The Iron Game - Henry Francis Keenan
Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32
"But that can never be!"
"Wait! I have faith that it will be!"
"If one flag should cover us--my flag--would you--would you--?"
"Ah, Vincent! don't ask me; don't force me to say something thing that
will make you unhappy, since I don't know my own mind well enough yet to
answer as you wish me to answer--"
"But you can tell me now whether you love me, or, at least, whether
there is any one you love more?"
"I don't think I love you. I know, however, that I think no more of any
one else than I think of you; pray, let that suffice."
"But how cruel that is, Olympia! It is as much, as to say that you won't
wait and see whether you may meet some one that you can be surer of than
you are of me?"
"I must distress you whatever I say, Vincent! Frankly, I don't think you
can decide just now whether your heart is really engaged. I think you do
not know me as a man should knows the woman he makes his wife. I am
certain I do not know you. If you had been born and bred in the North, I
should have no difficulty in deciding; but your ways are so different
here: women are accorded so much before marriage, and made so little of
a man's life after marriage, that I shrink from a promise which, if
lightly or inconsiderately given, would bring the last misery a woman
can confront."
"What, Olympia! you think Southern men do not hold marriage to be
sacred?"
"I think that the Southern man has a good deal of the knight you spoke
of in him, and, like the Frenchman, marries inconsiderately, and does
penance in infidelity, at least to the form, if not the fact, of the
relation."
"O Olympia! where do you get such repulsive ideas of us; who has been
traducing us to you?"
"I judge from the Southern men I have seen North; pardon me, Vincent, I
do not see how it can be otherwise in a society based upon human
servitude. To live on the labors of a helot people blunts the finer
sensibilities of men and women alike; when you can look unshrinkingly at
the separation of husband and wife on the auction-block, when you can
see innocent children taken from their mothers and sold into eternal
separation, I think it is not unnatural in me to fear that a woman with
my convictions would not be happy mated with a Southerner. All this is
cruel, I fear you will think, but it would be crueller for me to
encourage a love that, under present circumstances, would bring misery
to both of us."
"You are an abolitionist?"
"Yes; every right-thinking person in the North is an abolitionist to
this extent; we want the South to take the remedy into its own hands, to
free its slaves voluntarily; the radical abolitionists prefer a violent
means. That I do not seek or did not; but now, Vincent, it is bound
to come."
"And, if it should come, what would you answer to my question?"
"Here is a white rose: I picked it with my hand, and, you see, a drop of
my blood is on it; when you can give me a rose with a drop of your blood
on it as free from taint as the stain mine makes, I shall have an answer
that will not be unworthy your waiting for!"
"Unworthy! I don't understand you. Surely, you don't think me a
profligate?"
"When the time comes that no human being acknowledges your ownership,
perhaps you may receive a voluntary bond-maid, bound to you by stronger
ties than the chattel of the slave."
"But you love me, then, Olympia?"
"I can not love where I do not reverence."
"But it is not my fault that slaves are my inheritance!"
"It will be your fault if they are your support when you are your own
master."
"You love an idea better than you love a man who would die for you!"
"I love manliness and the sense of right, which is called duty, better
than I love a man who is blind to the first impulse of real manhood--"
"Would you ask a Jew to give up his synagogue to gain your hand?"
"The synagogue is the temple of a creed as divine as my own, and the
faith of the man I loved would never swerve me in accepting or
refusing him."
"We of the South believe slavery a divine institution--that is, first
established by the fathers!"
"The tribes in the Fiji Islands believe man-eating an ordinance of the
gods!"
"Well, this sort of discussion leads to nothing," Vincent said,
ruefully. "The world is well lost for the woman one loves, when I come
to you shorn of my world!"
"Ah! then, Vincent, you will find another!"
He drew her hand from the clinging vines and kissed it.
"I am very happy. I shall lose my world with a very light heart."
"The world is a very tough brier; we sometimes bring it closer, when its
thorns prick us more painfully in the struggles to cast it off."
"Then I'll cut the brambles, and not risk tearing my flesh!"
"That's the soldier's way--the heroic way; but wait for the future; I am
young and you are not old."
Vincent's gayety when they returned to the drawing-room attracted the
observant Dick, and he slyly whispered to the warrior, "Been practicing
the Roman strategy with the Sabines?"
"No, I've been at the Temple of Minerva and taken a pledge to hold my
tongue."
"Ah! the goddess of the owls; but, as they see light only in darkness, I
fear you groped in blackness."
The whole household were to meet President Davis and his party in
Williamsburg, assist at the review, and get back with the distinguished
guests in time for a state dinner. Merry and Mrs. Sprague were reluctant
to go, but they feared a refusal would be misunderstood. Poor Merry was
very tearful and disconsolate at the thought of leaving Dick, but she
strove heroically to hide her grief when the cavalcade set out, the
elder ladies driving, the young people mounted. The ancient capital of
Virginia was aflame with the new rebel bunting. President Davis, with
Generals Lee and Magruder, were in place on the pretty green before the
old colonial college edifice when the Rosedale people came up. Davis
saluted Mrs. Atterbury with cordial urbanity; but, as the troops were
already in column, there was only time for hasty presentation of the
strangers.
Jack watched the rather piebald pageant with absorbed interest. The
infantry marched wretchedly. The arms were as varied as the uniforms,
and the artillery seemed a relic of Jackson's time. But the cavalry was
superb. Never had he seen such splendid ranks, such noble horses. At
sight of the tall, elegant figure of the President, the troops broke
into the peculiar shrill cheer that afterward became a sound of wonder,
almost terror, to unaccustomed Northern ears. It was a mingling of the
boyish treble of college cries and the menacing shriek of the wild-cat.
Jack was secretly very much delighted with the review. More than half
the rank and file were mere boys; and he could see that they were
unruly, almost to point-blank disregard of their officers commands, or
the prescriptions of the manual. It would take short work for the
disciplined hosts the new Northern general was training, to sweep such
chaff from the field of war. Vincent saw something of this in his
comrade's eye, and a good deal nettled himself by the slovenly march and
humorous abandon of the men, he said:
"You must remember, Jack, our army is made up of gentlemen's sons; the
gentry of the South are all in arms, and we can't at once reduce them to
the mere machines a more heterogeneous soldiery can be made. The men who
won Manassas passed in review a day or two before the battle, and they
made the same impression upon me--upon Beauregard himself--that I see
these men have made on you. Depend upon it, in a fight they will be good
soldiers."
"Let me have the poor comfort of underrating my enemy, the thing above
all others that a wise man shuns and a fool indulges."
"Oh, on that theory revile them if you like."
"No, indeed; I'm far from reviling them. The cavalry is magnificent. I
don't think we have a regiment in our army that can compare with that
brigade. Who commands it?"
"Jeb Stuart--the Murat of the South," Vincent said, proudly. "I'm going
to tell the President what you said of the brigade; you know he is
passionately fond of the army, and really wanted to be the
commander-in-chief, when they made him President at Montgomery."
At sunset the President and General Lee entered the carriage with Mrs.
Atterbury and Mrs. Sprague, Merry driving in a phaeton with Kate, who
didn't enjoy so long a ride on the horse.
"I'm glad we've got such important hostages as yourself and son," Davis
said gallantly to Mrs. Sprague, as the carriage passed out of the clamor
of acclamation the crowd set up. "I knew the Senator, your husband,
intimately. If he had lived, I doubt whether we should have been driven
out of the Union. He was, in my mind, one of the most prudent statesmen
that came from the North to Congress."
"He certainly never would have consented to break up the Union," Mrs.
Sprague said, in embarrassment.
"Nor should I, madam, if there had been any further security in it. The
truth is, there was nothing left for us but to go out or be kicked out.
The leaders of the Abolition party long ago proclaimed that. However,
war settles all such problems. When it is settled by the sword we shall
be satisfied."
Mrs. Atterbury changed the conversation by asking how Mrs. Davis liked
Richmond.
"Oh, she has been treated royally by the people there. I declare
Richmond is as Southern a city as Charleston. I have been agreeably
surprised by the absolute unanimity of gentle and simple in the cause.
My wife receives a clothes-basketful of letters every morning from the
mothers of the Confederacy proffering time, money, and service wherever
she can suggest anything for them to do. I propose later on establishing
an order something like the Golden Fleece, which shall confer a certain
social precedence upon the wearers. I have thousands of letters on the
subject, and as the society of the South is, as a matter of fact, a
society of gentle-folk--for the most part lineally descended from the
nobility of older countries--I think it proper and right that lineage
should have certain acknowledged advantages in the new commonwealth. But
I propose to go further, and institute an order of something like
nobility for women--who have thus far given us great help and
encouragement. Indeed, there are many in the Congress--a dozen Senators
I could name--who think that we ought to make our regime entirely
different from the North, and that we should adopt a monarchical form--"
"I'm sure, I think we should," Mrs. Atterbury exclaimed, delightedly.
"We are really as unlike the Northern people as the French or
the Germans."
"The strongest argument for declaring the Confederacy an empire is the
one that weighed with Napoleon I. We should at one stroke secure the
alliance of all the monarchies. They have never looked with favor on the
experiment of a powerful republic over here, and it is almost certain
they would befriend us for transforming this mighty infant state into an
empire. However, that is for future action. Our agents abroad have sent
us full reports on the matter."
"I doubt the wisdom of ever hinting such a thing," General Lee said,
gravely. "We must show that we are able to act independently in
selecting our form of government. I doubt very much whether the masses
would listen favorably to an empire established by foreign aid."
"Possibly, general, possibly. As I said before, there will be time
enough for that when, like Napoleon, we have made our armies the masters
of this continent. Then, with boundaries embracing Mexico, Canada, and
the Western States--for they can never exist independent of us--we can
choose empire, republic, or a Venetian oligarchy."
As they came in sight of Rosedale, Davis stood up in the carriage to get
a better view of the landscape, which showed swift alternations of dense
thickets and wood and rolling acres of rich crops.
"What a State Virginia is!" he exclaimed with enthusiasm. "It has the
climate and soil to support half of Europe. Mother of Presidents in the
past, it will be the granary and magazine of the Confederacy in ten
years. My own State, Mississippi, is rich in land, but the climate is
hard for the stranger. It enervates the European at first. But we are an
agricultural people, or rather we give our energies to our staple,
cotton; that is to be the chief treasure of the Confederacy."
Dinner was ready for the table when the guests came from their rooms.
Davis excused his lack of ceremonial dress, saying pleasantly:
"I am something of a soldier, you know, and travel with a light train.
Lee, there, has the advantage of me. A soldier's uniform is court
costume the world over."
"But you are the commander-in-chief, Mr. President. Don't you have a
uniform?"
"No. I am commander-in-chief only in law. Congress is really the
commander-in-chief. The man that assumes those duties can attend to them
alone. He is, of course, subject to the executive; but only in general
plans, rarely in details."
Davis was placed at Mrs. Atterbury's right, Mrs. Sprague at her left,
General Lee sat at Vincent's right, _vis-a-vis_ to Jack, who was lost in
prodigious admiration of the Socratic-like chieftain--Lee was as yet
unknown to all but a discriminating few in the Confederacy. He was as
tall as Davis fully six feet--but more rounded and symmetrical. He spoke
with great gravity, but seemed to enjoy the jests that the young people
found opportunities to indulge in, when it was seen that the President
devoted his talk exclusively to the hostess or Mrs. Sprague. Davis was a
good talker, and charmed the company with reminiscences of old times
in Congress.
"I don't remember Lincoln distinctly," he said, concluding a
reminiscence, "but I think he's the man that used to be so popular in
the House cloak-room, telling stories which were said to be
extremely droll."
"Mrs. Lincoln is in some sort kin to Mrs. Davis, isn't she?" Mrs.
Atterbury asked. "I have read it somewhere."
"Very distant. Mrs. Lincoln is of the Kentucky Tods, and they were in
some way kin of my wife's family, the Howells. Not enough to put on
mourning, if Mrs. Lincoln should become a widow."
"Is it true, Mr. President, that a society in the North has offered a
million dollars for your capture--abduction? I heard it in Williamsburg,
and saw an allusion to it in _The Examiner_ the other day."
"Oh, I'm sure I can't say. If the offer were authenticated, I should be
tempted to go and get the reward myself. With a million dollars I could
do a good deal more for the cause in the North than I can here, making
brigadiers and settling questions of precedence between Cabinet
ministers, judges, and Senators."
"Mr. President, give me an exchange North, and I will ascertain the
facts in the million-dollar offer and write you faithfully how to set
about getting the money," Jack said, very soberly, from his end of
the table.
"Ah! the Yankee spoke there--nothing if not a bargain. Sir, you deserve
your clearance papers, but I'm too good a friend of Mrs. Atterbury and
her daughter to bring about the loss of company that I am sure must be
agreeable. Then, too, there's no telling the miracles of conversion that
may be brought about by such ministers as Miss Rosa there."
Rosa blushed, Jack felt foolish, and everybody laughed except Dick, who
looked unutterable things at his adored, and boldly entered the lists
against the great personage by asking, in a quivering treble:
"Doesn't the Bible say that the wife shall cleave to the husband; that
his people shall be her people, his God her God, where he goes
she goes?"
"It is so said in the Bible, sir; but it was a woman that uttered it,
and she was in love. When you know more of the sex, you will understand
that women in love are like poets; they say much that they don't mean,
and more that they don't understand."
"But, Mr. President, what the one woman said in the Bible all women
practice. You never knew a woman that didn't believe her husband's
beliefs, hate his hates, love his loves."
Davis smiled, and his eyes twinkled kindly on his boyish inquisitor.
"I know only one woman. That is as much as a man can speak for. She
doesn't hate my hates, love my loves, or enter unprotestingly into all
my ways. Indeed, I may say that, being a peaceful man, I wanted to
remain in Washington, for I believed that Seward was sincere in pleading
for a compromise; but the woman I speak of had her own opinion convinced
me that she was right, and I came to my own people."
At this moment there was a diversion. A soldier, booted and spurred,
entered the room, walked to the head of the table, and bending
deferentially to the President, said;
"I am ordered to deliver this message wherever you may be found." He
handed Davis a large envelope and retreated respectfully two or three
paces backward. Everybody affected to resume conversation as the
President, breaking the seal, said;
"Pardon me a moment, madam." But he had no sooner ran over the lines
than he turned to the courier, crying, in visible discomfiture:
"When did you leave the war office?"
"At five o'clock, sir."
"General, we must return instantly to Richmond; a hundred or more of the
prisoners have broken out of Libby! It is reported that a column of the
enemy with gunboats have passed up the James.--Madam, this is one of the
exigencies of a time of war. I needn't say to an Atterbury that
everything must give way to public business!" He called Lee aside, spoke
rapidly to him, and the latter, beckoning Vincent, left the room. He
returned in ten minutes, announcing that everything was in readiness to
set out. The carriage with Mrs. Sprague's and Merry's small luggage was
ready when the cavalcade set out, Davis riding with them and the cavalry
company from below, divided into squadrons before and behind the
carriage. It was eleven o'clock as the last dark line of the troop
disappeared. Olympia and Jack stood at the great gate in mournful
silence. The swiftness of the parting had lessened the pain, but their
minds were full of the sorrow that follows the inevitable. Mrs. Sprague
had herself declined to postpone the ordeal when Mrs. Atterbury pointed
out the untimely hour. No, it was better to suffer this slight
inconvenience to have Vincent's protecting presence all the way to the
Union lines; and Jack, acknowledging this, didn't say a word to dissuade
her. Vincent's last act was to call Jack to his room.
"I wanted to tell you, Jack, what a great joy it has been to me--it has
been to all of us--to have you in our home at this trying time. I can
not tell you how much comfort it has been to me now, but some time you
shall know," Vincent stammered, and began to open a drawer in the
bureau. "Here is something I want you to accept as a keepsake from me."
He drew forth a pistol-case and opened it. "It will be a melancholy
pleasure for me to feel, in the dark days to come, that these weapons
may prove your friend in battle, where I must be your enemy."
"By George, they're beauties!" Jack cried, taking the weapons out.
"Yes; they were bought last year, and I have had J.S. cut on one, and
V.A. on the other. I meant them for your Christmas last year, but they
were mislaid."
"What a kind fellow you are, Vint! I don't think I ought to take these."
"Why not? I have others! I shall feel easier, knowing that you have
them. You can stow them about you easily, they are so small."
"But it's against the laws of war for a prisoner to be armed."
"That's just the reason I haven't asked you to take them before. You can
leave them here in my room until you are exchanged, and then you can
carry them with impunity."
The household assembled at the gate leading into the roadway as the
cavalcade took up the march. There were sad, sobbing farewells
spoken--the kindly night covering the tears, and the loud neighing of
the horses drowning the sobs.
The Northern group remained in the roadway, straining their eyes to
catch the last glimpse of the wanderers as they disappeared in the misty
foliage, far up the roadway.
The horizon to the zenith was full of shimmering star-points, Olympia,
with Jack, turned slowly toward the house, silent and not wholly sad.
Dick, in a low treble, could be heard just behind them, quoting
melancholy verses to Rosa; and the brother and sister returned slowly up
the dewy, odorous path. At the porch Rosa exclaimed, in surprise:
"I wonder where Pizarro is? I haven't seen him while we have been out.
It can't be possible he has followed Vincent! What shall we do if
he has?"
"Make Dick take his place. A terrier is sometimes as faithful as a
mastiff," Jack said, quickly.
"Oh! Miss Atterbury wants something with a bite, rather than a bark, and
a terrier wouldn't do," the boy answered.
"I want Pizarro. I shall never sleep a wink all night if he isn't here,"
Rosa said, in consternation; "he is better than a regiment of soldiers,
for he won't let a human being come near the house after the doors are
closed, not even the servants."
An expedition, calling upon Pizarro in many keys, set out and wandered
through the grounds, back to the quarters, to the gates leading to the
rose-fields, to the stable, but Pizarro was not to be found. Lights were
burning in the hall only when the four re-entered, and with a very grave
face Rosa bade the rest good-night.
CHAPTER XX.
A CATASTROPHE.
Rosedale had been a bed of thorns to Wesley Boone since his recovery. He
felt that he was an incongruous visitor among the rest, as a hawk might
feel in a dove-cote. He would have willingly returned to Richmond--even
at the risk of re-entering the prison--if Kate had not been on his
hands. The life of the place, the constant necessity of masking his
aversion to the Spragues, his detestation of Dick, the simple
merry-making and intimate amenities of such close quarters, tasked his
small art of dissimulation beyond even the most practiced powers. The
garment of duplicity was gossamer, he felt, after all, in such
atmosphere of loyalty and trust as surrounded him at Rosedale.
He knew that in the daily attrition and conventional intimacies of the
table, the drawing-room, or the promenade, the cloak covering his
resentful antipathy, his moral perversities, his thinly veiled
impatience, was worn to such thin shreds that eyes keen as Jack's must
see and know him as he was. What was hatefulest and most unendurable of
all was the bondage of truce in which the Atterburys held him. Wesley
was no coward, and he ached to meet Jack face to face, arm to arm, and
settle with that thoughtless insubordinate a rankling list of griefs
heaped up in moments of over-vivacious frankness. He would make Jack
smart for his arrogance, his insolence, his cursed condescension so soon
as they were back among the Caribees.
But meanwhile, here, daily tortured by harmless things--tortured by his
soul's imaginings--Wesley was becoming a burden to Kate, who saw too
plainly that he was in misery, and realized that it was largely through
his own inherent weakness and insincerity. He had all the coarse fiber
of his father without the same force in its texture. With merely
superficial good manners, he was never certain whether the punctilious
niceties observed toward him by the Spragues and Atterburys were not a
species of studied satire. Vincent, who had never shown him the
slightest consideration in Acredale, treated him here with the
chivalrous decorum that the code of the South demanded in those days to
a guest. Wesley ground his teeth under the burden, not quite sure
whether it was mockery or malevolence. He watched with malignant
attentiveness the imperceptible change of tone and manner that marked
the family's treatment of the Spragues. There was none of the grave
ceremoniousness he resented in the Atterburys' behavior with them.
Jack was a hobbledehoy son of the house, almost as much as Vincent.
Kate, too, was, he felt certain, treated with a reserve not shown to
Mrs. Sprague or Merry. Brooding on this, brooding on the unhappiness of
his own disposition, which denied him the privilege of enjoying the best
at the moment, indifferent to what might be behind, Wesley had come to
hate the Atterburys for the burden of an obligation that he could never
lift. He hated Mrs. Atterbury for her high-bred, easy ignoring of all
conditions save those that she exacted. He hated Rosa for her gayety,
her absorption in the young scamp Dick. He hated Vincent because he
seemed to think there was no one in the North but the Spragues worthy of
a moment's consideration. It is in hate as in love--what we seek we
find. Every innocent word and sign that passed in the group, in which he
did not seek to make himself one, Wesley construed as a gird at him or
his family. Constantly on the watch for slights or disparagements, the
most thoughtless acts of the two groups were taken by the tormented
egotist as in some sense a disparagement to his own good repute or his
family standing.
Nor were the marked affection and confidence shown Kate by everybody in
the house a mitigation of this malign fabric of humiliation. Jack's
fondness for Kate had not escaped the observant eyes of Dick, who had
confided the secret to Rosa, who had likewise unraveled it to mamma,
and, as she kept nothing from Vincent, the Atterburys had that sort of
interest in Kate that intimate spectators always show in love affairs,
where there are no clashing interests involved. It was a moot question,
however, between the three, when, after weeks of observation, Mrs.
Atterbury declared that Jack was not in love with Miss Boone. "He can't
be," she declared. "He doesn't seek her alone; he doesn't make up to her
in the evening. Half the time when they come together it is by Dick's
arrangement. _He_ seems to be in love with Kate."