The Iron Game - Henry Francis Keenan
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"A score or more of the men who escaped from the Richmond prison a few
weeks ago, arrived at Washington to-day from Fort Monroe. The party
endured untold privations in the swamps between Williamsburg and our
line on the Warwick, but all came in safely, except two men who died
from the results of their wounds. The expedition was planned and carried
out by an agent of General Butler, who has been in Virginia since the
unfortunate attempt to rescue Captain Boone of the 'Caribee' regiment.
At the moment the party reached the Union outpost, one of the most
daring of the Union men, Sergeant Jacques of the Caribees, was, it is
thought, mortally wounded."
Merry, too, had seen the story, and came over to show it to Mrs.
Sprague.
"I have seen it, I have seen it. Who of the Caribees can these be? Who
is Jacques? I never heard that name here."
"Ah! he must be one of the town recruits. It's a French name."
"Yes, it is part of a rather famous French name," Mrs. Sprague replied,
half smiling at Merry's innocence. "Something must be done to get into
communication with these escaped men. Some of them must have seen Jack.
If there are Caribees among them, you may be sure they have messages
from our boys. I think I shall set out for Washington, or ask Mr.
Brodie to go."
"That's better. Mr. Brodie can get at the men and you couldn't. I shall
be in a fever until we have heard from them."
Brodie agreed with the ladies when, later, they discussed the matter
with him, and that evening he set out for Washington. Mrs. Sprague at
the tea-table with Merry, who made it a point to give the lonely mother
as much of her time as she could spare, was still pondering the
paragraph when the sound of carriage-wheels came in through the closed
curtains. Then the front door opened without knocking, and there was a
rustle in the hallway, and then, with a simultaneous scream, three
agitated females, to wit, Mrs. Sprague, Merry, and Olympia, in a
confused mass.
"O my child! my child!"
"Mamma!"
"Dearest, dearest Olympia," Merry splutters, wildly embracing both.
"Oh, how delightful to be here, to see you, mamma as peaceful and serene
as in the old days! I thought I should never get home. I left Richmond
three weeks ago. I was held at Fredericksburg for ten days. Then I had
to turn back when we got to Manassas, through some red tape lacking
there. But here I am. Here I am at home--ugh!--I shall never quit it
again--never."
"But, my child. Tell us--Jack!"
"Jack? Haven't you heard from him? He escaped three weeks ago. It was he
who got the men out of the prison. Dick was with him. Surely you have
heard of that?" and Olympia sank into the nearest chair, all the gayety
gone from her face, her eyes questioning the two wretched women. Neither
could for the moment control her agitation; neither was capable of
thinking. All that was in their minds was this dire specter of a month's
silence. Alive, Jack or Dick would have found means to relieve
their anxiety.
"Surely you heard that a party had escaped from Libby and made their way
to Fort Monroe?" Olympia cried, desperately.
"Fort Monroe?" Mrs. Sprague echoed mechanically. "Yes, ah, yes. Merry,
where's the paper?"
Olympia devoured the meager scrap and then dropped the journal on her
knees. Her mind was in a whirl. In Richmond the escape had been
announced, then the news that the party had been surrounded in the
swamp, then day by day details of the taking of straggling negroes and
one or two soldiers, but no name that even resembled Jack's. The
Atterburys, after the first painful sensation, had given their approval
of Jack's going, and used all means in their power to get such facts as
would comfort Olympia. They assured her that Jack had reached the Union
lines, and then she had set out northward, expecting to find him at home
or in communication with his family. No word from Dick? No word from
Jack? They were dead, and she--she had urged them to the mad adventure!
She had given Jack no peace, had fired Dick to the fatal enterprise. She
dared not look in the tearless eyes of her mother. She dared not face
the ghastly questioning in Merry's meek eye. Brodie had gone down to see
the escaped men. Perhaps he would discover something. This was the small
comfort left the three when, near midnight, they ended the woful
conference.
The next day Olympia was visited by a representative of the _Crossbow_,
the chief journal of Warchester, and urged to write a narrative of her
adventures in the rebel capital. Until her friends made her see how much
effect it would have in clearing Jack's reputation she shrank from the
publicity, but with that end in view--Jack's honor--she wrote, and wrote
with strength and clearness, the moving incidents of her brother's
capture, captivity, and escape--or his bold effort to escape. This she
told so simply, so directly, so vividly, that the truth of it at once,
struck the most prejudiced reader, who had no cause to continue in his
prepossession. After the publication in the Warchester paper scores who
had sided with the Boone faction either called or wrote to confess their
error. Even the Acredale _Monitor_, a weekly sheet notoriously in the
interest of Boone, felt constrained to copy parts of the account and
publish with it a shambling retraction of previous criticism, based on
imperfect knowledge, that it had printed concerning Sergeant Sprague.
"Death," it declared, "has obliterated all feeling that existed against
our young townsman, whose conduct, though open to grievous doubt in the
early part of his military career has been amply atoned for in the
intrepid enterprise in which he seems to have lost his life."
CHAPTER XXIX.
A WOMAN'S REASON.
The still, small voice that makes itself a force in the heart, which the
poets call our mentor and the moralists conscience, had been painfully
garrulous in Kate Boone's breast since the angry parting with Jack at
Rosedale. At first, in the wild grief of Wesley's death, she had hugged
hatred of Jack to her heart as a sublime revenge for the murder. But
with the hot partisanship allayed in the long weeks of reflection
preceding the rumor of Jack's own death, she began dimly to admit of
palliation in her lover's fatal act. Her father, the Boone faction, all
who had access to her, held the shooting to be a craftily planned
murder, calculated to bring advantage to the assassin. To check the
sacrilegious love she felt in her heart, she too had been forced to
believe, to admit the worst. But when the image of Jack came to her
mind, as it did day and night, it was as the gay, frank, chivalrous
Hotspur, as unlike a murderer as Golgotha to Hesperides. She had never
dared to confide to her father that vows had been exchanged between,
them--that they were, in fact, affianced lovers. He, never suspecting,
talked with her day after day of the signal vengeance in store for the
miscreant; how he had enlisted the aid of the most powerful in
Washington; how he had instructed the emissaries sent to Richmond to
effect Wesley's release, to direct all their energies to entrapping the
murderer into the ranks of the escaping prisoners.
She had often been startled by her father's far-seeing, malignantly
planned vengeances, and, now that the rumor of Jack's death began to
settle into belief, she was appalled by a sudden sense of complicity in
a murderous plot. Not that she believed her father capable of murder or
its procuration, but, knowing his potency with the authorities, she saw
that there were many ways in which Jack might be sacrificed in the
natural course of military duties. She had heard things of the sort
discussed--how inconvenient men had been sent into pitfalls and never
heard of again.
She began dimly to see that, at worst, Jack's act was not the calculated
murder her father held it to be. In her own tortured mind there had been
at first but one clear process of reasoning. That process, whenever she
began to gather the shreds, had led her mind straight to the conviction
that Jack's shot had been premeditated, that the chance had been
prearranged with the enemies of her brother. At first her only distinct
thought was that the hapless Wesley had been lured to his death. The
hand of the man she loved had sent the fatal shot into the poor boy's
body. Had it been in self-defense--even in the heat of uncontrollable
anger--she could have found mitigation for Jack; but there was neither
the justification of self-defense nor the plausible pretext of anger.
One word of warning, which Jack could have spoken, would have saved
Wesley from the rash, the dastardly attempt upon the Rosedale household.
The plot, in all its details, must have been known to Jack or Dick, else
how explain their presence in the chamber, armed and ready for
the murder?
It had been a conspiracy of delusive kindness from the day Wesley
entered Rosedale. The frankness and kindliness of the Atterburys had
been assumed to lure him to his fatal adventure. Boone himself believed
that Jack's ignoble ambition and envy had been the main motives in the
murder. To this Kate, from the first, opposed a resolute incredulity.
"You don't know the fellow, I tell you," Boone doggedly argued. "He's as
like his father as two snakes in a hole. Old man Sprague never let a man
stand in his way. Jack's the same. He thought Wes' kept him from the
shoulder-straps, and he got him out of the way. Wasn't he always
snooping 'round in the regiment trying to undermine your brother? Wasn't
he always trying to be popular? Ah, I know the Spragues. But I'll give
them a wrench that'll twist their damned pride out of them. I'll have
that cold-blooded young villain shot in a hollow square, and I'll have
it done in this very district, that the whole county may know the
disgrace of the high and mighty Spragues."
"No, father." Kate had heard all this before, but she, for the first
time, resolved upon setting her father right. "No, Jack hasn't a
particle of the feeling you ascribe to him. I don't think he liked poor
Wesley. They were totally unlike in nature, and I think that Jack felt
deeply that he had been wronged by Wesley's appointment. But it was not
in his nature to seek revenge. He would have fought Wesley openly, but
he would never be one of a gang of murderers. I think I can see how Jack
was led into the part he played. It does not lessen the guilt, but it
relieves him of the odious suspicions I first felt."
Then Boone, in irritable impatience, reminded her of her own earlier
utterances; how from his first coming Wesley had been treated with
studied distrust; how he had been denied the boyish intimacy that
existed between Jack and Dick; how he was insensibly made to feel that
he was in the house under a different cartel from that of Jack and Dick;
that he was a prisoner on parole, and his word was doubted. Nothing
could make him believe, he declared, getting up moodily, but that the
whole lot of them had set out to drive Wesley into a corner and then
kill him, as they had done.
Kate sighed wearily as her father left the room. If she could only be as
well assured as her strong words implied! Ah! if she could fetch back
her lover by getting at the truth, how willingly she would fly to
Rosedale and learn all! But she dared not question, lest questioning
should confirm, where she now at least had the miserable solace of
doubt. Could it be true? Could Jack be the base schemer her father
depicted him? Then her mind ran back to Rosedale. She lived again all
the enchanting days of that earthly paradise. She saw Wesley's furtive
starts, his strange disappearances, his growing melancholy, his moody
reticence when she questioned him. Ah! if he had but confided to her! If
she had but dreamed of the desperate purpose born of the loneliness he
lived in! If Jack had been loyal to him, loyal to her, Wesley would have
been warned that eager eyes were upon him, ready wits reading his
purposes, and revengeful hatred ready to slaughter him.
When the news came that Jack had lost his life in the very enterprise
Wesley had contemplated, Kate collapsed under the shock. Now, when it
was too late, she convinced herself that he was innocent. If she could
have recalled him to life, she cried in self-reproach, she would not ask
whether he was all her first impulse had painted him. She had borne up
with something like composure when Wesley's death came upon her; but
now, tortured by a sense of responsibility in Jack's fate, she gave way
to the grief she had so long repressed. If she had not upbraided him, if
she had not accused him, in so many words, of murder, he would never
have embarked on the mad plot of escape.
She had driven him to his death. She had sat silent while Acredale rang
with calumnies against him. It was not too late yet to make reparation.
She would proclaim publicly that her brother had rashly courted his own
death; that Jack had unknowingly shot him down, as many a man does, in
battle, shoot his best friend. She resolved on the instant to go to the
stricken family and make such expiation there as was in her power. But
was there any certainty that the report of Jack's death was true?
Grievous mistakes of the same sort had been made repeatedly in the
public journals. She was not able to formulate any plan at first. Her
father was more morose than ever. He seemed in his way to deplore the
young man's death, but not in pity, as she soon learned. Death had
robbed him of a cruelly meditated revenge. She wisely made no comment
when this brutal feeling betrayed itself; but for the first time in her
life the girl shuddered at the sight of her father. The vague rumors of
years, that had been whispered about him--rumors which of old had fired
her soul with hot indignation, came back insidiously. She shuddered. Was
she to lose all--brother, lover, father--in this unnatural strife? She
had been so loyal to her father. She had been so proud of him when
others reviled. She had felt so serenely confident of the nobleness of
his heart, the generosity of his impulses. She had always been able to
mold him, as she thought. Could it be possible that he was human to her,
inhuman to the rest of the world? Then her mind, tortured by newly
awakened doubts, ran back over the events leading to the rupture with
the Spragues. She groaned at the retrospect. It was injustice that had
displaced Jack in the command of the company. It was injustice that had
marked her father's conduct in the Perley feud.
Grief is a logician of very direct methods. Its clarifying processes
work like light in darkness. Kate saw the past in her father's conduct
with terrifying vividness. She realized that it was her father's harsh
purpose that had arrayed Acredale against him. It was his pride and
arrogant obstinacy that had brought about the loss of all she loved. The
fates had immolated the helpless; were the fates preparing a still
bitterer expiation? Life had very little left for her now, but she
resolved that she would no longer be isolated by her father's enmities.
The great house had been gloomy enough for father and daughter during
the last miserable months, but he still fled to her for comfort. It was
one evening when he came in, apparently in better spirits than he had
shown since Wesley's death, that she told him what had been filling her
mind since Jack's death.
"O father, I think I see that our lives have been unworthy, if not
altogether wrong. Surely such neighbors as ours could not all take sides
against you, if you were in the right in all the feuds that have divided
us as a family from the people of Acredale."
Then, in an almost imploring tone of reproach, she retraced the harsh
episodes in the father's dealings with the Perleys, with the community,
and, finally, the quarrel with the Spragues, involving in it the lives
of Wesley and Jack. Her voice softened into tremulousness. She arose,
and in her old pleading way pulled the shaggy head down on her breast,
pressing her lips on the high, bare forehead.
"Dear father, all this is unchristian; you have in reality been waging
war against women and children. Jack was a mere boy, Richard is a boy. I
don't go into other enmities, where you have used the enormous power of
wealth to crush the helpless. If you had not alienated the Spragues and
encouraged Wesley in overbearing Jack, my brother would be alive to-day.
My sweetheart--yes, Jack was dearer than all the world to me--he would
not be dead to-day. Ah! father, father, what good comes of anger--what
joy of revenge? You have brought about the death of these two boys. Is
it not time to look at life with a new heart--with clear-seeing eyes?"
Elisha Boone sat quite still. He had listened at first with a flush of
anger, which deepened as the girl pleaded, until it died away and left
his face very pale. He pushed himself away from the clinging figure, as
if the better to see her face. Then his head drooped. He sighed heavily,
rose and without a word left the room. Kate heard him ascending the
stairs, then the sound of his room door softly closing. Had the hateful
fires of vengeance been quenched? It was her father's way, when
resolutely opposed, to quit the scene and without confessing himself in
the wrong, do as Kate urged. The next morning he was gone before she
reached the breakfast-table. There was a note on her plate in his
handwriting. She read with a sinking heart:
"MY DAUGHTER: If what you said last night is true, you
can not be the daughter to me that you have been. I am
going to Washington, and when I come back you will know
that your brother was deliberately murdered, and that his
murderer, even in the grave, is held guilty before all men
of the crime."
The servant confirmed the tidings. Her father had arisen early and
departed on the first train. What could it mean? Had he some evidence
that she had not heard? Had Jack left papers incriminating him? Ah! why
carry the hideous feud further? Why blast the melancholy repose of the
living, by fastening this stain upon the dead? But they could not. She
knew it. She could herself refute any proof brought forward. She would
tell all. She would reveal their tender relationship, and surely then
any one, knowing the young man's nature, would scout the assertion of
his willfully shooting Wesley. But surely Olympia and Mrs. Sprague must
be able to tell, and tell decisively, the circumstances in the tragedy.
She would go to them. She owed this to the living; she owed it still
more imperatively to the dead. She had not seen Olympia since her
return. Mrs. Sprague had been too infirm to see her when she called. But
she would not heed rebuffs now. In such a cause, on such a mission, she
would have stood at the Sprague door a suppliant until even the
obstinacy of her father would have relented. On her way across the
square she saw Merry coming from the post. She turned out of her way,
and hurrying to the near-sighted spinster held out her hand,
saying, softly:
"Ah, Miss Merry, I'm so glad to see you! I have been meaning to call on
you ever since I heard of your return, but, what with sorrow and
illness, I have put it off, and now I want you to take me home with you.
Will you not?"
The pleading tone, the caressing clasp of the hand, the sadly changed
face, the somber black weeds, made the voice and figure so much unlike
the old Kate, that Merry stood for an instant confused and blushing as
she stammered:
"Bless me, Miss Kate, I--I--shouldn't have known you. Ah, I am very glad
to see you; sisters will be very glad to see you, too. Do, do come right
along with me. I'm afraid the parlor won't be very sightly, but you
won't mind, will you?"
Kate squeezed the hand still resting in her own, and drawing the long
veil back over face, she walked silently with the puzzled spinster,
unable to broach the theme she had at heart. Merry spared her the
torture of going at it obliquely.
"I have just been at the Spragues. Poor dears, they are in dreadful
distress. Mrs. Sprague is preparing to go in search of the body, but
Olympia won't give in that Jack is killed. She says that if he had been
she certainly would have known it in Richmond, for there are couriers
twice a day from the rebel outposts to the capital; that the Atterburys
had taken special measures to learn the fate of the escaped prisoners;
that, besides this, several young men in Richmond, who knew Jack well,
had been sent down the peninsula with the prisoners, to befriend him in
case he were retaken."
"And Olympia believes that Jack is alive?"
"Yes, firmly."
"Where does she think he is?"
"She believes that he is among a squad separated from the rest of the
prisoners, near the Union lines. It was asserted in Richmond that many
had crossed the James River, and were making for the Dismal Swamp, or
into Burnside's lines in North Carolina."
"Dear Miss Merry, I--I--think I won't go in now," Kate said,
tremblingly. "I must see Olympia. Perhaps I can help them in the search
for Jack, and you know there is no time to lose. I shall come and see
you all soon."
She squeezed the astonished Merry's hand, convulsively, and shot off,
leaving the bewildered lady quite speechless, so speechless that, when
she reached the stately presence of Aunt Pliny, she forgot the
commissions she had been sent to execute, and was at once reviled by the
parrot as "a no-account dawdler."
Meanwhile, Kate, with wild, throbbing hope in her heart that kindled
color in her pale cheeks and light in her weary eyes, sped away to the
Spragues. There was no tremor in the hand that raised the dragon-headed
knocker, nor hesitancy in the voice that bade the servant say that "Miss
Boone requested a few moments' conversation with Miss Sprague."
Olympia came presently into the reception-room, and the girls met with a
warm embrace.
"Ah, Olympia, I have been made so--so--glad by what Merry tells me!
You--do--not believe that your brother is dead?" Her voice faltered, and
Olympia, gazing at her fixedly, said:
"No, I shall not believe Jack is dead until I see his body. Poor mother,
who believes the worst whenever we are out of her sight, has given up
all but the faintest hope. I shall not. I know Jack so well. I know that
it would take a good deal to kill him, young and strong as he is.
Besides that, I know that the Atterburys would find means to let us
know, if there were any certainty as to his fate. Poor Jack! It would be
an unendurable calamity if he were to die before the monstrous calumnies
that have been published about him are proved lies."
"Dear Olympia, that is one reason of my coming. In my horror at
Rosedale, I, too, believed that John had been in a plot to entrap
Wesley; but I--I--know better now, and I have come to tell you that it
is no less my duty than my right to see that your brother's memory is
made as spotless as his life."
"I knew it; I knew you would, do it; I told Jack so in Richmond, almost
the last words I said before he set out on this miserable adventure. I
told him you were not the girl I took you for if you could believe him
to be such a dastard, when you had time to get over the shock of poor
Wesley's death. You never heard the whole story of that dreadful night.
I must tell it to you--as he would if he were here, and I know you would
believe him." The two girls sat down, hand in hand, and Olympia told
the tale as it has been set down in these pages.
Kate was sobbing when the story ended. She flung her arms about
Olympia's neck, and for a time the two sat silent, tearful.
"Oh, why didn't he tell me this at the time? It was not Jack's bullet
that entered poor Wesley's body. Jack was at his right, at the side of
the bed. Wesley's wound was on the left side, and the shot must have
come from Jones's pistol!"
"I remember that; but Jack's remorse put all thought of everything else
out of my head. I recall, perfectly, that the wound was in Wesley's left
side. Oh, if I could only get that word to Jack! I If--"
"I'll get it to him if he's alive. I, or mine, have been his undoing! I
shall make amends. Ah, Olympia, I--I am ashamed to feel so full of
joy--forgive me."
"It isn't your fault, dear, that you didn't know Jack as we do," Olympia
said, tenderly.
"What are your plans?" Kate asked, presently.
"Mother insists upon going to the peninsula and examining the ground,
questioning all who took part in the pursuit, and seeing with her own
eyes every wounded man in the neighborhood. I don't know whether we can
get passes, but we shall set out at once and do our best."
"O Olympia. I must--I must go with you! I shall die if I remain here
doing nothing--helpless! Let me go. I can aid you much. I can surely get
all the passports required. I can do many things that you couldn't do,
for my father--"
She stopped and colored. Her father! What was she rashly promising for
him? Dead, he was bent on Jack's dishonor; living, he would never rest
until Jack's life was condemned.
"Ah, yes--that's true. Your father is potent at headquarters. I can
answer for mamma. We shall be delighted and comforted to have you. I
shall need you as much as mamma needs me. We are only waiting for Mr.
Brodie's report. I don't expect much from his researches. It is only a
woman's heart that upholds one in such trials as this search means."