An Original Belle Part 52

The fact of the prisoners' escape soon became evident, and there were haste, confusion, and running to and fro to no purpose. Suwanee imitated Roberta so closely that she was not suspected. Lieutenant Macklin and the rebel sergeant at last returned, giving evidence of strong vexation.

"We don't understand this," began the lieutenant.

"Neither do we," interrupted Mrs. Barkdale, so haughtily that they were abashed, although they directed keen glances towards Suwanee, who met their scrutiny unflinchingly.

The Barkdales were not people to be offended with impunity, and the lieutenant knew it. He added, apologetically: "You know I must do my duty, madam. I fear some of your servants are implicated, or that guards have been tampered with."

"You are at liberty to examine any one you please."

They might as well have examined a carved, wrinkled effigy as old Cuffy, Lane's midnight guide. "I don' know nuffin' 'tall 'bout it,"

he declared. "My ole woman kin tell yo' dat I went to bed when she did and got up when she did."

The guard, bought with kindness, was as dense in his ignorance as any of the others. At last Macklin declared that he would have to put citizens on the hunt, for his orders admitted of no delay.

The Union prisoners, together with the Confederates, when formed in line, gave a ringing cheer for "Missy S'wanee and the ladies,"

and then the old mansion was left in more than its former isolation, and, as the younger girl felt, desolation.

She attended to her duties as usual, and then went to her piano.

The words spoken the previous evening would ever make the place dear to her. While she was there old Hildy crept in, with her feeble step, and whispered, "I foun' dis un'er Cap'n Lane's piller."

It was but a sc.r.a.p of paper, unaddressed; but Suwanee understood its significance. It contained these words: "I can never repay you, but to discover some coin which a nature like yours can accept has become one of my supreme ambitions. If I live, we shall meet again."

Those words formed a glimmering hope which grew fainter and fainter in the dark years which followed.

She did not have to mask her trouble very long, for another sorrow came like an avalanche. Close to the Union lines, on Cemetery Ridge, lay a white-haired colonel and his two tall sons. They were among the heroes in Pickett's final charge, on the 3d of July. "Missy S'wanee" laughed no more, even in self-defence.

CHAPTER XLI.

SUNDAY'S LULL AND MONDAY'S STORM.

SUNDAY, the 12th of July, proved a long, restful sabbath to Marian and her father, and they spent most of its hours together. The great tension and strain of the past weeks appeared to be over for a time. The magnificent Union victories had brought gladness and hopefulness to Mr. Vosburgh, and the return of her friends had relieved his daughter's mind. He now thought he saw the end clearly.

He believed that hereafter the tide of rebellion would ebb southward until all the land should be free.

"This day has been a G.o.dsend to us both," he said to Marian, as they sat together in the library before retiring. "The draft has begun quietly, and no disturbances have followed. I scarcely remember an evening when the murmur of the city was so faint and suggestive of repose. I think we can both go to the country soon, with minds comparatively at rest. I must admit that I expected no such experience as has blessed us to-day. We needed it. Not until this respite came did I realize how exhausted from labor and especially anxiety I had become. You, too, my little girl, are not the blooming la.s.sie you were a year ago."

"Yet I think I'm stronger in some respects, papa."

"Yes, in many respects. Thank G.o.d for the past year. Your sympathy and companionship have made it a new era in my life. You have influenced other lives, also, as events have amply proved. Are you not satisfied now that you can be unconventional without being queer? You have not been a colorless reflection of some social set; neither have you left your home for some startling public career; and yet you have achieved the distinct individuality which truthfulness to nature imparts. You have simply been developing your better self naturally, and you have helped fine fellows to make the best of themselves."

"Your encouragement is very sweet, papa. I'm not complacent over myself, however; and I've failed so signally in one instance that I'm vexed and almost saddened. You know what I mean."

"Yes, I know," with a slight laugh. "Merwyn is still your unsolved problem, and he worries you."

"Not because he is unsolved, but rather that the solution has proved so disappointing and unexpected. He baffles me with a trait which I recognize, but can't understand, and only admit in wonder and angry protest. Indeed, from the beginning of our acquaintance he has reversed my usual experiences. His first approaches incensed me beyond measure,--all the more, I suppose, because I saw in him an odious reflection of my old spirit. But, papa, when to his condescending offer I answered from the full bitterness of my heart, he looked and acted as if I had struck him with a knife."

Her father again laughed, as he said: "You truly used heroic surgery, and to excellent purpose. Has he shown any conceit, complacency, or patronizing airs since?"

"No, I admit that, at least."

"In destroying some of his meaner traits by one keen thrust, you did him a world of good. Of course he suffered under such a surgical operation, but he has had better moral health ever since."

"Oh, yes," she burst out, "he has become an eminently respectable and patriotic millionnaire, giving of his abundance to save the nation's life, living in a palace meanwhile. What did he mean by his pa.s.sionate words, 'I shall measure everything hereafter by the breadth of your woman's soul'? What have the words amounted to? You know, papa, that nothing but my duty and devotion to you keeps me from taking an active part in this struggle, even though a woman.

Indeed, the feeling is growing upon me that I must spend part of my time in some hospital. A woman can't help having an intense conviction of what she would do were she a man, and you know what I would have done, and he knows it also. Therefore he has not kept his word, for he fails at the vital point in reaching my standard.

I have no right to judge men in Mr. Merwyn's position because they do not go to the front. Let them do what they think wise and prudent; let them also keep among their own kind. I protest against their coming to me for what I give to friends who have already proved themselves heroes. But there, I forgot. He looks so like a man that I can't help thinking that he is one,--that he could come up to my standard if he chose to. He still seeks me--"

"No, he has not been here since he heard Blauvelt's story."

"He pa.s.sed the house once, hesitated, and did not enter. Papa, he has not changed, and you know it. He has plainly asked for a gift only second to what I can give to G.o.d. With a tenacity which nothing but his will can account for, perhaps, he seeks it still.

Do you think his distant manner deceives me for a moment? Nor has my coldness any influence on him. Yet it has not been the coldness of indifference, and he knows that too. He has seen and felt, like sword-thrusts, my indignation, my contempt. He has said to my face, 'You think me a coward.' He is no fool, and has fully comprehended the situation. If he had virtually admitted, 'I am a coward, and therefore can have no place among the friends who are surpa.s.sing your ideal of manly heroism,' and withdrawn to those to whom a million is more than all heroism, the affair would have ended naturally long ago. But he persists in bringing me a daily sense of failure and humiliation. He says: 'My regard for you is so great I can't give you up, yet not so great as to lead me to do what hundreds of thousands are doing. I can't face danger for your sake.' I have tried to make the utmost allowance for his const.i.tutional weakness, yet it has humiliated me that I had not the power to enable him to overcome so strange a failing. Why, I could face death for you, and he can't stand beside one whom he used to sneer at as 'little Strahan.' Yet, such is his idea of my woman's soul that he still gives me his thoughts and therefore his hopes;" and she almost stamped her foot in her irritation.

"Would you truly give your life for me?" he asked, gently.

"Yes, I know I could, and would were there necessity; not in callous disregard of danger, but because the greater emotion swallows up the less. Faulty as I am, there would be no bargainings and prudent reservations in my love. These are not the times for half-way people.

Oh think, papa, while we are here in the midst of every comfort, how many thousands of mutilated, horribly wounded men are dying in agony throughout the South! My heart goes out to them in a sympathy and homage I can't express. Think how Lane and even Strahan may be suffering to-night, with so much done for them, and then remember the prisoners of war and the poor unknown enlisted men, often terribly neglected, I fear. Papa, won't you let me go as a nurse?

The ache would go out of my own heart if I tried to reduce this awful sum of anguish a little. He whose word and touch always banished pain and disease would surely shield me in such labors. As soon as danger no longer threatens you, won't you let me do a little, although I am only a girl?"

"Yes, Marian," her father replied, gravely; "far be it from me to repress such heaven-born impulses. You are now attaining the highest rank reached by humanity. All the avenues of earthly distinction cannot lead beyond the spirit of self-sacrifice for others. This places you near the Divine Man, and all grow mean and plebeian to the degree that they recede from him. You see what comes of developing your better nature. Selfishness and its twin, cowardice, are crowded out."

"Please don't praise me any more. I can't stand it," faltered the girl, tearfully. A moment later her laugh rang out. "Hurrah!" she cried, "since Mr. Merwyn won't go to the war, I'm going myself."

"To make more wounds than you will heal," her father added.

"Remember the circ.u.mstances under which you go will have to receive very careful consideration, and I shall have to know all about the matron and nurses with whom you act. Your mother will be horrified, and so will not a few of your acquaintances. Flirting in shadows is proper enough, but helping wounded soldiers to live--But we understand each other, and I can trust you now."

The next morning father and daughter parted with few misgivings, and the latter promised to go to her mother in a day or two, Mr.

Vosburgh adding that if the week pa.s.sed quietly he could join them on Sat.u.r.day evening.

So they quietly exchanged their good-by kiss on the edge of a volcano already in eruption.

An early horseback ride in Central Park had become one of Merwyn's habits of late. At that hour he met comparatively few abroad, and the desire for solitude was growing upon him. Like Mr. Vosburgh, he had watched with solicitude the beginning of the draft, feeling that if it pa.s.sed quietly his only remaining chance would be to wring from his mother some form of release from his oath. Indeed, so unhappy and desperate was he becoming that he had thought of revealing everything to Mr. Vosburgh. The government officer, however, might feel it his duty to use the knowledge, should there come a time when the authorities proceeded against the property of the disloyal. Moreover, the young man felt that it would be dishonorable to reveal the secret.

Beyond his loyal impulses he now had little motive for effort.

Marian's prejudices against him had become too deeply rooted, and her woman's honor for the knightly men her friends had proved too controlling a principle, ever to give him a chance for anything better than polite tolerance. He had discovered what this meant so fully, and in Blauvelt's story had been shown the inevitable contrast which she must draw so vividly, that he had decided:--

"No more of Marian Vosburgh's society until all is changed. Therefore no more forever, probably. If my mother proves as obdurate as a Southern jailer, I suppose I'm held, although I begin to think I have as good cause to break my chains as any other Union man. She tricked me into captivity, and holds me remorselessly,--not like a mother. Miss Vosburgh did show she had a woman's heart, and would have given me her hand in friendship had I not been compelled to make her believe that I was a coward. If in some way I can escape my oath, and my reckless courage at the front proves her mistaken, I may return to her. Otherwise it is a useless humiliation and pain to see her any more."

Such had been the nature of his musings throughout the long Sunday whose quiet had led to the belief that the draft would scarcely create a ripple of overt hostility. During his ride on Monday morning he nearly concluded to go to his country place again. He was growing nervous and restless, and he longed for the steadying influence of his mountain rambles before meeting his mother and deciding questions which would involve all their future relations.

As with bowed head, lost in thought, he approached the city by one of the park entrances, he heard a deep, angry murmur, as if a storm-vexed tide was coming in. Spurring his horse forward, he soon discovered, with a feeling like an electric shock, that a tide was indeed rising. Was it a temporary tidal wave of human pa.s.sion, mysterious in its origin, soon to subside, leaving such wreckage as its senseless fury might have caused? Or was it the beginning of the revolution so long feared, but not now guarded against?