"I'm glad to hear your mother express such confidence, Vint," Jack said as they walked out on the veranda to take a good-night smoke; "but just let me give you a maxim of my own, the lock's not sure unless the key is in your pocket."
"Sententious, my boy, but vague. My mother is perfectly right. Our niggers are fidelity itself. But since we are so near the Butler lines, where his agents can sneak up on the river and kidnap the new sort of contraband, I think it better to take some precaution. Hereafter General Magruder will have a picket post within two miles of us, between here and the creek, which offers a convenient point for smuggling."
"I am heartily relieved to hear it," Jack cried, giving something too much fervor to his relief, for Vincent turned and looked at him in surprise, but it was too dark in the shadow of the clematis to see his face, and after a silence Vincent said:
"Mamma has told you that the President is coming to Williamsburg to review Magruder's troops?"
"No; she hadn't mentioned it. Is he?"
"Yes; he will be there Thursday afternoon, and we shall have the ball the same evening. He will be here with General Lee, his chief of staff, and remain all night; so that you will be able to say when you go back North—something that few Yankees will be able to say during the war—that you have broken bread with the first President of the Confederacy."
"I will strive to bear my honors with humility," Jack said.
"It befits the conquered to be humble."
"If I hadn't come in time, you two would have been in a squabble—own it!" and Rosa drew a chair between them as a peacemaker.
Rosedale was, indeed, Eden in the most orthodox sense to the group so strangely billeted in its lovely tranquillity. No sooner was the anguish concerning the invalids off Kate's, Olympia's, and Rosa's minds, than new perplexities beset them. Rosa was barely eighteen, Kate and Olympia older by three or four years, but the younger girl was in many essential things quite as mature as her Northern comrades. But Jack could not comprehend this, and quite innocently did and said things to arouse the young girl's dreams. I think I have said that Jack was a very comely fellow? He was big and brawny, and tireless in good-humor, and the attractive little gallantries that women adore. He looked as sentimentally sincere, uttering a paradox, as another vowing eternal fidelity. He gave every woman the impression that his mind was lost wondering how he should exist until she gave him the right to call her his own. Though, as a matter of fact, it is the man who is the woman's own—when the final word comes.
Rosa was not long in discovering Vincent's happy tumult in Olympia's presence, and she secretly misunderstood Jack the more that he was so lavish and open in his adulations. If he rode, he exhausted eulogy in describing her pose, her daring, her skill; if they danced, as they did nearly every night until poor Merry's fingers ached from drumming the unholy strains of Faust, Strauss, and what not, in the old-fashioned waltzes—he pantingly declared that she made the music seem a celestial choir by her lightness; in long walks in the rose-fields he exhausted a not very laborious store of botanical conceits, to make her cheeks resemble the roses. This assurance, this recklessness, thisaplomb, quite bewildered the girl, who posed in Richmond for a passed mistress of flirting. She had, unless rumor was badly at fault, jilted an appalling list of the striplings who believed that beard-growing and love-making were conventionally contemporaneous events. But they had "mooned" about her and made themselves absurd in vain, while this unconscious Adonis calmly walked, talked, and acted as if she could know nothing else than love him, and one day she started in delicious misery to find that she did—that is, she thought she might if—if? But there her dreams became nebulous—they were rosy in outline, however, and she was content to rest there.
The morning after the coming of the cavalry-troop, Wesley was discussing the never-ending theme of how he was going to get home—with Kate busy arranging the ferns she had brought from the swamp.
"Really, Wesley, just now you ought to be content. There is no likelihood of any movement; besides, philosophy is as much a merit in a soldier as valor—it is valor, it is endurance. You complain of your unhappy fate, housed here with a lot of women and idlers. How would you bear up in Libby Prison? There are as good men as you there, my dear; shall I say better or older soldiers, Brutus? You may take your choice, and 'count on a sister's blind partiality to justify you!'"
"Oh, don't always talk nonsense, Kate. You're worse than Jack Sprague. He doesn't seem to have a serious thought in his head from daylight till bedtime."
"Perhaps he keeps all his sober thoughts for the night, to give them good company."
"No, but do say what I ought to do."
"You ought to study to make yourself tolerable to your sister, dear, and agreeable to the other fellows' sisters. I have remarked that the young man who does that, keeps out of despondency and other uncomfortable conditions that too much brooding on an empty head brings about."
"I'd like to know what heart I can have to make myself agreeable to other fellows' sisters when you are always lampooning me; you delight in making me think I am nobody."
"Don't fear, my dear; if that were my delight I should die an old maid, never having known delight, for it would need more force than I can muster to make Wesley Boone, captain U.S.A., anything else than he is—his father's pride and his sister's joy. No, dear, my delight is to see you gay and open and frank and manly, self-dependent, grateful for the consideration shown you, and recognizant of the constant admonition of your sagacious sister."
"You talk exactly like the woman in George Sand's stupid stories; they always remind me of men in petticoats."
"That's a weak and strained comparison; not, however, unworthy a soldier. We always compare, in speech, to strengthen assertion or adorn it, and when we do we compare what is equivocal or vague, with what is well known and usual. Now, I do not remember any men in petticoats, unless you mean the Orientals, who wear a sort of skirt, and the Scots, who used to wear kilts—but strictly speaking—"
"Do, Kate, for Heaven's sake, be serious for a moment! I have a chance to escape, no matter how, but I can make my way to our lines without running any great risk. Now, is it or is it not dishonorable for me to do it?"
"Seriously, Wesley, just now it would be, while Vincent is here, for he is in a sense pledged for you to his superior. Further, there is no need to hurry. You are barely recovered. If you were North you would be in Acredale; if you were, there is no immediate want of your presence in the army. The articles we see in the Richmond papers every day, copied from Northern journals, show that this new general, McClellan, means to bring a trained, drilled, disciplined army down when he moves. It took six months to prepare McDowell's useless mass. It will certainly take a year to put the million men now arming in shape to fight. I may be wrong, but at the earliest there can be no movement before late in October. By that time we shall probably have the problem solved by the Government, and you will go North, having made delightful friends of all this charming family."
Wesley was even more afraid of Kate's strong sense of honor than of her biting sarcasm, and he ended the interview without daring to tell her how far he had compromised himself with the secret agents that were surrounding the plantation. Dick, running down-stairs in his wake, encountered Rosa, with her garden hat covering her like the roof of a disrupted pagoda. She arrested his stride as he was darting toward the door.
"Here—you—Richard, just come and be of some use to me. I'm housekeeper to-day, and I want to go to the quarters. Come along."
Now Dick had a double grievance against this imperious young person. He had fallen into the most violent love with her brown eyes and pink cheeks the moment he saw her; he had assiduously striven both to conceal and reveal this maddening condition of mind. But he remarked with ungovernable wrath that, whenever Jack or Wesley came about, the heartless young jilt, made as if she didn't know him; quite ignored him, and cared no more for his simple adoration than she did for the frisky gambols of Pizarro, the mastiff. But she was so adorable; her Southern accent was so bewitching; she put so much softness in those amusing idioms "I reckon" and "Seems like," "You others," and the countless little tricks of the Southern vernacular, that Dick passed sleepless hours and delicious days dreaming and sighing and groaning and doing all manner of unreasonable things—that we all do when we meet our first Rosas and they light the torch for other feet more favored than our own.
So, when Rosa called him to accompany her, Dick took the round basket she held out to him, and walked sulkily ahead of her, never opening his mouth. When he had stalked along through the currant bushes, he half turned his face; she was walking demurely behind him, and he made a pretext of picking a currant to give her a chance to come abreast. She did, and passed him trippingly, saying, as she cast a sympathetic side glance at him:
"Toothache?"
He stood rooted to the spot with indignant amazement. The heartless little minx! How dare she talk like that to a soldier?
"Did you call some one, Miss Atterbury?" he said, with chilling dignity.Usually he called her plain Rosa.
"I thought may be you had the toothache—you kept so quiet."
"No; I haven't got the toothache." Poor Dick! He said, to himself, that he had much worse. But he wouldn't gratify her with the acknowledgment of her triumph, and he stalked along with the basket over his head, as he had often seen the darkeys in the sun. There was a faint little appealing cry from behind.
"Oh—oh—dear!"
"What is it; are you hurt?" he cried, rushing to where Rosa stood, balanced on one foot.
"There is a crab thorn an inch long in my foot; it's gone through shoe and all. That wretched Sardanapalus never clears the limbs away when he cuts the hedge. I'll have him horsewhipped. Oh, dear!"
"Let me hold you while I look for the thorn."
Dick cleverly slipped his arm about her waist and set the basket endwise for her to sit on. Then kneeling, he picked out the thorn, which was a great deal less than the dimensions Rosa had described. But he said nothing to her about picking the torment out and slipping it in his vest pocket. He held the foot, examining the sole critically. Finally, as she moved impatiently, he asked:
"Does it hurt yet?"
"Of course it does, you stupid fellow. Do you suppose I would sit here like a goose on a gridiron and let you hold my foot if it didn't hurt? Men never have any sense when they ought to."
He affected to examine the sole of the thin leather of the upper still more minutely. As she gave no sign of ending the comedy, he said:
"I'm sure, Rosa, if it relieves the pain to have me hold your foot, I'll sit here in the sun all day—if you'll bring the rim of your hat over a little—but, as for the thorn, it has been out this ten minutes."
She gave him a sudden push and darted away. He followed laughing, admonishing her against another thorn. But she deigned no answer. Coming to the bee-hives, she stopped a moment to watch the busy swarm, and Dick stole up beside her. She turned pettishly, and he said, insinuatingly:
"Toothache?"
"You know, Dick, you're too trying for anything—holding my foot there like a ninny in the hot sun. You haven't a thimbleful of sense."
"Well, now we'll test these propositions, as Jack does, by syllogisms. Let me see. All men are trying. Dick Perley is a man: therefore he is trying."
"No; your premise—isn't that what you call it?—is wrong. Dick Perley is only a boy."
"I'll be nineteen in January next."
"Well?"
"Well, your father was married at nineteen. You've said it yourself,Rosa, and thought it greatly to his credit—at least Vint does."
"You can't imitate my father in that, at least."
"I might."
"How?"
"You could help me, Rosa."
"How?"
"Would you if you could?"
"That depends."
"On what?"
"On the girl."
"Ah! she's a perfect girl, but she's very young," and Dick eyed Rosa with ineffable complacency.
"That's bad."
"But she's older than she looks."
"That's worse; you'd grow tired of her."
"No, no; I don't mean she's older than she looks; her mind is older than her looks."
"Women with minds make troublesome wives. I have refused to let Vincent marry several of that kind."
"But, my girl hasn't got that kind of mind; it is all sweetness and wit and gayety and loveliness and—and—"
"Your girl? Who gave her to you?"
"Love gave her to me."
"Oh, well, since love gave her to you, I don't see how I can be of any service. Down here the mother always gives the girl, unless she have no mother; then some other kin gives her. But if your girl has all these qualities you describe, I advise you to get her into your own keeping just as soon as you can, for that's the sort of girl all the fellows about here are seeking."
"Very well, I'm ready. Will you help me? It comes back where we started."
"But you evaded my question."
"What question did I evade? I answered like an encyclopedia!" Dick cried, immensely satisfied with his own readiness.
"That convicts you; an encyclopedia has nothing about living people."
"Oh, yes; the new ones do." Dick was now very near her as she stood contemplating the bees, swarming in the comb. "O Rosa—Rosa, you know I love you, and you know I can never love anybody else. Why will you pretend not to understand me? I don't want you to marry me now, but by and by, when I shall have made a name as a soldier, or—or something," he added in painful turbulence of joy and fear over the great words—which he had been racking his small wits to fashion for weeks past, and, now that they were spoken, were not nearly so impressive as he had intended they should be.
"My dear Richard, you are a perfect boy—a very delightful boy, too, and I am extremely fond of you—oh, very, very fond of you—but you really must not make love to me. It isn't proper," and Rosa glanced into his eyes with a tender little gleam, that gave more encouragement than rebuff—for it came into her mind, in a moment, that it was not a time to hurt the bright, eager love—so winning, if boyish.
"Nonsense, Rosa, it is perfectly proper; everybody makes love to you; Jack makes love to you, and he is as good as engaged—" But here it suddenly flashed in Dick's mad head that he was meddling, and he stopped short. Rosa had turned upon him with a flash of such scorn, such indignant pain, that he cried:
"No, no; I don't mean that; but you know fellows do make love to you, and why mayn't I?"
She flirted away from him too angry or mortified to speak. He could not see her face, for she pulled the ample breadth of the hat-brim down, which served at once as a veil to shut out her visage and a sweeping sort of funnel to keep him far from her side, as she tripped determinedly to the pleasant group of clean, whitewashed cabins, where the negroes abode. Poor Dick, vexed with himself—angry at her for being irritated-waited in the hot sun until she had ended her commands, and when she came out to return he repentantly sidled up, imploring pardon in every movement. She couldn't resist the big, pleading blue eyes, and said, quite as if there had been deep discussion on the point:
"I don't think you mean to be a bad boy."
"I'm not a boy, I'm a soldier. It isn't fair in you to call me a boy."
"You're not a girl."
"If I were I wouldn't be so heartless as some I know."
"And if I were a boy I wouldn't be so silly as some I know."
"Yes, I think Southern boys are quite soft."
"Come, sir, my brotherwasa Southern boy."
"Yes, but he always lived North, and is like us."
"Jackanapes!"
"Dear Rosa."
"How dare you, sir?"
"Oh, just as easy, I dare do all that becomes a man—who dares do more is none. You are Rosa, and you are dear—"
"Not to you."
"You cost me enough to be dear and you are lovely enough to be 'Rosa' inLatin, Rose in English, and sweetheart in any tongue."
"You're much too pert. Boys so glib as you never really love. They think they do and perhaps they do—just a little."
"Ah! a 'little more than a little,' dear Rosa."
"You're quoting Shakespeare, I suppose you know? I'll quote more: 'A little more than a little is much too much.'"
"A little less than all is much too little for me. So, Rosa, give all or none."
"I don't understand you."
"That's proof you love me. Girls never love fellows they understand."
"Prove that I love you."
"Well, you don't hate me. You don't hate Vincent. Therefore you love him. Ergo, you love me."
"Simpleton."
"True love is always simple. Here, take this white rose as a sign that you don't hate me." He plucked a large half-opened bud from a great sprouting branch and held it toward her.
"But the red rose is my favorite."
"Well, here is a red one. Give me the white. That is my favorite. Now we've exchanged tokens. The rose always goes before the ring. I'll get that."
"If you were a true lover you would wear my colors."
"These white leaves will grow red resting on my heart."
"When they do I will listen to you."
"Will you, though? It is a promise; when this white rose is red you will love me?"
"Oh, yes, I can promise that."
"Dear Rosa!" He was very near her as she disentangled an obtruding vine from her garments, and before she was aware of his purpose he had audaciously snatched a kiss from her astonished lips.
"You odious Yankee! I haven't words to express my disgust—abhorrence!"
"Don't try, love needs no words: but I'll tell you; let me put this white rose to your lips; it will turn red at the touch, and in that way you can take your kiss back, if you really want it; then there'll be a fair exchange. I—"
"Hello, there! are you two grafting roses?"
It was Wesley, coming from the lower garden, where the stream was narrowest beyond the high wall of hedge.
"Oh, no, Mr. Boone; Richard here is studying the color in flowers. He has a theory that eclipses Goethe's 'Farbenlehre.'"
"Oh, indeed!" Wesley was quite unconscious of what Goethe's doctrine of colors might be, so he prudently avoided urging fuller particulars regarding Dick's theory, and said, vaguely;
"You have color enough here to theorize on, I'm sure."
"Yes, we have had very satisfactory experiments," Dick assented naïvely, stealing a glance at Rosa.
"But quite inconclusive," she rejoined, moving onward, the two young men following in the penumbra of her wide hat.
Meanwhile, there were curious events passing and coming to pass on the seven hills upon which the proud young capital of the proud young Confederacy stood. Rome, in her most imperial days, never dreamed of the scenic glories that Richmond, like a spoiled beauty, was hardly conscious of holding as her dower. Indeed, such is the necromantic mastery of the passion of the beautiful that, once standing on the glorious hill, that commands the James for twenty miles—twenty miles of such varied loveliness of color, configuration, andmis en scène, that the purple distances of Naples seem common to it—standing there, I say, one day, when the sword had long been rusting in the scabbard, and the memory of those who raised it in revolt had faded from all minds save those who wanted office—this historian thought that, had it been his lot to be born in that lovely spot, he, too, would have fought for State caprices—just as a gallant man will take up the quarrel of beauty, right or wrong!
Thoughts of this sort filled Barney Moore's mind too, that delicious September afternoon as he stood gazing dreamily down the river, toward that vague morning-land of the sun's rising, where his mind saw the long lines of blue his eyes ached to rest on. Barney had left the kindly roof where he had been nursed back to vigor. He had quit it in a fashion that left a rankling sorrow in his grateful heart. Vincent had represented to Jack the inconvenience it would be, the peril, rather, for him to assume the guardianship of so many enemies of the Confederacy. Scores of the old families of the city were under the ban simply because they had pleaded for deliberation before deciding on the secession ordinance. The Atterburys had their enemies too. It was pointed out that Vincent and Rosa had been educated in the North; that Mrs. Atterbury had spent many of her recent summers there. Their devotion to the Confederacy must be shown by deeds. It was true they had given twenty thousand dollars to the cause, but what was that to threefold millionaires? General Lee, their kinsman, had shaken his Socratic head solemnly when Rosa, at the War Department, told him, as an excellent joke, the strange chance that had brought Vincent's college chum and his family under the kind Rosedale roof.
Richard Perley was, therefore, deputized to rescue Barney from his false position and give him a chance for exchange when the time came. He journeyed up to Richmond, and, one day, laid these facts before Barney, who instantly saw his friend's dilemma, and at once set about inventing arusethat should extricate him, without mortifying the kind people who had befriended him. When he was able to be about, he feigned a desire to go to his friends in Arrowfield County, south of the James, and was bidden hearty Godspeed. Then, with funds supplied by Jack, he gained admittance to a modest house far out on Main Street, where the city merges into the country. They were simple people, and his thrilling tale of being a refugee from Harper's Ferry was plausible enough to be accepted by more skeptical people than the Gannats.
Day after day Barney skirted furtively about the uncompromising walls of Libby and Castle Thunder, where once or twice he had gone with his hosts to make a mental diagram of the place for future use. Little by little he became familiar with Richmond, which, like a new bride, gave the visitor welcome to admire her splendid spouse, the Confederate government. He learned all the plots of the prison, and became the confidant of Letitia Lanview, known to every exile in Richmond as the friend of the suffering—St. Veronica she was called—after a poem dedicated to her by a young Harvard graduate, rescued by her perseverance from death in Libby Prison. With this lady he drove all about the environs of Richmond, and several times far out toward the meditated route of flight, in order that he might be able to lead the bewildered refugees. He got the whole landscape by heart, and could have led a battalion over it in the dark. Then he passed days wandering over the Libby Hill, down in the bed of the "Rockets," as the bed of the James was known in those days; he learned the ground to the very beat of the patrols that guarded the wretched prisoners in the towering shambles. One whole night, too, he spent in marking the course of the guards as they changed in two-hour reliefs. With his facts well collected he visited Mrs. Lanview, and at last he was confronted by Butler's agent. This agent was a middle-aged man, who had evidently once been very handsome, but dissipation had left pitiable traces upon his fine features, and his once large, open eyes, that perplexingly suggested some one Barney tried in vain to recall—vainly? The man didn't say much in the lady's presence, but when the two were in the open air, facing toward the center of the town, he divulged a good deal that surprised Barney.
"You are from Acredale, young man. I lived there when I was younger than I am now. My name? People call me a good many names. I don't mind at all, so that I have rum enough and a bed and a bite to eat. No man can have more than that, my boy. I am plain Dick Jones now. It's an easy name, and plenty of the same in the land; and if I should die suddenly there would be lots o' folks to feel sorry, eh? But as you are from Acredale I don't mind telling you that it is Elisha Boone that foots the bill. Butler is a friend of Boone's, and he has given me authority to summon all the troops within reach to my aid. My business is to carry young Wes Boone to Fort Monroe. Butler doesn't know that. He thinks I am spying Jeff Davis and piping for the prisoners. He didn't say that he wanted me to kill Davis, but if we could carry him to Fort Monroe, my boy, there'd be about a million dollars swag to divide! How does that strike you?"
"It doesn't strike me at all. I think it is for the interest of the Union that Davis should be where he is. He is vain, arrogant, silly, and dull. He will alone wreck the rebel cause if he is given time. There couldn't be a greater misfortune for the North than to have Davis displaced by some one of real ability, such as Stephens, Lee, Benjamin, Mason, Breckenridge, or, in fact, any of the men identified with secession."
"You surprise me, my son. Still, admitting all you say, the men who should surprise the North some fine morning with a present of Jeff Davis on their breakfast-plates, wouldn't be without honor, to say nothing of promotion and profit"
"Oh, if we can carry Jeff off without compromising the safety of the prisoners, I'll join you heartily. But first of all we must rescue them."
"Unquestionably; now, here's the programme: Butler's forces will be within gunshot of Magruder's lines on Warwick Creek Thursday—that's three days from now. The prisoners will be out of the sewer Wednesday after midnight. You know the roads eastward. You will lead them to the swamps near Williamsburg. There we will have boats to take part down the river; the rest will make through the swamps under my lead. I have been spying out the land for a week. At a place called Rosedale we pick up young Boone, who is really the object of my journey. I couldn't find him for weeks, and inquired of all the prisoners. Mrs. Lanview finally put me on the track, and I saw Wes Boone as I came up here. He thought the chances were better with a big party than alone. I saw him again yesterday, and he told me that Davis and Lee, his chief of staff, were to be at a party in the Rosedale house on Thursday next. Now, we can pick up Davis just as well as Boone. There is the whole plan."
"Oh, that's a different matter. Davis will not be near the city, and his keeping will not add to our danger. I see no reason why we shouldn't grab him. Heavens, what a sensation it will make! We shall be the wonder of the North—we shall he like the men that discovered André and Arnold—Paulding and—and"—but here Barney's historical facts came to an end—"we shall be famous for—forever!"
"For a week, my son; wonders don't live long in these fast days. For aweek the North will glorify us; then, if they find that we voted forDouglas, as I did, they will say we had some sinister design in bringingDavis North, and likely send us to Fort Lafayette."
Barney stopped dead; they had come under a gas-lamp between Grace and Franklin Streets. He looked at the man. He was quite sober. His eyes answered the young man's indignant protesting glance, openly, unshrinkingly, humorously.
"I should be sorry to think that, Mr. Jones."
"Well, wait. When you get North you will see a mighty change in things.Sentiment, my boy, follows the main chance. It's money, my boy, money.Enough money would have made Judas respectable; he was fool enough toput his price too low."
"Ugh!—you almost make me hate the North! Who can have heart to fight for such heartless traffickers?"
"The North doesn't ask your heart. It has counted the cost, and finds that it can pay a million of men thirteen dollars a month for three years, and still make a good thing out of it—that's about the breadth of it. Here's an oasis in the desert of darkness. Come and have a drink?"
But Barney—not caring for a drink, the cynic—gave him his address, and, dreadfully cast down in spirit, the eager partisan moped up the long hill homeward. The next day Mrs. Lanview gave him the details of the meditated escape. There were only sixty or a hundred in position to avail themselves of the subterranean way that had been toilsomely dug, by a few devoted spirits, with tools casually dropped among them by the guileless Veronica during her daily visits. The plotters counted on at least six hours' start before discovery. The guards were not to be disturbed, and the evasion would not be known until eight o'clock, when the miserable breakfast ration was distributed.
Of that amazing-exploit, the digging through twenty solid feet of earth and stone, I do not propose to tell. It is to be found in the journals of the day: it is contained in the hundred pathetic narratives of the men who took part. It has nothing to do with this history beyond the use made of it to mislead the ingenious Barney, and in the end complicate the careers of those in whom we are interested. Suffice it, therefore, to say that in the dim morning mist, as arranged, a shadowy host emerged on the river-bottom, now dry and footable; that each man, as he crawled from the pit, was directed into the thick willows bordering the banks; that when six score or more had clambered out they obeyed a whispered command, for which Veronica had prepared them, and noiselessly, in shadowy single file, they followed the bed of the stream, even where the water flowed deep and dangerous, until they came to the gentle slopes of Church Hill. Then, under guidance of Barney, those who were wise followed swiftly down the river-road until daylight, when they hid in the dim recesses of the white-oak swamps, where they lay concealed many hours. As night fell they faced hopefully forward down the Williamsburg road, until a flaming wave in the air admonished them to strike to the right, and they plunged into the pathless swamps of the Chickahominy. Here they were secure. No force able to cope with them could enter; no force at the command of Magruder could surround them. But Barney's guiding hand was now replaced by another. Jones had appeared, and with him men bearing Butler's commission. The prisoners of Libby set up a defiant cheer. They were once more under the flag. Father Abraham was again their commander.
There were sedate, fatherly men among these rescued bands. There were men with gray hairs and sober behavior; men who could bow meekly under the chastening rod; but the antics of the juvenile group, in which we are mainly interested, were grave and decorous compared with the abandoned, delirious joy of these grave men as they reached the recesses of a swamp that denied admission to all save practiced explorers. Why, here they could subsist for weeks! The rebels might spy them, might surround them, but they need not starve—the buds were food, the bushes refreshment, the pellucid pools drink and life. Barney stared in speechless amazement at the unseemly gambols of the motley mass.
Delirium! it was a mild term for the embracing, the prancing, the Carmagnole-like ecstasy of the half-clad madmen running amuck in the almost unendurable joy of liberation. Barney knew that this condition of things would never do. All who bore commissions in the army were selected from the men. The highest in rank, who proved to be a colonel, was invested with the command, Barney serving as adjutant, and Jones as guide. The rabble, having made a good meal from the spoil of a sweet-potato patch, pushed forward through the fretwork of fern, rank morass, and verdure, toward security. But the march was a snail's pace, as may be imagined. The men, worn to skeletons by months of captivity, insufficient food, and stinted exercise, were forced to halt often for rest in such toilsome marching as the half-aquatic surface of the swamp involved.
By Thursday noon they were still far from the river. Foragers were detailed to procure food, and pending their return the wearied band sank to the earth to rest. In less than two hours the predatory platoon returned with a sybaritic store—chickens, young lamb, green corn, onions. Only the stern command of the colonel suppressed a mighty cheer. When the march was resumed the colonel led the main column south by east. Jones, with Barney and a dozen men, struck due east. In answer to Barney's surprised question, Jones informed him they were to pick up "Wes" Boone by taking that route. Difficult as the way had been heretofore, it now became laborious in the extreme for this smaller band. The bottom was all under water, and before they had proceeded a mile half the group were drenched. In many cases an imprudent plunger was compelled to call a halt to rescue his shoes—that is, those who were lucky enough to have shoes—from the deep mud, hidden by a fair green surface of moss or tendrils. It was a wondrous journey to Barney, The pages of Sindbad alone seemed to have a parallel for the awful mysteries of that long, long flight through jungles of towering timber, whose leaves and bark were as unfamiliar as Brazilian growth to the troops of Pizarro or the Congo vegetation to the French pioneer. Jones and his comrades saw nothing but the hardships of the march and the delay of the painfuldétoursin the solemn glades. The direction was kept by compass, many of the men having been supplied with a miniature instrument by the prudent foresight of Mrs. Lanview, who was niggard of neither time nor money in the cause she had at heart. In spite of every effort a march so swift that it would have exhausted cavalry, Jones's ranks did not reach the rendezvous until midnight. At about that hour the exhausted fugitives came suddenly upon a wide, open plain, and far below them, in the valley, a vision of light and life shone through the dark.
"There, boys, we're at the end of our first stage. Unless I'm much mistaken, that bit of merry-making yonder will cost the Confederacy a chief."
"But is it certain that Davis is there?" asked the man Jones calledMoon, who seemed to be his intimate.
"Ah, that we will learn so soon as Nasmyd reports. We will give the signal when we reach that fringe of wood yonder. It's back of the grounds, separated from them by a hard piece of swamp and water.—Men, you must follow now in single file, and when we get in the swamp, mind, a single step out of line will cost you your lives, for, sucked into that morass, wild horses can't pull you out."
Then, as they plunged anew in the gloomy deeps of swamp and brake, the friendly lights were lost and the depressed wayfarers struggled on with something of the feeling of a crew cast away at sea, who, thrown upon the crest of a rising billow, catch a near glimpse of a great ship, light and taut, riding serenely havenward to lose it the next in the dire waste. Presently the melancholy bird-notes that had puzzled Jack in the same vicinity days before broke out just in front of Barney, who was clambering along, the third man from the head of the little column. Again, after a long pause, the sweet, plaintive note was re-echoed from a distance.
"Ah, all is well!" he heard Jones ejaculate triumphantly. "We are in time and we are waited for.—Now, men, put all the heart that's in you to the next half-hour's work. No danger, but just cool heads and strong arms."
This good news was conveyed from man to man, and the toilsome movement briskly accelerated under the inspiring watchword. Shortly afterward the larger growth—cypress and oak—diminished, as the band straggled into the open, starry night at the margin of what they could tell was water by the croaking of frogs and plashing of night birds and reptiles. Then the train was halted. Jones left Nasmyd in command and plunged into a thick skirt of bushes. Now Barney, hot and dirty from the march, had shot ahead when he heard the ripple of the water. He had taken off his shoes to bathe his blistered and swollen feet, and sat quite still and restful under the leafy sprays of an odorous bush that even in the dark he knew to be honeysuckle.
"Well," he heard Jones cry in an exultant whisper, "we've done it. The woman is a trump. There are a hundred nearly of the prisoners gone to the boats. Now we are ready for Boone. Is Davis here?"
"Yes; he came over from Williamsburg at eight o'clock; they were feasting when Clem came away a three or more ago."
"Any cavalry at the house?"
"A squadron; but they are ordered to be in saddle for their quarters at midnight. There's the bugle for boots and saddles now."
"Yes; by the Eternal, what luck! Davis will sleep there."
"So Clem says; the state chamber has been prepared for him; all the rest except Lee go back to Williamsburg."
"We couldn't have arranged it better if we had been given the ordering of it. Are all the boats here?"
"Yes."
"And the negroes—how many have you?"
"I can't say. They've been dropping across in twos and threes since ten o'clock. The curious thing is that the women are more taken with the idea of fight than the men. We shall have enough—too many, I fear."
"We'll make them our safety, Jim, my boy; we'll divide them up, and, in case of pursuit, send them in different directions to confuse the troops."
"How many men are you going to take to the house?"
"Six, with you and me. It will be unsafe to take more, as the boats are small. I will go back and select the men. You get the boats ready."
Barney hurried on his shoes, crawled through the bushes, and was in his place when Jones presently appeared. The men, dead tired, were disposed about on the ground asleep, not minding the damp grass or the heavy dew that made the air fairly misty.
"Wake four of the men," Jones whispered, and when they were aroused he said to a tall, reeling shadow, idly waiting orders:
"We'll be back in a half-hour, or an hour at the farthest. Let the men sleep; they need it. Sleep yourself if you want to. Moon or I will come to rouse you, and we will bring you plenty of bacon and hominy. Have no fears if you hear movements just beyond you; there are a couple of contrabands here who go with us. Here's a ration of tobacco for the men when they wake, and a gallon of whisky, which you must serve out gradually."
Revived by this stimulating news quite as much as by the whisky, Barney and his three comrades followed Jones to the boats. There were four—the dug-outs we saw Jack manoeuvring in the same waters a few nights before. A negro sat silent, shadowy in each, and, when Jones gave the word, "Let drive!" the barks shot through the waters, propelled by the single scull, as swiftly as an Indian canoe. In a few moments all debarked on the grassy knoll behind the black line of hedge. Jones made straight for the high doorway, and inserting a key it was noiselessly opened.
"Men," he whispered, "no names must be used in any case. I'm number one, Jim here is number two, Moore number three, and so on. Each one remember his number. Clem will remain here with number six to guard the gate. All the rest follow me."
Two negroes joined the party that stole forward through the rose-field to the negro quarters. All was silent. As they reached the great kitchen behind the house and connected with it by a trellised pavilion, only an occasional light could be seen in the house. All were apparently there. The ball had ended. Leaving Barney in charge of the rest, Jones and Number Two crept along the trellis toward the house and soon disappeared around the southern corner. Jones presently returned and said, exultingly:
"The cavalry is gone; we have nothing to fear.—Plato, you go with Number Two to the stables and bring the horses out; hold six and send the rest scattering in the fields, so that in case of anybody's being in the mind to follow hell have to use his legs, and we can beat them at that game. Where are the ropes?" he asked the black man left in the group.
"In de kitchen, massa."
"Get them!"
"Must I go alone, massa?"
"That's a fact.—There, Moore, you go with the boy—don't be a minute."
Barney followed the sable marauder through the grounds to the rear of the trellis, and crept with him through a window which stood open. The kitchen was dark, but the negro seemed perfectly familiar with the place. He made directly for a dark panel in the northern wall, opened a cupboard-door, knelt down and began to grope among bottles, boxes, and what not that housewives gather in such receptacles.
"Oh, de lor'! dey ain't no rope! It's done gone!" "Have you a match?"Barney asked.
"No, massa, but dey is some yondah."
"Find them."
The boy crept cautiously in the direction of the passage leading into the house; he fumbled about, an age, as it seemed to the impatient Barney, and at last uttered an exclamation:
"Got 'em?"
"No, massa, but Ise suah deys kep dar."
"Take my hand and lead me."
"It's molasses, massa, and Ise all stickem," the voice in the dark whispered, delightedly, and Barney could see a double row of glistening white ivory in the dim light that came through the window. He came nearer the clumsy wight, and saw that it was a pan of batter the cook had left on the table, probably the morning griddle-cakes. The negro was a mass of white, pasty glue, and knelt on the floor, licking his hands passively.
"Where are the matches?"
"Under de clock, in a tin safe, massa—right da."
Barney groped angrily about the table, on the clock-shelf, knocking down a tin dish, that fell with the clatter of a bursting magazine in the dense stillness of the night. Both drew back in shadow, waiting with heart-beats that sounded in their ears like tramping horses on thick sward. The clamor of rushing steeds in the lane suddenly drowned this; a loud, joyous whinny sounded in the very kitchen it seemed, and there was a rush houseward past the pantry as of a troop of cavalry. Then a blood-curdling outcry of voices, then shots. Barney, leaving the negro writhing in convulsions under the table, darted to the window—to the rendezvous. It was deserted.
When Vincent visited the stables on the morning of that eagerly-looked-for Thursday, he found three of the horses clammy with perspiration and giving every sign of having been ridden! The awkward and evasive answers of the stablemen would not have been enough for any other than a man preoccupied by love. When Rosa went to the kitchen, if her head had not been taken up with the love in her heart, she must certainly have remarked that the stores of food prepared for the household were curiously diminished and the kitchen girls unwontedly reserved. Indeed, in any other condition than that in which the family now found themselves, they must have remarked a singular change in the black brigade in kitchen and garden. But, preocupied each with a different interest, as well as the preparation for the President'sfête, the Atterburys remarked nothing sinister in the distracted conduct of their servants, and had only a vague feeling that the great event had in some sort paralyzed their wonted noisy activities and repressed their usual chatter. Kate's uneasiness and restless vagaries, her disjointed talk and half-guilty evasions, would have been remarked by her prepossessed hosts; while Wesley's shifting and moody silence would have warned his comrades that he was suffering the pangs of an evil done or meditated. Precursive signs like these—and much more, which need not be dwelt on—the kind hosts of Rosedale made no note of. But when Vincent opened the mail-bag—brought by an orderly from Williamsburg every morning, the first surprise and shock of the day was felt—though in varying degrees by all the diverse inmates of the house.
"Hah! glory to the Lord of hosts!" the exultant reader cried, as he passed to his mother a large official envelope at the breakfast-table.
"I'm ordered to the field." he cried, as Jack looked inquiringly; "I'm to set out to-night and report for duty with General Johnston to-morrow at Manassas. No more loitering in my lady's bower; Jack, my boy, the carpet will be clear for your knightly pranks after to-night."
"If it were Aladdin's magic rug, I should caper nimbly enough. I warrant you."
"What would you wish—if it were under your feet, with its slaves at your command?"
"I should whisk you all off—North—instanter."
"Ingrate!—plunge us into the chilly blasts of the North, in return for our glorious Southern sun? Fie, Jack! I'm surprised at such selfish ingratitude. We expected better things of our prisoners," Mrs. Atterbury murmured, and affected a reproving frown at the culprit, as she handed her son back the order, with a stilled sigh.
"The sun of the South is not the sun of York to us, you know; all the clouds that lower on our house are doubly darkened by this Southern sun; even the warmth of Rosedale hearts can not make up for our eclipsed Northern star," Jack said, sadly, with a wistful look at the rival warrior reading with sparkling eyes the instructions accompanying the order to march.
"Since Vincent is going so far northward, I think it will be a good time for us to go home," Mrs. Sprague began, tentatively.
"Oh—no—no! Oh, we could never think of such a thing," Rosa cried—"could we, mamma?"
"Why should you go?" Mrs. Atterbury asked. "Until Jack is exchanged, you've certainly no duty in the North so important as watching over this headstrong fellow. We can't think of your going—unless you are weary of us."
"O Mrs. Atterbury, pray don't put it in that way! You know better. Our visit here has been perfect. But you can understand my anxiety to be at home; to be where I can aid my son's release. I have been anxious for some time to broach the subject, but I saw that our going would be a trouble to you; now, since fortune offers this chance, we must seize it—that is, those of us who feel it a duty to go"; and she looked meaningly at Merry and her daughter.
"Nonsense! You are hostages for Vincent, in case he is captured, as long as you are here; I can't let you go—under the laws of war—I can not. Can I, Vincent?"
Vincent looked at Jack solemnly, but made no answer.
"Mamma is quite right. While you are with us no harm can come toVincent; for, if he should be taken prisoner, we can threaten the YankeeGovernment to put you to torture unless he is well treated," Rosainterrupted, reassuringly.
"We should be far more aid and comfort to Vincent if we were in the North than we could be here. If he were taken prisoner and wounded, we could return him the kindness we have received here. In any event, we could lessen the hardships of prison life."
"Oh, you would have to minister to a mind diseased, if such a fate should befall me!" Vincent cried, sentimentally; with a glance into Olympia's eyes, which met his at the moment. Both blushed; and Olympia, to relieve the embarrassment, said, decisively:
"Mamma is right. Jack must have his family on the ground, to watch over his interests. I am sure there is some underhand work responsible for this long delay in his case, for I saw byThe Whig, last week, that exchanges of prisoners had been made; I think that—" But, suddenly remembering the presence of Kate and Wesley, she did not finish the thought, which implied a belief in the intervention of the elder Boone—to Jack's detriment. In the end—when the two mothers talked the matter over—Mrs. Sprague carried the point. She convinced Mrs. Atterbury that there was danger to Jack in a longer stay of his family in the Confederate lines. Vague reports had already reached them from Acredale of the suspicious hostility in which the Democrats were held after Bull Run. The Northern papers, which came through the lines quite regularly, left no doubt that Democratic leanings were universally interpreted in the North as evidences of rebel sympathy, if not partisanship. Such a charge, as things stood, would be fatal to Jack; and the mother's duty was plain. She had friends in Washington, once powerful, who could stand between her son and calumny—perhaps more serious danger—when she was present in person to explain his conduct. If she could not at once secure his exchange, she could save him from compromise in the present inflammable and capricious state of the public mind. Understanding this, and the enmity of Boone, Mrs. Atterbury not only made no further objection, but acknowledged the urgent necessity of the mother's presence in the North. The idle life of Rosedale had grown unbearably irksome to Merry, too.
"I feel as if I were a rebel," she confided to Mrs. Sprague in the evening talks, when the piano sounded and the young people were making the hours pass in gayety. "It's a sin for us to laugh and be contented here, when our friends are bearing the burdens of war. I shall be ashamed to show my face in Acredale. Oh, I wish I could carry a musket!"
"You might carry a canteen, my dear. I believe the regiments take outvivandières—there would be an outlet for your warlike emotions," Mrs. Sprague said, with the purpose of cheering the unhappy spinster.
"Ah, no; I must not give encouragement to that dreadful Richard. But we shall go now, thank Heaven, and it will comfort my sisters to have the boy back on Northern soil, even if he persists in being a soldier."
She had a long talk with Jack on the subject. That tempest-tossed knight convinced her that it would only incite the boy to more unruliness to persist in his quitting the army, or to urge him northward now, before an exchange was properly arranged. Indeed, he was a prisoner—taken in battle—though his name did not appear on the lists. So Vincent's sudden going was welcomed as a stroke of good fortune. The Atterburys, understanding the natural feelings of the family, made only perfunctory opposition. Olympia and Kate were to remain until their brothers' fates were decided. Vincent, who had been for weeks wildly impatient to return to the field, was divided in mind now—by joy and despair. He had put off and put off a last appeal to Olympia. He had not had an opportunity, or rather had too much opportunity—and had, from day to day, deferred the longed-for yet dreaded decision. When ready to speak, prudence whispered that it would be better to leave the question open until it should come up of itself. She would learn every day to know him better in his own home, where all the artificialities of life are stripped from a man, by the concurrent abrasions of family love and domesticdevoirs. She would see that, however unworthy of her love he might have seemed in the old boyish days at Acredale, now he could be a man when manliness was demanded; that he could be patient, reticent, humble in the trials her caprice or coquetry put upon him. She had, it seemed to him, deepened and broadened the current of his love during these blissful weeks of waiting. Her very reserve, under the new conditions surrounding her, had made more luminous the beauty of her heart and mind. She was no longer the airy, capricious Olympia of his college days. The pensive gravity of misfortune and premature responsibility had ennobled and made more tangible the traits that had won him in her Northern home. She had not avoided him during these weeks of purifying probation, as he feared she would. Of late—Jack's state being secure—she had revived much of the old vivacity, and deepened the thrall that held him.
But now the merry-making season which had opened before them was at an end. The madrigals that welled up in his soft heart must sing themselves in the silence of the night, in the camp yonder, with no ears to comprehend, no heart to melt to them. He should probably not get a chance to see her again during the conflict. How long? Perhaps a year—for it would take two campaigns, as the rebel leaders reckoned, to convince the North that the Confederacy was unconquerable! And what might not happen during those momentous months? Perhaps Jack's death?—and then they would be divided as by fire—or, if the conflict resulted victoriously for the South, as he knew it must, he foresaw that the soldier of the conquering army would not be received as a wooer in the family of the defeated. He knew her so well! She would, in the very pride of outraged patriotism, give her love to one of the defeated, rather than add to the triumphs of the hated South. She had strong convictions on the war. She hated slavery, and she could not be made to see that the South was warring for liberty, not to sustain slavery. These thoughts ran through Vincent's troubled mind as his mother directed the preparations for thefêteof the President.
Kate, Jack, and Dick were pressed into the service of decorating the apartments. Olympia left the room with her mother to advise and assist in making ready for the journey North; and Vincent, aiding his mother with a sadly divided mind, kept furtive watch on the hallway. She held him hours in suspense, he thought, almost wrathfully, of deliberate purpose; for she must have read in his eyes that he wanted to talk with her. The artless Dick finally gave him a chance.
"I say, Vint, get Polly to show you the roses needed for the tables; I'll be with you by-and-by to cut the ferns. Do you think you could make yourself of that much use? You're not worth a straw here"
"Send for Miss Polly and I'll do my best," Vincent said, with a gulp, to conceal his joy. She appeared presently; and, as they were passing out of the door, Rosa cried, imperiously:
"Oh, yes, Vint, we need ever so much honeysuckle; you know where it hangs thickest—in the Owl's Glen. Olympia will like to see that—the haunt of her favorite bird"; and the busy little maid laughed cheerily, like a disordered goddess, intoxicated by the exhaling odors of the floral chaos.
"En routefor Roumelia, then," Vincent cried in military cadence, as the florists set out. Roumelia was the name Jack had given the rose-lands near the stream, in fanciful allusion to the Turkish province of flowers. Halting at the gardener's cottage, Vincent procured an immense pair of shears, like a double rapier in size, and, bidding the man follow to gather the blossoms, he pushed into the blooming vineyard.
"With such an instrument I should say it was the golden fleece you were after," Olympia cried, as he reached her side, "though I believe Jason didn't do the shearing."
"No, the powers of air worked for him, and he found his quest ready to his hand."
"I'm sure the powers of air have not denied you; look at those radiant ranks of blossoms bending to be gathered."
"Ah, yes, beauty stoops sometimes to welcome the trembling hand of the suitor."
"Your hand is rather unsteady—infirm of purpose; give me the blades." She took them laughingly, and snipped the green stems rapidly and dexterously.
"Yes, I believe men are infirm in moral purposes, as compared to women.It is only in the brutalities of life that men are decisive."
"Do you mean that women approach the trials of life less thinkingly and act less rationally than men?"
"Yes and no. The daring too much is always before a man; the daring too little is, I think, the only trouble a woman has."
"Oh, that is a large question, involving too much mental strain in a garden of roses, where the senses sleep and one is content with mere breath and the faintest motion."
"There are enough roses; now we will go for the wild smilax and honeysuckle; perhaps the cool air of the pools will restore your mental activities."
They left the dismembered roses scattered in fragrant heaps on the shaded path and walked slowly toward the dense hedge.
"What a perfect fortress this green wall makes of the gardens!" Olympia said, glancing around the great square, where the solid green wall could be seen running up much higher than their heads.
"Yes, as I said the other day, it would take hard work for an invading force to get at the house unless traitors within gave up the gates. This one," he added, unlocking a massive oak door, crossed with thick planks and studded with iron bolts, "alone admits from the creek and swamp. It is locked all the time; no one has the key except the gardener, who delivers it to mamma every night."
"A feudal demesne; it takes one back to the so-called days of chivalry."
"Why do you say 'so-called'? To me they are the delight of the past—when men went to battle for the smile of the women they loved, when knights rode the world over in search of adventure, and my lady, in her donjon, listened with pleasure to the lover's roundelay. Ah, it was a perfect life, an enchanting time. We are living in a coarse, brutal age; chivalry was the creed of civilization, the knights the priesthood of the higher life."
"There's the Southerner through and through in that sentimentality. To me chivalry means all that is narrow, cruel, and rapacious in man. The philandering knights were sensual boobies, the simpering dames soulless wantons. Life meant simply the rule of the strong, the slaughter of the weak. Servitude was its law and robbery its methods. Have you ever traveled in out-of-the-way places in Germany, Austria, or Italy?"
"No, I've never been abroad."
"You would know better what I mean if you had seen the monstrous relics of the age you admire. The few ruled the many; the knights were simply a brotherhood of blood and rapine; men were slaves, women were worse. The bravest were as unlettered as your body-servant, the most beautiful dames as termagant as Penelope the cook. At the table men and women ate from a common dish, without forks or spoons. Men guzzled gallons of unfermented wine. A bath was unknown. Cleanliness was as unpracticed as Islamism in New York. Ugh! anything but chivalry for me."
"But surely the great lords were not what you represent. They were gentle born, gentle bred. They could not be robbers; they lived from great estates."
"They were the 'Knights of St. Nicholas,' which, in the slang of the middle ages, meant what they call in the West road agents; indeed, plain highwaymen they were called in England in Bacon's day."
Vincent bent over discomfited, and held the little shallop until Olympia was seated, and then pushed off into the murky stream.
"Do you see those streamers of loveliness waving welcome to you, fair damsel—Nature knows its kind?"
"That's one word for me and one for yourself," she cried, seizing the dainty pink sprays that now trailed over her head and shoulders as the boat glided along the fringe of hushes supporting the clinging vines.
"Oh, no, Olympia; I can't speak even one word for myself. I have been trembling to do it this six weeks, but your eye had none of the invitation these starry blossoms offer us. I am going to say now, Olympia, what I have to say—for after to-day there will be no chance; what has been on my mind you have long known. You know that I love you; how much I love you, how impossible it is to think of life without you, I dare not venture to say to you, for you distrust our Southern exaggeration. But I do love you; ah, my God! all the world else—my mother, my sister, my duty seem nothing compared to the one passionate hope in my breast. Do you believe me, Olympia—do you doubt me?"
"Far from it, Vincent—dear Vincent—no—no—sit where you are and listen to me—" She was deeply moved, and the lover in his heart cursed the luckless veils of blossom that she apparently, without design, drew before her face. "I do believe all you say; I knew it before you said it. But you remember we went over this very same ground before. Since then, it is true, you have been the means of saving us much misery; how much I hardly dare think of when I look back to that dreadful day, when mamma lay in the fever of coming disease and the hopelessness of despair. All I can say, dear, dear Vincent, is what I said before. Wait until thine and mine are no longer at war. Wait until one flag covers us—"
"But that can never be!"
"Wait! I have faith that it will be!"
"If one flag should cover us—my flag—would you—would you—?"
"Ah, Vincent! don't ask me; don't force me to say something thing that will make you unhappy, since I don't know my own mind well enough yet to answer as you wish me to answer—"
"But you can tell me now whether you love me, or, at least, whether there is any one you love more?"
"I don't think I love you. I know, however, that I think no more of any one else than I think of you; pray, let that suffice."
"But how cruel that is, Olympia! It is as much, as to say that you won't wait and see whether you may meet some one that you can be surer of than you are of me?"
"I must distress you whatever I say, Vincent! Frankly, I don't think you can decide just now whether your heart is really engaged. I think you do not know me as a man should knows the woman he makes his wife. I am certain I do not know you. If you had been born and bred in the North, I should have no difficulty in deciding; but your ways are so different here: women are accorded so much before marriage, and made so little of a man's life after marriage, that I shrink from a promise which, if lightly or inconsiderately given, would bring the last misery a woman can confront."
"What, Olympia! you think Southern men do not hold marriage to be sacred?"
"I think that the Southern man has a good deal of the knight you spoke of in him, and, like the Frenchman, marries inconsiderately, and does penance in infidelity, at least to the form, if not the fact, of the relation."
"O Olympia! where do you get such repulsive ideas of us; who has been traducing us to you?"
"I judge from the Southern men I have seen North; pardon me, Vincent, I do not see how it can be otherwise in a society based upon human servitude. To live on the labors of a helot people blunts the finer sensibilities of men and women alike; when you can look unshrinkingly at the separation of husband and wife on the auction-block, when you can see innocent children taken from their mothers and sold into eternal separation, I think it is not unnatural in me to fear that a woman with my convictions would not be happy mated with a Southerner. All this is cruel, I fear you will think, but it would be crueller for me to encourage a love that, under present circumstances, would bring misery to both of us."
"You are an abolitionist?"
"Yes; every right-thinking person in the North is an abolitionist to this extent; we want the South to take the remedy into its own hands, to free its slaves voluntarily; the radical abolitionists prefer a violent means. That I do not seek or did not; but now, Vincent, it is bound to come."
"And, if it should come, what would you answer to my question?"
"Here is a white rose: I picked it with my hand, and, you see, a drop of my blood is on it; when you can give me a rose with a drop of your blood on it as free from taint as the stain mine makes, I shall have an answer that will not be unworthy your waiting for!"
"Unworthy! I don't understand you. Surely, you don't think me a profligate?"
"When the time comes that no human being acknowledges your ownership, perhaps you may receive a voluntary bond-maid, bound to you by stronger ties than the chattel of the slave."
"But you love me, then, Olympia?"
"I can not love where I do not reverence."
"But it is not my fault that slaves are my inheritance!"
"It will be your fault if they are your support when you are your own master."
"You love an idea better than you love a man who would die for you!"
"I love manliness and the sense of right, which is called duty, better than I love a man who is blind to the first impulse of real manhood—"
"Would you ask a Jew to give up his synagogue to gain your hand?"
"The synagogue is the temple of a creed as divine as my own, and the faith of the man I loved would never swerve me in accepting or refusing him."
"We of the South believe slavery a divine institution—that is, first established by the fathers!"
"The tribes in the Fiji Islands believe man-eating an ordinance of the gods!"
"Well, this sort of discussion leads to nothing," Vincent said, ruefully. "The world is well lost for the woman one loves, when I come to you shorn of my world!"
"Ah! then, Vincent, you will find another!"
He drew her hand from the clinging vines and kissed it.
"I am very happy. I shall lose my world with a very light heart."
"The world is a very tough brier; we sometimes bring it closer, when its thorns prick us more painfully in the struggles to cast it off."
"Then I'll cut the brambles, and not risk tearing my flesh!"
"That's the soldier's way—the heroic way; but wait for the future; I am young and you are not old."
Vincent's gayety when they returned to the drawing-room attracted the observant Dick, and he slyly whispered to the warrior, "Been practicing the Roman strategy with the Sabines?"
"No, I've been at the Temple of Minerva and taken a pledge to hold my tongue."
"Ah! the goddess of the owls; but, as they see light only in darkness, I fear you groped in blackness."
The whole household were to meet President Davis and his party in Williamsburg, assist at the review, and get back with the distinguished guests in time for a state dinner. Merry and Mrs. Sprague were reluctant to go, but they feared a refusal would be misunderstood. Poor Merry was very tearful and disconsolate at the thought of leaving Dick, but she strove heroically to hide her grief when the cavalcade set out, the elder ladies driving, the young people mounted. The ancient capital of Virginia was aflame with the new rebel bunting. President Davis, with Generals Lee and Magruder, were in place on the pretty green before the old colonial college edifice when the Rosedale people came up. Davis saluted Mrs. Atterbury with cordial urbanity; but, as the troops were already in column, there was only time for hasty presentation of the strangers.