The Master of Warlock Part 11

Seeing that Baillie was becoming excited by this serious talk, his friend adroitly turned the conversation to less strenuous matters. Half an hour later The Oaks ladies drove up in their antique, high-hung carriage, to make that formal inquiry concerning Mr. Baillie Pegram's convalescence which from the first they had made with great scrupulousness three times every week.

When they had gone, Pollard asked:

"Have you seen Miss Agatha since that day last spring, when you were requested not to visit The Oaks?"

For a moment Baillie remained silent. Then he said: "If you don't mind, I'd rather not talk of that, Marshall."

That was all that pa.s.sed between these two on that subject during the week of Marshall's stay at Warlock. How unlike men are to women in these things! Had these two young men been two young women instead, how minutely each would have confided to the other the last detail of experience and thought and feeling! And this not because women are more emotional than men--for they are not--but because they are not ashamed, as men are, of the tenderer side of their natures.

XII

_UNDER ESCORT_

No sooner had Agatha Ronald determined to enter upon a career of very dangerous service to her cause and country, than she set herself diligently to the work of perfecting plans which were at first vague and undefined. It was no part of her purpose to fail if by any forethought and thoroughness of preparation she might avert the danger of failure.

She determined to do nothing until every point and possibility, so far as conditions could be foreseen, should be considered and provided for.

First of all, she entered into perfect confidence with her maid, Martha, telling the trusty negro woman as she meant to tell no other person near her, except her grandfather, precisely what she intended to do, and how.

Martha had a shrewd intelligence likely to be useful in emergencies, and her devotion to her mistress was as absolute as that of any devotee to an object of worship. This mistress had been hers to care for by night and by day ever since Agatha had been four years of age. All of loyalty, all of affection, all of self-sacrificing devotion of which the negro character in its best estate is capable, she gave to Agatha, never doubting her due or questioning her right to such service of the heart and soul. She knew no other love than this, no other life than that of unceasing, all-embracing care for her mistress.

It was with no shadow of doubt or hesitation, therefore, that Agatha revealed her purposes to Martha, and asked for her aid in carrying them out. And Martha received the somewhat startling confidence as calmly as if her mistress had been telling her of an intended afternoon drive.

When matters had settled down into apathetic idleness after the battle of Mana.s.sas, Agatha made occasion to visit the army. Officers at Fairfax Court-house had their wives and daughters with them at their headquarters then, and many of these were Agatha's intimates, whom she might visit without formal invitation.

At their quarters, she received visits from such of her friends as belonged to the cavalry forces stationed thereabouts. In her intercourse with these, she steadily maintained the innocent little fiction that she was there solely for social purposes, and to see the splendid army that had so recently won an astonishing victory.

One day, she learned that the picturesque cavalier, General J. E. B.

Stuart, had boldly pushed his outposts to Mason's and Munson's Hills, and established his headquarters under a tree, within easy sight of Washington. She instantly developed an intense desire to visit him there. It happened that she knew Stuart and his family personally, and had often dined in the great cavalry leader's company at her own and other homes. So she said one day, to a young cavalry officer, who was calling upon her:

"I want you to do me a very great service. I want you to ask General Stuart to let me visit him at the outposts. He'll offer to come here to call upon me instead, for he is always gallant, but you are to tell him I will not permit that. The service needs him at the front, and I want to visit him there. Besides, I particularly want to take a peep at Washington City in its new guise as a foreign capital which we are besieging."

The young man remonstrated. He protested that there was very great danger in the attempt--that raids from the picket-lines were of daily occurrence, that the firing was often severe--and all the rest of it, wherefore General Stuart would almost certainly forbid the young lady's proposed enterprise.

The girl calmly looked the young man in the eyes--he was an old friend whom she had known from her childhood--and said, very solemnly:

"Charlie, I am no more afraid of bullets than you are. My heart is set upon this visit, and you _must_ arrange it for me. As for General Stuart, I'll manage him, if you'll carry a note to him for me."

That young man had once begun to make love to Agatha, and she had checked him gently and affectionately in time to spare his pride, and to make of him her willing knight for all time to come. So he answered promptly:

"I'll carry your note, of course, and if Stuart gives permission, I'll beg to be myself your escort. Then, if anybody bothers you with bullets or anything else, it'll be a good deal the worse for him."

The girl thanked him in a way that would have made a hero of him in her defence had occasion served, and presently she scribbled a little note and placed it in the young cavalryman's hands for delivery. It was simple enough, but it was so worded as to make sure that Stuart would promptly grant its request. It ran as follows:

"MY DEAR GENERAL STUART:--I very much want to see you for half an hour out where you are, at Mason's or Munson's Hill, and not here at Fairfax Court-house. My visit will be absolutely and entirely in the public interest, though to all others than yourself I am pretending that it is prompted solely by the whim of a romantic young girl. Please send a permit at once, and please permit Lieutenant Fauntleroy, who bears this, to be my escort."

The note was unsealed, of course, except by the honour of the gentleman who bore it. Stuart's response was prompt, as every act of his enthusiastic life was sure to be. He read the note, held a corner of the sheet in the blaze of his camp-fire, and retained his hold upon the farther corner of it until it was quite consumed. Then he dropped the charred sheets into the coals, and turning to Lieutenant Fauntleroy, commanded:

"Return at once to Fairfax Court-house, detail an escort of half a dozen good men under your own personal command, and escort Miss Ronald to my headquarters. Be very careful not to place the young lady under fire if you can avoid it. Ride in the woods, or under other cover, wherever you can. Remember, you will have a lady in charge, and must take no risks."

"At what time shall I report with Miss Ronald?"

"At her time--at whatever time she shall fix upon as most pleasing to her."

Thus it came about that before noon of the next day, in the midst of a pouring rain-storm, General Stuart lifted Agatha Ronald from her saddle, taking her by the waist for that purpose. He welcomed her with a kiss upon her brow, as the daughter of a house whose hospitality he had often enjoyed. He quickly escorted her to a little brush shelter which he had made his men hastily construct as a defence for her against the rain, and ordered the sentries posted full fifty yards away, in order that the conversation might by no chance be overheard.

"It is a splendid service," he said, when the girl had finished telling him of her plans. "But it will be attended by extraordinary danger to a young woman like you."

"I have considered all that, General," she replied, very seriously. "I do not shrink from the danger."

"Of course not. You are a woman, a Virginian, and a Ronald,--three sufficient guarantees of courage. But I'm afraid for you. It is a terrible risk you are going to take--immeasurably greater in the case of a woman than in that of a man."

"I have my wits, General,--and this," showing him a tiny revolver. "With that a woman can always defend her honour."

"You mean by suicide?"

"Yes--if necessity compels." Stuart looked at the gentle girl, gazing into her fawn-like brown eyes as if trying to read her soul in their depths. Presently he said:

"G.o.d bless you and keep you, dear! I'm going to ride back to Fairfax Court-house with you. Make yourself as comfortable as you can here for half an hour, while I ride out to the pickets. I'll be with you soon, and then we'll have dinner, for you are my guest to-day."

When the dinner was served, it consisted of some ears of corn, plucked from a neighbouring field, and roasted with husks unremoved, among the live coals of the cavalier's camp-fire. Stuart made no apology for the lack of variety in the meal, for he sincerely accepted the doctrine which he often preached to his men, that "anything edible makes a good enough dinner if you are hungry, and the simpler it is, the better.

There's nothing more troublesome in a campaign than cooking utensils and unnecessary things generally. If armies would move without them, there'd be more and better fighting done. The chief thing in war is to start at once and get there without delay."

The meal over, Stuart held out his hand as a step, from which Agatha lightly sprang into her saddle. Then he mounted the superb gray, which he always rode when battle was on, or when he had a gentlewoman under his charge. For there was a touch of the boyish dandy in Stuart, and a good deal more than a touch of that gallantry which prompts every true man of warm blood to honour womanhood with every possible attention.

The horse was fit for his rider, and that is saying quite all that can be said in praise of a horse. Mounted upon him, Stuart was the bodily presentment of all that painters and sculptors have imagined the typical cavalier to be or to seem. Stalwart of figure, erect in carriage, his muscles showing themselves in graceful strength with every movement of his body, his head carried like that of a boy or a young bull, his beard closely clipped, his moustache standing out straight at the ends, and resembling that of Virginia's earliest knight errant, Captain John Smith, of Jamestown, Stuart was a picture to look upon, which the onlooker did not soon forget. His many-gabled slouch hat was decorated with streaming plumes, that helped to make of him a target for the enemy's sharpest sharpshooters whenever battle was on. Full of vigour, full of health, and full to the very lips of a boyish enthusiasm of life, he seemed never to know what weariness might signify, and never for one moment to abate the intensity of his purpose. He did all things as if all had been part of a great game in which he was playing for a championship.

On this occasion, however, his manner was subdued, and his conversation serious in a degree unusual to one of his effervescent spirits. He was riding with Agatha Ronald for the very serious purpose of talking with her about details that must be carefully arranged with a view to her safety in the dangerous undertaking upon which she was about to enter. A word or two to Lieutenant Fauntleroy sent that officer with his escort squad to the front, while Stuart and his charge rode in rear.

"Now, one thing more is necessary, Miss Agatha," he said. "You ought to reenter our country far to the west, if you can, where there are no armies, and only small detachments. Still, I don't know so well about that. Here we keep the Yankees too busy at the front to attend to matters in the rear, while over in the valley they'll have nothing better to do than look out for wandering women like you. Anyhow, you may find it necessary or advisable to enter my lines. In that case, you must be arrested immediately and brought to my headquarters. That is necessary on all accounts--to prevent the nature of your mission from being discovered, and--well, to prevent you from having to report to anybody but me. I shall want to see you, and hear all about your results. So I'm going to give orders every day that will put every picket-officer on watch for you, and impress every one of them with the idea that you are a peculiarly dangerous person, in league with traitors on our side, and trying to put yourself into communication with such. I cannot give you any sort of paper, you see, for papers are always dangerous. But I'll give you six words that will answer the purpose.

Whenever you speak the right one of these words with emphasis, the picket-officer will understand that you are the very dangerous spy whose entrance into our lines I antic.i.p.ate, and whose arrest I particularly desire to secure. I'll give out one of the six words each day, particularly charging officers of the pickets that any woman entering our lines by any means, and using that word with emphasis, is the spy I want,--that her use of it will be intended for the purpose of finding traitorous friends, and that any such woman, no matter upon what pretext she enters the lines, is to be arrested as soon as she uses the word.

Only one of these words will be given out each day, but you will know them all, and use them in succession until you use the right one and are arrested. The words will be such as you can embody in an ordinary sentence without exciting the suspicion of any of the men who may be standing by,--for, of course, only officers will be commissioned to arrest you. You can use the words in different sentences, until you use the right one. Then you will be arrested and brought to my headquarters, where I hope to have a better dinner than that of to-day to offer you."

Just at that moment, the road along which they were riding pa.s.sed between two abandoned fields, each of which was skirted by woodlands on its farther side. Stuart raised his head like a startled deer, and said:

"We must quit the road here, and put ourselves behind that skirt of timber over on the left. Your horse will take the fence easily."

With that the pair pushed their animals over the rail fence on the left, and at a gallop rode across the field toward a little strip of young chestnut woodland that lay beyond. But just as they reached the centre of the field there came the zip, zip, zip of bullets striking the earth, the whiz of bullets pa.s.sing their ears, and the weird whistle of bullets pa.s.sing over them, one of which, now and then, turned somersaults in its course, and produced the peculiar sound that only bullets so misbehaving are capable of producing. At the same moment, the escort under Lieutenant Fauntleroy, who had been in front, fell back to protect its charge, as it was its duty to do. Stuart hurriedly said to the girl:

"Ride for your life to the chestnut-trees, and hide yourself there, while I take care of those fellows. I'll come to you when it's over."

With that he turned about, placed himself at the head of the little escort squad, and, swinging his sabre, as he always did in action, led them at a furious pace, over a fence and into the thicket from which the fire was coming. The few men who were lurking there were quickly scattered, and abandoning their arms, they ran with all their might to the strong picket-post from which they had been thrown out to intercept him.

This done, all danger of further trouble was at an end, or would have been, had Stuart willed it so. But the scent of battle was always in his nostrils. His men were accustomed to say that he was always "looking for trouble," whenever there was the smallest chance of finding it. So instead of contenting himself with having dispersed the a.s.sailing party, he wheeled about to the right, and led his squad with the fury of Mameluke against the strong picket-post itself. Amid a hailstorm of bullets he charged through the half-company there posted, and then, turning about, charged back again, completing the work of destruction and dispersal.

It was not until this was over, and he had given the command, "Trot,"