A War-Time Wooing Part 2

"I don't think it either, sir," answers the sergeant; while Rix, at sight of his commanding officer, pops his head back within the tent, and shuts the narrow slit. "He's simply ugly and bent on making trouble."

"Well, stop it! If he utters another insubordinate word, have him bucked and gagged at once. He is disgracing the regiment, and I won't tolerate it. Do you understand?"

"I do, sir."

The colonel turns abruptly away, while the prisoner, knowing his man, keeps discreetly out of sight, and correspondingly silent. At the gate the older officer stops once more and calls to a soldier who is standing near.

"Give my compliments to Lieutenant Abbot, and say that I will be out here again to-morrow afternoon. Now, doctor, I am with you."

The old gentleman is leaning wearily back in his corner of the cab; a strange, stunned, lethargic feeling seems to have come over him. His eyes are fixed on vacancy, if anything, and the colonel's attempt at cheeriness meets no response. As the vehicle slowly rattles away he makes an effort, rouses himself as it were from a stupor-like condition, and abruptly speaks:

"You tell me that--that you have seen Lieutenant Abbot's mail all summer and spring and never saw a--our postmark--Hastings?"

"I have seen his mail very often, and thought his correspondents were all home people. I am sure I would have noticed any letters coming frequently in one handwriting, and his father's is the only masculine superscription that was at all regular."

"My letters--our home letters--were not often addressed by me,"

hesitates the doctor. "The postmark might have given you an idea. I had not time--" but he breaks off, weakly. It is so hard for him to prevaricate: and it is bitter as death to tell the truth, now. And worse--worse! What is he to tell--_how_ is he to tell her?

The colonel speaks slowly and sadly, but with earnest conviction:

"No words can tell you how I mourn the heartlessness of this trick, doctor; but you may rest a.s.sured it is no doing of Abbot's. What earthly inducement could he have? Think of it! a man of his family and connections--and character, too. Some scoundrel has simply borrowed his name, possibly in the hope of bleeding you for money. Did none of the letters ever suggest embarra.s.sments? It is most unfortunate that you did not bring them with you. I know the writing of every officer and many of the men in the regiment, and it would give me a clew with which to work.

Promise me you will send them when you reach home."

The Doctor bows his head in deep dejection. "What good will it do? I thought to find a comrade of my boy's. Indeed! it must be one who knew him well!--and how can I desire to bring to punishment one who appreciated my son as this unknown writer evidently did. His only crime seems to have been a hesitancy about giving his own name."

"And a scoundrelly larceny of that of a better man in every way. No, doctor. The honor of my regiment demands that he be run down and brought to justice; and you must not withhold the only proof with which we can reach him. Promise me!"

"I--I will think. I am all unstrung now, my dear sir! Pray do not press me! If it was not Mr. Abbot, who could it have been? Who else could have known him?"

"Why, Doctor Warren, there are probably fifty Harvard men in this one regiment--or were at least," says the colonel, sadly, "up to a month ago. Cedar Mountain, Bull Run, South Mountain, and Antietam have left but a moiety. Most of our officers are graduates of the old college, and many a man was there. I dare say I could have found a dozen who well knew your son. In the few words I had with Abbot, he told me he remembered that there had been some talk among the officers last July after your son was killed. Some one saw the name in the papers, and said that it must have been Warren of the cla.s.s of '58, and our Captain Webster, who was killed at Mana.s.sas, was in that cla.s.s and knew him well. Abbot said he remembered him, by sight, as a soph.o.m.ore would know a senior, but had never spoken to him. Anybody hearing all the talk going on at the time we got the news of Seven Pines could have woven quite a college history out of it--and somebody has."

"Ah, colonel! There is still the fact of the photograph, and the letters that were written about Guthrie all last winter--long before Seven Pines."

The colonel looks utterly dejected, too; he shakes his head, mournfully.

"That troubles Abbot as much as it does me. Fields, gallant fellow, was our adjutant then, and he and Abbot were close friends. He could hardly have had a hand in anything beyond the photograph and letter which, you tell me, were sent to the Soldier's Aid Society in town. I remember the young fellows were having quite a lot of fun about their Havelocks when we lay at Edwards's Ferry--but Fields was shot dead, almost the first man, at Cedar Mountain, and of the thirty-five officers we had when we crossed the Potomac the first time, only eleven are with the--th to-day.

Abbot, who was a junior second lieutenant then, is a captain now, by rights, and daily expecting his promotion. I showed you several letters in his hand, and they, you admit, are utterly unlike the ones you received. Indeed, doctor, it is impossible to connect Abbot with it in any way."

The doctor's face is covered by his hands. In ten minutes or less he must be at _her_ side. What can he tell his little girl? What shall he say? What possible, probable story can man invent to cover a case so cruel as this? He hardly hears the colonel's words. He is thinking--thinking with a bursting heart and whirling brain. For a time all sense of the loss of his only son seems deadened in face of this undreamed-of, this almost incredible shadow that has come to blight the sweet and innocent life that is so infinitely dear to him. What can he say to Bessie when he meets those beautiful, pleading, trusting, anxious eyes? She has borne up so bravely, silently, patiently. Their journey has been trying and full of fatigue, but once at Frederick he has left her in the hands of a sympathetic woman, the wife of the proprietor of the only tavern in which a room could be had, and, promising to return as soon as he could see the lieutenant, he has gone away on his quest with hopeful heart. A soldier claiming to be of the--th Ma.s.sachusetts told them that very morning at the Baltimore station that Mr. Abbot was well enough to be up and about. It is barely nine o'clock now. In less than an hour there will be a train going back. All he can think of is that they must go--go as quick as possible. They have nothing now to keep them here, and he has one secret to guard from all--his little girl's. No one must know, none suspect that. In the bitterness of desolation, still stunned and bewildered by the cruelty of the blow that has come upon them, his mind is clear on that point. If possible no one, except those people at the tavern, must know she was with him. None must suspect--above all--none must suspect the bitter truth. It would crush her like a bruised and trodden flower.

"If--if it had been a correspondence where there was a woman in the case," begins the colonel again--and the doctor starts as though stung, and his wrinkled hands wring each other under the heavy travelling-shawl he wears--"I could understand the thing better. Quite a number of romantic correspondences have grown up between our soldiers and young girls at home through the medium of these mittens and things; they seem to have lost their old significance. But you give me to understand that--that there was none?"

"The letters were solely about my son, all that ever came to me," said the doctor, nervously.

"That seems to complicate the matter. If it were a mere flirtation by letter, such as is occasionally going on, _then_ somebody might have borrowed his name and stolen his photograph; but I don't see how he could have secured the replies--the girl's letters--in such a case. No.

As you say, doctor, that wasn't apt to be the solution, though I'm at a loss to account for the letters that came from you. They were addressed to Lieutenant Abbot, camp of the--th Ma.s.sachusetts, you tell me, and Abbot declares he has never heard from any one of your name, or had a letter from Hastings. He would be the last man, too, to get into a correspondence with a woman--for he is engaged."

The doctor starts again as though stung a second time. Was there not in one of those letters a paragraph over which his sweet daughter had blushed painfully as she strove to read it aloud? Did it not speak of an entanglement that once existed; an affair in which his heart had never been enlisted, but where family considerations and parental wishes had conspired to bring about a temporary "understanding"? The cabriolet is bouncing about on the cobblestones of the old-fashioned street, and the doctor is thankful for the physical jar. Another moment and they draw up at the door of the old Maryland hostelry, and the colonel steps out and a.s.sists his companion to alight.

"Let me take you to your room now, doctor; then I'll have our staff surgeon come over and see you. It has been a shock which would break a younger man--"

But the old gentleman has nerved himself for the struggle. First and foremost--no one must follow him to his room--none suspect the trial there awaiting him. He turns sadly, but with decision.

"Colonel, I cannot thank you now as you deserve; once home, I will write, but now what I need is absolute rest a little while. I am stunned, bewildered. I must think this out, and my best plan is to get to sleep first. Forgive me, sir, for my apparent discourtesy, and do not take it amiss if I say that for a few moments--for the present--I should like to be alone. We--we will meet again, sir, if it rest with me, and I will write. Good-night, colonel. Good-night, sir."

And he turns hurriedly away. For a moment the soldier stands uncertain what to do. Then he enters the hallway determined to bespeak the best offices of the host in behalf of his stricken friend. There is a broad stairway some distance back in the hall, and up this he sees the doctor slowly laboring. He longs to go to his a.s.sistance, but stands irresolute, fearing to offend. The old gentleman nears the top, and is almost on the landing above, when a door is suddenly opened, a light, quick step is heard, and in an instant a tall, graceful girl, clad in deep black--a girl whom the colonel sees is young, beautiful, and very pale--springs forward into view, places her hands on the old man's shoulders, and looks eagerly, imploringly, into his face. What she asks, what she says, the colonel cannot hear; but another moment solves all doubt as to his proper course. He sees her clasped to the doctor's breast; he sees them clinging to each other one instant, and then the father, with sudden rally, bears her pale and probably fainting from his sight. A door shuts with m.u.f.fled slam, and they are gone; and with the intuition of a gentleman Colonel Putnam realizes why his proffer of services would now be out of place.

"And so there is a woman in the case, after all," he thinks to himself as he steps forth into the cool evening air. "And it is for her sake the good old man shrinks from dragging the matter into the light of day--his daughter, probably; and some scoundrel has been at work, and in my regiment."

The colonel grinds his teeth and clinches his fists at this reflection.

He is a husband and father himself, and now he understands some features in the old doctor's trouble which had puzzled him before. He strolls across the street to the sidewalk under the quaint old red-brick, dormer-windowed houses where lights are still gleaming, and where groups of people are chatting and laughing in the pleasant air. Many of them are in the rough uniform of the army--teamsters, drivers, and slightly wounded soldiers out on pa.s.s from the neighboring field hospitals. The old cabriolet is being trundled off to some neighboring stable after a brief confabulation between the driver thereof and the landlord of the tavern, and the colonel is about hailing and tendering the Jehu another job for the morrow, when he sees that somebody else is before him; and, bending down from his seat, the driver is talking with a man who has come out from the shadow of a side porch. There is but little light in the street, and the colonel has turned on reaching the curb, and is seeking among the windows across the way for one which may possibly prove to be the young lady's. He is interested in the case more than ever now, but the windows give no sign. Some are lighted, and occasional shadows flit across them, but none that are familiar. Suddenly he hears a sound that brings him back to himself--the tramp of marching feet, and the sudden clash of arms as they halt; a patrol from the provost-marshal's guard comes quickly around a corner from the soft dust of a side street, and the non-commissioned officers are sharply halting all neighboring men in uniform, and examining their pa.s.ses. Several parties in army overcoats shuffle uneasily up the street, only to fall into the clutches of a companion patrol that pops up as suddenly around the next corner beyond. "Rounding up the stragglers," thinks the colonel, with a quiet smile of approval, and, like the soldier he is, he finds time to look on a moment and watch the manner in which the work is done. The patrol seems to have possessed itself of both sides of the street at the same instant, and "spotted" every man in blue. These are bidden to stand until their papers are examined by the brace of young officers who appear upon the scene, belted and sashed, and bearing small lanterns. Nor are uniforms alone subject to scrutiny. Ever since Second Bull-Run there has been much straggling in the army, and not a little desertion; and though a fortnight has pa.s.sed since Antietam was fought, the provost-marshal's men have not yet finished scouring the country, and a sharp lookout is kept for deserters. Those civilians who can readily establish their ident.i.ty as old residents of the town have no trouble. Occasionally a man is encountered whom n.o.body seems to know, and, despite their protestations, two of those characters have been gathered in by the patrol, and are now on their way to the office. The colonel hears their mingled complaint and blasphemy as they are marched past him by a file of the guard, and then turns to the nearest of the officers--

"Lieutenant, did you note the man who ran back from where that cab is standing?"

The officer of the patrol looks quickly up from the "pa.s.s" he is examining by the light of his lantern, and at sight of Colonel Putnam his hand goes up to the visor of his cap.

"No, colonel; was there one? Which way did he go?"

"Straight back to the shadow of the porch; just a minute ago. What attracted my attention to him was the fact that he was deep in talk with the driver when your men rounded the corner, and did not seem to see or hear them. Then I turned to look at that corporal yonder, as he crossed to halt a man on the east side, and at sound of his voice this fellow at the cab started suddenly and ran, crouching in the shadow, back to the side of the tavern there. It looks suspicious."

"Come with me, two of you," says the lieutenant, quickly, and, followed by a brace of his guard, he crosses the street, and his lantern is seen dancing around the dark gallery. The colonel, meantime, accosts the driver:

"What took that man away so suddenly? Who is he?"

"I don't know, sir. I never seen him afore. He stopped me right here to ask who the gentleman was I was drivin'. I told him your name, 'cause I heard it, and he started then kinder queer, but came back and said 'twas the citizen he meant; and the boss here had just told me that was Doctor Warren, and that his daughter was up-stairs. Then the feller jumped like he was scared; the guard had just come round the corner, and when he saw them he just put for the barn."

"Is there a barn back there?" asks the colonel. The driver nods a.s.sent.

A moment's silence, and then the colonel continues: "I want to see you in the morning. Wait for me here at the hotel about nine o'clock.

Meantime say nothing about this, and you'll lose nothing by holding your tongue. What was his face like--this man I mean?"

"Couldn't see it, sir. It was dark, and he had a beard all over it, and wore a black-felt hat--soft; and he had a cloak something like yours, that was wrapped all over his shoulders."

"Remember, I want to see you here in the morning; and hold your tongue till then."

With that the colonel hastens off on the trail of the searching-party.

He sees the lantern glimmering among some dark buildings beyond the side-gallery, and thither he follows. To all appearances the spot is almost a _cul de sac_ of wooden barns, board-fences, and locked doors, except for a gateway leading to the yard behind the tavern. The search has revealed no trace of the skulker, and the lieutenant holds his lamp aloft as he examines the gate and peers over the picket fence that stands barely breast-high and bars them out.

"May have gone in here," he mutters. "Come on!"

But the search here only reveals half a dozen avenues of escape. The man could have gone back through several doors into the building itself, or eastward, through some dilapidated yards, into a street that was uninfested by patrols, and dark as the bottom of a well. "It is useless to waste further time," says the lieutenant, who presently rejoins the colonel behind the tavern, and finds him staring up at the rear windows.

To him the young officer, briefly and in low tone, reports the result of his search.

"I presume there is nothing else I can do just here, is there, colonel?"

he asks. The colonel shakes his head.

"Nothing that I can think of, unless you look through the halls and office."

"We are going there. Shall I light you back to the street?"

"Er--ah--no! I think I'll wait here--just a moment," says the colonel, and, marvelling not a little, the subaltern leaves him.