherokee hedge grew so thick and high that it formed a screen and rampart between the house land and a dense grove of pines which was itself bordered by a stream that here and there spread out into tiny lakelets. On the larger of these there were rude "dug-outs," made by the darkies to cut off the long walk from their quarters to the tobacco and corn fields.
"Was there ever an Eden more perfect than this delicious place?" Kate cried, as the flaming sun sent banners of gold, mingled in a rainbow baldric with the blooming parterres of roses.
"I don't know much about Eden, and the little I do know doesn't give mea sympathetic reminiscence of the place; but I agree with you thatRosedale is about as near a paradise as one can come to on this earth,"Jack qualifiedly replied.
"And yet we want to fly from it?"
"Ah, yes; because the tree of our life, the volume of our knowledge, or, in plain prose, our hearts, are not here, and scenic beauty is a poor substitute for that. Duty, I am convinced, is the key of the best life. There are hearts here, noble ones—duties here, inspiring ones. But they do not satisfy us: they are become a torment to me. I feel like a soldier brought from duty; a priest fallen into the ways of the flesh."
"Your rhapsodies are like most fine-sounding things, more to the hope than the heart," Kate murmured, gazing dreamily into the purple mass of color hovering changefully over the opaque water at their feet. "You mean they do not reach your heart; that your soul is far away as to what is here. I think Vincent and Rosa would not agree that life has any more or narrower limitations here than we recognize at Acredale."
"Let us go on the water." He pulled the rude shallop to her feet and they got in and went on, Jack not heeding her gibe. "These brackish, threatening deeps remind me of all sorts of weird and uncanny things; Stygian pools—Lethe—what not mystic and terrifying. See, the tiny waves that curl before our boat are like thin ink; a thousand roots and herbs and who knows what mysterious vegetable mixture colors these dark deeps? I could fancy myself on an uncanny pilgrimage, seeking some demon delight."
There was but one oar in the boat, which the negroes used as a scull. Jack made a poor fist with this, but there was no need of rowing. Kate, catching a projecting limb from the thick bushes on the margin, sent the little, wabbling craft onward in noisless, spasmodic plunges. Deep fringes of wild columbine fell in fluffy sprays from the higher banks as the boat drifted along the other side. The thickets were musical with the chattering cat-birds and whip-poor-wills, mingled with a score of woodland melodists that Jack's limited woodcraft did not enable him to recognize.
"Who would think that we are within a half-mile of a completely appointed country house? We are as isolated here from all vestiges of civilization as we should be in a Florida everglade," Kate said, as the little craft swam along in an eddy.
"It seems to me typical of the people—this curiously wild transition from blooming, well-kept gardens, to such still and solemn nature. The place might be called primeval: look at those gnarled roots, like prodigious serpents; see the shining bark of the larch—I think it is larch—I should call it 'slippery' elm if it were at Acredale; but see the fantastic effects of the little lances of sunlight breaking through! Isn't it the realization of all you ever read in 'Uncle Tom' or 'Dred'?"
Kate glanced into the weird deeps of foliage, where a bird, fluttering on the wing, aroused strange echoes. "Ugh!" she said, in a half-whisper, "I can imagine it the meeting-place of 'Tam o' Shanter's' eldritches seeing this—but, all the same, do you know it is fascinating beyond words to me? Should you mind going in a little farther—I should like the sensation of awe the place suggests, since there can be no danger—while you are here?"
He gave her a quick glance, but her eyes were fastened on the dark recesses beyond.
"I should be delighted, but I won't insure your gown, nor—nor half promise that we shall come out alive."
"Oh, as to that, I'll take the risk."
"I don't know the habits of Southern snakes; but if they are as well-bred as ours, they retire from the ken of wicked men at sundown, so we needn't fear them, as the sun is too far down for the snake of tradition to see or molest us."
They stepped out of the boat at a green, sedgy point, extending from a labyrinth of flowering vines and creepers. Once inside the delicious odorous screen, they found themselves in an archipelago of green islets, connected by monster roots or moss-covered trunks that seemed laid by elfin hands for the penetration of this leafy jungle.
"Yes; I was going to say," Jack continued, "this swift transposition from the cultivation of civilization to the handiwork of Nature is whimsically illustrative of the people. Did you ever see or hear or read of such open-handed, honest-hearted hospitality as theirs; such refinement of manners; such sincerity in speech and act? Contrast this with their fairly pagan creed as to the slaves; their intolerance of the Northern people; their clannish reverence for family."
"But isn't the inequality of the Southern character due to their strange lack of education? Few of them are cultivated as we understand education. Do you notice that among the people we met at Williamsburg—officers as well as civilians—none of them were equal to even a very limited range of subjects? All who are educated have been in the North. Ah—good Heavens!"
Kate's exclamation was due to a sudden sinking in the mossy causeway until she was almost buried in the tall ferns. Jack helped her out, shivered a moment, doubtingly, as he exclaimed:
"The sun is nearly down now, though the air is transparent, or would be if we were in the free play of daylight. I think it would be better to go back." But they made no haste. Such trophies of ferns and lace-like mosses were not to be plucked in every walk, and they dawdled on and on skirmishing, with delighted hardihood, against the pitfalls of bog that covered morass and pitch-black mud. When the impulse finally came to hasten back, they were somewhat chagrined to discover that they had lost their own trail. The point where they had quit the stream could not be found. Clambering plants, burdened with blossoms, fragrant as honeysuckle, grew all along the bank, and the bush that had attracted them was no longer a landmark.
"Well," Jack said, confidently, "the sun disappeared over there; that is southwest. The house is in that direction—northeast. Now, if you will keep that big sycamore in your eye and follow me, we shall be nearing the house, as I calculate."
They pushed on in that direction, but had only gone a few yards when the ground became a perfect quagmire of black loam, that looked like coal ground to powder, and was thin as mush.
"This is a brilliant stroke on my part, I must say," Jack cried, facing Kate ruefully. "We must go back and examine the ground, as Indians do, and find our entrance trail in that way. I will watch the ground and you keep an eye on the shrubs. Wherever you see havoc among them you may be sure my manly foot has fallen there."
Suddenly they were conscious of an indescribable change in the place. Neither knew what it was. It had come on in the excitement of their march into the morass—or it had come the instant they both became conscious of it. What was it? Kate turned and looked into Jack's blank face!
"I'm blessed if I know what it is, but it seems as if something had suddenly gone out of the order of things! What is it? Do you feel it; do you notice it?"
"Feel it—see it—why, it is as palpable, or, rather to speak accurately, it is as clearly absent as the color from an oil-painting, leaving mere black and white outlines."
"How besotted I am!" Jack cried; "why, I know. The sun has wholly gone, and the birds and living things have ceased to sing and move."
"That's it; could you believe that it would make such a change? Why, I thought, when we came in, the place was a temple of silence, but it was a mad world compared to this."
"Yes, and we must hurry and get out while we have daylight to help us. I take it you wouldn't care to swim the lagoon. Let us call it lagoon, for this place makes the name appropriate."
"Call it whatever you like, but don't ask me to swim it," Kate cried, pushing on.
"Ah! I have our trail," Jack cries in triumph. "By George, it is wide enough!" he added, bending over where the thick grasses were crushed and broken. "See the advantage of large feet. Now, if you had been alone, 'twould have been as hard as to trace a bird's track."
"Is that an implication that I have Chinese feet?"
"No, too literal young woman. It was meant to show you that I am very much relieved, for, 'pon my soul, I was afraid we were in a very disagreeable scrape."
"And you are now quite sure we are not?"
"Quite sure. Don't you want to take my arm?"
"Oh, no, thank you. I'm not at all tired. I'm used to longer walks than this."
"Longer, possibly, but not over such trying ground."
"Oh, yes. I've gone with Wesley and his friends to the lakes in theNorth Woods."
"Ah! I've never been there. Are they as bad travel as this?"
"Infinitely worse—Why, what was that?"
"It sounded very like the report of a pistol."
Both stopped, Kate coming quite close to the young man, who was bent over with his hand to his ear, trumpet-fashion.
"Do you—" He made a warning gesture with his hand, and motioned her to stoop among the ferns. A halloo was heard in the distance; then a response just ahead of where the two crouched in the breast-high ferns, through which the path made by their recent footsteps led. When the echoing halloo died away, a bird in the distance seemed to catch up the refrain and dwell upon the note with an exquisite, painful melody.
"Why, it's the throat interlude in the Magic Flute! How lovely it is!" Kate whispered. "If you were my knight, I should put on you the task of caging that lovely sound for me."
The distant bird-note ceased, and then suddenly, from the bushes just ahead of them, it was caught up and answered, note for note, in a wild pibroch strain, harsher but inexpressibly moving. Jack turned to Kate, his face quite pale, and whispered:
"It in not a bird. They are negroes. I have read of these sounds. They are marauding slaves, and we must not let them see us. We must get to those thick clumps of bushes. Do you think you can remain bent until we reach them? If not, we will rest every few paces."
"Go on. I can try."
The pibroch strains still continued, rising into a mournful wail, then sinking info the soft cries of the whip-poor-will. In a few minutes the perplexed fugitives were deep in a clump of wild hawberries, invisible to any one who should pass. The strains had ceased as suddenly as they began. Then a faint hallo-o-o sounded, being answered in the bushes, as it seemed, just in front of where Jack and his companion stood; voices soon became audible farther along, ten or more paces. Motioning to Kate, Jack crept along noiselessly, and fancied he could distinguish forms through the thick screen of bushes. A voice, not a negro's, said:
"I went to the cove for you—what was the matter?"
"I had the devil's work to get through the posts. For some reason or other they're getting mighty sharp. I must be back before twelve; what's been done?"
"Well, the mokes consent to go, but they won't touch the ranch. You'll have to bring up a few hands; the fewer the better. If them damned feather-bed sojers wasn't there, we could do the job ourselves."
"When, does the boss get out?"
"Next week. I don't know what day. They'd pay high for him both ways."
"No, we can't nibble there. The cap'n'll pay well. That's square. We can't afford to try the other now, at any rate. Is the skiff here?"
"Yes; well, get in."
There was a plash and the-receding sound of voices. Jack darted through the screen of branches, but he could not distinguish the figures, for it was growing every instant dimmer twilight. He turned to Kate. She was at his side.
"Who were they—what were they planning? Were they soldiers?" she asked.
"Never mind them now. We must find a way out of this. Our boat can't be far off. We must follow this line of bushes until we come to the spot we left. I know I can recognize it, for there was an enormous tree fallen a few steps from the sedge bank we landed on."
It was a very toilsome journey now, obliged as they were to hug the obstinate growth of haws, wild alder, and dog roses, which tore flesh and garments in the hurried flight. They came to the dead tree finally, and Jack almost shouted in grateful relief:
"You were a true prophet, Miss Boone. You gave utterance to some Druid-like remarks as we crossed the Stygian pool. The worst your fancy painted couldn't equal what we've seen and heard."
"I have seen nothing dreadful, and I can't say that I understand very much of what we heard."
"There is some 'caper' going on to give these cut-throats a chance to get booty or something of the sort."
"They are probably rebel soldiers planning to sack the commissary."
They were in the boat now, and Jack was sending it forward by lusty lunges against every protruding object he could get a stroke at; when these failed he managed to scull after a fashion. They found the household in consternation when they got back, but Jack gave a picturesque narrative of their escapade, omitting the encounter with the negroes which he had charged Kate to say nothing about, as it would only alarm Mrs. Atterbury. The garments of the explorers told the tale of their mishaps, and when they had clothed themselves anew supper was announced. The feast was of the lightest sort: sherbet or tea for those who liked it; fruit and crackers, honey or marmalade—a triumph in the cultivation of dyspepsia, Jack said when he first began the eating. But it was observed that the disease had no terrors for him, for he sat at the table as long as he could get any one to remain with him, and did his share in testing all the dishes. He outsat everybody that night except Dick, who never got tired of any place that brought him near his idol.
"I'm going up-stairs in a moment, Towhead. Come up after me."
Dick nodded, a gleam of delightful expectation in his eyes. He was just in the ardent period when boys love to make mysteries of very ordinary things, and Jack'ssotto vocecommand was like the hero's voice in the play, "Meet me by the ruined well when midnight strikes." He followed Jack up the wide staircase and into his own room, for greater security, as no one would think of looking for them there.
"Now, tell me all you have found out," Jack commanded as he shut the door. "Have you been among the darkys?"
"I've found out this much. The old negroes are opposed to going away or in any shape annoying their masters. The young bucks and the women are very eager to fly. It seems that some one has spread the story among them that Lincoln has sent Butler to Fort Monroe to receive all the negroes on the Peninsula. They have been assured that they are to have 'their freedom, one hundred acres of land, and an ox-team.' Where the report comes from, I can't find out; but there is some communication between here and the Union lines, I'm positive."
"Has Wesley been with the negroes again?"
"No. I have kept an eye on him all day."
"Where does he go at night?"
"The doctor has forbidden him to be in the night air for the present."
"Well, you keep an eye on Wesley," and then Jack narrated the strange scene in the swamp, the mysterious calls, and the conversation.
Dick listened in awe, mingled with rapture. "Oh, why wasn't I there? Just my blamed luck! I would have followed them, and then we should have known what they were up to. Did you know that a company of cavalry had gone into camp just below the grove?"
"No—when?"
"This evening. Vincent is down there now."
"Well, you may be sure they suspect something. I wonder if it wouldn't be better to speak to Vincent?"
"Of course not! What have we to tell him? Simply my suspicions and Clem's chatter. The little moke may have been lying; I can't see that any of them do much else."
"The worst of it is, these Southerners are very sensitive about any allusion to the negroes. They would pooh-pooh anything we might say that was not backed by proof. It's a mighty uncomfortable fix to be in, Dick, my boy; though, 'pon my soul, I believe you enjoy it!"
Dick grinned deprecating.
"I think you do, you unfledged Guy Fawkes. I know nothing would give you greater joy than to put on a mask, grasp a dagger in your hand, and go to Wesley, crying, 'Villain, your secret or your life!' Dick, you're a stage hero; you're a thing of sawdust and tinsel. Come to the parlor and hear Kate play the divine songs of Mendelssohn; perhaps, night-eyed conspirator, to whirl Polly or Miss Rosa in the delirium of the 'Blaue Donau.' Come."
But there was neither dance nor music when they reached the drawing-room. Everybody was there; Vincent had just come, and the first words Jack and Dick heard glued them to their places.
"Yes, all the negroes on the Lawless', Skinner's, and Lomas's plantations have gone. Butler has declared them contrabands of war, and a lot of Yankee speculators have been sneaking through the plantations, filling their ignorant minds with promises of freedom, a farm, and a share of their masters' property. Their real purpose is to get the negroes and hold them until the two governments come to terms, and then they will get rewards for every nigger they hold. Oh, these Yankees can see ways of making money through a stone-wall," and Vincent laughed lightly, as though the incident in no way concerned him. "Captain Cram, who is in camp just below in the oak clearing, is ordered to scour the river-bank to the enemy's lines near Hampton, so we need have no fear of these enterprising apostles of freedom interfering with our niggers."
"I don't think one of them could be induced to leave us if offered all our farms," Mrs. Atterbury said, a little proudly.
"There isn't one of them that I haven't brought through sickness or trouble of one sort or another, and there isn't one that wouldn't take my command before the gold of a stranger."
"I don't know, Mrs. Atterbury," Mrs. Sprague ventured, mildly. "Gold is a mighty weight in an argument. I have known it to change the convictions of a lifetime in a moment. I have known it to make a man renounce his father, dishonor his name, belie his whole life, deny his family."
"When a fortune beyond reasonable dreams was placed upon the head of Charles Stuart, for whom our ancestors fought and beggared themselves, his secret was in the keeping of scores of peasants, and the blood-money lay idle. I could cite hundreds of similar proofs, that gold is not God everywhere. I mean no offense, but you will agree with me that you Northern people are given up to the getting and worship of money. It is not so with us. Perhaps because we have it, and with it something that makes it secondary—birth. I have no fear of the infidelity of any of my people. I would as soon doubt Rosa or Vincent us the smallest black on my estate."
She spoke with mild, high-bred dignity, not a particle of assertion or captious intolerance, but as a prelate might assert the majesty of the word on the altar, neither looking for dissent nor dreaming that the spirit of it could exist.