The Iron Game Part 25

"Oh, de lor'! dey ain't no rope! It's done gone!" "Have you a match?"

Barney asked.

"No, ma.s.sa, but dey is some yondah."

"Find them."

The boy crept cautiously in the direction of the pa.s.sage leading into the house; he fumbled about, an age, as it seemed to the impatient Barney, and at last uttered an exclamation:

"Got 'em?"

"No, ma.s.sa, but Ise suah deys kep dar."

"Take my hand and lead me."

"It's mola.s.ses, ma.s.sa, and Ise all stickem," the voice in the dark whispered, delightedly, and Barney could see a double row of glistening white ivory in the dim light that came through the window. He came nearer the clumsy wight, and saw that it was a pan of batter the cook had left on the table, probably the morning griddle-cakes. The negro was a ma.s.s of white, pasty glue, and knelt on the floor, licking his hands pa.s.sively.

"Where are the matches?"

"Under de clock, in a tin safe, ma.s.sa--right da."

Barney groped angrily about the table, on the clock-shelf, knocking down a tin dish, that fell with the clatter of a bursting magazine in the dense stillness of the night. Both drew back in shadow, waiting with heart-beats that sounded in their ears like tramping horses on thick sward. The clamor of rushing steeds in the lane suddenly drowned this; a loud, joyous whinny sounded in the very kitchen it seemed, and there was a rush houseward past the pantry as of a troop of cavalry. Then a blood-curdling outcry of voices, then shots. Barney, leaving the negro writhing in convulsions under the table, darted to the window--to the rendezvous. It was deserted.

CHAPTER XIX.

"HE EITHER FEARS HIS FATE TOO MUCH."

When Vincent visited the stables on the morning of that eagerly-looked-for Thursday, he found three of the horses clammy with perspiration and giving every sign of having been ridden! The awkward and evasive answers of the stablemen would not have been enough for any other than a man preoccupied by love. When Rosa went to the kitchen, if her head had not been taken up with the love in her heart, she must certainly have remarked that the stores of food prepared for the household were curiously diminished and the kitchen girls unwontedly reserved. Indeed, in any other condition than that in which the family now found themselves, they must have remarked a singular change in the black brigade in kitchen and garden. But, preocupied each with a different interest, as well as the preparation for the President's _fete_, the Atterburys remarked nothing sinister in the distracted conduct of their servants, and had only a vague feeling that the great event had in some sort paralyzed their wonted noisy activities and repressed their usual chatter. Kate's uneasiness and restless vagaries, her disjointed talk and half-guilty evasions, would have been remarked by her prepossessed hosts; while Wesley's shifting and moody silence would have warned his comrades that he was suffering the pangs of an evil done or meditated. Precursive signs like these--and much more, which need not be dwelt on--the kind hosts of Rosedale made no note of.

But when Vincent opened the mail-bag--brought by an orderly from Williamsburg every morning, the first surprise and shock of the day was felt--though in varying degrees by all the diverse inmates of the house.

"Hah! glory to the Lord of hosts!" the exultant reader cried, as he pa.s.sed to his mother a large official envelope at the breakfast-table.

"I'm ordered to the field." he cried, as Jack looked inquiringly; "I'm to set out to-night and report for duty with General Johnston to-morrow at Mana.s.sas. No more loitering in my lady's bower; Jack, my boy, the carpet will be clear for your knightly pranks after to-night."

"If it were Aladdin's magic rug, I should caper nimbly enough. I warrant you."

"What would you wish--if it were under your feet, with its slaves at your command?"

"I should whisk you all off--North--instanter."

"Ingrate!--plunge us into the chilly blasts of the North, in return for our glorious Southern sun? Fie, Jack! I'm surprised at such selfish ingrat.i.tude. We expected better things of our prisoners," Mrs. Atterbury murmured, and affected a reproving frown at the culprit, as she handed her son back the order, with a stilled sigh.

"The sun of the South is not the sun of York to us, you know; all the clouds that lower on our house are doubly darkened by this Southern sun; even the warmth of Rosedale hearts can not make up for our eclipsed Northern star," Jack said, sadly, with a wistful look at the rival warrior reading with sparkling eyes the instructions accompanying the order to march.

"Since Vincent is going so far northward, I think it will be a good time for us to go home," Mrs. Sprague began, tentatively.

"Oh--no--no! Oh, we could never think of such a thing," Rosa cried--"could we, mamma?"

"Why should you go?" Mrs. Atterbury asked. "Until Jack is exchanged, you've certainly no duty in the North so important as watching over this headstrong fellow. We can't think of your going--unless you are weary of us."

"O Mrs. Atterbury, pray don't put it in that way! You know better. Our visit here has been perfect. But you can understand my anxiety to be at home; to be where I can aid my son's release. I have been anxious for some time to broach the subject, but I saw that our going would be a trouble to you; now, since fortune offers this chance, we must seize it--that is, those of us who feel it a duty to go"; and she looked meaningly at Merry and her daughter.

"Nonsense! You are hostages for Vincent, in case he is captured, as long as you are here; I can't let you go--under the laws of war--I can not.

Can I, Vincent?"

Vincent looked at Jack solemnly, but made no answer.

"Mamma is quite right. While you are with us no harm can come to Vincent; for, if he should be taken prisoner, we can threaten the Yankee Government to put you to torture unless he is well treated," Rosa interrupted, rea.s.suringly.

"We should be far more aid and comfort to Vincent if we were in the North than we could be here. If he were taken prisoner and wounded, we could return him the kindness we have received here. In any event, we could lessen the hardships of prison life."

"Oh, you would have to minister to a mind diseased, if such a fate should befall me!" Vincent cried, sentimentally; with a glance into Olympia's eyes, which met his at the moment. Both blushed; and Olympia, to relieve the embarra.s.sment, said, decisively:

"Mamma is right. Jack must have his family on the ground, to watch over his interests. I am sure there is some underhand work responsible for this long delay in his case, for I saw by _The Whig_, last week, that exchanges of prisoners had been made; I think that--" But, suddenly remembering the presence of Kate and Wesley, she did not finish the thought, which implied a belief in the intervention of the elder Boone--to Jack's detriment. In the end--when the two mothers talked the matter over--Mrs. Sprague carried the point. She convinced Mrs.

Atterbury that there was danger to Jack in a longer stay of his family in the Confederate lines. Vague reports had already reached them from Acredale of the suspicious hostility in which the Democrats were held after Bull Run. The Northern papers, which came through the lines quite regularly, left no doubt that Democratic leanings were universally interpreted in the North as evidences of rebel sympathy, if not partisanship. Such a charge, as things stood, would be fatal to Jack; and the mother's duty was plain. She had friends in Washington, once powerful, who could stand between her son and calumny--perhaps more serious danger--when she was present in person to explain his conduct.

If she could not at once secure his exchange, she could save him from compromise in the present inflammable and capricious state of the public mind. Understanding this, and the enmity of Boone, Mrs. Atterbury not only made no further objection, but acknowledged the urgent necessity of the mother's presence in the North. The idle life of Rosedale had grown unbearably irksome to Merry, too.

"I feel as if I were a rebel," she confided to Mrs. Sprague in the evening talks, when the piano sounded and the young people were making the hours pa.s.s in gayety. "It's a sin for us to laugh and be contented here, when our friends are bearing the burdens of war. I shall be ashamed to show my face in Acredale. Oh, I wish I could carry a musket!"

"You might carry a canteen, my dear. I believe the regiments take out _vivandieres_--there would be an outlet for your warlike emotions," Mrs.

Sprague said, with the purpose of cheering the unhappy spinster.

"Ah, no; I must not give encouragement to that dreadful Richard. But we shall go now, thank Heaven, and it will comfort my sisters to have the boy back on Northern soil, even if he persists in being a soldier."

She had a long talk with Jack on the subject. That tempest-tossed knight convinced her that it would only incite the boy to more unruliness to persist in his quitting the army, or to urge him northward now, before an exchange was properly arranged. Indeed, he was a prisoner--taken in battle--though his name did not appear on the lists. So Vincent's sudden going was welcomed as a stroke of good fortune. The Atterburys, understanding the natural feelings of the family, made only perfunctory opposition. Olympia and Kate were to remain until their brothers' fates were decided. Vincent, who had been for weeks wildly impatient to return to the field, was divided in mind now--by joy and despair. He had put off and put off a last appeal to Olympia. He had not had an opportunity, or rather had too much opportunity--and had, from day to day, deferred the longed-for yet dreaded decision. When ready to speak, prudence whispered that it would be better to leave the question open until it should come up of itself. She would learn every day to know him better in his own home, where all the artificialities of life are stripped from a man, by the concurrent abrasions of family love and domestic _devoirs_. She would see that, however unworthy of her love he might have seemed in the old boyish days at Acredale, now he could be a man when manliness was demanded; that he could be patient, reticent, humble in the trials her caprice or coquetry put upon him. She had, it seemed to him, deepened and broadened the current of his love during these blissful weeks of waiting. Her very reserve, under the new conditions surrounding her, had made more luminous the beauty of her heart and mind. She was no longer the airy, capricious Olympia of his college days. The pensive gravity of misfortune and premature responsibility had enn.o.bled and made more tangible the traits that had won him in her Northern home. She had not avoided him during these weeks of purifying probation, as he feared she would. Of late--Jack's state being secure--she had revived much of the old vivacity, and deepened the thrall that held him.

But now the merry-making season which had opened before them was at an end. The madrigals that welled up in his soft heart must sing themselves in the silence of the night, in the camp yonder, with no ears to comprehend, no heart to melt to them. He should probably not get a chance to see her again during the conflict. How long? Perhaps a year--for it would take two campaigns, as the rebel leaders reckoned, to convince the North that the Confederacy was unconquerable! And what might not happen during those momentous months? Perhaps Jack's death?--and then they would be divided as by fire--or, if the conflict resulted victoriously for the South, as he knew it must, he foresaw that the soldier of the conquering army would not be received as a wooer in the family of the defeated. He knew her so well! She would, in the very pride of outraged patriotism, give her love to one of the defeated, rather than add to the triumphs of the hated South. She had strong convictions on the war. She hated slavery, and she could not be made to see that the South was warring for liberty, not to sustain slavery.

These thoughts ran through Vincent's troubled mind as his mother directed the preparations for the _fete_ of the President.

Kate, Jack, and d.i.c.k were pressed into the service of decorating the apartments. Olympia left the room with her mother to advise and a.s.sist in making ready for the journey North; and Vincent, aiding his mother with a sadly divided mind, kept furtive watch on the hallway. She held him hours in suspense, he thought, almost wrathfully, of deliberate purpose; for she must have read in his eyes that he wanted to talk with her. The artless d.i.c.k finally gave him a chance.

"I say, Vint, get Polly to show you the roses needed for the tables; I'll be with you by-and-by to cut the ferns. Do you think you could make yourself of that much use? You're not worth a straw here"

"Send for Miss Polly and I'll do my best," Vincent said, with a gulp, to conceal his joy. She appeared presently; and, as they were pa.s.sing out of the door, Rosa cried, imperiously:

"Oh, yes, Vint, we need ever so much honeysuckle; you know where it hangs thickest--in the Owl's Glen. Olympia will like to see that--the haunt of her favorite bird"; and the busy little maid laughed cheerily, like a disordered G.o.ddess, intoxicated by the exhaling odors of the floral chaos.

"_En route_ for Roumelia, then," Vincent cried in military cadence, as the florists set out. Roumelia was the name Jack had given the rose-lands near the stream, in fanciful allusion to the Turkish province of flowers. Halting at the gardener's cottage, Vincent procured an immense pair of shears, like a double rapier in size, and, bidding the man follow to gather the blossoms, he pushed into the blooming vineyard.

"With such an instrument I should say it was the golden fleece you were after," Olympia cried, as he reached her side, "though I believe Jason didn't do the shearing."

"No, the powers of air worked for him, and he found his quest ready to his hand."

"I'm sure the powers of air have not denied you; look at those radiant ranks of blossoms bending to be gathered."