The Iron Game - Henry Francis Keenan
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Vincent didn't leave next day, nor for a good many days. He seemed to
get a good deal of "aid and comfort" from those who should have been his
enemies. Mistress Sprague found that he was not in a fit state to
travel; that he needed nursing to prepare him for his journey, and that
no place was so fit as the great guest-chamber in the baronial Sprague
mansion, near his friend Jack. Strange to say, Vincent's eagerness to
get to Richmond and his shoulder-straps were forgotten in the agreeable
pastimes of the big house, where he spent hours enlightening Olympia on
the wonders the Southern soldiers were to perform and the glory that he
(Vincent) was to win. He went of a morning to the post-office, where
Jack was installed recruiting-agent for Acredale township, and made very
merry over the homespun stuff enrolled in defense of the Union.
"Our strapping cavaliers will make short work of your gawky bumpkins;"
he remarked to Jack as the recruits loitered about the wide, shaded
streets, waiting to be forwarded to the rendezvous.
"Don't be too sure of that. These young, boyish-looking fellows are just
the sort of men that met the British at Bunker Hill. They laughed too,
when they saw them; but they didn't laugh after they met them, nor will
your cavaliers," Jack cried, loftily.
"But there's not a full-grown man among all these I've seen. How do you
suppose they are to endure march and battle? None of them can ride. All
our young men ride, and cavalry is the main thing in modern armies."
In the Sprague parlors conversation of this risky sort was eschewed.
Mistress Sprague was anxious that the son of her oldest friend should
return to his mother with only the memory of amiable hospitality in his
heart to show that, although war raged between the people, families were
still friends. Vincent's mother had been one of Mistress Sprague's
bridesmaids, and it was her wish that the children might grow up in the
old kindly ties. So Vincent was made much of. There were companies every
night, and drives and boating in the afternoons, and such merry-making
as it was thought a lad of his years would enjoy. He was a very
entertaining guest; that all Acredale had known in the old vacations
when, with his sister, the pretty Rosa, he spent a summer with
the Spragues.
But, now that there was to be a separation involving the unknown in its
vaguest form, the lad was treated with a tenderness that made the swift
days very sweet to the young rebel. It was from Olympia that he met the
only distinct formality in the manners of his hosts. He had known and
adored her in a boyish way for years, and now, as he contemplated going,
he thought that she ought to exhibit something of the old-time warmth.
In other days she had ridden, walked, and flirted to his heart's desire.
Now she avoided him when Jack was not at hand, and when she talked it
was in a flippant vein that drove him wild with baffled hope. The day
before he was to bid the kind house adieu he had his wish. She was
riding with him over the shaded roadway that curves in bewildering
beauty toward the lake. She seemed in a gentler mood than he had lately
seen her. They rode slowly side by side, but Vincent had a dismal
awkwardness of speech in whimsical contrast to his habitual fluency.
"There's only one thing hateful to me in this war," he said, caressing
the arching neck of his horse, "and that is, the better we do our duty
as soldiers the more sorrow we must bring upon our own friends."
"That's a rather solemn view to take of what Jack regards as the path of
glory."
"Oh, you know what I mean: under the flag there can or ought to be no
friendships--the bullet sent from the musket, the sword drawn in light,
must be aimed blindly. It might be my fate, for example, to meet
Jack, to--to--"
"Yes," Olympia laughed demurely, ignoring the sentimental aspect of
Vincent's remark. "Yes, that might paralyze the arm of valor; but, then,
you and Jack have met before, when duty demanded one thing and affection
another: I don't see that the dilemma softened the blows, or that either
of you are any the worse for them."
Vincent was the real Southerner of his epoch--impulsive, sentimental,
ardent in all that he espoused, without the slightest notion of humor,
though imaginative as a dreamer; love, war, and his State, Virginia,
were passions that he thought it a duty to uphold at any and all times.
He colored under the girl's satiric sally. If she had been a man he
would have bid her to battle on the spot. Her sly fun and gentle malice
he resented as insulting, coarse, and unwomanly. He flashed a look of
piteous, surprised reproach at her as she flecked the flies from the
neck of her horse. He rode along moodily--too angry, too wretched to
trust himself to speak, for he felt sure he must say something bitter.
But, as she gave no sign of resuming the discourse, he was forced to
take up the burden again. Venturing nearer her side, he said in a
conciliating, argumentative tone, as if he had not heard the
foregoing speech:
"Do you know, it seems to me, Olympia, that you of the North do not seem
to realize the seriousness of the war, the determination of our side to
make the South free? Here you go about the common business of life,
parties, balls, dress, and all the follies of peace, as if war could not
affect you at all. Your newspapers are full of coarse jokes at the
expense of your own soldiers, your own President. There seems no
devotion to your own cause, such as we feel in the South. I believe that
if put to a vote more than half the North would side with us to-day."
CHAPTER III.
MALBROOK S'EN VA-T-EN GUERRE.
Olympia had been jogging along, apparently oblivious to everything but
the blazing vision of sun and cloud above the lake, purpling shapes of
mirage, reflecting the smooth surface of the glowing water. But as the
young man's voice--fallen into a melodious murmur--ceased, she took up
the theme with unexpected earnestness.
"That's the error the South has made from the first. You know my father
was a public man. I have been educated more at our dinner-table and in
his talks with guests than at school. That is, the things that have
taken strongest hold of my mind young girls rarely hear or understand.
Now I think I can tell you something that may be of value to you in
official places where you are going. The North is not only in
earnest--it is religiously in earnest. If you know Puritan history you
know what that means. For example: if Jack had hesitated a moment or
made delay to get rank in the army, I should have abhorred him. So would
our mother, though she seems to be dismayed at his serving as a common
soldier. I adore Jack; I think him the finest, the most perfect nature
after my father's--that lives. But I give him up gladly, because to keep
him would be to degrade him. We know that he may fall; that he may come
back to us a cripple or worse. But, as you see, we make no sign. Not a
line of routine has been changed in the house. Jack will march away and
never see a tear in my eye or feel my pulse tremble. It is not in our
Northern blood to give much expression to sentiment, but we feel none
the less deeply--much more deeply, I think, than you exuberant
Southerners; you are impulsive, mercurial, and fickle."
"Oh, don't say that: I can't bear to hear you say it; we have deep
feelings, we are constant, true as steel, chivalrous--"
"Yes, you are delightful people; but you are always living in the past.
Shall I say it? You are womanlike; you can't reason. What you want at
the moment is right, and only that; with us nothing is real until we
have tried and proved it. If you count on Northern apathy you will soon
see your mistake. When Beauregard fired on Fort Sumter the North was of
one mind, and will stay so until all is again as it was."
"Pray don't let us talk on this subject. I'm free to own that it does
not interest me. Then," he added adroitly, "you are readier in argument
than I, because you were brought up in it. But what I want to say is,
that it seems base for me to turn upon the goodness I have met in this
house, and--and--"
"But you need not turn. In battle do your duty like a man. If it should
fall to you to do a kindness to the wounded, do it in memory of the
friends you have here. War is less savage now than it was when your
ancestors and mine tortured each other in the name of God and the king."
"All murder is done for love of one sort or another: war is love of
country; revenge is love of some one else--men rarely kill from hate,"
Vincent stammered, his heart beating at the nearness of what he was
dying to say.
"In that case I hope I shall he hated. I shall shun people who love me,"
and with that she struck the horse a lively tap and soon was far ahead
of her tongue-tied wooer. Was this a challenge? Vincent asked himself,
as he sped after her. When he reached her side the tender words were
chilled on his lips, for Olympia had in her laughing eye the, to him,
odious expression he saw there when she made the irritating speech about
himself and Jack a few minutes before. Fearing a teasing retort, he
bridled the tender outburst and rode along pensively, revolving pretexts
for another day's stay in Acredale. But when they reached home he found
an imperative mandate to set out at once, as his lingering in the North
was subjecting himself and kinsmen to doubt among the zealous partisans
of the Davis party. Olympia was alone in the library when he ran down to
tell Jack that he must start at once. He took it as an omen, and said,
confusedly:
"It is decided; I must go in the morning."
As this had been the plan all along, she looked up at him in surprise,
not knowing, of course, that he had been thinking of putting off the
fixed time.
"Yes, everything has been made ready; Jack will take you to Warchester,
and we shall drive over to see you _en route_."
"It is fortunate the letter from my mother came to-night." He stood
quite, over her chair, his eyes glittering strangely, his
manner excited.
"Do you know what they think at home? They say that I--I am not true to
my cause; that my heart is with the North--that I want to stay here."
"They won't think that when they hear you, as we have, breathing fury
and wrath against the Lincolnites," Olympia briskly replied, as if to
proffer her services as witness to his misguided loyalty to the South.
"Ah, don't be so ungenerous, now--at this time. I never talk like that
now--here--never before you." He hesitated, and his voice dropped. "Why
will you put a fellow in a ridiculous light? Your sneers almost make me
ashamed of my honest pride in my State--my enthusiasm for our
sacred cause."
"Deep feeling isn't so easily shaken; true love should brave all
things--even sneers and blows."
"If I should tell you that I loved somebody, I am sure you would make me
seem ridiculous or ignorant of my own mind."
"Then pray be wise and don't tell me. It's bad enough to be in love,
without being photographed in the agony."
He looked at her in angry perplexity. Could she ever be serious? Was all
the tenderness of the past only heedless coquetry? Had she danced with
him, drove with him, sailed with him, walked in the moonlight and made
much of him in mere wanton mischief? What right had she to be so pretty
and so--without heart or sensibility? A Southern girl with the word love
on a young man's lips would have become a Circe of seductive wooing
until the tale were told, even though she could not give her heart
in return.
"I--I am going to-morrow, you know, and--" Then he almost laughed
himself, for the droll inconsequence of this intelligence, after what
had passed, touched even his small sense of humor. "O Olympia, I mean
that I shall be far away: that I shall not see you after to-morrow.
Won't you say something to encourage me--to give me heart for
the future?"
"Let me see," and she leaned on her elbow musingly, as if construing his
words literally, and quite unaware of the tender intent of his prayer.
"It ought to be a line to go on your sword--there's where you have the
advantage of poor Jack, he has only a musket. But, no, you being a
Southerner, have a coat of arms, and the line must go on that. I used to
know plenty of stirring phrases suitable to young men setting out for
the wars. Perhaps you know them, too; they are to be found in the
copy-books. 'The pen is mightier than the sword' wouldn't do, would it?
Pens are only fit for poets and men of peace? We should have something
brief and epigrammatic. 'That hour is regal when the sentinel mounts on
guard.' There is sublimity in that, but you won't go on guard, being
an officer.
'No blood-stained woes in mankind's story
Should daunt the heart that's set on glory.'
"That's too trivial--the sort of doggerel for newspaper poets' corners
rather than a warrior's shield.
'Think on the perils that environ
The man that meddles with cold iron!'
"That's too much like a caution, and a soldier's motto should urge to
daring. So we'll none of that. What do you say to the distich in honor
of your great ancestor, Pocahontas's husband, John Smith:
'I never yet knew a warrior but thee,
From wine, tobacco, debt, and vice so free.'
"Perhaps, however, that might be regarded as vaunting over your
comrades, who, I've no doubt, relax the tedium of war in temperate
indulgence of some of these vices. 'Put up thy sword; states may be
saved without it,' would sound out of keeping for a warrior whose States
drew the sword when the olive-branch was offered them. You see, I can
not select any text quite suitable to your case?"
"O Olympia, I did not believe you could be so heartless! Be serious."
"Well, Mr. Soldier, if you insist, I know nothing better for a warrior
to bear in mind in war than these simple lines:
'The bravest are the tenderest,
The loving are the daring.'"
"You are right, Olympia--those are noble lines. It gives me courage; the
loving are the daring! I love you; I dare to tell you that I love you!
Ah, Olympia, I love you so well that I have been traitor to my
fatherland! I have loitered here in the hope that you would give me some
sign--some word to take with me in the dark path Fate has set for me
to follow."
He came back to her side now, passion and zeal in his shining eyes,
ardent, elate, expectant. But she put the hand behind her that he
reached out to seize as he fell upon one knee by her chair. Her voice
softened and a warm light shone in her eye when she spoke:
"I beg you to get up; we cold-blooded people up here don't understand
that old-fashioned way." As he started back with something like a groan,
she gave him a quick glance that electrified him. He seized her hand
before she could snatch it away and pressed it to his lips.
"Pray be serious. You are too young to talk of love."
"I am twenty-two; my father was married at nineteen."
"No, dear Vincent, don't talk of this now. You don't know your own mind
yet. I am sure that when you go home and think over the matter you will
see that it would be impossible, but, even if you were sure of yourself,
I never could think of it. You are going to take up arms against all I
hold dear and sacred. If I were your affianced, with the love for you
that you deserve, I would break the pledge when you joined in arms
against my family and country."
"You have known for years, Olympia, that I loved you; that I was only
waiting to finish college to tell you of my love. Why didn't you
tell me--"
"Tell you what?"
"I say, Polly," Jack cried, bursting in, radiant and eager. "I have the
last man of the one hundred--" Observing Vincent he stopped. It seemed
to him a sort of treason to talk of his regiment before the man who was
so soon to be in the ranks against them. "Oh, I can't tell our secrets
before the enemy," he ended, jocosely. The word went to Vincent's heart
like the prod of sharp steel. He gave Olympia one pathetic glance, and,
without a word, hastened from the room. In spite of a great many adroit
efforts, Vincent could get no further speech with Olympia alone that
night. Early in the morning he was driven, with Mrs. Sprague and Jack to
the station. Olympia sent down excuses and adieus, alleging some not
incredible ailing of the sort that is always gallantly at the disposal
of damsels not minded to do things people expect.
Presently, when the lorn lover had been gone three days, a letter came
from Washington to Olympia, and, though it was handed to her by her
mother, the maiden made no proffer to confide its contents to the
naturally curious parent. But we, who can look over the reader's
shoulder, need not be kept in the dark.
"Dear Olympia" (the letter said), "it was hard to leave
without a last word. All the way here I have been thinking
of our little talk--if that can be called a talk where one
side has lost his senses and the other is trifling or mystifying.
I told you that I loved you. I thrill even yet with
the joy of that. You are so wayward and capricious, so
coy, that I began to fear that I never could get your car long
enough to tell you what I felt you must have long known. You
didn't say that you loved me; but, dear Olympia, neither did
you say that you did not. The rose has fallen on the hem
of your robe. When its fragrance steals into your senses,
you will stoop and put the blossom in your bosom. It is the
war that divides us, you say. It will soon pass. And who
knows what may happen to make you glad that, since there
must be strife, I am one of the enemy rather than a stranger?
I feel that we shall be brought together in danger, when it
may be my happiness to serve you or yours. But, even if I
am not so favored, I shall still ask your love. You know
our Southern ways. Whom I love my mother loves. But
my mother and sister Rosa have loved you long and dearly.
They have known you as long as I have, and when you consent
to come to us you will take no stranger's place in the
heart and home of the family. Remember the motto you
gave me. You are a woman, therefore tender; I am daring,
Heaven knows, in aspiring to such a reward as your love.
But I dare to love you; if you cast that love from you, love
will lose its tenderness, bravery its daring. One of the high
mountains of hope whereon I sun my fainting soul is the
knowledge that you love no one else. I won't say that you
should in love hold to the ride 'first come first served,' but I
do say, 'first dare, first win.' And when you reflect on what
you said about the accident of war separating us, just put
Jack in my place. What would you think of a Southern
girl who should refuse him because he fought on the side of
his family and his State? What is the old line? 'I could
not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honor more.' I'm
sure I couldn't ask your love if there were not honor in my
own. The war will be over and forgotten in six months,
but you and I are young; we have long years before us.
The right will win in the contest, and, right or wrong, I am
yours, and only yours, while there are life in my body and
hope in my soul. VINCENT."
In a little glow of what was plainly not displeasure, the young woman
"filed" this "writ of pre-emption," as Jack afterward called it, in
careful hiding, and resumed meditation of the writer. It could not now
be answered, for letters between the lines were subject to censorship,
and Olympia perhaps shrank from adding to her lover's misery by exposing
his rejection to the unfeeling eyes of the postal agents. There was pity
in the resolve as well as prudence. Had Vincent been able to read the
workings of the lady's mind, he would have donned his rebel gray with
more buoyant joy that day in Richmond. Another ally of the absent came
in the course of the day. Miss Boone, the daughter of the opulent
contractor and chief local magnate, called to plan work for the
soldiers. Vincent's name being mentioned, Miss Boone said, in the
apparent effusion of girlish intimacy:
"I like Mr. Atterbury very much. He is a charming fellow. But, for your
family's sake, I am glad he is away from this house." At Olympia's
surprised start she nodded as if to emphasize this, continuing: "Yes,
and for good reasons. You know our house is the high court of
abolitionism? Well, papa's cronies have made Mr. Atterbury's visit cause
of suspicion."
"Suspicion? What do you mean?"
Miss Boone was paling and blushing painfully. "Dear Olympia, I hate to
say it; but you should know it. You will hear it elsewhere. Cruel things
like this always come out. You know that feeling has been very bitter
here since the dreadful attack on the Massachusetts soldiers in
Baltimore? Radicals make no distinction between Democrats and rebels,
and--I'm to say it--but Mr. Atterbury is charged with being a spy
here--and--and your family, being Democrats, are thought to sympathize
with the rebels. Of course, your friends know better. I and many more
know that the Atterburys and Spragues have been intimate for thirty
years. But in war-time people seem to lose their senses and change their
opinions like lake breezes; prejudices grow like gourds, and the people
who do least and talk loudest make public sentiment."
"What an outrageous state of things!" Olympia cried, hotly. "Our family
sympathize with traitors indeed! Why, it was my father who, in the
Senate, upheld Jackson when he stamped out South Carolina in its
rebellion. Oh! it is monstrous, such a calumny. Why, just think of it!
The only man in the family is a private soldier, when he might have been
high in rank, with such influences as we could bring to bear. O Kate! it
almost makes one pray for a defeat to punish such ingrates!"
"Yes; but for Heaven's sake don't let any one hear you say such a
thing--for your brother's sake! He is already the victim of the feeling
I have spoken about. He was to have had the captaincy of the first one
hundred men he raised. But the Governor has been made to change the
usual rule, and the colonel is to appoint the officers."
"And Jack isn't to have a commission?"
"No, not now; only men of the war party are to be made officers."
"Good heavens! Nobody could be more eager for the war than Jack. It is
his passion. His delight in it shocks my mother, who hates war. What
stronger evidence of sympathy for the cause could he show than joining
the army before finishing college?"
"But he is a Democrat--and--and--only Republicans are to be trusted at
first." Miss Boone blushed as she stammered this, for it was her own
father, in his function as chairman of the war committee, who had
insisted upon this discrimination. Worse still, but this Kate did not
mention--it was Boone's own work that kept Jack from his expected
epaulets. There had long been a feud between Boone and the late Senator
Sprague, and Olympia conjectured most of what the daughter reserved.
"Your brother has done wonders, everybody says; he has the finest
fellows in the township, and he ought to be colonel, at least," Miss
Boone said, rising to go.
"Oh, I have no fear that he will not win his way," Olympia replied,
cheerfully. "The brave in battle are captains, no matter what rank
they hold."
The odious partisanship and ready calumny of her own compatriots gave a
strange bent to her mind in dealing with another problem. Vincent, too,
had suffered from the wretched battle of his family's enemies. After
all, might he not be right? Might the war not be a mere game of havoc
played by the base and unscrupulous? Country, right or wrong, had been
her family watchword since her ancestor flew to fight the British
invaders. It was Jack's watchword, too, and his conduct in battle should
put these wretches to shame. She thought more kindly of the rebel in
this vengeful mood, and straightway ran up-stairs, where, sitting by the
open window and lulled by the piping of the robins, she took the letter
from its pretty covert, read it again with heightened color, and,
smiling rosily at the face she saw in the mirror, raised it to her lips
and sighed softly.
When a whole people have but one thought in mind that thought becomes
mania. Acredale had but this one thought, "Beat rebellion and punish
rebels." "On to Richmond!" was the cry, and forming ranks to go there
the business that everybody took in hand. These had been great days to
Jack. He began to feel something of the burden that a feudal chief must
have borne at the summoning of the clans. So soon as it spread in the
country-side that "young Sprague had 'listed," all the "ageable" sons of
the soil were fired with a burning zeal to take up arms and bear him
company. Boys from sixteen to twenty these were for the most part, and
there was bitter grumbling when Jack firmly refused to take the names of
any under twenty. Some he solaced with a gun, a pistol, or such object
as he knew was dear to the country boy's heart. They returned to the
relieved hearthstone loud in Jack's praise, having his promise to enlist
them when they were twenty, if the war lasted so long; and if the wise
smiled at this, wasn't it well known that the great army now gathering
was to set out at latest by the 4th of July? And didn't everybody know
that it was going to march direct to Richmond? There were trying scenes
too, in the _role_ Jack had assumed so gayly. He began to see that war
had ministers of pain and sorrow hardly less cruel than those dealing
death and wounds. Tearful parents came to him day by day to beg his help
in restoring sons who had fled to the wars. Others came to warn him that
if their boys applied to him he must refuse them, as they were
under age.