Kitobni o'qish: «The Master of Warlock: A Virginia War Story», sahifa 11

XX
Two home-comings

News of Agatha's safe return to Virginia had been sent to Colonel Archer by a courier, on the morning of her arrival at Stuart's headquarters, and the octogenarian promenaded up and down the porch all the next day, during her homeward journey.

He had greatly grieved to have his "ladybird" undertake her late perilous enterprise at all. But with him at least Agatha was accustomed to have her way, and moreover the spirit of the old soldier was strong within him still, so that he was intensely in sympathy with Agatha's courageous purpose to render such service as a woman might to the cause that both had at heart.

But Agatha had a harder task before her now. Remembering the heart-broken tone in which he had bidden her good-bye on the former occasion, and easily imagining the suffering he must have endured during her absence, both from loneliness and from apprehension for her safety, she thought with something like terror of her new necessity of leaving him again, almost in the very hour of his joy at her return. For it was her resolute purpose to set out again within a very few days, – as soon, indeed, as she could feel confidence that her preliminary letters would reach their destination before her own arrival there.

There were other matters that troubled her, too. She must tell her Chummie the reason for her second journey, and that would be a distressing thing for her to do. She must tell him frankly – for she would never in the least trifle with truth, especially in dealing with him – that she had learned to love Baillie Pegram, and that she had in effect put it out of possibility that Baillie Pegram should ever ask for knowledge of that fact.

To a woman of her sensitively proud nature, such a confession, even to her grandfather, seemed almost shameful. She shrank from the very thought of it, and flushed crimson every time it came to her mind during that long day's ride. Yet not for one moment did she falter in her determination to undergo the ordeal. Not for one moment did she entertain a thought of evading the painful confession, or in any way disguising the truth. So much was due to her grandfather, and never in her life had she cheated him of his dues as Chummie. It was due to herself also. To shrink from a duty because of its painfulness would be cowardice, and there was no touch or trace of that most detestable weakness in her soul.

"Anyhow," she resolved, "I'll let him have one whole day of joy before I grieve him with the news that I must go away again. And in telling him of my first journey I'll say as little as I can about the dangers encountered and the hardships endured; I'll make as much of a frolic of it as I can in the telling. Surely there will be no untruthfulness in that."

That day's journey was a long one, but the start was early, and Baillie Pegram's horse was a willing one, as that energetic young man's horses were apt to be, while as for the troopers of the escort, they and their horses were accustomed to follow at any pace their leader might set. It was barely three o'clock in the afternoon, therefore, when the cavalcade arrived at Willoughby, and Agatha threw herself into the old gentleman's arms.

"Oh, Agatha!"

"Oh, Chummie!"

That at first was all that the two could say. When Colonel Archer found voice he greeted the troopers and bade them leave their horses to the care of his servants. For the men were of that class, socially, to which Colonel Archer belonged, and there was no thought at that time in Virginia of treating a gentleman otherwise than as a gentleman, merely because he happened to be a private soldier.

"You will be my guests for the night," the host said, quite as if that settled the matter. But the sergeant had orders which he must obey, – orders which Stuart, with his unfailing foresight, had probably given, to make sure that the presence of his men at Willoughby overnight might not spoil an occasion of tender affection.

"Thank you very cordially, Colonel Archer," answered the sergeant; "but we are under orders to move on toward Loudoun County to-night. We are permitted to rest the horses for three hours only. After that we must march about a dozen miles before sleeping, so that we may complete a little scouting expedition into Loudoun to-morrow. Our orders on that point are peremptory."

"Well, Ladybird, we'll have the gentlemen to dinner at any rate. As soon as I heard of your coming I went out with my gun, and brought back two big wild turkeys, as fat as butter. I thought you might come under escort, so I've had them put both the birds on the spit. I'll wager you gentlemen haven't seen a wild turkey this fall."

So he ran on with his hospitable greetings, managing in his joyous nervousness to upset two of the glasses which he had ordered a servant to bring with the decanters, for the troopers' refreshment. Agatha managed presently to get a word with him aside.

"It is three o'clock, Chummie – an hour before dinner. I'll have time enough to boil myself a little. Think of it, Chummie, I haven't had a hot bath for a whole week!" Then turning to her escort she excused herself until the dinner-hour.

This was an unhappy circumstance, as Agatha learned when she came down, fresh-faced, to the dinner. For, left alone with the troopers, the old gentleman naturally asked them concerning the details of her coming into Stuart's lines, and as the story of her dash through the canister fire was echoing throughout the army, the young fellows grew enthusiastic in their minute descriptions of her peril and her heroism. When Agatha reappeared, therefore, the old gentleman was all a-tremble. He met her at the foot of the stairway, and a little scene followed, which told the girl not only that he knew all that had been most harrowing in her experiences, but that the knowledge of it would make her coming absence cruelly hard for him to bear.

At dinner he found himself too tremulous to carve, and, for the first time in his life, he relinquished that most hospitable of all a host's offices to the younger men.

"Never mind, Ladybird," he said, cheerily, as he saw how greatly troubled she was, "it will pass presently, and you shall find me quite myself again in the morning. We're going after the birds, you know, you and I. I haven't allowed a partridge to be killed on the plantation this fall, so that you might be sure of a good day's sport with Chummie."

Thus it came about that as the old man and the young woman sat in the firelight that evening, after the troopers were gone, Agatha changed her purpose and told him of Baillie Pegram. Delicately, but with perfect candour, she told the whole of the truth.

"I learned to like him very much while I was in Richmond last Christmas, and I was not to blame for that, was I, Chummie? He was so kind to me, so good in a thousand little ways, so gentle in all his strength that he reminded me of you, more than anybody else ever did. I used often to think that he was very much the sort of man you must have been when you were in your twenties. There was no reason, that I knew of, why I should not like him. He was a gentleman, the representative of one of the best families in the State, a man of the highest character, well-educated, travelled, intellectual, and of charming manners. He did more than anybody else – or everybody else for that matter – to make the time pass pleasantly for me. You see how it was, don't you, Chummie?"

The old gentleman nodded his head with a smile, and answered:

"I see how it was, Ladybird. Go on. Tell me all about it."

"Then one day there came a letter from The Oaks. It wasn't just a scolding letter. It was something much worse than that. For if my aunts had scolded me, I shouldn't have stood it."

"What would you have done, Ladybird?" asked the grandfather, with a look of pleased and loving pride upon his countenance.

"I should have come back to Willoughby and you."

"And right welcome you would have been. But go on. What did the old cats – psha! I didn't mean that; I thought I heard a cat yowling as I spoke – what did the good ladies of The Oaks say to you?"

"O, they wrote very kindly and sorrowfully. They were shocked to know that I had permitted something like intimacy to grow up between myself and a young man without consulting them as to the proprieties of the situation. But how could I have done that, Chummie? You see I didn't sit down and say, 'I'm going to be intimate with this young man if my aunts approve.' The friendship just grew, quite naturally, like the grass on a lawn. I didn't think about it at all, and I don't see why I should. I met Mr. Pegram in all the best houses; everybody was fond of him, and everybody spoke of him in the highest terms. Why should I think – "

"You shouldn't, Ladybird. I should have been ashamed of you if you had. Only a vain or morbidly self-conscious girl would have thought in such a case. And only – there goes that confounded cat again – only elderly gentlewomen of secluded lives and a badly perverted sense of propriety would ever have thought of such a thing. But continue, my child. I suppose they told you about that idiotic old quarrel – "

"Yes, Chummie – they told me and they didn't tell me. They never would say what it was all about, or how much there was in it. Indeed, they told me I was guilty of a great irreverence in even asking concerning it. They said it should be quite enough for a well-ordered young woman to know that these people were my father's enemies. As Mr. Baillie Pegram never knew my father, I couldn't understand why he and I should be enemies, but when I said something like that, I saw that the aunties were terribly shocked. I suppose I'm not a 'well-ordered' young lady, Chummie."

"No! Thank God you're not. You are just a sweet, wholesome, lovable girl – and that is very different from what those old – ladies call a 'well-ordered' young woman."

"Well, anyhow," the girl resumed, "I obeyed my instructions. I wrote to Mr. Pegram, telling him there could be no friendship between him and me, and do you know, Chummie, they blamed me more for that than for all the rest. They said it was 'unladylike' and a lot more things, for me to write to him at all. But I never could find out what they thought I ought to have done. I couldn't break off the acquaintance without telling him I must do so, could I?"

"You couldn't, and I'm glad you couldn't. A 'well-ordered' young lady would have done it easily. She would have told a lot of lies about not being at home when he called, or having a headache when he wanted to see her. You couldn't do that because you are honest and truthful, and that's the best thing about you, except your love for your old Chummie, and even that wouldn't be of much account if I couldn't trust its truth and sincerity. Go on, child. I didn't mean to interrupt."

"O, but you must interrupt. That's the only way I know what you're thinking. Well, I went to The Oaks sometime later, and while there I went out one morning for a ride by myself. My poor horse broke his leg, as I told you in a letter, and Mr. Baillie Pegram happened along, and was very kind in helping me out of my trouble. He insisted that I should ride his mare home. I tried all I could to refuse, but he showed me that I simply could not help myself, and so I took the mare, – the same one that was killed under him at Manassas. That time the aunties did actually scold me, or pretty nearly that. So I rebelled, and made up my mind to come back to you at once. Mr. Pegram dined at The Oaks on the day before I started, and he and I had a long talk, but of course it could not change the situation. That was the last I saw of him until the day before the battle of Manassas, when he took a red feather out of my hat and wore it in the battle. He was terribly wounded in the fight, but he sent the feather back to me as he had promised to do. I had quoted to him or let him quote to me the Indian's defiance, 'There is war between me and thee.' It was after that that he insisted upon taking the feather and wearing it through the battle."

The girl paused, but her grandfather said nothing for a whole minute. Perhaps he felt that she needed the pause before speaking further. At last he said, very low and gently:

"Tell me about yesterday morning."

She did so, sparing herself at no point. She told of Baillie's outburst, and of the declaration of his love. She told, too, of her chilling answer, and her perversity in so managing the conversation as to prevent a recurrence to the subject. Finally she broke down, saying with streaming eyes:

"Oh, Chummie! I have ruined his life – and my own!"

"I don't know so well about that. He may recover, you know."

"Yes, I know. But what then?" At that she laid her head upon the old man's breast and let herself become a little child again, in an abandonment of grief. And with a childlike confidence and candour she said at last:

"Oh, Chummie! Don't you understand? He can never know. He will always think of me as hard and cold and unresponsive. After what I said to him yesterday morning, he cannot again tell me – why, Chummie, it was as bad as if I had slapped him in the face!"

The old man caressed her till her agitation subsided. Then, speaking in a tone of wisdom which irresistibly carried conviction with it, he said:

"You are wholly wrong, Agatha. Baillie Pegram is much too brave and true, and much too generous a man to let this matter rest where it is. If he recovers, as I pray God he may, be very sure he will come to you again and tell you calmly what he blurted out without meaning to do so, under stress of a trying situation. You must go to sleep now, little girl. You are very weary and greatly overwrought. And we must be up with the sun to-morrow on account of the birds. Good night, dear. You must never leave me again while I live."

There was unsteadiness in his step, as he gallantly ushered her through the doorway, and as he returned to the room to extinguish the solitary lamp. Then a heaviness came over him, and he sat down again in his easy chair before the fire. The logs had ceased to blaze and crackle now, but the old man sat still. The logs fell into a mass of glowing coals after a time, and slowly the coals ceased to glow. One by one they went out. Still he did not move.

There were only ashes in the great fireplace when the morning came and Agatha found her Chummie still sitting there where the fire of his life had so gently gone out.

XXI
At parting

News of Colonel Archer's death ran rapidly through a State of which he had been one of the foremost citizens, by reason alike of his public services and his private virtues. It quickly reached Stuart's ears, and he promptly sent a courier with a letter of sympathy and friendship, at the end of which he wrote:

"Now, my dear Miss Agatha, I crave a favour at your hands. Your grandfather was a soldier greatly distinguished in two wars. He should have a soldier's burial, and with your permission, which I take for granted, I am ordering a company of dragoons and a battery now stationed at Warrenton and under my command, to move at once to Willoughby, and there pay the last honours to the veteran."

Heart-broken as she was, Agatha met calamity with a fortitude which astonished even herself. She was still scarcely more than a girl, but the blood of a soldier filled her veins, – a soldier who had never flinched from danger or murmured under suffering. "I too will neither flinch nor murmur," she said to herself. "Chummie would like it best to see me brave and resolute, if he could know – and perhaps he does know. I will bear myself as he would like me to."

And she kept that vow to the letter. The tears would mount to her eyelids now and then in spite of her and trickle down her cheeks; but they were silent tears, accompanied by no moanings that were audible; they were the tears of heart-break, not the tears of weakness and self-pity. They were hidden for the most part from human view, and resolutely restrained in the presence of others. And when any of those who thronged about her for her consolation caught momentary sight of them, the effect was like that produced when a strong man weeps.

When the soldiers came she directed an attentive ministry to their comfort, and after the last salutes to the dead had been fired over the grave, she turned to Captain Marshall Pollard, whose battery it was that had paid that tribute of honour, and asked in a steady voice:

"Can you arrange to stay at Willoughby overnight? I have need to talk with you of matters of some importance. It will be very kind and good of you, if you can manage it."

After a moment's reflection, Marshall answered:

"I can stay till midnight, and that will give us time for our talk. I must be at Warrenton at reveille in the morning, but my horse will easily make the distance if I start by one o'clock."

Then he spoke a few words in a low tone to his lieutenant, who took command and marched the battery away, with all heads bared till they had passed out of the grounds.

"Let us not talk of my grandfather, please," said the girl, as the two entered the drawing-room. "Not that I shrink from that," she quickly added. "It can never be painful to me to speak of him. But it might distress you. You knew him and loved him long ago, before – before you and I quarrelled."

She did not shrink from this reference to the past, or try in any way to disguise the truth of it. Her mind was full of the dear dead man's last words spoken in praise of her courage and truthfulness, and she was more resolute than ever to live up to the character he had approved so earnestly and with so much of loving admiration.

"I think we did not quarrel," the young captain responded; "you did not, at any rate. I misjudged you cruelly, and in my anger I falsely accused you in my heart. Believe me, Agatha," – he had called her so in the old days, and the name came easily to his lips now, – "believe me when I say that I have outlived all that bitterness. Let us be true, loyal friends hereafter, friends who know and trust each other, friends who do not misunderstand."

The girl held out her hand, in response, and made no effort to hide the tears with which she welcomed this healing of the old wounds.

The young man, too, rejoiced in a reconciliation which laid his old love for this woman for ever to rest and planted flowers of friendship upon its grave. He was astonished at his own condition of mind and heart. He learned now the truth that his mad love for Agatha had become completely a thing of the past, and that the bitterness which had at first succeeded it was utterly gone. He could think of her henceforth with a tender affection that had no trace of passion in it. The dead past had buried its dead, and the grass grew green above it.

At that moment dinner was announced, for Agatha had decreed that life at Willoughby should at once resume its accustomed order. "Chummie would like it so," she thought. So the two friends passed through the hall to the dining-room hand in hand, just as they had so often done in the old days before passion had come to disturb their lives.

Marshall had now one supreme desire with respect to Agatha, – a great yearning to comfort her and help her as a brother might. He told her so, when they returned to the drawing-room after dinner, to sit before the great fire of hickory logs during all the remaining hours of Marshall's stay.

"Tell me now," he said, "of your plans, that I may share in them and help you carry them out perhaps. What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to find Baillie if I can, and nurse him back to health – if it is not too late."

"But he is in the hands of the enemy, you know."

"Yes, I know. That makes it more difficult, but we must not shrink from difficulties. I shall start north to-morrow."

"But how? – Tell me about it, please."

She explained her plans, telling him of the arrangements she had made for bringing medicines through the blockade, transmitting letters, and finding friends at every step in case of need. Then she added:

"I'm going to take Sam with me this time. He is devoted to his master, and his sagacity is extraordinary. I shall depend upon him to help me find where Baillie is, and to do whatever there is to do for him."

"Will you let me have writing materials?" the young man abruptly asked.

Without asking for an explanation, she brought her lap desk, and with the awkwardness which a man always manifests in attempting to use that peculiarly feminine device, he managed to fill two or three sheets. When he had done, he handed the papers to her, saying:

"I can really help, I think. You will need money for your expenses. You must have it in sufficient supply to meet all emergencies, so that you may never be delayed or baffled in any purpose for want of it. And it may easily happen that you shall need a considerable sum at once. Money is the pass-key to many difficult doors. It so happens that I have a very considerable sum invested in railroad and other securities, in the hands of a very close friend of mine in New York. I have written to him to sell out the whole of them and place the proceeds at your disposal in any banks that may be most convenient to you."

"But, Marshall, you are impoverishing yourself – "

"In the which case," he responded, with his gentle, half-mocking smile, "I should be doing no more than all the rest of us Virginians are doing in this struggle. But I am doing nothing of the kind. I have a plantation, you know, and absolutely nobody dependent upon me. If I survive the war I shall have some land, at any rate, out of which to dig a living. These investments of mine at the North were made long before the war, and I should have sold them out at the beginning of the trouble if I hadn't been too lazy to attend to my affairs. I'm glad now that I was lazy. It enables me to help the two best friends I ever had in this rather lonely world, – Baillie Pegram and you. A man may do as he likes with his own, you know, and this is precisely what I like to do with my securities. Fortunately my friend who has them in charge is a blue-blooded Virginian, who would be fighting with us out there on the lines, if he were not a helpless cripple, fit for nothing, as he wrote to me when the trouble came, but to manage his banking-house. But how are you to get these papers through with you, without risk of discovery?"

"I'll make Sam carry them," she responded. "Nobody will ever think of searching him, particularly as his connection with my affairs will be known to nobody except my friends and co-conspirators."

"What a strategist you are, Agatha! What a general you would have made if you'd happened to be a man!" exclaimed the young man in admiration.

"No," she answered, hesitating for a moment, and then resolutely going on to speak truthfully the thought that was in her. "No, Marshall, for then I should not have had the impulse that teaches me now what to do. Tell me now, about the war. Shall I find Willoughby occupied as a Federal general's headquarters when I get back to Virginia?"

"I don't know. I cannot even guess what the officials at Richmond mean. I only know we have thrown away an opportunity that will never come back to us. The army was full of enthusiasm after Manassas – it is discouraged and depressed now. Then it was strong with the hope and confidence that are born of victory; now it sits there wondering when the enemy will be ready for it to fight again. It was fit for any enterprise then, and the enemy was utterly unfit to resist anything it might have undertaken. But it was not permitted to undertake anything. It was made to lie still, like a pointer in a turkey blind, quivering with eagerness to be up and doing, but restrained by the paralysis of misdirected authority. While we have been doing nothing, the Federal enemy has been swollen to more than twice our numbers. More important still, it has been fashioned by McClellan's skilled hand into as fine a fighting-machine as any general need wish for his tool. The officers have been instructed in their profession, and the men have been taught their trade. Their organisation is perfect, their discipline is almost as good as that of regulars, and their confidence in themselves and their commanders is daily and hourly increasing. Our men have abundant confidence in themselves, but none at all in generals who throw away their opportunities or in a government that touches nothing without paralysing it. Moreover, the Federal army has supply departments behind it that could not be bettered, while ours seem wholly imbecile and incapable. It should have been obvious to every intelligent man at the outset, that with our vastly inferior material resources, our best chance of winning in this war was by bringing to bear from the first all we could of dash and ceaseless activity. We should have taken the aggressive at once and all the time, knowing that every day of delay must strengthen the enemy and weaken us. Instead of that, after winning a great battle in such fashion as well-nigh to destroy for a time the enemy's capacity of resistance, we have taken up a defensive attitude and let the precious opportunity slip from our grasp. It will never return. I do not say that we shall be beaten in the end; I say only that our task is immeasurably more difficult now than it was three months ago, and it is growing more and more difficult every day."

"You are discouraged then?"

"No. I am only depressed. As for courage, we must all of us keep that up to the end. We must be brave to endure as well as to fight, – if we are ever graciously permitted to fight again. But I did not mean to talk of these things. I am only a battery captain. I have no business to think. But unfortunately our army is largely composed of men who can't help thinking. Tell me now, for I must ride presently, is there anything that I can do for you – any way in which I can help you?"

"You will be helping me all the time, just by letting me feel that the old boy and girl friendship is mine again. That is more precious to me than you can imagine. Good-bye, now. Your horse is at the door. Thank you for all, and God bless you."