The Master of Warlock Part 27

McClellan had seventy thousand men in line, Lee forty thousand. The struggle began early in the morning and continued until after nightfall.

The fighting on both sides was as heroic and as determined as any that was ever done in the world. At the end of it all both sides claimed the victory, and neither had in fact won it. Neither had been able to drive the other from his position. Neither had broken the other's lines or gained any decisive advantage. And when morning came again neither side was willing to renew the contest, and neither would retire from the field.

For a whole day the two armies lay facing each other in grim defiance, each ready to receive the other should it attack, but neither venturing to make the a.s.sault.

After twenty-four hours of defiant waiting, Lee slowly retired to the Potomac, while McClellan lay still, not venturing to follow his adversary. Lee crossed unmolested into Virginia and took up a position within easy striking distance, but his adversary made no attempt to strike. McClellan presently advanced and stretched his great army along the Potomac. But he a.s.sumed an att.i.tude of defence, calling insistently for reinforcements, though his army outnumbered Lee's about two to one.

He had succeeded in checking Lee's invasion of the North and turning it back. He was content with that, and in spite of President Lincoln's urgency he refused to do more, till at last General Burnside was ordered to a.s.sume command in his stead.

It was confidently expected both at the North and at the South, after Lee's withdrawal to Virginia, that as soon as his army should be rested, he would again take the offensive, a.s.sail McClellan at some point, and attempt a new march northward. This expectation was strengthened when Stuart, early in October, plunged across the river with his cavalry, galloped over the country, penetrated into Pennsylvania, and saucily rode entirely round McClellan's army, just as he had done a few months before at Richmond, in preparation for Lee's seven days' battle.

x.x.x

_THE LAST STRAW_

When the news came to Baillie and Agatha that Lee and McClellan had met in a great battle, and that the Army of Northern Virginia had retraced its steps across the Potomac, both lost heart a little.

But Baillie was now regaining strength at a surprising rate, and his eagerness to carry out Agatha's plan of escape, by way of England, Na.s.sau, and a blockaded Southern port, became importunate.

Yielding to it, early in October, Agatha hurriedly made her final preparations. Through her friend in New York she engaged pa.s.sage for herself, Baillie, and Sam, on a Cunard steamer appointed to sail on the 15th of the month. She made all necessary arrangements for the sick French gentleman, his French nurse, and his negro valet to make the journey to New York on the 14th, in order that they might sail the next morning.

But a few days before the time set for their departure a great excitement arose in the town where Baillie had so long lain ill. The Confederates were coming again; they had destroyed McClellan in a great battle, current rumour reported, and were now marching upon Washington unopposed. So the rumours ran.

Later tidings corrected all this to some extent. It was learned that there had been no battle as yet, and that the invading force was only the vanguard of Lee's advance.

"I think I understand what it means," said Agatha, who had followed Stuart's operations in the past with close attention, learning to appreciate his methods. "This is simply one of General Stuart's splendidly audacious raids. He rode around McClellan at Richmond, you remember; he rode around Pope, and captured his baggage, and his uniform, and all his mules at Mana.s.sas two months ago. I suspect that he is simply riding around McClellan again in search of forage and stores and glory."

"That is probably what the movement means," answered Baillie, "though it may be made in preparation for another advance of the whole army, just as each of his former exploits was. In either case, if he comes this way it will answer our purpose. I shall escape with him. If it is only a cavalry raid, of course Stuart will have to force his way back through or over whatever obstacles McClellan may throw in his path, and in that case there will be a continual running fight with no secure rear for you to take shelter with. Of course, if the whole army advances, a secure way will be open, but if only the cavalry come, there will be no line of communication. In that case it will be necessary for you to remain here, or rather go on to New York and sail for Liverpool as we have both intended."

"You are forgetful, Captain Pegram. I have ridden with General Stuart before, and as to placing myself under fire, I think you know I am not without experience. No. If General Stuart comes this way, I shall ask him for a horse and play outrider to the ambulance in which you are to travel."

"But, Agatha!" he pleaded, "I am unwilling to have you expose yourself thus needlessly. Think of the danger and the hardship, and think too of the discomfort you must suffer as a solitary woman in company with a horde of rough-riding cavalrymen!"

"Hush! I will not hear one word even in suspicion of our Virginia cavaliers. I know those superb fellows, and I trust them. They may be rough as riders, and they are certainly rough fellows for the enemy to encounter, but they are gallant gentlemen; they are as gentle as only giants of courage can be, in their att.i.tude toward a defenceless woman.

If the opportunity comes, I shall certainly ride with them."

At that moment there was a scurrying in the streets, a hurried closing of the little shops, and a scampering of juvenile chronic offenders to points of secure observation.

A minute or two later some gray-clad regiments of cavalry trotted into the town, taking temporary possession of it. They created no more of disorder, and made far less noise than a Sunday-school picnic might have done. Not a man of them was permitted to quit his place in the ranks even for a single moment, for Stuart had given strict orders, and his lieutenants enforced them relentlessly.

There were very valuable commissary and ordnance stores belonging to the United States government in the town, and the advance squadron of the cavalry quietly took possession of these military supplies, quickly loading them into wagons, but touching no single cent's worth of private property of any kind, and molesting no citizen. So the orders ran.

Half an hour sufficed for this work, and at the end of that time the column moved out of the town in silence and good order.

Captain Baillie Pegram accompanied it in an ambulance, with Sam riding at its tail, and Agatha, mounted upon a stout and war-seasoned cavalry horse, preceding the vehicle.

At nightfall the detachment joined the main column, and there was a brief pause for supper. Agatha, in her capacity of nurse, questioned Baillie closely as to his condition, and found that he had seemingly taken no harm from excitement or weariness. When she had satisfied herself on that point, she ventured to tell him that his own battery lay around the ambulance. He promptly sat up and asked to see his subalterns and certain of his men.

"You may see a few of them," answered his nurse, "if you will receive them lying down. If you insist upon sitting up, I'll not permit a single one of them even to grasp your hand."

He yielded to her authority, and during the remainder of the brief halting time, there was a cheering reunion of comrades and a hasty interchange of personal news between men who loved each other as only those men do who have stood together under an enemy's fire and together endured the hardships of campaigning.

The enemy's cavalry was by this time approaching in considerable force, and Stuart, whose plan did not include any purpose of unnecessary fighting, set his column in motion again. But he did not take the line of march which he had been following all day. That had been intended as a blind. By threatening several points in directions quite other than the one he meant to take, he had accomplished two important purposes. He had gained time for all his scattered detachments to rejoin the column, and he had compelled the enemy to scatter his forces in many directions for the defence of the threatened points.

Having thus shaken off the greater part of the force pursuing him, he began his march that night in such a direction as to suggest that he meant to return if possible by the route by which he had come. For this his enemy was of course prepared. As soon as the cavalry forces that were observing his movement discovered what they took to be his purpose, they withdrew for a s.p.a.ce and planted themselves across his pathway.

Infantry and artillery forces were hurried forward in support, and the enemy confidently believed that at last the wily cavalier was securely entrapped.

To encourage this mistaken belief, Stuart threw forward a small force of men armed with carbines, and instructed them to maintain a scattering fire upon the enemy's pickets during the night as if feeling of the position in preparation for an attempt to break through it on the morrow.

No sooner was this disposition made than the main body of the Confederates was turned into the by-roads that led toward the Potomac at a point far east of McClellan's position and farther down the river.

By a rapid march it reached the river at daylight and crossed it by sunrise. In the meanwhile, just before the dawn, the detachment which had been left behind to maintain a show of intended battle during the night, quietly withdrew, and rode at a gallop to rejoin the escaping column. The enemy did not discover their withdrawal until sunrise, by which time they were many miles away, galloping toward the river, which they crossed without molestation.

It was not until the column halted in Virginia for a breakfast that might be taken in security, that Stuart met Baillie and Agatha in person. He insisted upon hearing the whole story, even making Sam take part in its telling. At parting he sought a word apart with Agatha, and said to her:

"I suppose you and Captain Pegram have quite ceased to be 'almost strangers' by this time."

The girl flushed crimson, but managed to answer:

"No, General. I have simply been his nurse, you know, and--and--well, he has been very ill."

"Nevertheless," answered the cavalier, "I'll court-martial him when he returns to duty, if I hear no better report than that of his conduct."

This bit of playfulness on Stuart's part had the effect of making Agatha exceedingly uncomfortable in her mind. She had so long been caring for Baillie as a man ill nigh unto death, that she had ceased to think of conventionalities in connection with her relations to him. But Stuart's jest reminded her that others might not be equally forgetful, especially now that her patient was rapidly regaining his strength.

"My work is done," she said to herself, "and I must no longer intrude myself upon Captain Pegram or his affairs. As soon as he can be sent off to Warlock in Sam's care, I must bid him a final adieu and go back to my loneliness at Willoughby. After all, I shall have enough to do there, caring for the poor negroes and managing the plantation so that it shall yield enough for them to live upon. I wonder if everything has fallen into complete neglect there during my absence? Now that Chummie has gone to the angels, I am needed there. And besides I must look after my underground railroad affairs. I wonder if the line is in good working order, and if it is carrying as much freight as it ought."

She realised, too, now that the parting was drawing near, how much Baillie Pegram's presence had come to mean to her, how necessary a part of her life he had become, and how barren and desolate that life must be when they two should have spoken a final good-bye. For during her period of nursing, he and she had come to be the best of comrades, and at such times as his condition had permitted, they had fallen into habits of intimate converse. Their talks, it is true, had never been personal in character. They had talked of books and travel and life; now and then they had discussed philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, and a hundred other subjects external to themselves. But although their converse had not been personal in character, it had taught each to know the impulses, the sentiments, and the convictions of the other in a degree that purely personal intercourse never could have done.

Agatha understood all this now, as she had not understood it before, and the understanding saddened her. For she was resolutely determined now to take herself as completely out of this man's life as if she had never known him at all. She proudly realised her duty, and she would not flinch from its doing.

"Did I not break off the acquaintance at that Christmas-time nearly two years ago?" she argued with herself. "Was I not strong and resolute, the moment I learned what my duty was? Why then should I not do the same again?"

She let her thoughts wander at will. "It is true there was war between us then, and there is none now. There never has been since Chummie talked with me that last night of his life. And it seems harder now in other ways. Since I have come to know Captain Pegram so well, and especially since I have taken care of him in a time of helplessness, it seems harder to send him away and tell him that we are mere acquaintances, not likely to see much of each other hereafter."

Then she generalised in this fashion:

"Life is very hard on women in any case--much harder than it is on men, in every way. And the worst of it is that men do not want it to be so, and nothing they can do can prevent. Even in that restriction of our lives which petty conventionality forces upon us, men cannot come to our relief. It is women who hold women to such restrictions. Men would laugh them away, if we would let them, but we never will. We hold each other to the rigidest standards of propriety, even when propriety makes needless and foolish exactions of us. Men never do that. They want us to be innocently as free as they are, but we are afraid to be so. We are afraid of other women. Even Chummie could not succeed in setting me free. I was too much afraid of other women's opinions, too much a slave to other women's standards to accept the freedom he tried so hard to force upon me.

"No, that isn't just it. I am not really afraid of other women's opinions; I am afraid of my own. I have laughed at and defied other women's standards, many a time, and I shall go on doing so to the end, whenever I am convinced that their opinions are unsound and their standards wrong. I did that when I went North to find and rescue Captain Pegram. I knew perfectly that my good aunts would look upon my conduct with positive horror, and that the least any other woman of my acquaintance would say about my conduct would be 'How could she?' in tones that meant all that is possible of condemnation. But I did not care for all that, and I do not care for it now, because I know that what I did was right, and that Chummie would have said so if he had lived till now. The trouble is that in the main I share those opinions of other women which so restrict the liberty of all women. I am afraid of those opinions because they are my own as well as others'; I submit myself to those standards of feminine conduct because I share the opinion that sets them up and enforces obedience to them."

At this point Agatha "shied" away from the thought that had in fact suggested all this introspective meditation. She would not admit, even to herself, that she was strongly moved by a perfectly natural impulse, to bridge the chasm that lay between her and Baillie Pegram, to remind him of what he had said to her that far-away morning on the picket-line at Fairfax Court-house, and so give him opportunity to say it again.

When that thought intruded itself upon her, she was shocked and startled by it. It seemed to her immodest in an extreme degree, unwomanly, almost atrocious. She would not harbour it for a moment. She cast it out of her mind, and was bitterly resentful against herself for having permitted it even to suggest itself.

"I must act at once," she resolved, when the day's march was resumed. "I must flee from the devil of this temptation. If Captain Pegram suffers no relapse to-day, I will bid him good-bye in the morning. No, I will not bid him good-bye. That would be too--well, it would be almost like acting upon that hideous thought. I shall simply go without saying a word to him. Perhaps I shall leave a little note for him, simply telling him that I am going to look after affairs at Willoughby, as he no longer needs his French nurse. I'll be very careful, in writing it, not to--not to make it more than coldly courteous and friendly."