With these important works wrecked and dismantled, with the destruction of great stores of ammunition and artillery which obviously placed the system of defence in an imperfect condition, with the difficulty of repair and supply which time and distance and insufficiency of transportation rendered insurmountable, with the elation of victory that so dashing an exploit, so thoroughly consummated, must communicate to the Confederate troops, an attack by them in force was daily expected. The capture of Roanoke City was considered an event of the near future, anticipated with joy or gloom, according to the several interests of the varied population, but in any case regarded as a foregone conclusion. Daily the Northern trains, heavily laden, bore away passengers who had no wish to become citizens of the Southern Confederacy. Perishable effects, stocks of goods of the order that a battle would endanger or destroy, were shipped to calmer regions. Reinforcements came by every train, by every boat, till all the resources of the country were strained to maintain them, and still the Southerners had not advanced to the opportunity. It was one of those occasionsof the Civil War when the hand that took was not strong enough to hold. The Confederate force near the town was inadequately supplied to enable it to do more than seize the advantage, which must needs be relinquished. Its slim resources admitted of no permanent occupation of the town, and the empty glory of the capture of Roanoke City would have been offset by the disastrous necessity of the evacuation of the post. Gradually the Federal lines were extended until they lay almost as before the raid on the works. The Confederate ranks had been depleted to furnish reinforcements to a more practicable point. They were falling back, and now and again sudden sallies brought in prisoners from such a distance as told the story.
The town was once more secure, work was begun on the dismantled fortifications, and daily the question of how so hazardous an enterprise could have been devised and executed revived in interest. The commanding general had not the loss of the town itself to account for, as at one time was probable, but for the destruction of a great store of ammunition, as well as the loss of life, of guns, of the works themselves, representing many thousands of dollars and the labor of regiments. All, however, seemed hardly commensurate with the disaster he would sustain in point of reputation. That such a dashing, destructive exploit could be planned and consummated under his own ceaselessly vigilant eyesappeared little short of the miraculous, and for his own justification he looked needfully into its inception.
It was discovered that there was a natural subterranean passage from the grove of Judge Roscoe's place to a cellar, a portion of which had constituted the powder magazine on the Devrett hill, and that this had been exploded by means of a slow match through the grotto, previously prepared, enabling the raiders to effect their escape. It was further ascertained that Julius Roscoe, who had led the enterprise, had been in hiding for some time at his father's home, and had been seen as he issued thence covered with blood, evidently fresh from some personal altercation with a Federal officer, for weeks a guest in the house. Although bruised and bleeding, this officer could offer no account of his wounds save a fall, impossible to have produced them; he had raised no alarm, and had given no report of the presence of an enemy, whose intrusion had wrought such damage and disaster to the Union cause.
One detail led to another, each discovery unveiled cognate mysteries, the disclosure of trifles brought forward circumstances of importance. The claim of the sentinel posted at Judge Roscoe's portico that he had fired the first shot which raised the alarm, evoked the fact that an earlier sentry had told Captain Baynell that he had heard marching feet—a moving column in thecadenced step, he described it now—near, very near, that murky night, and that Captain Baynell had waived it away with the suggestion of "a corporal of the guard with the relief"—at that hour!—when the next relief would not be due till nearly midnight,—and had gone back into the parlor, where Mrs. Gwynn had begun to sing, "Her bright smile haunts me still."
This account reminded several of his camp-fellows that, having been in town on leave, they had met that dark night on the turnpike a force marching in column, and naturally thinking this only the removal of Federal troops from some point to another, here, so far within the lines, they had quietly stood aside and watched the shadowy progress. Nothing amiss had occurred to their minds. The men had all their officers duly in position, and they were marching silently and with great regularity. But by reference to the various written reports, it was easily ascertained that there was no shifting of troops that day, no assignment of a company to any duty which would have taken them out at that hour, no detail reporting for service. Still following in the footsteps of this column, something more was learned from a young negro, who had been out to fish that night, which was the delight of the plantation darkey at this season of the year, and had cast his lines from under the bluff near Judge Roscoe's place; the night being foggy, he had not noticed, till they were very near, theapproach of three or four large open boats, filled with soldiers, to judge by the rifles, who were rowing very fast and hard against the current and keeping close in to the shore. When they landed and beached the boats they were very quiet, fell into order, and marched off without a word, except the necessary curt commands. It had never occurred to him to give the alarm. He had taken none. They had rowed so close in to shore, he thought, to avoid such a collision as had happened in the mists earlier in the night, when a large barge was run down by a gunboat and sunk. Doubtless if they had passed the picket boats, the misty invisibility of all the surface of the water protected them, but for the most part the patrol of the river pickets was further down-stream. As they had come, so they had gone, and the matter remained a nine days' wonder. The commanding general almost choked when he thought of it.
"This is going to be a serious matter for Baynell," said Colonel Ashley, one day. He had called at Judge Roscoe's partly because he did not wish to break off with abrupt rudeness an acquaintance which he had persisted in forming, and partly because he was not willing in the circumstances that had arisen to seem to shun the house.
Judge Roscoe was not at home, but Mrs. Gwynn was in the parlor. Ashley had asked her to sing. There was something "delightfullydreary," as he described it, in the searching, romantic, melancholy cadences of her sweet contralto voice. He had not intended to open his heart, but somehow the mood induced by her singing, the quiet of the dim, secluded, cool drawing-rooms, with the old-fashioned, high, stucco ceiling, and the shadowy green gloom of the trees without, prevailed with him, and he spoke upon impulse.
"What matter?" she asked. She had wheeled half around on the piano-stool, and sat, her slim figure in its white dress, delicate and erect, one white arm, visible through the thin fabric, outstretched to the keyboard, the hand toying with resolving chords.
He had been standing beside the piano as she sang, but now, with the air of inviting serious discussion, he seated himself in one of the stiff arm-chairs of the carved rosewood "parlor set" of that day, and replied gravely:——
"His association with Julius Roscoe."
Her eyes widened with genuine amazement.
"It seems," proceeded Ashley, slowly, "that a dozen or two of the soldiers, who claimed to have seen a Confederate officer on the balcony here, recognized him as Julius Roscoe, when he reappeared in command of the forces that captured the redoubt. And the surgeon has always insisted that Baynell's hurt was a blow, not a fall. There is a good deal of smothered talk in various quarters."
He stroked his mustache contemplatively, looked vaguely about the room, and sighed in a certain disconsolateness.
"I don't understand," said Mrs. Gwynn, sharply, fixing intent eyes upon him. "How can Captain Baynell be called in question?"
"Oh, the general theory—however well or ill grounded—is that young Roscoe was here on a reconnoitring expedition of some sort, or perhaps merely on a visit to his kindred, and that Baynell winked at his presence on account of friendship with the family, instead of arresting him, as he should have done. It's an immense pity. Baynell is a fine officer."
Mrs. Gwynn had turned pale with excitement.
"Butnone of usknew that Julius Roscoe was in the house!" she exclaimed. She hesitated a moment as the words passed her lips. Judge Roscoe's reticence on the subject might imply some knowledge of the harbored Rebel.
Ashley was suddenly tense with energy.
"Don't imagine for one moment, my dear madam, that I have any desire to extract information from you. It is no concern of mine how he came or went. I only mention the subject because it is very much on my mind and heart. And I don't see any satisfactory end to it. I have a great respect for Baynell as a man, and especially as an artillerist, and somehow in these campaigns I have contrived to get fond of the fellow!—though he is about as stiff, and unresponsive,and prejudiced, and priggish a bundle of animal fibre as ever called himself human."
"Why, he doesn't give me that idea," exclaimed Leonora, her eyes widening. "He seems unguarded, and impulsive, and ardent."
Colonel Ashley was very considerably her senior and far too experienced to be ingenuous himself. He made no comment on the conviction her words created within him. He only looked at her in silence, receiving her remark with courteous attention. Then he resumed:——
"Of course in a civil war there are always some instances of undue leniency,—the pressure of circumstances induces it,—but rarely indeed such as this; it amounts to aiding and abetting the enemy, however unpremeditated. Young Roscoe could not have secured the means or information for his destructive raid had not Baynell permitted him to be housed here. Doubtless, however, Baynell thought it a mere visit of the boy to his father's family."
"But Captain Baynell never dreamed that Julius Roscoe was in the house!" she exclaimed.
"That's just what he says hedid—dreamed that he saw him! I can rely on you not to repeat my words. But I have had no confidential talk with him."
"I am sure—Iknow—they were never together for a moment."
"The surgeon says that Roscoe's knuckles cut to the bone," commented Ashley, with a significantsmile. But the triumphs of stultifying Mrs. Gwynn in conversation were all inadequate to restore his usual serene satisfaction, and once more he looked restlessly about the rooms and sighed.
"What do you think Captain Baynell was guilty of? Permitting an enemy to remain within the lines,perdu, unsuspected, to gather information, and make off with it—conniving at the concealment, and assisting the escape of an enemy? Andyoucall yourself his friend!"
Leonora's cheeks were flushed. Her voice rang with a tense vibration. She fixed her interlocutor with a challenging eye.
"Oh—I don'tknowwhat he intended," replied Ashley, almost irritably. "Doubtless he had some high-minded motive, so intricate that he can never explain it, and nobody else can ever unravel it. I only know he has played the fool,—and Ifearhe has ruined himself irretrievably."
"But you don't answer my question—what doyou thinkhe has done?"
Ashley might have responded that his conclusions were not subject to her inquisition. But his suave methods of thought and conduct could not compass this unmannerly retort. Moreover, it was a relief to his feelings to canvass the matter so paramount in his mind with an irresponsible woman, rather than with his brother officers, among whom it was rife, thereby sending his speculations and doubts and views abroad asthreads to be wrought into the warp and woof of their opinion, and possibly give undue substance and color to the character of the fabric.
"Why,—of course this is just my own view,—formed on what I hear from outsiders,—and I think it is the general view. Baynell knew the young man was hidden in the house, on a stolen visit to his father, thinking he had no ultimate intentions but to escape at a convenient opportunity. These separations must be very cruel indeed, with no means of communication. Baynell, though very wrongfully,mighthave indulged this concealment from motives of—ah—er—friendship to the family, for young Roscoe would undoubtedly have been dealt with as a spy, had he been captured in lurking here. The twomayhave been more or less associated,—certainly they came together in an altercation that resulted in blows.Ithink Baynell possibly discovered Roscoe's scheme, and threatened him with arrest. Roscoe knocked him down the stairs and fled from the house to the grotto, considering this safe, for he might have crossed from the balcony to the firs without observation if he had been lucky, as at that time none of us knew that the grotto existed. Now these aremyconclusions—but for the integrity of the service Baynell's acts and his motives must be sifted. They may not bear to an impartial mind even so liberal a construction as this. It is a threateningsituation, and I am apprehensive—I am very apprehensive."
Mrs. Gwynn's hand fell with a discordant crash on the keys of the piano.
"Why—why—what can they do to him?" she gasped.
Vertnor Ashley shied from the subject like a frightened horse.
"Ah—oh—ah—er—well," he said, "let us not think of that." He paused abruptly. Then, "To forecast the immediate future is enough of disaster. There is already said to be an official investigation on the cards. No doubt charges will be preferred, and he will be brought to a court-martial."
He sighed again, and looked about futilely, as if for suggestion. He rose at length, and with his pleasant, cordial manner and a smile of deprecating apology, he said, "I am afraid my grim subjects do not commend me for a lady's parlor." Then with a light change of tone, "So much obliged for that lovely little French song—what is it—Quel est cet attrait qui m'attire? I want to be able to distinguish it, for may I not ask for it again some time?" And bowing, and smiling, and prosperous, he took his graceful departure.
Mrs. Gwynn stood motionless, her eyes on the carpet, her mind almost dazed by the magnitude, by the terrors, of the subjects of her contemplation. She felt she must be more certain;she could not leave this disastrous complication thus. She could not speak to this man, friendly though he had seemed, lest she betray some fact of her own knowledge that might be of disadvantage to another who had meant no ill—nay, she was sure had done no ill. Then she was beset by the realization of the sophistry of circumstance. But if circumstance could be adduced against Baynell, should it not equally prevail in his favor? When she, knowing naught of the lurking Julius, had sent to his hiding-place this Federal officer, did not instantly the clamors of discovery resound through the house? She could hear even now in the tones of his voice, steadied and sonorous by the habit of command, sharp and decisive on the air, the words, "You are my prisoner!" twice repeated, that had summoned her, stricken with sudden panic, from her flowers on the library table to the hall, where she saw the balustrade of the stairs still shaking with the concussion of a heavy fall. And as she stood there, another moment—barely a moment—brought the apparition of Julius, flying as if for his life, a pistol in his hand, and covered with blood. Dreams! Who said aught of dreams! This was not the course a man would take who desired to shield a concealed Rebel. There was no eye-witness of the altercation. But she, on the lower floor, had heard it all—the swift ascent for the book, the exclamation of amazement, then the stern voice of command, the words ofarrest, the impact of the blow, and the clamors of the fall. Then the flight; she had seen Julius, fleeing for safety, fleeing from the house into the very teeth of the camps.
Should not Baynell know this, the event that preceded the long insensibility which had so blunted his impressions, his recollections? She resolved to confer with Judge Roscoe. How much he knew of Julius Roscoe's lurking visit, how much he cared for her to know, she could not be sure. She suspected that old Ephraim was fully informed, for without his services the visitor could hardly have been maintained. But neither had been at hand at the moment of discovery, of collision.
When Judge Roscoe came in she submitted this question to his judgment. To her surprise he did not canvass the matter. He said at once: "By all means Captain Baynell ought to know this. It would be best to send for him and explain to him what you saw and heard,—the whole occurrence. Captain Baynell should be made aware of all the details of the actual event that you more nearly than any one else witnessed."
The house in these summer days, with the shutters half closed and the doors all open, seemed more retired, more solitary, than when all the busy life of the place was drawn to the focus of the library fire. She was quite alone, as she traversed the hall and sat down to write at thelibrary table. The "ladies" were playing out of doors, close in to the window under a tree. Judge Roscoe had business in the town and walked thither leaning rather heavily on his cane, for no news came of Acrobat, and somehow he no longer cared to ride the glossy iron-gray that Captain Baynell still left grazing in his pastures. So still were all the precincts she feared she might not find a messenger as she went out on the latticed gallery searching for old Ephraim. But there he sat in the sun in front of the kitchen door. He was not wont to be so silent. He said naught when she handed him the missive with her instructions, but he looked unwilling, with a sort of warning wisdom in his expression, and several times turned the note gingerly in his hand, as if he thought it might explode. He would fain have remonstrated against the renewal of communication with the elements that had brought so much disquiet into the calm life of the old house hitherto. But his lips were sealed so far as the "Yankee man" and Julius were concerned. And he would maintain that he had never seen or heard of the grotto till indeed it was blown up.
"All dese young folks is a stiff-necked and tarrifyin' generation, an' ef dey will leave ole Ephraim in peace, he p'intedly won't pester dem," he said to himself.
Therefore, merely murmuring acquiescence, "Yes'm, yes'm, yes'm," while he received hisorders, he put on his hat which he had hitherto held in his hand, and walked off briskly to the tent of the artillery captain.
The succinct dignified tone of Mrs. Gwynn's note requesting to see Captain Baynell at his earliest convenience on a matter of business precluded effectually any false sentimental hopes, had any communication from her been calculated to raise them. He was already mounted, having just returned from afternoon parade; and saying to Uncle Ephraim that he would wait on Mrs. Gwynn immediately, he wheeled his horse and forthwith disappeared in the midst of the shadow and sheen of the full-leaved grove.
Baynell had changed, changed immeasurably, since she had last seen him. Always quiet and sedate, his gravity had intensified to sternness, his dignified composure to a cold, impenetrable reserve, his attentive interest to a sort of wary vigilance, all giving token of the effect wrought in his mental and moral endowment by the knowledge of the suspicions entertained concerning his actions, and the charges that were being formulated against him.
In one sense these had already slain him. His individuality was gone. He would be no more what once he was. His pride, so strong, so vivid, as essential an element of his being as his breath, as his soul, had been done to death. It had been a noble endowment, despite its exactions, and maintained high standards andsought finer issues. It had died with the woe of a thousand deaths, that calumny should touch his name; that accusation could ever find a foothold in his life; that treachery should come to investigation in his deeds.
She rather wondered at his calmness, the self-possession expressed in his manner, his face. He had himself well in hand. He was not nervous. His haggard pallor told what the sleepless hours of self-communing brought to him, yet he was strong enough to confront the future. He would give battle to the false charge, the lying circumstance, the implacable phalanxes of the probabilities. The truth was intrinsically worth fighting for, in any event, and even now his heart could swell with the conviction that the truth could only demonstrate the impeccancy of his official record.
He met her with that grave, conventional, inexpressive courtesy which had always characterized him, and it was a little difficult, in her unusual flutter and agitation, to find a suitable beginning.
She had seated herself in the library at the table where she had written the note, and she was mechanically trifling with an ivory paper-knife, the portfolio and paper still lying before her. He took a chair near at hand and waited, not seeking to inaugurate the conversation.
"I sent for you, Captain Baynell, because I have heard something—there are rumors—"
He did not take the word from her, nor help her out. He sat quietly waiting.
"In short, I think you ought to know that I overheard all that passed between you and Julius Roscoe on the stairs that morning."
Captain Baynell's rejoinder surprised her.
"Then he was really in the house?" he said meditatively.
"Oh, yes,—though I did not know it till he dashed past me in the hall. Two minutes had not elapsed since you had left me here standing by the table."
She detailed the circumstances, and when she had finished speaking he thanked her simply, and said that the facts would be of value to him.
"I thought you ought to know them, hearing Colonel Ashley describe the various rumors afloat—but, but these—they—they will soon die out?" She looked at him appealingly.
He did not answer immediately. Then—
"I shall be court-martialled," he said succinctly.
Her heart seemed almost to stand still in the presence of this great threat, yet she strove against its menace.
"Of course I know this is serious, and must trouble all your friends," she said vaguely. "But doubtless—doubtless there will be an acquittal."
"It is a matter of liberty, and life itself," hesaid. "But I do not care for either,—I deprecate the reflections on my character as a soldier." He hesitated for one moment, then broke out with sudden passion, "I care for the jeopardy of my honor—my sacred honor!"
There was an interval of stillness so long that a slant of the sunset light might seem to have moved on the floor. The soft babble of the voices of the children came in at the open window; the mocking-bird's jubilance rose from among the magnolia blooms outside. The great bowl on the table was full of roses, and she eyed their magnificence absently, seeing nothing, remembering all that Ashley had said, and realizing how difficult it would be to convince even him, with all his friendly good-will, of the simplicity of the motives that had precipitated the real events, so grimly metamorphosed in the monstrous mischances of war.
"Oh—" she cried suddenly, with a poignant accent, "that this should have fallen upon you in the house of your friends! We can never forgive ourselves, and you can never forgive us!"
"There is nothing to forgive," he said heartily; "I have no grievance against this kind roof. I could not expect Judge Roscoe to betray his own son, and deliver him up to capture, to death as a spy—because I happened to be here, a temporary guest. And I could not expect the young man to voluntarily surrender—for my convenience. No—I blame no one."
"You are magnanimous!" exclaimed Mrs. Gwynn, her luminous gray eyes shining through tears as she looked at him.
"Only omniscience could have foreseen and guarded against this disastrous complication of adverse circumstances. But the results are serious enough to justify doubt and provoke investigation. Knowing the simple truth, it seems a little difficult to see how it can fail to be easily established—it is the imputation that afflicts me. I am not used to contemplate myself as a traitor—with my motives."
"Oh, it is so unjust—so rancorously untrue! You arrested him the moment you saw him—although he was in Judge Roscoe's house. You must have known that he was Judge Roscoe's son."
"I recognized him from his portrait—" Baynell checked himself. He would not have liked to say how often, with what jealous appraisement of its manly beauty and interest of suggestion, he had studied the portrait of Julius on the parlor wall, knowing him as a man who had loved Leonora Gwynn, and fearing him as a man whom possibly Leonora Gwynn loved.
"But I was obliged to arrest him on the spot—why, I was in honor bound."
His face suddenly fell—in this most intimate essential of true gentlemanhood, in this dearest requisition of a soldier's faith, that is yet the commonest principle of the humblest campaigner,he was held to have failed, in point of honor. He was held to have paltered and played a double part, to have betrayed alike his country, the fair name of his corps, and his own unsullied record. And this was the fiat of fair-minded men, comrades, countrymen, to be expressed in the preferred charges.
Bankrupt in all he held dear, he shrank from seeming to beg the sheer empty bounty of her sympathy. He hardly cared to face these reflections in her presence. He arose to go, and it was with composed, conventional courtesy, as inexpressive as if he were some casual friendly caller, that he took his leave, resolutely ignoring all the tragedy of the situation.
The next day came the news that charges having been duly preferred he had been placed in arrest to await the action of the general court-martial to be assembled in the town.
Ashley, in common with a number of Baynell's friends, did not recognize a fair spirit in the inception of the investigation. The military authorities in Roanoke City seemed rancorously keen to prove that naught within the scope of their own duty could have averted the disasters of the battle of the redoubt. The moral gymnastic of shunting the blame was actively in progress. The proof of treachery within the lines, individual failure of duty, would explain to the Department far more to the justification of the commander of the garrison of the town the losses both of life and material, and the jeopardy of the whole position, than admission of the fact that the military of the post had been outwitted, and that the enemy was entitled to salvos of applause for a very gallant exploit. Indeed, only specific details from one familiar with the interior of the works, to which, of course, citizens were not admitted, could have informed Julius Roscoe of the location of the powder magazine and enabled him to utilize in this connection his own early familiarity with the surroundings. Thus the theory that Julius Roscoe could not have accomplished its destructionhad he not been harbored, even helped, by the connivance of a personal friend in the lines, and that friend, a Federal officer, was far more popular among the military authorities than the simple fact that a Rebel had been detected visiting his father's house by a Federal officer, a guest therein, promptly arrested, and in the altercation the one had been hurt and the other had escaped. Had the capture of the redoubt never occurred later as a sequence, this transient encounter of Baynell's would hardly have elicited a momentary notice.
The aspect of the court-martial was far from reassuring even to men of worldly experience on broad lines. The impassive, serious, bearded faces, the military figures in full-dress uniform, the brilliant insignia of high rank being specially pronounced, for of course no officer of lower degree than that of the prisoner was permitted to sit, were ranged on each side of a long table on a low rostrum in a large room, formerly a fraternity hall, in a commercial building now devoted to military purposes. The spectacle might well have made the heart quail. It seemed so expressive of the arbitrary decrees of absolute force, oblivious of justice, untempered by mercy!
A jury as an engine of the law must needs be considered essentially imperfect, and subject to many deteriorating influences, only available as the best device for eliciting fact and appraising crises that the slow development of human moralshas yet presented. But to a peaceful civilian a jury of ignorant, shock-headed rustics might seem a safe and reasonable repository of the dearest values of life and reputation in comparison with this warlike phalanx, combining the functions of both judge and jury, the very atmosphere of destruction sucked in with every respiration.
The president, a brevet brigadier-general, at the head of the table, was of a peculiarly fierce physiognomy, that yet was stony cruel. The judge-advocate at the foot had the look of laying down the law by main force. He had a keenly aggressive manner. He was a captain of cavalry, brusque, alert; he had dark side whiskers and a glancing dark eye, and was the only man on the rostrum attired in an undress uniform. His multifarious functions as the official prosecutor for the government, and also adviser to the court, and yet attorney for the prisoner to a degree,—by a theory similar to the ancient fiction of English law that the judge is counsel for the accused,—would seem, in civilian estimation, to render him "like Cerberus, three gentlemen at once," as Mrs. Malaprop would say, or a military presentment of Pooh-Bah. The nominal military accuser, acting in concert with the judge-advocate, seated at a little distance, was conscious of sustaining an unpopularrôle, and it had tinged his manner with disadvantage. The prisoner appeared without any restraint, of course, butwearing no sword. The special values of his presence, his handsome face, his blond hair and beard that had a glitter not unlike the gold lace of his full-dress uniform, his fine figure and highbred, reserved manner, were very marked in his conspicuous position, occupying a chair at a small table on the right of the judge-advocate. Baynell had a calm dignity and a look of steady, immovable courage incongruous with his plight, arraigned on so base a charge, and yet a sort of blighted, wounded dismay, as unmistakable as a burn, was on his face, that might have moved even one who had cared naught for him to resentment, to protest for his sake.
The light of the unshaded windows, broad, of ample height, and eight or ten in number on one side of the room, brought out in fine detail every feature of the scene within. Beneath no sign of the town appeared, as the murmur of traffic rose softly, for the building was one of the few three-story structures, and the opposite roofs were low. The aspect of the far-away mountains, framed in each of the apertures, with the intense clarity of the light and the richness of tint of the approaching summer solstice, was like a sublimated gallery of pictures, painted with a full brush and of kindred types. Here were the repetitious long ranges, with the mouldings of the foot-hills at the base, and again a single great dome, amongst its mysterious shimmering clouds, filled the canvas. Now in the background werecrowded all the varying mountain forms, while a glittering vacant reach of the Tennessee River stretched out into the distance. And again a bridge crossed the currents, light and airy in effect, seeming to spring elastically from its piers, in the strong curves of the suspended arches, while a sail-boat, with its head tucked down shyly as the breeze essayed to chuck it under the chin, passed through and out of sight. Another window showed the wind in a bluffer mood, wrestling with the storm clouds; showed, too, that rain was falling in a different county, and the splendors of the iris hung over far green valleys that gleamed prismatically with a secondary reflection.
The room was crowded with spectators, both military and civilian, finding seats on the benches which were formerly used in the fraternity gatherings and which were still in place. The case had attracted much public attention. There were few denizens of the town who had not had individual experiences of interest pending the storming of the fort, and this fact invested additional details with peculiar zest and whetted the edge of curiosity as to the inception of the plan and the means by which Julius Roscoe's exploit had become practicable. The effect of the imposing character of the court was manifested in the perfect decorum observed by the general public. There was scarcely a stir during the opening of the proceedings. The order convening the court was read to the accused, and he was offered hisright to challenge any member of the court-martial for bias or other incompetency. Baynell declined to avail himself of this privilege. There ensued a moment of silence. Then, with a metallic clangor, for every member wore his sword, the court rose, and, all standing, a glittering array, the oath was administered to each of the thirteen by the judge-advocate. Afterward the president of the court, of course the ranking officer present, himself administered the oath to the judge-advocate, and the prosecution opened.
The military accuser was the first witness sworn and interrogated, but the prosecution had much other testimony tending to show that the prisoner had been living in great amity with persons notoriously of sentiments antagonistic to the Union cause, as exemplified by his long stay in Judge Roscoe's house; that he was in correspondence and even in intimate association with a Rebel in hiding under the same roof; that either with treacherous intent, or for personal reasons, he had leniently permitted this enemy in arms to lieperduwithin the lines and subsequently to escape with such information as had resulted in great loss of men, materials, and money to the Federal government; that he had been apprised, by the sentinel at the door, of the approach of a body of troops the night before the attack on the redoubt took place, and that he nefariously or negligently declined to investigate the incident. Most of this evidence, however, was circumstantial.
The defence met it strenuously at every point. The intimacy between Judge Roscoe and the Baynell family was shown to be of a far earlier date, and the friendship utterly devoid of any connection with political interests; in this relation the accused had in every instance subordinated his personal feeling to his military duty, even going so far as to cause the property of his host's niece to be seized for military service,—the impressment of the horse, which Colonel Ashley testified he had at that time considered an unwarrantable bit of official tyranny, some individuals being allowed to retain their horses through the interposition of army officers among their friends.
Colonel Ashley testified further that the prisoner was such a stickler on trifles, as to seek to check him, a person of responsibility and discretion, an experienced officer, in expressing some casual speculations in the presence of Judge Roscoe concerning troops on an incoming train.
The accused admitted that he had not investigated the sound of marching troops in the thrice-guarded lines of the encampment, but urged it was no part of his duty and impracticable. Small detachments were coming and going at all hours of the night. If an officer of the guard, going out with the relief or a patrol, had seen fit to march across Judge Roscoe's grove, it was no concern of his nor of the sentinel's. He had no divination of the proximity of the enemy.
Perhaps the ardor of the witnesses, called in Captain Baynell's behalf, when the prosecution had rested at length, made an impression unfavorable to the idea of impartiality. More than one on cross-examination was constrained to acknowledge that he was swayed by the sense of the prisoner's hitherto unimpugnable record, and his high standing as a soldier. No such admission could be wrung from Judge Roscoe, skilled in all the details of the effect of testimony. His plain asseverations that his son had come to his house, not knowing that a Federal officer was a temporary inmate, the account of the simple measures taken to defeat the guest's observation or detection of the young Rebel's propinquity, the reasonableness of his quietly awaiting an opportunity to run the pickets when a chance meeting resulted in discovery and a collision—all went far to establish the fact that the presence of Julius Roscoe was but one of those stolen visits home in which the adventurous Southern soldiers delighted and of which Captain Baynell had no sort of knowledge till the moment of their encounter, when Julius rushed forth to the gaze of all the camp.
This was the point of difficulty with the prosecution, the point of danger with the defence,—the adequacy of the proof as to the prisoner's knowledge of the presence of the Rebel in hiding, harbored in the house. For this the prosecution had the apparition of the Confederate officer,covered with blood and later identified as Julius Roscoe, and the condition of Baynell's wound, which the surgeon swore was a "facer," delivered by an expert boxer. Evidently this came from an altercation, in which both had forborne the use of weapons, thus suggesting some collision of interests, as between personal associates or former friends rather than a hand-to-hand conflict of armed enemies.
On this vital point, to form the conclusions of military men, Baynell could command no testimony save that of the Roscoe household,—the most important witness of course being the judge himself, who had devised and controlled all the methods to keep the Federal officer unsuspicious and tranquil, and to maintain the lurking Rebel in security. The anxiety of the authorities to fix the responsibility for the disclosure of the military information concerning the interior of the works, which only one familiar with the location of the magazine could have given, had induced them to ignore Judge Roscoe's shelter of their enemy, thus avoiding the entanglement of a slighter matter with the paramount consideration under investigation. While the fact that his feelings as a father must needs have coerced Judge Roscoe into harboring and protecting his son and requiring his servant to minister to his wants, still the recital of the concealment of his presence affronted the sentiment of the court-martial, even though JudgeRoscoe's part was obviously restricted to the sojourn of the Confederate officer in his house, for he had no knowledge of the details of the escape and subsequent adventures.
The course of the proceedings of such a body was not competent to afford any very marked relaxations in the line of comedy relief. But certainly old Ephraim, when summoned to the stand, must have been in any other presence a mark of irresistible derision, not unkind, to be sure, and devoid of bitterness.
Keenly conscious that he had been discovered in details which to "Marse Soldier" were a stumbling-block and an offence, and that his own prestige for political loyalty was shattered,—for he doubted if it were possible to so present the contradiction of his conviction of his interest and yet his adherence to old custom and fidelity in such a guise that the brevet brigadier would do aught but snort at it,—he came, bowing repeatedly, cringing almost to the earth, his hat in his hand, his worn face seamed in a thousand new wrinkles, and looking nearly eighty years of age. The formidable embodiment of military justice fixed him with a stern comprehensive gaze, and the brigadier, who had no realization of the martial terrors of his own appearance, sought to reassure him by saying in his deep bluff voice, "Come forward, Uncle Ephraim, come forward." The old negro started violently, then bowed once more in humble deprecation.Suddenly he perceived Baynell. In his relief to recognize the face of a friend he forgot the purport of the assemblage, and broke out with a high senile chirp.
"Youhere, Cap'n! Well, sah! I is p'intedly s'prised." Then recollecting the situation, he was covered with confusion, especially as Baynell remained immovable and unresponsive, and once more old Ephraim bowed to the earth.
Not a little doubt had been felt by the court when deliberating upon the admissibility of the testimony of the old negro. It was contrary to the civil law of the state and contravened also the theory of the unbounded influence over the slave which the master exerts. In view of the pending abolition of slavery, both considerations might be considered abrogated, and since this testimony was of great importance to the prosecution as well as to the defence, bearing directly on the main point at issue,—as a freedman he was duly sworn. The members of the court-martial had ample opportunity to test the degree of patience with which they had been severally endowed as the old darkey was engineered through the preliminary statements; inducted into the witness-chair on the left hand of the judge-advocate, his hat inverted at his feet, with his red bandanna handkerchief filling its crown; induced to give over his acquiescent iteration, "Yes, sah! Yes, sah! jes' ezyousay!" regardless of the significance of the question; andat last fairly launched on the rendering of his testimony. The prosecution, however, soon thought he was no such fool as he seemed, for the details of the earlier sojourn of Julius had a simplicity that was coercive of credence. The old servant stated, as if it were a matter of prime importance, that he had to feed him in the salad-bowl. He "das'ent fetch Marse Julius a plate 'kase de widder 'oman, dat's Miss Leonora, mought miss it. Buthedidn't keer, little Julius didn't,"—then to explain the familiarity of the address he stated that "Julius de youngest ob Marster's chillen—de Baby-chile." Old Ephraim repeated this expression often, thinking it mitigated the fall from political grace which he himself had suffered, because of the leniency which must be shown to a "Baby-chile." And now and then, at first, the court-martial, though far from lacking in brainy endowment and keen perception, were at sea to understand that the "Baby-chile" would have been allowed to smoke aseegar,—he being "plumb desperate" for tobacco,—except so anxious was Judge Roscoe to avoid attracting the suspicion of Captain Baynell, who would "have tuk little Julius in quick as a dog snappin' at a fly! Yes—sah—yes—Cap'n," with a deprecatory side glance at Baynell. "De Baby-chile couldn't even dare to smoke, fur fear de Cap'n mought smell it from out de garret. De Baby-chile wanted aseegar so bad he sont his Pa forty messages a day.But his Pa didn't allow him ter light one—not one; he jes' gnawed the e-end."
It required, too, some mental readjustment to recognize the "Baby-chile" in the young Samson, who had almost carried off the gates of the town itself, the key of the whole department, on his stalwart back. This phrase was even more frequently repeated as Uncle Ephraim entered upon the details of Julius's escape and his attack on Baynell—it seemed to mitigate the intensity with which he played at the game of war to speak of it as the freaks of a "Baby-chile."
The witness could produce no replies to the question, and indeed he had no recollection, as to how Julius Roscoe became possessed of the facts concerning the works, for old Ephraim did not realize that he himself had afforded this information—acquired in aimlessly tagging after the detail sent for ammunition, the negroes coming and going with scant restriction in the camps of their liberators. But very careful was he to let fall no word of the citizen's dress he had conveyed to the "Baby-chile" in the grotto, under cover of night.
"Bress Gawd!" he said to himself, "it's de Cap'n on trial—not me!"
He detailed with great candor the lies he had told Captain Baynell, when, emerging from his long insensibility, he had asked about the Rebel officer. "It was a dream," the witness had told"Cap'n." In Captain Baynell's earlier illness he had often been delirious, and it had amused him when he recovered to hear the quaint things he had said; sometimes "Cap'n" himself described to Judge Roscoe or to the surgeon the queer sights he had seen, the results of the morphine administered. So in this instance he had hardly seemed surprised, but had let it pass like the rest.
Uncle Ephraim did not vary these statements in any degree, not even under the ordeal of cross-examination. Indeed, he stood this remarkably well and left the impression he had made unimpaired. But when he was told that he might stand aside, and it entered into his comprehension that the phrase meant that he might leave the room, he fairly chirped with glee and obvious relief.
"Thankee, Marse Gen'al!" he said to the youngest member of the court, a captain, to whom he had persisted in addressing most of his replies, and had continuously promoted to the rank of general, as if this high station obviously best accorded with the young officer's deserts.
Old Ephraim scuttled off to the door, stumbling and hirpling in his haste and agitation, and it had not closed on him, when his "Bress de Lawd! he done delivered me f'om dem dat would have devoured me!" resounded through the room.
There was a laugh outside—somebody in thecorridor opined that the court-martial wanted no such tough old morsel, but not a smile touched the serious faces on each side of the table, and the next witness was summoned.
This was Mrs. Gwynn. She produced an effect of sober elegance in her dress of gray barège, wearing a simple hat of lacelike straw of the same tint, with velvet knots of a darker gray, on her beautiful golden-brown hair. The court-martial, guaranteed to have no heart, had, as far as perceptible impression was concerned, no eyes. They looked stolidly at her as, with a swift and adaptive intelligence, she complied with the formalities, and her testimony was under way.
So youthful, so girlish and fair of face, so sylphlike in form was she, that her appearance was of far more significance in their estimation than their apparent lack of appreciation might betoken. More than one who had begun to incline to the views of the prosecution thought that he beheld here the influence which had fostered treason and brought a fine officer to a forgetfulness of his oath, a disregard of his duty, and the destruction of every value of life and every consolation of death.
Her manner, however, was not that of a siren. All the incongruities of her aspect were specially pronounced as she sat in the clear light of the window and looked steadfastly at each querist in turn, so soberly, so earnestly, with so little consciousness of her beauty, that it seemed insomething to lack, as if a more definite aplomb and intention of display could enhance the fact.
Apparently it was a conclusive testimony that she was giving, for it was presently developed that she did not know that Julius Roscoe was in the house; that she herself had suggested to Captain Baynell to go in search of a book up the stairs to his hiding-place, from which there was no other mode of egress; that in less than two minutes she heard Captain Baynell's loud exclamations of surprise, and the words in his voice, very quick and decisive—"You are my prisoner!" twice repeated. She had rushed to the door of the hall to hear a crash as of a fall, and she saw the balustrade of the staircase, which was the same structure throughout the three stories, shaking, as Julius Roscoe, covered with blood, dashed by her and out into the balcony. She knew that Baynell was delirious subsequently, and that he was kept in ignorance as to what had occasioned his fall.
There was a degree of discomfiture on the part of the prosecution. It was not that the judge-advocate was specially bloody-minded or vindictive. He had a part to play, and it behooved him to play it well. It would seem that if the prosecution broke down on so obvious and simple a case, which had been the nucleus of so much disaster, blame might attach to him, by the mere accident of his position. These reflections renderedhim ingenious, and with the license of cross-examination he began with personalities.
"You have stated that you are a widow?"
"Yes. I am the widow of Rufus Allerton Gwynn."
"You do not wear widow's weeds?"
"No. I have laid them aside."
"In contemplation of matrimony?"
"No."
"Is not the accused your accepted suitor?"
"No."
Baynell was looking down at a paper in his hand. His eyelids flickered, then he looked up steadily, with a face of quiet attention.
A member of the court preferred the demand:—
"Was he ever a suitor for your hand?"
"Yes." Her face had flushed, but she kept her eyes steadily fixed on the questioner.
The president of the court cleared his throat as if minded to speak. Then obviously with the view of avoiding misunderstandings as to dates he formulated the query: "Was this recent? May I askwhenyou declined his proposal?"
"I am not certain of the date," she replied. "It was—let me think—it was the evening of a day when the neighborhood sewing-circle met at my uncle's house. I remember, now—it was the sixth of May."
"Did Captain Baynell attend the meeting of the sewing-circle?"—the judge-advocate permitted himself an edge of satire.
"He was present, and Colonel Ashley, and Lieutenant Seymour."
"Oh!" said the judge-advocate, at a loss.
At a loss and doubtful, but encouraged. To his mind she offered the key to the situation. Keenly susceptible to feminine influence himself, he fancied he could divine its effect on another man. He proceeded warily, reducing his question to writing, while on various faces ranged about the table appeared a shade of doubt and even reprobation of the tone he was taking.
"You have laid aside the insignia of mourning—yet you do not contemplate matrimony. You are very young."
"I am twenty-three—as I have already stated."
"You may live a long time. You may live to grow old. You propose to live alone the remainder of your days. Did you tell Captain Baynell that?"
"In effect, yes."
Her face had grown crimson, then paled, then the color came again in patches. But her voice did not falter, and she looked at her interlocutor with an admirable steadiness. The president again cleared his throat as if about to speak. The shade of disapprobation deepened on the listening faces.
The judge-advocate leaned forward, wrote swiftly, then read in a tantalizing tone, as of one who has a clincher in reserve:—
"Now was not that a mere feminine subterfuge?You know you could hardly besurethat you will never marry again—at your age."
Once more the president cleared his throat, but he spoke this time.
"Do you desire to push this line of investigation farther?" he said, objection eloquent in his deep, full voice.
"One moment, sir." The judge-advocate had been feeling his way very cautiously, but he was flustered by the interruption, and he was conscious that he put his next question less adroitly than he had intended.
"Why are you so sure, if I may ask?"
There was a tense silence. She said to herself that this was no time or place for finical delicacy. A man's life, his honor, all he held dear, were in jeopardy, and it had fallen to her to say words that must needs affect the result. She answered steadily. "My reply to Captain Baynell was not actuated by any objections to him. I know nothing of him but what is greatly to his credit." She hesitated for a moment. She had grown very white, and her eyes glittered, but her voice was still firm as she went on:——
"There is no reason why I should not speak freely under these circumstances, for every one knows—every one who is cognizant of our family affairs—that my married life was extremely wretched. I was very unhappy, and I told Captain Baynell that I would never marry again."
Dead silence reigned for a moment. Theyhad all heard the story of her hard fate. The discussion as to whether a chair had been merely broken over her head, or she had been dragged about her home one woful midnight by the masses of her beautiful hair, was insistently suggested as the sunlight lay athwart it now, and the breeze moved its tendrils caressingly. The eyes of the court-martial looked at the judge-advocate with fiery reproach, and the heart of the court-martial beat for her for the moment with chivalric partisanship.
For the first time Baynell seemed to lose his composure. His face was scarlet, his hands trembled. He was biting his under lip violently in an effort at self-control; he was experiencing an agony of sympathy and regret that this should be forced upon her, of helpless fury that he could be of no avail.
Still once more the president cleared his throat, this time peremptorily. The judge-advocate, considerably out of countenance, hastily forestalled him, that he might justify his course by bringing out the point he desired to elicit, reading his question aloud for its submission to the court, though her last reply had rendered his clincher of little force.
"Did you say to Captain Baynell that you have no intention of marrying again merely as a subterfuge—to soften the blow, because you expect to marry Lieutenant Roscoe as soon as the war is over?"
His suspicion that Baynell had been accessory to the concealment of young Roscoe so long as he did not fear him as a rival was evident. Baynell turned suddenly and stared with startled eyes in which an amazed dismay contended with futile anger that this,—such a motive—such a course of action, could be attributed to him.
She replied only to the obvious question, evidently not realizing the implication. The tension was over; her color had returned; her voice was casual.
"No. I have no thought of marrying Lieutenant Roscoe."
"Has he asked you to marry him?"
"Long ago,—when he was a mere boy."
"And again since your widowhood?"
"No."
"You have seen him since?"
"Only that morning when he rushed past me in the hall," she replied, not apprehending the trend of his questions.
"Captain Baynell must have had some reason to think you would marry him, or he would not have asked you. You rejected him one evening. The next morning he arrested Lieutenant Roscoe, who had been in hiding in the house,—was there some understanding between you and Captain Baynell,—had he earlier forborne this arrest in the expectation of your consent, and was the arrest made in revenge on a rival whom he fancied a successful suitor?"
She looked at the judge-advocate with a horrified amazement eloquent on her face.
"No! No! Oh," she cried in a poignant voice, "if you knew Captain Baynell, you could not, you would not, advance such implications against him,—who is the very soul of honor."
The judge-advocate was again for an instant out of countenance.
"You thought so little of him yourself as to reject his addresses," he said by way of recovering himself.
She was absorbed in the importance of the crisis. She did not realize the effect of her words until after she had uttered them.
"I did not appreciate his character then," she said simply.
Once more there was an interval of tense and significant silence. Baynell, suddenly pale to the lips, lifted startled eyes as if he sought to assure himself that he had heard aright. Then he bent his gaze on the paper in his hand.
Mrs. Gwynn, tremulous with excitement, appreciated a moment later the inadvertent and personal admission, and a burning flush sprang into her cheeks. The judge-advocate took instant advantage of her loss of poise.
"I don't know what you mean by that—that you would not reject him again? Will you explain?" he read his question with a twinkling eye that nettled and harassed her.
A member of the court-martial objected to theinterrogation as "frivolous and unnecessary," and therefore it was not addressed to the witness. A pause ensued.
The brevet brigadier cleared his throat.
"Have you concluded this line of investigation?" he said to the judge-advocate, for the prosecution was obviously breaking down.
"I believe we are about through," said the judge-advocate, vacuously, looking at a list in his hand, "that is"—to the accused—"if you have no questions to put in reëxamination." And as Mrs. Gwynn was permitted to depart from the room, he still busied himself with his list. "Three names, yet. These are the children, sir."
Every member of the household of Judge Roscoe was summoned as a witness for the defence, to seek to establish Baynell's innocence in these difficult circumstances, even the little girls, and indeed otherwise the prosecution would have subpoenaed them on the theory that if there were any treachery, the children had not the artifice to conceal it. So far this testimony was unequivocal. Judge Roscoe had sworn to the simple facts and the measures taken to avoid the notice of the Federal officer. Uncle Ephraim's testimony, save for the withheld episode of the grotto, the exact truth, was corroborative, but suffered somewhat from his reputation for wearing two faces, his sobriquet of "Janus" being adduced by the prosecution. Mrs. Gwynn had affirmed that she herself did not know orsuspect the presence of Julius in the house, so completely was he heldperdu. The agitated little twins, each examined as to her knowledge of the obligations of an oath and sworn, separately testified in curiously clipped, suppressed voices that they knew nothing, heard nothing, saw nothing of Julius Roscoe in the house.
In the face of this unanimity it seemed impossible to prove aught save that in one of those hazardous visits home, so dear to the rash young Southern soldiers, the father had taken successful precautions to defeat suspicion; and the Confederate officer had shown great adroitness in carrying out the plan of his campaign which his observations inside the lines had suggested.
On the last day of the trial Captain Baynell was beginning to breathe more freely, all the testimony having been taken except the necessarily formal questioning of the dumb child. As she was sworn and interrogated, one of the other children, sworn anew for the purpose, acted as her interpreter, being more accustomed than the elders to the use of the manual alphabet. The court-room was interested in the quaint situation. The aspect of the two little children, in their white summer attire, in this incongruous environment, with their tiny hands lifted in signalling to each other, their eyes shining with excitement, touched the spectators to smiles and a stir of pleasant sympathy. Now and then Geraldine's silvery treble faltered while repeating the question, todemonstrate her comprehension of it, and she desisted from her task to gaze in blue-eyed wonder over her shoulder at the crowd. The deaf-mute was passed over cursorily by the defence, only summoned in fact that no one of the household might be omitted or seem feared. Suddenly one of the members of the court asked a question in cross-examination. In civil life this officer, a colonel of volunteers, had been an aurist of some note and the physician in attendance in a deaf-and-dumb asylum. He was a portly, robust man, whose prematurely gray hair and mustache were at variance with his florid complexion and his bright, still youthful, dark eyes. He had a manner peculiarly composed, bland, yet commanding. He leaned forward abruptly on the table; with an intent, questioning gaze he caught the child's eyes as she stood lounging against the tall witness-chair. Then as he lifted his hands it was obvious that he was far more expert in the manual alphabet than Geraldine. In three minutes it was evident to the assembled members of the court-martial on each side of the long table, the president at its head, the judge-advocate at its foot, that the line of communication was as perfect as if both spoke. Delighted to meet a stranger who could converse fluently with her, the child's blue eyes glittered, her cheek flushed; she was continually laughing and tossing back the curls of her rich chestnut hair, as if she wished to be free of its weight while shegave every capacity to this matter. And yet in her youth, her innocence, her inexperience, she knew naught of the ultimate significance of the detail.
It was an evidence of the degree to which she was isolated by her infirmity, how slight was her participation in the subtler interests of the life about her, that she had no remote conception of the intents and results of the investigation. Even her curiosity was manacled—it stretched no grasp for the fact. She did not question. She did not dream that it concerned Captain Baynell. She had no idea that trouble had fallen upon him. Tears to her expressed woe, or a visage of sadness, or the environment of poverty or physical hurt—but this bright room, with its crowd of intent spectators; this splendid array of uniformed men of an august aspect; her own friend, Captain Baynell, present, himself in full regimentals, calm, composed, quiet, as was his wont, looking over a paper in his hand—how was the restricted creature to imagine that this was the arena of a life-and-death conflict.
"Yes!" the little waxen-white fingers flashed forth. "Yes, indeed, she had known that Soldier-Boy was in the house. That was Julius!"
She gave the military salute with her accustomed grace and spirit, lifting her hand to the brim of her hat, and looked laughing along theline of stern, bearded faces and military figures on either side of the long table.
The other "ladies" did not know that Soldier-Boy was there, though they saw him, and she saw him, too! It was in the library, and it was just about dusk. They were surprised, and came and told the family that they had seen a ghost. They knew no better! They were young and they were little. They were only six, the twins, and she was eight; a great girl indeed!
Once more she tossed back her hair, and, with her eyes intent from under the wide Leghorn brim of her hat, bedecked with bows of a broad white ribbon with fluffy fringed edges, she watched his white military gauntlets, uplifted as he asked the next question on his slow fingers.
How her own swiftly flickered!
Yes, indeed, she had told the family better. It was no ghost, but only Soldier-Boy! She had told Captain Baynell. She wanted him to see Soldier-Boy. He was beautiful—the most beautiful member of the family!
Oh, yes, Baynell knew he was in the house. She had told him by her sign. When she had first shown him Soldier-Boy's fine portrait, they had told him what she meant.
No! Captain Baynell had not forgotten! For when she said it was no ghost, but Soldier-Boy, Cousin Leonora cried out, "Oh, she means Julius; that is her sign for him!" Cousin Leonora did not use the manual alphabet; she read the motionof her lips. None of them used the alphabet except a little bit; Soldier-Boy the best of all.
Throughout there was a continual ripple of excitement among the members and several heads were dubiously shaken. More than once Baynell's counsel sought to interpose an objection,—mindful of the preposterous restrictions of his position, swiftly writing his views, transmitted, as if he himself were dumb, through the prisoner to the judge-advocate and by him to the court. The testimony of the witness could not be legally taken this way, he insisted, merely by the repetition of what she had said, by a member of the court-martial for the benefit of the rest.
The peculiar petulance of those who lack a sense was manifested in the acrimony which shone in the child's eyes as she perceived that he sought to restrict and repress her statement of her views. When he ventured himself to ask her a question, having some knowledge of the manual alphabet, she merely gazed at his awkward gesticulations with an expression of polite tolerance, making no attempt to answer, then cast up her eyes, as who should say, "Saw ever anybody the like of that!" and catching the intent gaze of the brigadier, she burst into a sly coquettish ripple of laughter that had all the effect of a roguish aside. Then, turning to the ex-surgeon, her fingers flickered forth the hope that he would come and see her and talk. When the war was over, she was going back to school where shehad learned the manual alphabet,—there, although dumb, they talked much.
The mention of the word "school" suggested an idea which obviated the difficulty as to how this extraordinary testimony could be put into such shape as to render it available, impervious to cavil, strictly in accordance with precedent in the case of witnesses who are "mute by the visitation of God." The cross-examiner asked her if she could write. How she tossed her head in pride and scorn of the question! Write—of course she could write. Cousin Leonora had taught her.
When she was placed in a chair, and mounted on a great book beside the judge-advocate—looking like a learned mushroom under her big white hat, her white flounced skirts fluttering out, her long white hose and slippered feet dangling—he wrote the questions and accommodated her with a blotting-pad and pen, and it may be doubted if ever hitherto a small bunch of fabric and millinery contained so much vainglory. In truth the triumph atoned for many a soundless day—to note the surprise on his solemn visage, between his Burnside whiskers, as she glanced covertly up into his face, watching the effect of her first answer, five or six lines of clear, round handwriting, sensibly expressed, and perfectly spelled. She wrote much the more legibly of the two, and once there occurred a break when one of the members of the court asked aquestion in writing, and she was constrained to put one hand before her face to laugh gleefully, for one of his capital letters was so bad—she was great on capitals—that she must needs ask what was meant by it.
Baynell, in reëxamination, himself wrote to ask what he had said when he was told that the ghost in the library was Julius Roscoe.
"Nothing," she wrote in answer, all unaware how she was destroying him. "Nothing at all. You just looked at me and then looked at Cousin Leonora. But Grandpa said, 'Oh, fie! oh, fie!' all the time."
Thus the extraordinary testimony was taken. The paper, with her answers in her round childish characters and flourishing capitals, all as plain as print and exhibiting a thorough comprehension of what she was asked, was handed to each of the members of the court-martial, here and there eliciting a murmur of surprise at her proficiency. The prosecution, that had practically broken down, now had the point of the sword at the throat of the defence.
There was naught further necessary but to confront the earlier witnesses with this episode. Mrs. Gwynn, recalled, stared in amazement for a moment as a question was put as to the significant event of the discovery of a ghost in the library, one afternoon. Then as the reminiscence grew clear to her mind, she rehearsed the circumstance, stating in great confusion that shehad disregarded it at the time, and had forgotten it since.