The Iron Game - Henry Francis Keenan
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"Toothache?"
He stood rooted to the spot with indignant amazement. The heartless
little minx! How dare she talk like that to a soldier?
"Did you call some one, Miss Atterbury?" he said, with chilling dignity.
Usually he called her plain Rosa.
"I thought may be you had the toothache--you kept so quiet."
"No; I haven't got the toothache." Poor Dick! He said, to himself, that
he had much worse. But he wouldn't gratify her with the acknowledgment
of her triumph, and he stalked along with the basket over his head, as
he had often seen the darkeys in the sun. There was a faint little
appealing cry from behind.
"Oh--oh--dear!"
"What is it; are you hurt?" he cried, rushing to where Rosa stood,
balanced on one foot.
"There is a crab thorn an inch long in my foot; it's gone through shoe
and all. That wretched Sardanapalus never clears the limbs away when he
cuts the hedge. I'll have him horsewhipped. Oh, dear!"
"Let me hold you while I look for the thorn."
Dick cleverly slipped his arm about her waist and set the basket endwise
for her to sit on. Then kneeling, he picked out the thorn, which was a
great deal less than the dimensions Rosa had described. But he said
nothing to her about picking the torment out and slipping it in his vest
pocket. He held the foot, examining the sole critically. Finally, as she
moved impatiently, he asked:
"Does it hurt yet?"
"Of course it does, you stupid fellow. Do you suppose I would sit here
like a goose on a gridiron and let you hold my foot if it didn't hurt?
Men never have any sense when they ought to."
He affected to examine the sole of the thin leather of the upper still
more minutely. As she gave no sign of ending the comedy, he said:
"I'm sure, Rosa, if it relieves the pain to have me hold your foot, I'll
sit here in the sun all day--if you'll bring the rim of your hat over a
little--but, as for the thorn, it has been out this ten minutes."
She gave him a sudden push and darted away. He followed laughing,
admonishing her against another thorn. But she deigned no answer. Coming
to the bee-hives, she stopped a moment to watch the busy swarm, and Dick
stole up beside her. She turned pettishly, and he said, insinuatingly:
"Toothache?"
"You know, Dick, you're too trying for anything--holding my foot there
like a ninny in the hot sun. You haven't a thimbleful of sense."
"Well, now we'll test these propositions, as Jack does, by syllogisms.
Let me see. All men are trying. Dick Perley is a man: therefore he
is trying."
"No; your premise--isn't that what you call it?--is wrong. Dick Perley
is only a boy."
"I'll be nineteen in January next."
"Well?"
"Well, your father was married at nineteen. You've said it yourself,
Rosa, and thought it greatly to his credit--at least Vint does."
"You can't imitate my father in that, at least."
"I might."
"How?"
"You could help me, Rosa."
"How?"
"Would you if you could?"
"That depends."
"On what?"
"On the girl."
"Ah! she's a perfect girl, but she's very young," and Dick eyed Rosa
with ineffable complacency.
"That's bad."
"But she's older than she looks."
"That's worse; you'd grow tired of her."
"No, no; I don't mean she's older than she looks; her mind is older than
her looks."
"Women with minds make troublesome wives. I have refused to let Vincent
marry several of that kind."
"But, my girl hasn't got that kind of mind; it is all sweetness and wit
and gayety and loveliness and--and--"
"Your girl? Who gave her to you?"
"Love gave her to me."
"Oh, well, since love gave her to you, I don't see how I can be of any
service. Down here the mother always gives the girl, unless she have no
mother; then some other kin gives her. But if your girl has all these
qualities you describe, I advise you to get her into your own keeping
just as soon as you can, for that's the sort of girl all the fellows
about here are seeking."
"Very well, I'm ready. Will you help me? It comes back where we
started."
"But you evaded my question."
"What question did I evade? I answered like an encyclopedia!" Dick
cried, immensely satisfied with his own readiness.
"That convicts you; an encyclopedia has nothing about living people."
"Oh, yes; the new ones do." Dick was now very near her as she stood
contemplating the bees, swarming in the comb. "O Rosa--Rosa, you know I
love you, and you know I can never love anybody else. Why will you
pretend not to understand me? I don't want you to marry me now, but by
and by, when I shall have made a name as a soldier, or--or something,"
he added in painful turbulence of joy and fear over the great
words--which he had been racking his small wits to fashion for weeks
past, and, now that they were spoken, were not nearly so impressive as
he had intended they should be.
"My dear Richard, you are a perfect boy--a very delightful boy, too, and
I am extremely fond of you--oh, very, very fond of you--but you really
must not make love to me. It isn't proper," and Rosa glanced into his
eyes with a tender little gleam, that gave more encouragement than
rebuff--for it came into her mind, in a moment, that it was not a time
to hurt the bright, eager love--so winning, if boyish.
"Nonsense, Rosa, it is perfectly proper; everybody makes love to you;
Jack makes love to you, and he is as good as engaged--" But here it
suddenly flashed in Dick's mad head that he was meddling, and he stopped
short. Rosa had turned upon him with a flash of such scorn, such
indignant pain, that he cried:
"No, no; I don't mean that; but you know fellows do make love to you,
and why mayn't I?"
She flirted away from him too angry or mortified to speak. He could not
see her face, for she pulled the ample breadth of the hat-brim down,
which served at once as a veil to shut out her visage and a sweeping
sort of funnel to keep him far from her side, as she tripped
determinedly to the pleasant group of clean, whitewashed cabins, where
the negroes abode. Poor Dick, vexed with himself--angry at her for being
irritated-waited in the hot sun until she had ended her commands, and
when she came out to return he repentantly sidled up, imploring pardon
in every movement. She couldn't resist the big, pleading blue eyes, and
said, quite as if there had been deep discussion on the point:
"I don't think you mean to be a bad boy."
"I'm not a boy, I'm a soldier. It isn't fair in you to call me a boy."
"You're not a girl."
"If I were I wouldn't be so heartless as some I know."
"And if I were a boy I wouldn't be so silly as some I know."
"Yes, I think Southern boys are quite soft."
"Come, sir, my brother _was_ a Southern boy."
"Yes, but he always lived North, and is like us."
"Jackanapes!"
"Dear Rosa."
"How dare you, sir?"
"Oh, just as easy, I dare do all that becomes a man--who dares do more
is none. You are Rosa, and you are dear--"
"Not to you."
"You cost me enough to be dear and you are lovely enough to be 'Rosa' in
Latin, Rose in English, and sweetheart in any tongue."
"You're much too pert. Boys so glib as you never really love. They think
they do and perhaps they do--just a little."
"Ah! a 'little more than a little,' dear Rosa."
"You're quoting Shakespeare, I suppose you know? I'll quote more: 'A
little more than a little is much too much.'"
"A little less than all is much too little for me. So, Rosa, give all or
none."
"I don't understand you."
"That's proof you love me. Girls never love fellows they understand."
"Prove that I love you."
"Well, you don't hate me. You don't hate Vincent. Therefore you love
him. Ergo, you love me."
"Simpleton."
"True love is always simple. Here, take this white rose as a sign that
you don't hate me." He plucked a large half-opened bud from a great
sprouting branch and held it toward her.
"But the red rose is my favorite."
"Well, here is a red one. Give me the white. That is my favorite. Now
we've exchanged tokens. The rose always goes before the ring. I'll
get that."
"If you were a true lover you would wear my colors."
"These white leaves will grow red resting on my heart."
"When they do I will listen to you."
"Will you, though? It is a promise; when this white rose is red you will
love me?"
"Oh, yes, I can promise that."
"Dear Rosa!" He was very near her as she disentangled an obtruding vine
from her garments, and before she was aware of his purpose he had
audaciously snatched a kiss from her astonished lips.
"You odious Yankee! I haven't words to express my disgust--abhorrence!"
"Don't try, love needs no words: but I'll tell you; let me put this
white rose to your lips; it will turn red at the touch, and in that way
you can take your kiss back, if you really want it; then there'll be a
fair exchange. I--"
"Hello, there! are you two grafting roses?"
It was Wesley, coming from the lower garden, where the stream was
narrowest beyond the high wall of hedge.
"Oh, no, Mr. Boone; Richard here is studying the color in flowers. He
has a theory that eclipses Goethe's 'Farbenlehre.'"
"Oh, indeed!" Wesley was quite unconscious of what Goethe's doctrine of
colors might be, so he prudently avoided urging fuller particulars
regarding Dick's theory, and said, vaguely;
"You have color enough here to theorize on, I'm sure."
"Yes, we have had very satisfactory experiments," Dick assented naively,
stealing a glance at Rosa.
"But quite inconclusive," she rejoined, moving onward, the two young men
following in the penumbra of her wide hat.
CHAPTER XVIII.
A CAMPAIGN OF PLOTS.
Meanwhile, there were curious events passing and coming to pass on the
seven hills upon which the proud young capital of the proud young
Confederacy stood. Rome, in her most imperial days, never dreamed of the
scenic glories that Richmond, like a spoiled beauty, was hardly
conscious of holding as her dower. Indeed, such is the necromantic
mastery of the passion of the beautiful that, once standing on the
glorious hill, that commands the James for twenty miles--twenty miles of
such varied loveliness of color, configuration, and _mis en scene_, that
the purple distances of Naples seem common to it--standing there, I say,
one day, when the sword had long been rusting in the scabbard, and the
memory of those who raised it in revolt had faded from all minds save
those who wanted office--this historian thought that, had it been his
lot to be born in that lovely spot, he, too, would have fought for State
caprices--just as a gallant man will take up the quarrel of beauty,
right or wrong!
Thoughts of this sort filled Barney Moore's mind too, that delicious
September afternoon as he stood gazing dreamily down the river, toward
that vague morning-land of the sun's rising, where his mind saw the long
lines of blue his eyes ached to rest on. Barney had left the kindly roof
where he had been nursed back to vigor. He had quit it in a fashion that
left a rankling sorrow in his grateful heart. Vincent had represented to
Jack the inconvenience it would be, the peril, rather, for him to assume
the guardianship of so many enemies of the Confederacy. Scores of the
old families of the city were under the ban simply because they had
pleaded for deliberation before deciding on the secession ordinance. The
Atterburys had their enemies too. It was pointed out that Vincent and
Rosa had been educated in the North; that Mrs. Atterbury had spent many
of her recent summers there. Their devotion to the Confederacy must be
shown by deeds. It was true they had given twenty thousand dollars to
the cause, but what was that to threefold millionaires? General Lee,
their kinsman, had shaken his Socratic head solemnly when Rosa, at the
War Department, told him, as an excellent joke, the strange chance that
had brought Vincent's college chum and his family under the kind
Rosedale roof.
Richard Perley was, therefore, deputized to rescue Barney from his false
position and give him a chance for exchange when the time came. He
journeyed up to Richmond, and, one day, laid these facts before Barney,
who instantly saw his friend's dilemma, and at once set about inventing
a _ruse_ that should extricate him, without mortifying the kind people
who had befriended him. When he was able to be about, he feigned a
desire to go to his friends in Arrowfield County, south of the James,
and was bidden hearty Godspeed. Then, with funds supplied by Jack, he
gained admittance to a modest house far out on Main Street, where the
city merges into the country. They were simple people, and his thrilling
tale of being a refugee from Harper's Ferry was plausible enough to be
accepted by more skeptical people than the Gannats.
Day after day Barney skirted furtively about the uncompromising walls of
Libby and Castle Thunder, where once or twice he had gone with his hosts
to make a mental diagram of the place for future use. Little by little
he became familiar with Richmond, which, like a new bride, gave the
visitor welcome to admire her splendid spouse, the Confederate
government. He learned all the plots of the prison, and became the
confidant of Letitia Lanview, known to every exile in Richmond as the
friend of the suffering--St. Veronica she was called--after a poem
dedicated to her by a young Harvard graduate, rescued by her
perseverance from death in Libby Prison. With this lady he drove all
about the environs of Richmond, and several times far out toward the
meditated route of flight, in order that he might be able to lead the
bewildered refugees. He got the whole landscape by heart, and could have
led a battalion over it in the dark. Then he passed days wandering over
the Libby Hill, down in the bed of the "Rockets," as the bed of the
James was known in those days; he learned the ground to the very beat of
the patrols that guarded the wretched prisoners in the towering
shambles. One whole night, too, he spent in marking the course of the
guards as they changed in two-hour reliefs. With his facts well
collected he visited Mrs. Lanview, and at last he was confronted by
Butler's agent. This agent was a middle-aged man, who had evidently once
been very handsome, but dissipation had left pitiable traces upon his
fine features, and his once large, open eyes, that perplexingly
suggested some one Barney tried in vain to recall--vainly? The man
didn't say much in the lady's presence, but when the two were in the
open air, facing toward the center of the town, he divulged a good deal
that surprised Barney.
"You are from Acredale, young man. I lived there when I was younger than
I am now. My name? People call me a good many names. I don't mind at
all, so that I have rum enough and a bed and a bite to eat. No man can
have more than that, my boy. I am plain Dick Jones now. It's an easy
name, and plenty of the same in the land; and if I should die suddenly
there would be lots o' folks to feel sorry, eh? But as you are from
Acredale I don't mind telling you that it is Elisha Boone that foots the
bill. Butler is a friend of Boone's, and he has given me authority to
summon all the troops within reach to my aid. My business is to carry
young Wes Boone to Fort Monroe. Butler doesn't know that. He thinks I am
spying Jeff Davis and piping for the prisoners. He didn't say that he
wanted me to kill Davis, but if we could carry him to Fort Monroe, my
boy, there'd be about a million dollars swag to divide! How does that
strike you?"
"It doesn't strike me at all. I think it is for the interest of the
Union that Davis should be where he is. He is vain, arrogant, silly, and
dull. He will alone wreck the rebel cause if he is given time. There
couldn't be a greater misfortune for the North than to have Davis
displaced by some one of real ability, such as Stephens, Lee, Benjamin,
Mason, Breckenridge, or, in fact, any of the men identified with
secession."
"You surprise me, my son. Still, admitting all you say, the men who
should surprise the North some fine morning with a present of Jeff Davis
on their breakfast-plates, wouldn't be without honor, to say nothing of
promotion and profit"
"Oh, if we can carry Jeff off without compromising the safety of the
prisoners, I'll join you heartily. But first of all we must
rescue them."
"Unquestionably; now, here's the programme: Butler's forces will be
within gunshot of Magruder's lines on Warwick Creek Thursday--that's
three days from now. The prisoners will be out of the sewer Wednesday
after midnight. You know the roads eastward. You will lead them to the
swamps near Williamsburg. There we will have boats to take part down the
river; the rest will make through the swamps under my lead. I have been
spying out the land for a week. At a place called Rosedale we pick up
young Boone, who is really the object of my journey. I couldn't find him
for weeks, and inquired of all the prisoners. Mrs. Lanview finally put
me on the track, and I saw Wes Boone as I came up here. He thought the
chances were better with a big party than alone. I saw him again
yesterday, and he told me that Davis and Lee, his chief of staff, were
to be at a party in the Rosedale house on Thursday next. Now, we can
pick up Davis just as well as Boone. There is the whole plan."
"Oh, that's a different matter. Davis will not be near the city, and his
keeping will not add to our danger. I see no reason why we shouldn't
grab him. Heavens, what a sensation it will make! We shall be the wonder
of the North--we shall he like the men that discovered Andre and
Arnold--Paulding and--and"--but here Barney's historical facts came to
an end--"we shall be famous for--forever!"
"For a week, my son; wonders don't live long in these fast days. For a
week the North will glorify us; then, if they find that we voted for
Douglas, as I did, they will say we had some sinister design in bringing
Davis North, and likely send us to Fort Lafayette."
Barney stopped dead; they had come under a gas-lamp between Grace and
Franklin Streets. He looked at the man. He was quite sober. His eyes
answered the young man's indignant protesting glance, openly,
unshrinkingly, humorously.
"I should be sorry to think that, Mr. Jones."
"Well, wait. When you get North you will see a mighty change in things.
Sentiment, my boy, follows the main chance. It's money, my boy, money.
Enough money would have made Judas respectable; he was fool enough to
put his price too low."
"Ugh!--you almost make me hate the North! Who can have heart to fight
for such heartless traffickers?"
"The North doesn't ask your heart. It has counted the cost, and finds
that it can pay a million of men thirteen dollars a month for three
years, and still make a good thing out of it--that's about the breadth
of it. Here's an oasis in the desert of darkness. Come and have
a drink?"
But Barney--not caring for a drink, the cynic--gave him his address,
and, dreadfully cast down in spirit, the eager partisan moped up the
long hill homeward. The next day Mrs. Lanview gave him the details of
the meditated escape. There were only sixty or a hundred in position to
avail themselves of the subterranean way that had been toilsomely dug,
by a few devoted spirits, with tools casually dropped among them by the
guileless Veronica during her daily visits. The plotters counted on at
least six hours' start before discovery. The guards were not to be
disturbed, and the evasion would not be known until eight o'clock, when
the miserable breakfast ration was distributed.
Of that amazing-exploit, the digging through twenty solid feet of earth
and stone, I do not propose to tell. It is to be found in the journals
of the day: it is contained in the hundred pathetic narratives of the
men who took part. It has nothing to do with this history beyond the use
made of it to mislead the ingenious Barney, and in the end complicate
the careers of those in whom we are interested. Suffice it, therefore,
to say that in the dim morning mist, as arranged, a shadowy host emerged
on the river-bottom, now dry and footable; that each man, as he crawled
from the pit, was directed into the thick willows bordering the banks;
that when six score or more had clambered out they obeyed a whispered
command, for which Veronica had prepared them, and noiselessly, in
shadowy single file, they followed the bed of the stream, even where the
water flowed deep and dangerous, until they came to the gentle slopes of
Church Hill. Then, under guidance of Barney, those who were wise
followed swiftly down the river-road until daylight, when they hid in
the dim recesses of the white-oak swamps, where they lay concealed many
hours. As night fell they faced hopefully forward down the Williamsburg
road, until a flaming wave in the air admonished them to strike to the
right, and they plunged into the pathless swamps of the Chickahominy.
Here they were secure. No force able to cope with them could enter; no
force at the command of Magruder could surround them. But Barney's
guiding hand was now replaced by another. Jones had appeared, and with
him men bearing Butler's commission. The prisoners of Libby set up a
defiant cheer. They were once more under the flag. Father Abraham was
again their commander.
There were sedate, fatherly men among these rescued bands. There were
men with gray hairs and sober behavior; men who could bow meekly under
the chastening rod; but the antics of the juvenile group, in which we
are mainly interested, were grave and decorous compared with the
abandoned, delirious joy of these grave men as they reached the recesses
of a swamp that denied admission to all save practiced explorers. Why,
here they could subsist for weeks! The rebels might spy them, might
surround them, but they need not starve--the buds were food, the bushes
refreshment, the pellucid pools drink and life. Barney stared in
speechless amazement at the unseemly gambols of the motley mass.
Delirium! it was a mild term for the embracing, the prancing, the
Carmagnole-like ecstasy of the half-clad madmen running amuck in the
almost unendurable joy of liberation. Barney knew that this condition of
things would never do. All who bore commissions in the army were
selected from the men. The highest in rank, who proved to be a colonel,
was invested with the command, Barney serving as adjutant, and Jones as
guide. The rabble, having made a good meal from the spoil of a
sweet-potato patch, pushed forward through the fretwork of fern, rank
morass, and verdure, toward security. But the march was a snail's pace,
as may be imagined. The men, worn to skeletons by months of captivity,
insufficient food, and stinted exercise, were forced to halt often for
rest in such toilsome marching as the half-aquatic surface of the
swamp involved.
By Thursday noon they were still far from the river. Foragers were
detailed to procure food, and pending their return the wearied band sank
to the earth to rest. In less than two hours the predatory platoon
returned with a sybaritic store--chickens, young lamb, green corn,
onions. Only the stern command of the colonel suppressed a mighty cheer.
When the march was resumed the colonel led the main column south by
east. Jones, with Barney and a dozen men, struck due east. In answer to
Barney's surprised question, Jones informed him they were to pick up
"Wes" Boone by taking that route. Difficult as the way had been
heretofore, it now became laborious in the extreme for this smaller
band. The bottom was all under water, and before they had proceeded a
mile half the group were drenched. In many cases an imprudent plunger
was compelled to call a halt to rescue his shoes--that is, those who
were lucky enough to have shoes--from the deep mud, hidden by a fair
green surface of moss or tendrils. It was a wondrous journey to Barney,
The pages of Sindbad alone seemed to have a parallel for the awful
mysteries of that long, long flight through jungles of towering timber,
whose leaves and bark were as unfamiliar as Brazilian growth to the
troops of Pizarro or the Congo vegetation to the French pioneer. Jones
and his comrades saw nothing but the hardships of the march and the
delay of the painful _detours_ in the solemn glades. The direction was
kept by compass, many of the men having been supplied with a miniature
instrument by the prudent foresight of Mrs. Lanview, who was niggard of
neither time nor money in the cause she had at heart. In spite of every
effort a march so swift that it would have exhausted cavalry, Jones's
ranks did not reach the rendezvous until midnight. At about that hour
the exhausted fugitives came suddenly upon a wide, open plain, and far
below them, in the valley, a vision of light and life shone through
the dark.
"There, boys, we're at the end of our first stage. Unless I'm much
mistaken, that bit of merry-making yonder will cost the Confederacy
a chief."
"But is it certain that Davis is there?" asked the man Jones called
Moon, who seemed to be his intimate.
"Ah, that we will learn so soon as Nasmyd reports. We will give the
signal when we reach that fringe of wood yonder. It's back of the
grounds, separated from them by a hard piece of swamp and water.--Men,
you must follow now in single file, and when we get in the swamp, mind,
a single step out of line will cost you your lives, for, sucked into
that morass, wild horses can't pull you out."