The Victim: A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis Part 67

And then he laughed for sheer joy that love had come into his heart and made the world beautiful. He surrendered himself body and soul to the madness and wonder of it all.

If he could only see his mother and tell her, she could understand. He couldn't talk to the bundle of nerves Miss Van Lew had become. Her eyes burned each day with a deeper and deeper light of fanatical patriotism.

He had yielded none of his own enthusiasm. But this secret of his heart was too sweet to be shared by a comrade in arms.

Only G.o.d's eye, or the soul of the mother who bore him, could understand what he felt. The realization of his love for Jennie brought a new fear into his heart. His nerve was put daily to supreme test in the dangerous work in which he was engaged. A single mistake would start an investigation sure to end with a rope around his neck. Love had given life a new meaning. The chatter of the squirrels in the Capitol Square was all about their homes and babies in the tree tops. The song of birds in the old flower garden on Church Hill made his heart thump with a joy that was agony. The flowers were just bursting into full bloom and their perfume filled the air with the lazy dreaming of the southern spring.

He must speak his love. His heart would burst with its beating. His mate must know. And she had returned to Richmond with a bitterness against the North that was something new in the development of her character.

The newspapers of Richmond had published an elaborate account of the sacking of her father's house, the smashing of its furniture and theft of its valuables. It had created a profound sensation. There was no mistaking the pa.s.sion with which she had told this story.

He had laughed at first over the fun of winning the fairest little rebel in the South and carrying his bride away a prize of war, against the combined efforts of his Southern rivals. His love and pride had not doubted for a moment that her heart would yield to the man she loved no matter what uniform he might wear at the end of this war.

He couldn't make up his mind to ask her to marry him until she should know his real name and his true principles.

What would she do if the truth were revealed? His heart fairly stopped its beating at the thought. The fall of Richmond he now regarded as a practical certainty. The _Merrimac_ had proven a vain hope to the Confederacy.

McClellan was landing his magnificent army on the Peninsula and preparing to sweep all before him. McDowell's forty thousand men were moving on his old line of march straight from Washington. Their two armies would unite before the city and circle it with an invincible wall of fire and steel. Fremont, Milroy and Banks were sweeping through the valley of the Shenandoah. Their armies would unite, break the connections of the Confederacy at Lynchburg and the South would be crushed.

That this would all be accomplished within thirty days he had the most positive a.s.surances from Washington. So sure was Miss Van Lew of McClellan's triumphant entry into Richmond she had put her house in order for his reception. Her parlor had been scrupulously cleaned. Its blinds were drawn and the room dark, but a flag staff was ready and a Union standard concealed in one of her feather beds. Over the old house on Church Hill the emblem of the Nation would first be flung to the breeze in the conquered Capital of the Confederacy.

The certainty of his discovery in the rush of the Union army into the city was now the nightmare which haunted his imagination.

He could fight the Confederate Government on even terms. He asked no odds. His life was on the hazard. Something more than the life of a Union spy was at stake in his affair with Jennie. Her life and happiness were bound in his. He felt this by an unerring instinct.

If this proud, sensitive, embittered girl should stumble on even a suspicion of the truth, she would tear her heart out of her body if necessary to put him out of her life.

For a moment he was tempted to give up his work and return to the North.

It was the one sure way to avoid discovery when Richmond fell. The war over, he would have his even chance with other men when its bitterness had been softened. His work in Richmond was practically done. His men could finish it. The number of soldiers in the Southern armies had been accurately counted and reported to Washington. Why should he risk the happiness of the woman he loved and his own happiness for life by remaining another day?

The thought had no sooner taken shape than he put it out of his mind.

"Bah! I've set my hand to a great task. I'm not a quitter. I'll stand by my guns. No true woman ever loved a coward!"

He would take his chances and tell her his love.

He lifted the old-fashioned bra.s.s knocker on Senator Barton's door and banged it with such force he laughed at his own foolish eagerness:

"At least I needn't smash my way in!" he muttered.

"Ya.s.sah, des walk right in de parlor, sah," Jennie's maid said, with her teeth shining in a knowing smile.

Senator Barton had recovered from his illness. There could be no doubt about it. He was in the library holding forth in eloquent tones to a group of Confederate Congressmen who made his house their rendezvous. He was enjoying the martyrdom which the outrage on his home and the death of his aged mother and father had brought. He was using it to inveigh with new bitterness against the imbecility of Jefferson Davis and his administration. He held Davis personally responsible for every defeat of the South. He was the one man who had caused the fall of New Orleans, the loss of Fort Donelson and the failure to reap the victory at Shiloh.

"But you must remember, Senator," one of his henchmen mildly protested, "that Davis did save Albert Sidney Johnston to us and that alone made a victory possible."

"And what of it, if he threw it away by appointing a fool second in Command?"

There was a good answer to this--too good for the henchman to dare use it. He had sent Beauregard west to join Albert Sidney Johnston's command because Barton's junta, supporting Joseph E. Johnston against the administration, would no longer tolerate Beauregard in the same camp with their chief. They had demanded a free field for Joseph E. Johnston in the conflict with McClellan or they had threatened his resignation and the disruption of the Confederate army.

The President, sick unto death over the wrangling of these two generals, had separated them and sent Beauregard west where the genius of Albert Sidney Johnston could use his personal popularity, and his own more powerful mind would neutralize in any council of war the little man's feeble generalship.

Socola listened to Barton's fierce, unreasoning invective with a sense of dread. It was impossible to realize that this big-mouthed, bitter, vindictive, ridiculous politician was the father of the gentle girl he loved. There must be something of his power of malignant hatred somewhere in Jennie's nature. He had caught just a glimpse of it in the story she had told the Richmond papers.

She stood in the doorway at last, a smiling vision of modest beauty. Her dress of fine old lace seemed woven of the tender smiles that played about the sensitive mouth.

He sprang to his feet and took her hand, his heart thumping with joy.

She felt it tremble and laughed outright.

"So you have returned a fiercer rebel than ever, Miss Jennie?" he said hesitatingly.

He tried to say something purely conventional but it popped out when he opened his mouth--the ugly thought that was gnawing at his happiness.

"Yes," she answered thoughtfully, "I never realized before what it meant to be with my own people. I could have burned New Orleans and laughed at its ruins to have smoked Ben Butler out of it--"

"President Davis has proclaimed him an outlaw I see," Socola added.

"If he can only capture and hang him, the people of Louisiana would be perfectly willing to lose all--"

"But your brother, the Judge, is still loyal to the Union--you can't hate him you know?"

Jennie's eyes flashed into Socola's.

Why had he asked the one question that opened the wound in her heart?

Perhaps her mind had suggested it. She had scarcely spoken the bitter words before she saw the vision of his serious face and regretted it.

"Strange you should have mentioned my brother's name at the very moment his image was before me," the girl thoughtfully replied.

"Clairvoyance perhaps--"

"You believe in such things?" Jennie asked.

"Yes. My mother leaped from her bed with a scream one night and told me that she had seen my father's spirit, felt him bend over her and touch her lips. He had died at exactly that moment."

"Wonderful, isn't it," Jennie murmured softly, "the vision of love!"

She was dreaming of the moments of her distress in the sacking of her home when the vision of this man's smiling face had suddenly set her to laughing.

"Yes," Socola answered. "I asked you about your older brother because I don't like the idea of you poisoning your beautiful young life with hatred. Such thoughts kill--they can't bring health and strength, Miss Jennie."

"Of course," the girl responded tenderly, "you can see things more calmly. You can't understand how deep the knife has entered our hearts in the South."

"That's just what I do understand. It's that against which I'm warning you. This war can't last always you know. There must be a readjustment--"

"Between the North and South?"

"Of course--"

"Never!"