The Iron Game - Henry Francis Keenan
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He gave her a quick glance, but her eyes were fastened on the dark
recesses beyond.
"I should be delighted, but I won't insure your gown, nor--nor half
promise that we shall come out alive."
"Oh, as to that, I'll take the risk."
"I don't know the habits of Southern snakes; but if they are as
well-bred as ours, they retire from the ken of wicked men at sundown, so
we needn't fear them, as the sun is too far down for the snake of
tradition to see or molest us."
They stepped out of the boat at a green, sedgy point, extending from a
labyrinth of flowering vines and creepers. Once inside the delicious
odorous screen, they found themselves in an archipelago of green islets,
connected by monster roots or moss-covered trunks that seemed laid by
elfin hands for the penetration of this leafy jungle.
"Yes; I was going to say," Jack continued, "this swift transposition
from the cultivation of civilization to the handiwork of Nature is
whimsically illustrative of the people. Did you ever see or hear or read
of such open-handed, honest-hearted hospitality as theirs; such
refinement of manners; such sincerity in speech and act? Contrast this
with their fairly pagan creed as to the slaves; their intolerance of the
Northern people; their clannish reverence for family."
"But isn't the inequality of the Southern character due to their strange
lack of education? Few of them are cultivated as we understand
education. Do you notice that among the people we met at
Williamsburg--officers as well as civilians--none of them were equal to
even a very limited range of subjects? All who are educated have been in
the North. Ah--good Heavens!"
Kate's exclamation was due to a sudden sinking in the mossy causeway
until she was almost buried in the tall ferns. Jack helped her out,
shivered a moment, doubtingly, as he exclaimed:
"The sun is nearly down now, though the air is transparent, or would be
if we were in the free play of daylight. I think it would be better to
go back." But they made no haste. Such trophies of ferns and lace-like
mosses were not to be plucked in every walk, and they dawdled on and on
skirmishing, with delighted hardihood, against the pitfalls of bog that
covered morass and pitch-black mud. When the impulse finally came to
hasten back, they were somewhat chagrined to discover that they had lost
their own trail. The point where they had quit the stream could not be
found. Clambering plants, burdened with blossoms, fragrant as
honeysuckle, grew all along the bank, and the bush that had attracted
them was no longer a landmark.
"Well," Jack said, confidently, "the sun disappeared over there; that is
southwest. The house is in that direction--northeast. Now, if you will
keep that big sycamore in your eye and follow me, we shall be nearing
the house, as I calculate."
They pushed on in that direction, but had only gone a few yards when the
ground became a perfect quagmire of black loam, that looked like coal
ground to powder, and was thin as mush.
"This is a brilliant stroke on my part, I must say," Jack cried, facing
Kate ruefully. "We must go back and examine the ground, as Indians do,
and find our entrance trail in that way. I will watch the ground and you
keep an eye on the shrubs. Wherever you see havoc among them you may be
sure my manly foot has fallen there."
Suddenly they were conscious of an indescribable change in the place.
Neither knew what it was. It had come on in the excitement of their
march into the morass--or it had come the instant they both became
conscious of it. What was it? Kate turned and looked into Jack's
blank face!
"I'm blessed if I know what it is, but it seems as if something had
suddenly gone out of the order of things! What is it? Do you feel it; do
you notice it?"
"Feel it--see it--why, it is as palpable, or, rather to speak
accurately, it is as clearly absent as the color from an oil-painting,
leaving mere black and white outlines."
"How besotted I am!" Jack cried; "why, I know. The sun has wholly gone,
and the birds and living things have ceased to sing and move."
"That's it; could you believe that it would make such a change? Why, I
thought, when we came in, the place was a temple of silence, but it was
a mad world compared to this."
"Yes, and we must hurry and get out while we have daylight to help us. I
take it you wouldn't care to swim the lagoon. Let us call it lagoon, for
this place makes the name appropriate."
"Call it whatever you like, but don't ask me to swim it," Kate cried,
pushing on.
"Ah! I have our trail," Jack cries in triumph. "By George, it is wide
enough!" he added, bending over where the thick grasses were crushed and
broken. "See the advantage of large feet. Now, if you had been alone,
'twould have been as hard as to trace a bird's track."
"Is that an implication that I have Chinese feet?"
"No, too literal young woman. It was meant to show you that I am very
much relieved, for, 'pon my soul, I was afraid we were in a very
disagreeable scrape."
"And you are now quite sure we are not?"
"Quite sure. Don't you want to take my arm?"
"Oh, no, thank you. I'm not at all tired. I'm used to longer walks than
this."
"Longer, possibly, but not over such trying ground."
"Oh, yes. I've gone with Wesley and his friends to the lakes in the
North Woods."
"Ah! I've never been there. Are they as bad travel as this?"
"Infinitely worse--Why, what was that?"
"It sounded very like the report of a pistol."
Both stopped, Kate coming quite close to the young man, who was bent
over with his hand to his ear, trumpet-fashion.
"Do you--" He made a warning gesture with his hand, and motioned her to
stoop among the ferns. A halloo was heard in the distance; then a
response just ahead of where the two crouched in the breast-high ferns,
through which the path made by their recent footsteps led. When the
echoing halloo died away, a bird in the distance seemed to catch up the
refrain and dwell upon the note with an exquisite, painful melody.
"Why, it's the throat interlude in the Magic Flute! How lovely it is!"
Kate whispered. "If you were my knight, I should put on you the task of
caging that lovely sound for me."
The distant bird-note ceased, and then suddenly, from the bushes just
ahead of them, it was caught up and answered, note for note, in a wild
pibroch strain, harsher but inexpressibly moving. Jack turned to Kate,
his face quite pale, and whispered:
"It in not a bird. They are negroes. I have read of these sounds. They
are marauding slaves, and we must not let them see us. We must get to
those thick clumps of bushes. Do you think you can remain bent until we
reach them? If not, we will rest every few paces."
"Go on. I can try."
The pibroch strains still continued, rising into a mournful wail, then
sinking info the soft cries of the whip-poor-will. In a few minutes the
perplexed fugitives were deep in a clump of wild hawberries, invisible
to any one who should pass. The strains had ceased as suddenly as they
began. Then a faint hallo-o-o sounded, being answered in the bushes, as
it seemed, just in front of where Jack and his companion stood; voices
soon became audible farther along, ten or more paces. Motioning to Kate,
Jack crept along noiselessly, and fancied he could distinguish forms
through the thick screen of bushes. A voice, not a negro's, said:
"I went to the cove for you--what was the matter?"
"I had the devil's work to get through the posts. For some reason or
other they're getting mighty sharp. I must be back before twelve; what's
been done?"
"Well, the mokes consent to go, but they won't touch the ranch. You'll
have to bring up a few hands; the fewer the better. If them damned
feather-bed sojers wasn't there, we could do the job ourselves."
"When, does the boss get out?"
"Next week. I don't know what day. They'd pay high for him both ways."
"No, we can't nibble there. The cap'n'll pay well. That's square. We
can't afford to try the other now, at any rate. Is the skiff here?"
"Yes; well, get in."
There was a plash and the-receding sound of voices. Jack darted through
the screen of branches, but he could not distinguish the figures, for it
was growing every instant dimmer twilight. He turned to Kate. She was
at his side.
"Who were they--what were they planning? Were they soldiers?" she asked.
"Never mind them now. We must find a way out of this. Our boat can't be
far off. We must follow this line of bushes until we come to the spot we
left. I know I can recognize it, for there was an enormous tree fallen a
few steps from the sedge bank we landed on."
It was a very toilsome journey now, obliged as they were to hug the
obstinate growth of haws, wild alder, and dog roses, which tore flesh
and garments in the hurried flight. They came to the dead tree finally,
and Jack almost shouted in grateful relief:
"You were a true prophet, Miss Boone. You gave utterance to some
Druid-like remarks as we crossed the Stygian pool. The worst your fancy
painted couldn't equal what we've seen and heard."
"I have seen nothing dreadful, and I can't say that I understand very
much of what we heard."
"There is some 'caper' going on to give these cut-throats a chance to
get booty or something of the sort."
"They are probably rebel soldiers planning to sack the commissary."
They were in the boat now, and Jack was sending it forward by lusty
lunges against every protruding object he could get a stroke at; when
these failed he managed to scull after a fashion. They found the
household in consternation when they got back, but Jack gave a
picturesque narrative of their escapade, omitting the encounter with the
negroes which he had charged Kate to say nothing about, as it would only
alarm Mrs. Atterbury. The garments of the explorers told the tale of
their mishaps, and when they had clothed themselves anew supper was
announced. The feast was of the lightest sort: sherbet or tea for those
who liked it; fruit and crackers, honey or marmalade--a triumph in the
cultivation of dyspepsia, Jack said when he first began the eating. But
it was observed that the disease had no terrors for him, for he sat at
the table as long as he could get any one to remain with him, and did
his share in testing all the dishes. He outsat everybody that night
except Dick, who never got tired of any place that brought him near
his idol.
"I'm going up-stairs in a moment, Towhead. Come up after me."
Dick nodded, a gleam of delightful expectation in his eyes. He was just
in the ardent period when boys love to make mysteries of very ordinary
things, and Jack's _sotto voce_ command was like the hero's voice in the
play, "Meet me by the ruined well when midnight strikes." He followed
Jack up the wide staircase and into his own room, for greater security,
as no one would think of looking for them there.
"Now, tell me all you have found out," Jack commanded as he shut the
door. "Have you been among the darkys?"
"I've found out this much. The old negroes are opposed to going away or
in any shape annoying their masters. The young bucks and the women are
very eager to fly. It seems that some one has spread the story among
them that Lincoln has sent Butler to Fort Monroe to receive all the
negroes on the Peninsula. They have been assured that they are to have
'their freedom, one hundred acres of land, and an ox-team.' Where the
report comes from, I can't find out; but there is some communication
between here and the Union lines, I'm positive."
"Has Wesley been with the negroes again?"
"No. I have kept an eye on him all day."
"Where does he go at night?"
"The doctor has forbidden him to be in the night air for the present."
"Well, you keep an eye on Wesley," and then Jack narrated the strange
scene in the swamp, the mysterious calls, and the conversation.
Dick listened in awe, mingled with rapture. "Oh, why wasn't I there?
Just my blamed luck! I would have followed them, and then we should have
known what they were up to. Did you know that a company of cavalry had
gone into camp just below the grove?"
"No--when?"
"This evening. Vincent is down there now."
"Well, you may be sure they suspect something. I wonder if it wouldn't
be better to speak to Vincent?"
"Of course not! What have we to tell him? Simply my suspicions and
Clem's chatter. The little moke may have been lying; I can't see that
any of them do much else."
"The worst of it is, these Southerners are very sensitive about any
allusion to the negroes. They would pooh-pooh anything we might say that
was not backed by proof. It's a mighty uncomfortable fix to be in, Dick,
my boy; though, 'pon my soul, I believe you enjoy it!"
Dick grinned deprecating.
"I think you do, you unfledged Guy Fawkes. I know nothing would give you
greater joy than to put on a mask, grasp a dagger in your hand, and go
to Wesley, crying, 'Villain, your secret or your life!' Dick, you're a
stage hero; you're a thing of sawdust and tinsel. Come to the parlor and
hear Kate play the divine songs of Mendelssohn; perhaps, night-eyed
conspirator, to whirl Polly or Miss Rosa in the delirium of the '_Blaue
Donau_.' Come."
But there was neither dance nor music when they reached the
drawing-room. Everybody was there; Vincent had just come, and the first
words Jack and Dick heard glued them to their places.
"Yes, all the negroes on the Lawless', Skinner's, and Lomas's
plantations have gone. Butler has declared them contrabands of war, and
a lot of Yankee speculators have been sneaking through the plantations,
filling their ignorant minds with promises of freedom, a farm, and a
share of their masters' property. Their real purpose is to get the
negroes and hold them until the two governments come to terms, and then
they will get rewards for every nigger they hold. Oh, these Yankees can
see ways of making money through a stone-wall," and Vincent laughed
lightly, as though the incident in no way concerned him. "Captain Cram,
who is in camp just below in the oak clearing, is ordered to scour the
river-bank to the enemy's lines near Hampton, so we need have no fear of
these enterprising apostles of freedom interfering with our niggers."
"I don't think one of them could be induced to leave us if offered all
our farms," Mrs. Atterbury said, a little proudly.
"There isn't one of them that I haven't brought through sickness or
trouble of one sort or another, and there isn't one that wouldn't take
my command before the gold of a stranger."
"I don't know, Mrs. Atterbury," Mrs. Sprague ventured, mildly. "Gold is
a mighty weight in an argument. I have known it to change the
convictions of a lifetime in a moment. I have known it to make a man
renounce his father, dishonor his name, belie his whole life, deny
his family."
"When a fortune beyond reasonable dreams was placed upon the head of
Charles Stuart, for whom our ancestors fought and beggared themselves,
his secret was in the keeping of scores of peasants, and the blood-money
lay idle. I could cite hundreds of similar proofs, that gold is not God
everywhere. I mean no offense, but you will agree with me that you
Northern people are given up to the getting and worship of money. It is
not so with us. Perhaps because we have it, and with it something that
makes it secondary--birth. I have no fear of the infidelity of any of my
people. I would as soon doubt Rosa or Vincent us the smallest black on
my estate."
She spoke with mild, high-bred dignity, not a particle of assertion or
captious intolerance, but as a prelate might assert the majesty of the
word on the altar, neither looking for dissent nor dreaming that the
spirit of it could exist.
"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.
CHAPTER XVII.
TREASON AND STRATAGEMS.
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, this _aplomb_,
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: