A War-Time Wooing Part 6

"Mrs. Winthrop has told me as much."

That evening, before returning to camp, Lieutenant Abbot went round the square--or what is the Bostonian equivalent therefor--and surprised Miss Winthrop with a call. He told her what he had not told his mother, that Colonel Raymond that morning received a telegram from Washington saying that on the following Tuesday they must be in readiness to start.

"We have been good friends always, Viva," he said; "but you have been something more to me than that. I did not mean to make so sudden an avowal, but soldiers have no time to call their own just now, and every hour has been given up to duty with the regiment. Now this sharp summons comes and I must go. If I return, shall we--" (he had almost said, "shall we fulfil our manifest destiny, and make our parents happy?" but had sense enough to realize that she was ent.i.tled to a far more personal proposition). He broke off nervously.

"You have always been so dear to me, Viva. Will you be my wife?"

She was sitting on the sofa, nervously twisting the cords of a fan in and out among her slender white fingers. Her eyes were downcast and her cheeks suffused. For an instant she looked up and a question seemed trembling on her lips. She was a truthful woman and no coward. There was something she was ent.i.tled to know, something the heart within her craved to know, yet she knew not how to ask, or, if she did, was too proud to frame the words, to plead for that thing of all others which a woman prizes and glories in, yet will never knowingly beg of any man--his honest and outspoken love. She looked down again, silent.

His tone softened and his voice quivered a little as he bent over her.

"Has any one else won away the heart of my little girl-love?" he asked.

"We were sweethearts so long, Viva; but have you learned to care for some other?"

"No. It--it is not that."

"Then cannot you find a little love for me left over from the childish days? You were so loyal to me then, Viva--and it would make our home people so happy."

"I suppose it might--them."

"Then promise me, dear; I go so soon, and--"

She interrupted him now, impetuously. Looking straight up into his eyes, she spoke in low, vehement tone, rapidly, almost angrily.

"On this condition, Paul; on this condition. You ask me to be your wife and--and I suppose it is what is expected of us--what you have expected all along, and are ent.i.tled to an answer now. Promise me this, if ever you have a thought for another woman, if ever you feel in your heart that perhaps another girl would make you happier, or if--if you feel the faintest growing fancy for another, that you will tell me."

He smiled gravely as he encircled her in his arm. She drew back, but he held her.

"Why, Viva, I have never had a thought for any other girl. I simply thought you might care for some one more than you did for me. It is settled, then--I promise," and he bent and softly kissed her.

They met again--twice--before the regiment took the cars. It had been settled that no announcement of the engagement should be made, but there are some secrets mothers cannot keep, and there were not lacking men and women to obtrude premature "congratulations" even on the day she came with mothers, sisters, cousins, and sweethearts by the score to witness the presentation of colors and say adieu. That afternoon the regimental quartermaster returned from the city after a stay of thirty-six hours, thirty of which were unauthorized, and it was rumored that Colonel Raymond was very angry and had threatened extreme measures. It was this prospect, possibly, that shrouded Mr. Hollins's face in gloom, but most people were disposed to think that he had taken the engagement very much to heart. There were many who considered that, despite the fact of his lack of fortune, birth, and "position," Mr. Hollins had been treated very shabbily by the heiress. There were a few who said that but for his "lacks" she would have married him. What she herself said was something that caused Mr. Abbot a good deal of wonderment and reflection.

"Paul, I want you to promise me another thing. Mr. Hollins has very few friends in the regiment. He is poor, sensitive, and he feels it keenly.

He is our kinsman, though distant, and he placed me under obligations abroad by his devotion to mother, and his courtesy to me when we needed attention. He thinks you dislike him, as well as many of the others.

Remember what he is to us, and how hard a struggle he has had, and be kind to him--for me."

And though his college remembrances of Mr. Hollins were not tinged with romance, Paul Abbot was too glad and proud in the thought of going to the front--too happy and prosperous, perhaps, to feel anything but pity for the quartermaster's isolation. He made the promise, and found its fulfilment, before they had been away a fortnight, a very irksome thing.

Hollins fairly lived at his tent and better men kept away. Gradually they had drifted apart. Gradually the feeling of coldness and aversion had become so marked that he could not conceal it; and finally, after one of the frequent lapses of which the quartermaster was guilty, there had come rupture of all social relations, and the only a.s.sociate left to Mr. Hollins was the strange character whom he had foisted upon the regiment at its organization--the quondam quartermaster-sergeant, Rix.

But in all the marching and fighting of the battle summer of '62, these things were of less account than they had been during the inaction of the winter and early spring, until, at the Monocacy, Mr. Abbot's curiosity was excited by the singular language used by Rix when ordered under guard. What could such a man as he have to do with the affairs, personal or professional, of the officers of the regiment? It was rabid nonsense--idle boasting, no doubt; and yet the new-made major found that melodramatic threat recurring to his mind time and again.

Another thing that perplexed him was the fact already alluded to, that during the winter Viva's letters, never too frequent or long, had begun to grow longer as to interval and shorter as to contents. He made occasional reference to the fact, but was referred to the singular circ.u.mstance that "he began it." Matters were mended for a while, then drifted into the old channel again. Then came the stirring incidents of June; the sharp, hard marches of July and August; the thrilling battles of Cedar Mountain and Second Bull Run; and he felt that his letters were hardly missed. Then came the dash at Turner's Gap; his wounds, rest, recovery, and promotion. But there was silence at home. He had not missed _her_ letters before. Now he felt that they ought to come, and had written more than once to say so.

And now, alone in his room, he is trying to keep cool and clear-headed; to fathom the mystery of his predicament before going to his father and telling him that between Genevieve Winthrop and himself there has arisen a cloud which at any moment may burst in storm.

Her letter--the first received since Antietam--he has read over time and again. It must be confessed that there is a good deal therein to anger an honest man, and Abbot believes he is ent.i.tled to that distinction:

"You demand the reason for my silence, and shall have it. I did not wish to endanger your recovery, and so have kept my trouble to myself, but now I write to tell you that the farce is ended. You have utterly broken your promise; I am absolved from mine. The fact that you could find time to write day after day to Miss Warren, and neglect me for weeks, would in itself be justification for demanding my release from an engagement you have held so lightly.

But that you should have sought and won another's love even while your honor was pledged to me, is _more_ than enough. I do not ask release. I break the bond--once and for all.

"You will have no place to receive your letters at the front. They, with your ring, and certain gifts with which you have honored me from time to time, will be found in a packet which is this day forwarded to your mother.

"GENEVIEVE WINTHROP."

Abbot is seated with his head buried in his hands. That name again! the girl who fainted at sight of him! the old man who was prostrate at his denial on the Monocacy! the picture of himself in _her_ desk! and now, this bitter, insulting letter from the woman who was to have been his wife! Rix's words at the field hospital!--what in Heaven's name can it all mean? What network of crime and mystery is this that is thrown around him?

There is a sudden knock at the door--a negro waiter with a telegram:

"POINT OF ROCKS, MD., _Oct._ --, 1862.

"Major PAUL R. ABBOT, Willard's Hotel, Washington:

"Hollins still missing; believed to have followed you to Washington. Use every effort to secure arrest.

"PUTNAM."

VII.

There is an air of unusual excitement about the War Department this bright October day. It is only a month since the whole army seemed tramping through the streets on its way to the field of the Antietam; only three weeks since the news was received that Lee was beaten back across the Potomac, and every one expected that McClellan would be hot on his trail, eager to pursue and punish before the daring Southerners could receive accessions. But though two corps managed to reoccupy Harper's Ferry and there go into camp, the bulk of the army has remained where Lee left it when he slipped from its grasp, and McClellan's cry is for reinforcements. Three weeks of precious time slip by, and then--back come those daredevils of Stuart's, riding with laugh and taunt and jeer all around the Union forces; and there is the mischief to pay here in Washington, for if he should take a notion to pay the capital a visit on his homeward trip, what would the consequences be? Of course there are troops--lots of them--all around in the fortifications. The trouble is, that we have so few cavalry, and, after all, the greatest trouble is the old one--those fellows, Stuart and Jackson, have such a consummate faculty of making a very little go a great way. All that is known of Stuart's present move is, that he is somewhere up the c.u.mberland Valley; that telegraphic communication beyond McClellan's headquarters is broken, and that it is more than likely he will come hitherwards when he chooses to make his next start.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_Back come those daredevils of Stuart's._"]

Going to the War Department to make inquiries for the provost-marshal, and show him Putnam's telegram, Major Abbot finds that official too busy to see him, "unless it be something urgent," says the subaltern, who seems to be an aide-de-camp of some kind.

"I have come to show him a despatch received last night--late--from Point of Rocks."

"You are Major Abbot, formerly--th Ma.s.sachusetts, I believe, and your despatch is about the missing quartermaster, is it not?"

"Yes," replies Abbot, in surprise.

"We have the duplicate of the despatch here," says the young officer, smiling. "You would know Hollins at once, would you not?"

"Yes, anywhere, I think."

"One of the secret-service men will come in to see you this morning if you will kindly remain at your room until eleven or twelve o'clock.

Pardon me, major, you saw this Doctor Warren at Frederick, did you not?"

"Yes. The evening he came out to the field hospital."

"Did he impress you as a man who told a perfectly straight story, and properly accounted for himself?"

"Why--You put it in a way that never occurred to me before," says the major, in bewilderment. "Do you mean that there was anything wrong about him?"