The Iron Game - Henry Francis Keenan
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"Mr. Boone, your daughter has been exposed to a great danger. We may be
able to save her, but it will require great patience."
"Danger, doctor! What do you mean?"
"Your daughter has caught the most hideous of all diseases--small-pox!"
Elisha Boone started to his feet. "Great God! where could she catch
small-pox?"
"She caught it nursing young Sprague. I thought you knew of that;" and
the doctor regarded the incredulous, terror-stricken face of the father
with bewildered fixity. Well he might. The first rod of the moral law
had just struck him. The vengeance he had so subtly planned had turned
into retributive justice. He had refused Kate's prayer; he had driven
her to this mad search and the contagion now periling her life, or, if
it were spared, leaving her a hideous specter of herself. This passed
through his shattered mind as the doctor stood regarding him.
"What do you propose doing?" he finally asked, to get his thoughts from
the torturing grip of conscience.
"I propose to install two trained nurses in the house. You are not to
let a soul know what your daughter is suffering from. I hope to be able
to check the evil in the blood, but I must be secure against any form of
meddling. You must avoid your daughter's chamber--indeed, it would be
better if you could quit Acredale for a few days. You would be less
embarrassed by intrusive neighbors and keep your conscience clear of
evasions."
So it was settled that Boone should take up his quarters in Warchester,
coming out late every night for news.
Meanwhile, Acredale had read with amazement, first, of the finding of
Jack Sprague among the rebels at Point Lookout, then, the extraordinary
story of the court-martial and death-sentence. Every one called at the
Sprague mansion, but it was in the hands of the servants, Olympia and
her guest having returned to Washington so soon as the story of her
brother's peril reached her. Dick, too, had flown to his adored Jack,
and Acredale, confounded by the swift alternations in the young
soldier's fortunes, settled down to wait the outcome with a tender
sorrow for the bright young life eclipsed in disgrace so awful, death so
ignominious.
We have looked on while most of the people in this history worked
through night to light in the moral perplexities besetting them. We have
seen warriors in love and danger gallantly extricating themselves and
plucking the bloom of safety from the dragon path of danger. We have
seen a moral combat in the minds of most of the people who have had to
do with our luckless Jack. But all herein set down has been the merest
November melancholy compared to the charnel-house of dead hopes and
baffled purposes that tortured Elisha Boone. Unlovely as Boone has
seemed to us, he had one of the prime conditions of human goodness--he
loved. He had loved very fondly his son Wesley. He loved very tenderly
his daughter Kate.
With this love came the sanctification that must abide where love is. I
don't think he had much of what may be called the second condition of
human goodness--reverence. If he had, we should never have seen him push
revenge to the verge of crime. Richard Perley, it is true, accuses him
of a turpitude that makes a man shudder and abhor; but allowances must
be made for the exaggeration of a careless spendthrift--a "good fellow,"
than whom I can conceive of nothing so useless and mischievous in the
human economy. For my part, I think I could endure the frank
heartlessness of a man like Boone more philosophically than the false
good-nature of the creature men call a good fellow.
Obviously, Boone did not take Dick Perley's estimate of him very
seriously. He, too, could have told a tale not without its strong
features of a shiftless set, constantly borrowing, constantly
squandering, constantly provoking the thrifty to accumulate unguarded
properties. All this, however, had faded from the old man's mind now. He
had avenged himself upon the life-long scorners of his name and fame;
but the blow that shattered their pride had sent a dart to his own
heart. His beautiful Kate, his big-hearted, high-spirited, man-witted
girl!--she would bear a leper-taint for life, and his hand had put the
virus on her perfect flesh!
In a few days the black in his hair withered to an ashen white. His
flesh fell away. He could neither eat nor sleep. He shambled through the
obscure streets of Warchester, or lingered wistfully in the beech woods
behind his own palatial home in Acredale, staring at the window of his
daughter's chamber. The week passed in such mental torture as tries the
strong when confronted by the major force of conscience. Then the doctor
told him that he had balked the plague; that Kate was recovering from
varioloid; that beyond a transparency of skin, which would add to her
beauty rather than impair it, there would be no sign of the attack.
Elisha Boone slept in his own home that night, and, for the first time
in forty years, he fell upon his knees--upon his knees! Indeed, the
doctor found him so at midnight, when he came with a request from his
daughter to come to her room. The doctor, with a word of warning against
agitating the sufferer, wisely retired from the solemn reconciliation
which, without knowing the circumstances, he knew was to take place
between father and child. She was propped up upon pillows whose texture
her flesh rivaled in whiteness. She opened her arms as the specter of
what had been her father flew to her with a stifled cry.
"O father, we have both been wicked! we have both been punished! Help me
to do my part; help me to bear my burden."
It was hope, mercy, and peace the meeting brought. The next day Elisha
Boone bade Kate a tender farewell. She did not ask him where he was
going. She knew, and the light in her eye shone brighter as he rode in
the darkness over the bare fields and through the sleeping towns to the
capital, where Jack's fate was hanging in the balance. With Boone's
influence to aid them, Jack's friends found a surprising change in the
demeanor of the officials, hitherto captious and indifferent. Boone
himself laid the case before the President, omitting certain details not
essential to the showing of the monstrous injustice done a brave
soldier. The President listened attentively, and with the expression,
half sad and half droll, with which he softened the asperities of
official life, said, humorously:
"I wish by such simple means as courts-martial we could find out more
such soldiers as this; we need all of that sort we can get." He touched
a bell, and, when a clerk appeared in response, he said, "Ask General
McClellan to come in for a moment before he leaves."
What need to go into the details? The court reconvened, and traversed
the charges, which were disproved or withdrawn. John Sprague was
pronounced guiltless on every specification, and, on General McClellan's
recommendation, was promoted to a captaincy and assigned to the
headquarters staff. I might go on and tell of Jack's daring on the
Peninsula and his immeasurable usefulness to McClellan in the
Williamsburg contest and the final wondrous change of base from the
Chickahominy to the James; how his services were recognized by promotion
to a colonelcy on the battle-field of Malvern; and how, when McClellan
was wronged by Stanton, and removed from the army, Jack broke his sword
and swore that he would never serve again. But, thinking better of it,
he applied for a place in Hancock's corps, and was by his side from
Fredericksburg to Gettysburg. You have seen from the very first what was
going to happen. The marriages all took place, just as you have guessed
from the beginning. Young Dick was too impatient and too skeptical to
wait until the end of the war, and, to the amazement of his aunts and
the amusement of Acredale, he carried Rosa off, one day, and was
secretly married in the rector's study at Warchester, so that his first
son was born under the Stars and Bars in Richmond, while Dick was
beleaguering the walls at Fort Walthall, four miles away. The other
young people waited rationally until a month or two after the peace, and
while they were still entitled to wear the blue, and then they were
wedded. It was said that Kate made the most beautiful bride ever seen in
Warchester, for it was there they were married.
THE END.