The Iron Game Part 13

"Don't you? Well, honey, it's mitey sight different from all the roads you ever saw. It takes you where you don't want to go."

"What do you mean, Bob?"

"I jess mean that ar road goes to Newmarket, where these Yanks are ordered, but we've lost it and we shall come out in about an hour and a half at the junction, whar th' train goes on to Richmond. See?"

"Bob Purvis, you are a general, suah," and then there followed low, rollicking laughter, mingled with a gurgling as of a liquid swallowed from a flask. "But how'll we manage at the junction? We can't go right on the cars? There is some hocus-pocus about everything you do in the army."

"Oh, jess you keep your eye on your dad, and you'll see things you never saw afore. The minit them cavalry sneaks left us back thar, I made up my mind I'd skip Newmarket. They've gone back to pick up more loot. No one at the junction knows what our orders was. Besides, it'll be dark when we get thar. The trains'll be full of our wounded. We'll slip these Yanks in as if under orders. No one will know but we're hospital guards on a detail for the wounded. When it is found out we shall be in Richmond, and, if the provost folk get hold of me afore I've been home and planted my haul, then I'm a Yank."

"By mitey, Ben, you are a general, suah." Then suppressed laughter and the gurgling of the flowing enlivener. Jack blissfully fell into dreams, wherein home things and warlike doings mingled in grotesque medley.

Relapses into consciousness followed at he knew not what intervals thereafter. He was conscious of cruel torment and a clumsy transfer into another vehicle, confused sounds of groans, curses, waving lights, and the hissing of escaping steam almost in his very ears. Then the anguish of thundering wheels, until his cracked brain reeled and he was mercifully unconscious. How long? His eyes opened on a clean white wall, flowers hung from the windows in plumy festoons, birds sang in the yellow dazzling sunlight. What could it mean? Was he at home? Surely there was nothing of war in these comfortable surroundings. His left arm was free, there was no one lying near to impede its movement. So it wasn't a hospital. He took vague note of all this before he tried to lift his arm. He raised his hand to rub his eyes and to a.s.sure himself that it was not a cruel delusion. When he took it away, a kind face--the face of a woman--was bending over him.

"You are feeling better, aren't you, lieutenant?"

"Lieutenant"? Why did she call him lieutenant? Had he been promoted on the battle-field? Was he in the Union lines? Oh, yes; else he would have been in a hospital, with moaning men all about him. He tried to speak.

The woman put her finger to her lips, warningly.

"The doctor says you must not speak or be spoken to until you get strong."

Days pa.s.sed. He couldn't tell how many, for he lay, long hours at a time, unconscious, the mental faculties mercifully dead while the wounded ligatures knit themselves anew. His right arm had been cut by a saber-stroke, and a pistol-ball had entered above the shoulder-blade.

Prompt attention would have given him recovery in a few days, but the twenty-four hours in a cart and the cars made his condition, for a time, serious.

But now he is visibly stronger, and his nurse brings people into the room to see him. They look at him with wonder and admiration, while the good lady is all in a flutter of delight. He hears himself spoken of always as the "lieutenant," and hesitates to ask an explanation. The physician comes but seldom, the lady explaining that all the doctors in town are busy in the hospitals. The truth flashed upon him one morning, when his hostess came bursting in to say:

"The provost guard has come to take your name. I don't know it, for when you were brought here my son only heard you called lieutenant."

"My name is John Sprague"--Jack lifted himself to his elbow in excitement and disregard of everything--"and my regiment is the--ah!" He fell back, and the frightened dame hurried to him as she saw his changed look and deadly pallor.

"Oh, how careless of me; how unthinking! There, lie perfectly still. I will send the guard away and come back."

She was gone before he could recover his speech or enough coherence to say what was in his mind. She informed the orderly that the ailing man was John Sprague, a lieutenant in the First Virginia Volunteers, for that was the regiment the hospital guards had named, when, on the night of the arrival, the eager citizens swarmed at the station to take the wounded to their homes, the hospitals being sadly unready. Jack instantly suspected the situation, the conversation in the ambulance coming back to him now distinctly. What should he do? He was in honor bound to undeceive the kind-hearted and unwitting accomplice of the fraud practiced on herself as well as on him. She came in presently with an officer. Jack was not familiar with the rebel insignia, and could not discover his rank or service, but he expected to hear himself denounced as a spy or anything odious.

"Our surgeon has been sent to Mana.s.sas, and Dr. Van Ness is come to take care of you in his place," the matron said, as Jack stared silent and quavering at the new-comer. That gentleman examined the patient, shook his head dubiously and declared high fever at work, and ordered absolute quiet for at least twenty-four hours, when, if he could, he would return. "Continue the prescriptions you have now, Mrs. Raines. All he needs is quiet. The hospital steward will come to dress his wounds as usual."

Mrs. Raines came in with tea and toast in the evening, and as she spread the napkin on the bed she prattled cheerily.

"I'm so happy to-night. I've just received a letter from my son. He's at Mana.s.sas. He's been promoted to lieutenant from sergeant. It was read at the head of the regiment--for gallant service at the Henry House, where he captured part of a company of Yankees with a squad of cavalry. He's only twenty-two, and if he lives he may be a general--if those cowardly Yankees will only fight long enough. But I'm afraid they won't. _The Whig_ says this morning that that beast Lincoln has to keep himself guarded by a regiment of negroes, as the Northern people want to kill him. I hope they won't, for if they did then they might put some one in his place that has some sense, and then the war would come to an end and we should be cheated in a settlement, for the Yankees are sharper than our big-hearted, generous men. No, sir, no; you mustn't talk. I've promised to keep you quiet, so lie still. I'll read _The Whig_ to you."

She ran over the meager dispatches made up of hearsay and speculation--how the North had fallen into a rage with the Washington authorities; how Lincoln's life wasn't safe; how the Cabinet had all resigned; how the Democrats had arisen in Congress and in the State Legislatures and demanded negotiations with "President Davis"; how England was drawing up a treaty with the new Confederacy. Then she turned to the local page. She ran over a dozen paragraphs recounting the deeds of well-known Richmond heroes, but these made no impression upon the listener, until she read:

"Major Vincent Atterbury, whose gallantry at the battle of the 21st Richmond is a subject of pride to his friends, was transferred to his country home, on the James, yesterday. He is still very low, but the surgeons declare that home quiet and careful nursing will restore him to his duties in time for the autumn campaign--if the Yankees do not surrender before that time."

Jack's eyes were so bright when Mrs. Raines looked at him, as she lowered the sheet, that she arose, exclaiming quickly:

"There, I have brought the fever back! Your eyes are glittering and your cheeks are flushed. No, do not speak."

She moved precipitately from the room, and Jack sank back with a groan.

His danger, if not his difficulties, might be overcome now. He would write to Mrs. Atterbury, and through Vincent arrange for an exchange.

But a still deeper trouble had been on his mind. Where were Barney and Nick, and, worse than all, young d.i.c.k Perley? If any mishap had befallen that boy, he would shrink from returning to Acredale. And his mother, what must her state of mind be? How many days had pa.s.sed since the battle? He had no means of knowing. Ah, yes! The paper was there on the stand, where Mrs. Raines had thrown it. He raised himself slowly and seized it. Heavens! Sat.u.r.day, August 4th? Two weeks since that fatal Sunday! And his mother? Oh, he must find means to write, to telegraph.

"Mrs. Raines," he called, hoa.r.s.ely, "Mrs. Raines!" She came running to his side in alarm.

"Oh, what has happened? You are worse!"

"I am very comfortable; but, my kind friend, I must--I must let my mother know that I am alive; she will think me dead."

"That's what I meant to ask you--just as soon as you seemed able to talk. I would have gladly sent her word and invited her to come here, but I didn't know the name nor the address. You didn't have a st.i.tch of clothes when you came except your underwear; the rest had been taken off, the men said, because they were soiled and b.l.o.o.d.y, and there wasn't a clew of any sort to your ident.i.ty, except that you were a lieutenant in a Virginia regiment. I thought we should find out when the provost came, but they have sent to Mana.s.sas, and no answer has come back yet."

"The men who brought me here deceived you, Mrs. Raines. I do not belong to a Virginia regiment; I belong to a New York regiment, and I am a--a--Union soldier."

"Great Father! A Yankee?" The poor woman sank on the nearest chair, as some one who has been nursing a patient that suddenly turns out to have small-pox or leprosy.

"Yes, Mrs. Raines: if you prefer that name, I'm a Yankee--but we call only New-Englanders Yankees." He waited for her to speak, but as she sat dumb, helpless, overcome, he continued: "I tried to explain the mistake before, but your kindness cut me off. I can only say that, though you have given me a mother's care and a Christian's consideration under a misunderstanding, I trust you will not blame me for willful deception nor regret the goodness you have shown the stranger in your hands."

"And those men that brought you here--were they Yankees, too?" she asked, her mind dwelling, womanlike, on the least essential factor of the problem in order to keep the grievous fact as far away as possible.

"Oh, no! they were your own people. There was no collusion, I a.s.sure you." Jack almost laughed now, as the dialogue in the ambulance recurred to him, and the adroit use the men had made of their unconscious charges to secure a furlough. "No; I was more amazed than I can say when I came to myself in this charming chamber--a paradise it seemed to me, a home paradise--when your kind face bent over my pillow."

"It's a cruel disappointment," she said, rising and holding the back of the chair as she tilted it toward the bed. "We were so proud of you--so proud to have any one that had fought for our dear State in our own house to nurse, to bring back to life. Every one on the street has some one from the battle, and oh, what will be said of us when people know that we--we--" But here the cruelty of the conclusion came too sharply to her mind, and she walked to the window, sobbing softly.

"I can understand, believe me, Mrs. Raines, and I am going to propose a means to you whereby I shall be taken from here, and your neighbors shall never know that you entertained an enemy unawares, though G.o.d knows I don't see why we should be enemies when the battle is over. If your son were in my condition I should think very hard of my mother if she were not to him what you have been to me."

"But I can't believe you're a Yankee; you were so gentle, so patient in all the dreadful times when the surgeon was cutting and hacking. Oh, I can't believe it! Oh, please say you are joking--that you wanted to give me a fright. And you have a mother?" She came over near the bed again and stood looking at him dismally, half in doubt, half in perplexed wonder; for Yankee, in her mind, suggested some such monster as the Greeks conjured when the Goths poured into the peninsula, maiming the men and debauching the women. "I said Sprague wasn't a Virginia name,"

she murmered, plaintively, in a last desperate attempt to fortify herself against the worst; "but there's no telling what names are in Virginia now, since Norfolk has grown so big and folks come in that way from all over the world."

Jack could scarcely keep a serious face, as this humorous lament displayed the pride of the Dominion and the unconscious Boeotianism of the provincial.

"Now, Mrs. Raines, here is what I propose: Major Atterbury, of whom you read to me, is my nearest friend. We have been college comrades; he has pa.s.sed weeks at my home, and I have been asked to his, and meant to come this autumn vacation, if the war had not broken out. I will write to his mother, and she will have me removed to her house, and it need never be known that you gave aid and comfort to the enemy."

"But the Atterburys will never receive you. They were the first to favor secession, when all the rest of us opposed it. To tell you the truth, Mr. Sprague, it is partly because we were abused a good deal for holding back when the secession excitement was first started, that I am so--so anxious about the story getting out that we entertained a Yankee prisoner. My husband is in the service of the government in Norfolk, and my son is in the army. But you know what neighborhood gossip is."

So, after a friendly talk in which the poor lady cried a great deal and besought Jack's good-will for her darling William, if ever he were luckless enough to be captured, the note was written and dispatched to the Atterburys, whose city house was near the capital square. The messenger returned a half-hour later, reporting the family out of town; that they had taken the major to their country-place near Williamsburg, on the banks of the James. The messenger had given the letter to the housekeeper, who said that it would go out an hour later with the mail sent daily to the family.

"Williamsburg is two hours' ride on the train," Mrs. Raines explained, "and we sha'n't hear from them until to-morrow."

Jack said nothing; his mind was on his mother and the misery she must be enduring. He turned restlessly on his pillow that night, and woke feverish in the morning. Mrs. Raines now took as much pains to keep people who called from seeing her hero as she had before put herself out to display the invalid. Even the doctor, calling about nine o'clock, was sent away on some pretext, and the poor lady waited with an anxiety, almost as poignant as Jack's own, for the response to his note. About noon it came. Mrs. Raines went to the door herself, not daring to trust the colored girl, who had lavished untold pains on Jack's linen and the manual part of his care. Jack heard low voices in the hallway, then on the stairs, and he knew some one had come.

"Here is Miss Atterbury sent to fetch you, lieutenant," Mrs. Raines said, now very much relieved, and impressed, too, by the powerful friends her dangerous _protege_ was able to summon so promptly by a line.

"You are Rosalind?" Jack said, smiling at a pair of the brownest and most bewitching eyes fixed soberly on him. "I should have known you if I had met you in the street, although you were a small girl when I saw you last."

"You needn't take much credit for that, sir, since Vincent probably had my portrait in all his coat-pockets and his room frescoed with them--it's a trick of his. So you needn't pretend that it was family likeness--I know better. Vincent has all the good looks of the family, and I have all the good qualities."

"That's why you've come to console the afflicted?"

"Yes, duty--you know how disagreeable that is. Vincent declared he would come himself, if I didn't, and mamma wouldn't hear of your being moved by servants alone, so I am here. But I give you fair warning that I am a rebel of the most ferocious sort. You shall ride under the 'bonnie blue flag' to Rosedale, and you shall salute our flag every morning when it is hoisted."

"I am the most docile of men and the easiest of invalids. I will ride under Captain Kidd's flag and salute the standard of the Grand Turk, to be near Vincent just now."

When Rosalind's colored aids had placed him in the big family carriage, and he had bidden Mrs. Raines farewell, the young lady resumed: "Ah, I know you! Vincent has told me about your Yankee ways. Not another word, sir. I'll act as guide, and tell you all we see of note as we go on.