A War-Time Wooing Part 5

"Why so?"

"Because he said he had come to see an old friend of his son's whom he mourned as killed at Seven Pines. He named Abbot, and said he had been in correspondence with him for a year. As luck would have it, Abbot was sitting right there beside me, and I said at once, 'Here's your man,' or something like it; and then Abbot didn't know him at all; declared he had never written a line to him; never heard of him. The old gentleman was completely floored. He vowed that for a whole year he had been receiving letters from Lieutenant Paul Revere Abbot, and now had come to see him because he was reported severely wounded."

"Did he show you any of the letters?"

"Why, no! He said there were none with him. He--I declare I do not know what excuse he _did_ give," says the colonel, in dire distress of mind.

The provost-marshal's eyes are glittering, and his face is set and eager. He thinks intently one moment, and then turns on the silent colonel and their perplexed landlord.

"Keep this thing perfectly quiet, gentlemen; I may have to look further into it; but at this moment, colonel, circ.u.mstances point significantly at your friend, the doctor. Do you see nothing suspicious in his conduct? His confident claim of a year's correspondence with an officer of your regiment was possibly to gain your friendship and protection. As ill-luck for him and good-luck for us would have it, he named the wrong man. Abbot was there, and could deny it on the spot. The old man was floored, of course; but his only way of carrying the thing through was to play the martyr, and tell the story that for a year somebody had been writing to him daily or weekly over the name of Abbot. What a very improbable yarn, Putnam! Just think for yourself. What man would be apt to do that sort of thing? What object could he have? Why, the doctor himself well realized what a transparent fiction it must appear, and away he slips by the night train the moment he gets back. And now our friend, the landlord, throws further light upon the matter. He was here to meet that night visitor, perhaps convey valuable information to him, but was frightened by the blunder he had made, and got away as speedily as possible, and without seeing the owner of the beard, although a packet of papers was duly handed to him from that mysterious party.

Doctor Warren may turn out a candidate for the fortress of that name in your own harbor, colonel."

And, thinking it all over, Putnam cannot make up his mind what to say.

There is something in his impression of the doctor that utterly sets at naught any belief that he was acting a part. He was so simple, so direct, so genuine in his manner and in his distress. On the other hand, a.n.a.lyzing the situation, the colonel is compelled to realize that to any one but himself the doctor's story would appear unworthy of credence. He is in this uncomfortable frame of mind when a staff-officer comes to see him with some papers from the quartermaster-general that call for an immediate investigation of the affairs of the missing Lieutenant Hollins, and for two or three days Colonel Putnam is away at the supply depot on the railway. It is there that he learns the pleasant news that his gallant young comrade has been promoted to a most desirable staff position, and ordered to report for duty in Washington as soon as able to travel. He writes a line of congratulation to Abbot, and begs him to be sure and send word when he will come through, so that they may meet, and then returns to his patient overhauling of the garbled accounts of the quondam quartermaster.

No answer comes from Abbot, and the colonel is so busy that he thinks little of it. The investigation is giving him a world of insight into the crookedness of the late administration, and has put him in possession of facts and given rise to theories that are of unusual interest, and so, when he hears that Abbot was able to leave the hospital and ride slowly in to the railway and so on to Baltimore, he merely regrets not having seen him, and thinks little of it.

But the provost-marshal has been busily at work; has interviewed Abbot and cross-examined the landlady. He has found an officer who says that the night of the escapade at Frederick his horse was taken from in front of the house of some friends he was visiting in the southern edge of the town, and was found next morning by the pickets clear down at the bridge where the ca.n.a.l crosses the Monocacy; and the pickets said he looked as though he had been ridden hard and fast, and that no trace of rider could be found. Inquiry among patrols and guards develops the fact that a man riding such a horse, wearing such a hat and cape as was described, but with a smooth face and spectacles, had pa.s.sed south during the night, and claimed to be on his way to Point of Rocks with despatches for the commanding officer from General Franklin. He exhibited an order made out for Captain Hollister, and signed by Seth Williams, adjutant-general of the army in the field. No such officer had reached Point of Rocks, and the provost-marshal becomes satisfied that on or about the 4th or 5th of October this very party who was prowling about the town of Frederick has gotten back into Virginia, possibly with valuable information.

When, on the evening of the 10th, there comes the startling news that "Jeb" Stuart, with all his daring gray raiders at his back, has leaped the Potomac at Williamsport, and is galloping up the c.u.mberland Valley around McClellan's right, the provost-marshal is convinced that the bold dash is all due to information picked up under his very nose in the valley of the Monocacy. If he ever had the faintest doubt of the justice of his suspicions as to "Doctor Warren's" complicity, the doubt has been removed. Already, at his instance, a secret-service agent has visited Hastings, and wires back the important news that the doctor left there about the 25th of September, and has not returned. On the 11th he is rejoiced by a telegram from Washington which tells him that, acting on his advices, Doctor Warren had been found, and is now under close surveillance at Willard's.

Then it is time for him to look out for his own movements. Having leaped into the Union lines with all his native grace and audacity, the cavalier Stuart reposes a few days at Chambersburg, placidly surveying the neighborhood and inviting attack. Then he rides eastward over the South Mountain, and the next heard of him he is coming down the Monocacy. McClellan's army is encamped about Sharpsburg and Harper's Ferry. He has but few cavalry, and, at this stage of the war, none that can compete successfully with Stuart. Not knowing just what to do against so active and calmly audacious an opponent, the Union general is possibly too glad to get rid of him to attempt any check. To the vast indignation and disappointment of many young and ardent soldiers in our lines, he is apparently riding homeward unmolested, picking up such supplies as he desires, paroling such prisoners as he does not want to burden himself with, and exchanging laughing greetings with old friends he meets everywhere along the Monocacy. At Point of Rocks, whither our provost-marshal and Colonel Putnam are driven for shelter, together with numerous squads of convalescents and some dozen stragglers, there is arming for defence, and every intention of giving Jeb a sharp fight should he attempt to pick up supplies or stragglers from its st.u.r.dy garrison. Every hour there is exciting news of his coming, and, with their gla.s.ses, the officers can see clouds of dust rising high in air far up the valley. Putnam has urgent reason for wanting to rejoin his regiment at once. What with the information he has received from the two or three officers whom he has questioned, and the papers themselves, he has immediate need of seeing the ex-quartermaster sergeant, Rix. But he cannot go when there is a chance for a fight right here. Stuart may dash in westward, and have just one lively tussle with them to cover the crossing of his valuable plunder and prisoners below. Of course they have not men enough to think of confronting him. Just in the midst of all the excitement there comes an orderly with despatches and letters from up the river, and one of them is for Putnam, from the major commanding the regiment. It is brief enough, but exasperating. "I greatly regret to have to report to you, in answer to your directions with regard to Rix, that they came too late. In some utterly unaccountable way, though we fear through collusion on part of a member or members of the guard, Rix made his escape two nights ago, and is now at large."

V.

To say that Paul Abbot was made very happy over his most unexpected promotion would be putting it mildly. He hates to leave the old regiment, but he has done hard fighting, borne several hard knocks, is still weak and shaky from recent wounds; and to be summoned to Washington, there to meet his proud father, and to receive his appointment as a.s.sistant adjutant-general from the hands of the most distinguished representative "in Congress a.s.sembled" of his distinguished state, is something to put new life into a young soldier's heart. Duties for him there are none at the moment: he is to get strong and well before again taking the field, and, for the time being, he is occupying a room at Willard's adjoining that of his father. His arm is still in a sling; his walk is still slow and somewhat painful; he has ordered his new uniform, and meantime has procured the staff shoulder-straps and b.u.t.tons, and put them on his sack-coat; he has had many letters to write, and much pleasant congratulation and compliment to acknowledge; and so the three or four days succeeding his arrival pa.s.s rapidly by. One afternoon he returns from a drive with his father; they have been out to visit friends in camp, and talk over home news, and now he comes somewhat slowly up the stairs of the crowded hotel to the quiet of the upper corridors. He smiles to himself at the increasing ease with which he mounts the bra.s.s-bound steps, and is thankful for the health and elasticity returning to him. He has just had the obnoxious beard removed, too; and freshly shaved, except where his blond mustache shades the short upper lip, with returning color and very bright, clear eyes, the young major of staff is a most presentable-looking youth as he stops a moment to rest at the top of the third flight. His undress uniform is decidedly becoming, and all the more interesting because of the sling that carries his wounded arm. And now, after a moment's breathing-spell, he walks slowly along the carpeted corridor, and turns into the hallway leading to his own room. Along this he goes some twenty paces or more, when there comes quickly into view from a side gallery the figure of a tall, slight, and graceful girl. She has descended some little flight of stairs, for he could hear the patter of her slippered feet, and the swish of her skirts before she appeared. Now, with rapid step she is coming straight towards him, carrying some little gla.s.s phials in her hand. The glare of the afternoon sun is blazing in the street, and at the window behind her. Against this glare she is revealed only _en silhouette_. Of her features the young soldier can see nothing.

On the contrary, as he is facing the light, Major Abbot realizes that every line of his countenance is open to her gaze. Before he has time to congratulate himself that recent shaving and the new straps have made him more presentable, he is astonished to see the darkly-outlined figure halt short: he sees the slender hands fly up to her face in sudden panic or shock; crash go the phials in fragments on the floor, and the young lady, staggering against the wall, is going too--some stifled exclamation on her lips.

Abbot is quick, even when crippled. He springs to her side just in time to save. He throws his left arm around her, and has to hug her close to prevent her slipping through his clasp--a dead weight--to the floor. She has fainted away, he sees at a glance, and, looking about him, he finds a little alcove close at hand; he knows it well, for there on the sofa he has spent several restful hours since his arrival. Thither he promptly bears her; gently lays her down; quickly opens the window to give her air; then steps across the hall for aid. Not a soul is in sight. His own room is but a few paces away, and thither he hastens; returns speedily with a goblet of ice-water in his hand, and a slender flask of cologne tucked under his arm. Kneeling by the sofa, he gently turns her face to the light, and sprinkles it with water; then bathes, with cologne, the white temples and soft, rippling, sunny hair. How sweet a face it is that lies there, all unconscious, so close to his beating heart! Though colorless and marble-like, there is beauty in every feature, and signs of suffering and pain in the dark circles about the eyes and in the lines at the corners of the exquisite mouth. Even as he clumsily but most a.s.siduously mops with his one available hand and looks vaguely around for feminine a.s.sistance, Major Abbot is conscious of a feeling of proprietorship and confidence that is as unwarranted, probably, as it is new. 'Tis only a faint, he is certain. She will come to in a moment, so why be worried? But then, of course, 'twill be embarra.s.sing and painful to her not to find some sympathetic female face at hand when she does revive; and he looks about him for a bell-rope: none nearer than the room, and he hates to leave her. At last comes a little shivering sigh, a long gasp. Then he holds the goblet to her lips and begs her to sip a little water, and, somehow, she does, and with another moment a pair of lovely eyes has opened, and she is gazing wildly into his.

"Lie still one minute," he murmurs. "You have been faint; I will bring your friends."

But a little hand feebly closes on his wrist. She is trying to speak; her lips are moving, and he bends his handsome head close to hers; perhaps she can tell him whom to summon.

But he starts back, amazed, when the broken, half-intelligible, almost inaudible words reach his ears,

"Paul! Papa--said--you were killed. Oh! he will be so glad!"

And then comes a burst of tears.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_Then bathes, with cologne, the white temples and soft, rippling, sunny hair._"]

Abbot rises to his feet and hurries into the hall. He is bewildered by her words. He feels that it must be some case of mistaken ident.i.ty, but--how strange a coincidence! Close by the fragments of the phials he finds a door key and the presumable number of her room. Only ten steps away from the little flight of stairs he finds a corresponding door, and, next, an open room. Looking therein, he sees a gentle, matronly woman seated by a bedside, slowly fanning some rec.u.mbent invalid. She puts her fingers on her lips, warningly, as she sees the uniform at her door.

"Do not wake him, it is the first sound sleep he has had for days," she says. "Is this the army doctor?"

"No," he whispers, "a young lady has just fainted down in the next corridor. Her room adjoins this. Do you know her?"

"Oh, Heaven! I might have known it. Poor child, she is utterly worn out.

This is her father. Will you stay here just a few moments? His son was a soldier, too, and was killed--and so was her lover--and it has nearly killed the poor old gentleman. I'll go at once."

Still puzzling over his strange adventure, and thinking only of the sweet face of the fainting girl, Abbot mechanically takes the fan the nurse has resigned and slowly sweeps the circling flies away. The invalid lies on his right side with his face to the wall; but the soft, curling gray hair ripples under the waves of air stirred by the languid movement of the fan. The features have not yet attracted his attention.

He is listening intently for sounds from the corridor. His thoughts are with the girl who has so strangely moved him; so strangely called his name and looked up into his eyes with a sweet light of recognition in hers--with a wild thrill of delight and hope in them, unless all signs deceive him. The color, too, that was rushing into her face, the sudden storm of emotion that bursts in tears; what meant all this--all this in a girl whom never before had he seen in all his life? Verily, strange experiences were these he was going through. Only a week or so before had not that gray-haired old doctor shown almost as deep an emotion on meeting him at Frederick? And was he not prostrated when a.s.sured of his mistake, and was it not hard to convince him that the letters to which he persistently referred were forgeries? Some scoundrel who claimed to know his son was striving to bleed him for money, probably, and using, of all others, the name of Paul Abbot. And this poor old gentleman here had also lost a son, and the sweet, fragile-looking girl a lover! How peacefully the old man sleeps, thinks Abbot, as he glances a moment around the room. There are flowers on the table near the open window; books, too, which, perhaps, she had tried to read aloud. The window opens out over Pennsylvania Avenue, and the hum and bustle of thronging life comes floating up from below; a roar of drums is growing louder every minute, and presently bursts upon the ear as though, just issuing from a neighboring street, the drummers were marching forth upon the avenue. Abbot glances at his patient, fearful lest the noise should wake him, but he sleeps the sleep of exhausted nature, and the soldier in his temporary nurse prompts him to steal to the window and look down upon the troops. They are marching south, along Fourteenth Street--a regiment going over to the fortifications beyond the Long Bridge, and, after a glance, Abbot steps quickly back. On the table nearest the window lies a dainty writing-case, a woman's, and the flap is down on a half-finished letter. On the letter, half disclosed, is the photograph of an officer.

It is strangely familiar as Abbot steps towards it. Then--the roar of the drums seems deafening; the walls of the little room seem turning upside down; his brain is in some strange and sudden whirl; but there in his hands he holds, beyond all question--his own picture--a photograph by Brady, taken when he was in Washington during the previous summer. He has not recovered his senses when there is an uneasy movement at the bed. The gray-haired patient turns wearily and throws himself on the other side, and now, though haggard and worn with suffering, there is no forgetting that sorrow-stricken old face. In an instant Major Abbot has recognized his visitor of the week before. There before him lies Doctor Warren. Who--_who_ then is _she_?

VI.

Sitting by the open window and looking out over the bustling street Major Abbot later in the evening is trying to collect his senses and convince himself that he really is himself. "It never rains but it pours," and events have been pouring upon him with confusing rapidity.

Early in the summer he had noted an odd constraint in the tone of the few letters that came from Miss Winthrop. That they were few and far between was not in itself a matter to give him much discomfort. From boyhood he had been accustomed to the household cry that at some time in the future--the distant future--Viva Winthrop was to be his wife. He had known her quite as long as he had been conscious of his own existence, and the relations between the families were such as to render the alliance desirable. Excellent friends were the young people as they grew to years of discretion, and, in the eyes of parents and intimate acquaintances, no formal betrothal was ever necessary, simply because "it was such an understood thing." For more than a year previous to the outbreak of the war, however, Miss Winthrop was in Europe, and much of the time, it was said, she had been studying. So had Mr. Hollins, who withdrew from Harvard in his second year and read law a.s.siduously in the office of Winthrop & Lawrence, and then went abroad for his health. They returned on the Cunarder in the early part of April, and Mrs. Winthrop was ill from the time she set foot on the saloon deck until they sighted the State House looming through the fog, and nothing could have been more fortunate than that Mr. Hollins was with them--he was so attentive, so very thoughtful. When he wasn't doing something for her he was promenading with Viva on deck or bundling that young lady in warm wraps and hedging her in a sunny corner. Pity that Mr. Hollins was so poor and rather obscure in his family--his immediate family--connections. His mother was Mr. Winthrop's first cousin, and she had been very fond of Mr. Winthrop when she was a child, and he had befriended her son when a friend was needed. She died years ago, and no one knew just when her husband followed her. He was a person no one ever met, said Mrs.

Winthrop, a man who had a singular career, was an erratic genius, and very dissipated. But he was a very fascinating person, she understood, in his younger days, and his son was most talented and deserving, but entirely out of the question as an intimate or a.s.sociate. Viva would not be apt to see anything of him after their return; but the question never seemed to occur to her, how much had the daughter been influenced by their frequent companionship abroad? It really mattered nothing. Viva was to marry Revere Abbot, as Mrs. Winthrop preferred to call him, and such was distinctly the family understanding. Miss Winthrop had been home but a few weeks when all the North was thrilled by the stirring call for volunteers, and the old Bay State responded, as was to be expected of her. In the --th Ma.s.sachusetts were a score of officers, as has been said, whose names were as old as the colony and whose family connections made them thoroughly well known to each other at the earliest organization of the command. That Paul Abbot should be among the first to seek a commission as a junior lieutenant was naturally expected. Then with all possible hesitancy and delicacy, after a feminine council in the family, his mother asked him if he did not think there ought to be some distinct understanding about Viva Winthrop before he went away to the front. The matter was something that he had thought of before she went to Europe, but believed then that it could wait, Now that she had returned, improved both physically and intellectually, Mr.

Abbot had once or twice thought that it would not be long before he would be asked some such question as his mother now propounded, but again decided that it was a matter that could be deferred. They had met with much hearty cordiality, and called each other Paul and Viva, as they had from babyhood, and then she had a round of social duties and he became absorbed in drills, day and night, and they saw very little of each other--much less than was entirely satisfactory to the parental councils, and these were frequent. While the masters of the households of Abbot and Winthrop seldom interchanged a word on the subject, they had their personal views none the less; and, as to the mothers, their hearts had long been set upon the match. Miss Winthrop had abundant wealth in her own right. Paul Abbot's blood was blue as the doctrines of the Puritans. Without being a beauty in face or form, Miss Winthrop was unquestionably distinguished-looking, and her reputation for a certain acerbity of temper and the faculty of saying cutting things did not materially lower her value in the matrimonial market. There was, however, that constantly recurring statement, "Oh, she's engaged to Paul Abbot," and that, presumably, accounted for the lack of those attentions in society which are so intangible when a.s.sailed, and yet leave such a void when omitted. Mrs. Abbot put it very plainly to Paul when she said:

"Everybody considers her as virtually engaged to you and expects you to look after her. That is why I say it is due to her that you should arrive at some understanding before your orders come."

Paul had come up from camp that day--a Sat.u.r.day afternoon--and he stood there in the old family gathering room, a very handsome young soldier.

He had listened in silence and respect while his mother spoke, but without much sign of responsive feeling. When she had finished he looked her full in the face and quietly said:

"And is there any other reason, mother?"

Mrs. Abbot flushed. There was another reason, and one that after much mental dodging both she and Mrs. Winthrop had been compelled to admit to each other within a very few days. Mr. Hollins was constantly finding means to come over to the city and see Miss Winthrop, and the ladies could not grapple with the intricacies of a military problem which permitted one officer to be in town three or four days a week and kept the others incessantly drilling at camp. Mrs. Abbot, motherlike, had more than once suggested to her son that he ought to be able to visit town more frequently, and on his replying that it was simply impossible, and that none of the officers could leave their duties, had triumphantly pointed to Mr. Hollins.

"But he is quartermaster," said Paul, "and has to come on business."

"He manages to combine a good deal of pleasure with his business," was the tentative response, and Abbot knew that he was expected to ask the nature of Mr. Hollins's pleasures. He was silent, however, much to his mother's disappointment, for he had heard from other sources of the frequency with which Mr. Hollins and Miss Winthrop were seen together.

Finding that he would not ask, Mrs. Abbot was compelled to suppress the inclination she felt to have her suspicions dragged to light. She wished he had more curiosity, or jealousy, or something; but in its absence she could only say,

"Well, I wish you were quartermaster, that's all."

And now that he _had_ asked her if there were no other reason, there was something in his placid tone she did not like. A month agone she wanted him to know of Mr. Hollins's evident attentions to Genevieve because it would probably, or possibly, spur him into some exertion on his own account. Now that she felt sure he had heard of it, and it had not spurred him, she was as anxious to conceal the fact that, both to Mrs.

Winthrop and herself, these attentions were becoming alarming. If he did _not_ care for Viva, the chances were that so soon as he found that public attention had been drawn to her acceptance of such devotions, Paul would drop the matter entirely, and that would be a calamity.

Knowing perfectly well, therefore, what was in his mind when he asked the question, Mrs. Abbot parried the thrust. Though she flushed, and her voice quivered a little, she looked him straight in the face.

"There is, Paul. I--think she has a right to expect it of you; that--that she does expect it."

Abbot looked with undisguised perplexity into his mother's face.

"You surprise me very much, mother; I cannot, see how Viva would betray such an idea, even if she had it; it is not like her."

"Women see these things where men cannot," was the somewhat sententious reply. "Besides, Paul--"

"Well, mother, besides--?"