CHAPTER XIV
After the escape of Julius Roscoe time held to a tranquil pace in theplacidities of the storm centre. The rose-red dawns burst into bloom andthe days flowered whitely, full of fragrance and singing birds, ofloitering sunshine and light-winged breezes. One by one the still noonsglowed and glistered, expanding into summer radiance, and dulledgradually to the mellow splendors of the sunset. Then fell the serenedusk, blue on the far-away mountains, violet nearer at hand, with awhite star in the sky, and a bugle's strain leaping into the air like athing of life, a vivified sound. And all the panorama of troops, andforts, and camps, and cannon might be some magnificent militaryspectacle, so remote seemed the war--so unreal. Every morning the"ladies" wrought at their lessons in the library, and Leonora cut theirsmall summer garments and helped the seamstress, who came in by the day,to sew. Despite these absorptions Mrs. Gwynn managed to find leisure toread aloud to Judge Roscoe his favorite old novels, and essays, and dullantiquated histories. She evolved subjects of controversy on which toargue with him, and was facetious and found occasion to call him "YourHonour" oftener than heretofore. For he had grown old suddenly; his stephad lost its elasticity; he looked up a cane that had once beenpresented to him by some fraternity; his hair was turning whiteand--worst sign of all--he was not sorry to be approaching the end.
"The night is long, and the day is a burden," he once said.
Then, when she reminded him of duty, he recanted. But he had obviouslyfallen into that indifference to life incident to advancing age, and wassensible of a not involuntary gravitation toward the tomb. Later heasked her if she did not think those lines of Stephen Hawes's had a mostmellow and languorous cadence,--
"For though the day appear ever so long, At last the bell ringeth to even-song."
He showed great anxiety concerning Captain Baynell's recovery, but hehad never mentioned to her the fact of Julius's presence in the house.She knew that he and probably old Ephraim had been aware of it, but thiswas only a constructive knowledge on her part, and founded on noassurance. When once more Baynell was able to come downstairs, sheperceived that he himself had no remote consciousness of his assailant.He had entirely accepted the theory of a fall instead of a collision,and was only a little deprecatory and embarrassed at being so long ingetting himself away.
"Positively my last appearance!" He was reduced even to the hackneyedphrase.
Mrs. Gwynn made the conventional polite protest, and the "ladies"joyously and affectionately flocked around him, and his heart expandedto the grave kindness of his host. Nevertheless he appreciated a subtlechange. Despite the enhancing charm of the season, which even a few dayshad wrought to a deeper perfection, the place had somehow fallen under atinge of gloom. But the roses were blooming at the windows, the liliesstood in ranks, tall and stately, in the borders, the humming-birds wererioting all day in the honeysuckle vines over the rear galleries and theside porch, the breeze swept back and forth through the dim, perfumed,wide spaces of the house, which seemed expanded, with all the doorsopen. Sometimes he attributed the change to the tempered light, for allthe trees were in full leaf, and the deeply umbrageous boughstransmitted scarce a beam to the windows, once so sunny; much of thetime, too, the shutters were partially closed. And though the childrenflitted about like little fairies, in their thin white dresses, and Mrs.Gwynn, garbed, too, in white, seemed, with her floating draperies, inthe transparent green twilight, like some ethereal dream of youth andbeauty, there was a pervasive sense of despondency, of domesticdiscomfort, of impending disaster. Sometimes he attributed the change toone or two untoward chances, a revelation of the real character of warthat happened to be presented to the observation of the household. The"ladies" came clamoring in one day, all wide-eyed and half distraught.With that relish of horror characteristic of ignorance, a negro woman, avisitor of Aunt Chaney's, had detailed to them the sentence of a soldierto be shot for some military crime--shot, as he knelt on his own coffin.Presently they heard the music of the band playing a funeral march alongthe turnpike as the poor wretch was taken out with a detail from thecity limits; then, only the drum, a terrible sound, a dull, muffledthud, at intervals, that barely timed the marching footfall, while thevictim was in the midst! And still the vibration of the mournful drum,seeking out every responsive nerve of terror within the shudderingchildren!
Their painful, tearless cries, their clinging hands, their franticappeals for help for the doomed creature--would no one help him!--weremost pathetic.
And though Leonora could shut the windows and gravely explain, then tella story and divert the moment,--they were so young, so plastic, sotrustful,--no ingenuity could find a satisfactory method to account forthe anti-climax of the tragedy, when within the hour came the samedetail, marching briskly back along the turnpike, with fife and drumplaying a waggish tune. The wide, daunted eyes of the children, theirpaling cheeks, their breathless silence, annotated the lesson inbrutality, in the essential heartlessness of the world, except for thetutored graces of a cultivated philanthropy. For a long time one or theother would wake in the night to cry out that she heard the muffleddrum,--they were taking the man out to shoot him, kneeling on hiscoffin,--and again and again would come the plaintive query, "And isnobody, _nobody_ sorry?"
The incident passed with the events of the crowded time, but even withinthe domestic periphery harmony had ceased to reign as of yore. OldEphraim was a bit sullen, gloomy, did his work with an ill grace, andrepudiated all acquaintance with "Brer Rabbit" and "Brer Fox." Thesoldiers in the neighboring camps--possibly to secure an influence, hisalienation from the interest of his quasi-owner, in order to ferret outmore of the mystery concerning the Confederate officer, possibly onlyanimated by political fervor, and it may be with a spice of mischief,finding amusement in the old negro's garrulous grotesqueries--had beentalking to him of slavery, making the most of his grievances, settingthem in order before him, and urging him to rouse himself to the greatopportunities of freedom.
"I done make up my mind," he said autocratically, one day in thekitchen. "I gwine realize on my forty acres an' a muel!"
For this substantial bonanza freedom was supposed to confer on eachex-slave.
"Forty acres an' a mule!" the old cook echoed in derisive incredulityand with a scornful black face. "You _done_ realize on de mule--a muleis whut you is, sure! Here's yer mule! An' now you go out an' fotch me apail of water, else I'll make ye realize on enough good land ter kiverye! Dat's whut! It'll be six feet--not forty acres,--but it kin do yerjob!"
He might have made a fractious politician but for this adverseinfluence, for he had the variant moods of a mercurial nature, and ingloom showed a morose perversity that could have been easily manipulatedinto a spurious sense of martyrdom, lacking a tutored ratiocination toenable him to discriminate the facts. But despite his failings, hisignorance, the bewildering changes in his surroundings, never a wordconcerning his young master escaped his lips, never an inadvertentallusion, a disastrous whisper. He scarcely allowed himself a thought, aspeculation.
"Fust thing I know," he reflected warily, "I'll be talkin' ter myself.They always tole me dat walls had ears!"
A day or two of murky weather seemed to penetrate the mental atmosphereas well. It was perhaps the inauguration of the chill interval known as"blackberry winter." Everywhere the great brambles were snowy withbloom, and in the house the "ladies" shivered and clasped their coldelbows in the sleeves of their thin summer dresses till the fenders andfire-dogs were brought out once more, and the flicker of hearthstoneflames made cheery the aspect of the library, and dispensed a genialwarmth. The air was moist; the trains ran with a dull roar and anundertone of reverberation; there was a collision of boats in the fog onthe river, involving loss of life, and one night, the window being up,the sentry in passing called Captain Baynell out on the portico. He saidhe hesitated to summon the corporal of the guard, lest the sound shouldpass before the non-commissioned officer could come.
"What sound?" asked Baynell.
> "Listen, sir," said the sentry.
The night was dark. There was no moon. The stars now and then glimmeringthrough the mists afforded scant illumination to the earth. The fires ofthe troops in bivouac about the town shone like thousands ofconstellations, reflected by the earth. The wind was surging fitfullyamong the pines. There was a dull iterative beat, rather felt thanheard.
"The train?" suggested Baynell.
"The train is in, sir."
"Must have been a freight," Baynell hazarded, for the indefinitevibration had ceased.
"That's 'hep, hep, hep,'--that's marching feet, sir,--that's what itis!"
"Well, what of that?" Baynell demanded. "It's the corporal of the guardgoing out with the relief."
"It's too early----"
"Grand Rounds, possibly."
"It's too near," objected the man. "It's very near."
The wind struck their faces with a dank fillip of dew. The vine hard bywas dripping; they could hear the drops fall, and a silent interval, andagain a falling drop.
"There is nothing now," said Baynell. "It was doubtless some patrol. Theair is very moist, and sounds are heavier than usual."
"This seemed to me very near, sir," said the soldier, discontentedly. Hewished he had fired his piece and called for the corporal of the guard.He had hesitated, for the corporal had scant patience with a militaryzealot who was forever discovering causes of alarm without foundation,and this exercise of judgment was a strain on a soldier's sense of duty.He had expected the captain to respond to the mere suggestion of asecret approach, remembering the search for the hidden Rebel officer.But Baynell had never heard of that episode!
Suddenly all the camps broke into a turbulence of sound. A hundred drumswere beating the tattoo. From down the valley and over the river thebugle iterated the strain. Near the town and along the hills it wasduplicated anew, and all the echoes of the crags and the rocks of theriver bank repeated it, and called out the mandate, and sang it again ina different key; at last it died into a fitful repetition; silence oncemore; an absolute hush.
A rocket went up from the fort hard by; another rose, starlike andstately, from unseen regions beyond a hill. Presently the lights weredying out like magic all along the encampments, as if some greatcataclysm were among the stellular reflections, blotting them from thesphere of being. The constellations above glowed more brightly as theearth darkened. The wind was gathering force. Baynell listened as theboughs clashed and surged together.
"You doubtless heard the patrol," he said. And again--"The air is dank."
Then he turned and went within; the soldier marched back and forth, ashe was destined to do for some time yet, and listened with all the keenintentness of which he was capable. And heard nothing.
The next morning--it was still before dawn--a sudden sharp clamor rosefrom a redoubt within which was a powder magazine near the main works,lying on the hither side of the river. The mischief which the earliersentinel at the Roscoe place anticipated had come; how, whence,--the mannow on duty hardly knew. He fired his rifle and called for the guard.Then a few sharp reports, and a tumult of shouting sounded from theredoubt. A general alarm ensued. The drums were beating the long rollin the infantry camps,--a nerve-thrilling, terrifying vibration; and thesharp cry, "Fall in!--Fall in!" was like an incident of the keen, rare,matutinal air, the iterative command sounding like an echo from everyquarter in which the lines of tents were beginning to glimmer dimly.From where the cavalry horses were picketed in long rows came the clashof accoutrements and the tramp of hoofs as the trumpets sang "Boots andSaddles!" Once a courier--a shadowy, mounted figure, halfdistinguishable in the gray obscurity, seeming gigantic, like somehorseman of a fable--dashed past in the gloom, going or coming nonecould know whither. The clamors increased, the shots multiplied, thenthe clear, chill light came gradually over the turmoils of darkness andsudden surprise. The first rays of the sun struck upon the Confederateflag flying from the redoubt, and its paroled garrison were troopingacross to the main line of fortifications, bearing the miraculous storythat they had awakened to find the work full of Confederate soldiers whoseemed to have mined their way into the place from some subterraneanaccess, and who were now in the name of Julius Roscoe, their rankingofficer, demanding the surrender of the fort which the redoubtoverlooked.
The Federal commander would have shelled them out of their precariousadvantage with very hearty good-will, but he feared for the stores ofpowder, which he really could not spare. Moreover, the explosion of themagazine at such close quarters could but result in the total demolitionof the main work and its valuable armament, inflicting also greatdestruction of life. Thus, although the burly and experienced warrior,Colonel Deltz, was fairly rampant with indignation at the insignificanceof this bold enemy both in point of the subordinate rank of the leaderand the small number of the force, he was fain to hold parley, insteadof opening fire upon the redoubt at once and wiping the raiders, withone hand, as it were, from the face of the earth. It may be doubted ifany capable and trusted military expert ever discharged a moredistasteful duty. Nevertheless, it was performed _secundum artem_, withevery show of those amenities which of all professional courtesies havethe slightest root in truth and real feeling. He invited the surrenderof the redoubt, ignoring the demand for the surrender of the fort as apuerile and impudent folly, offering the usual fine and humanesuggestions touching the avoidance of the useless effusion of blood,such as often before have been heard when a sophistry must needs fillthe breach in lieu of force. When this was declined, Julius Roscoe wasreminded, in the most cautious terms, of the personal jeopardy incurredby a commander who undertakes to hold out an untenable position. JuliusRoscoe's reply, couched in the same strain of courteous phraseology,such, indeed, as might have been employed by a general of division,deliberating on articles of capitulation involving the well-being of anarmy, intimated that he was popularly supposed to be able to take careof himself; that so far from being unprepared to hold the redoubt whichhe had captured, he had means at his disposal to possess himself of thefort itself, and if its garrison would but await his onset, he should behappy to entertain Colonel Deltz in his own quarters at dinner in acampaigner's simple way--say, at one of the clock.
These covert allusions to the signal advantages of his situation showedthat Lieutenant Roscoe was fully apprized of the very large quantity ofammunition stored in the magazine, and the tone of his rejoinderintimated that he would avail himself to the uttermost of itsefficiency. The works were close enough to render visible theoccupations of the Confederates. Though gaunt and half-starved, manyragged and barefoot, they were as merry as grigs and as industrious asbeavers, destroying such Federal stores as they could not remove,spiking or otherwise disabling the ordnance that they could notuse,--the heavy howitzers at the embrasures,--and briskly preparing toserve the barbette battery, that they had shifted to command the fortand a line of intrenchments taken at a grievous disadvantage in therear, and some lighter swivel artillery that could sweep all the horizonwithin range.
It was a sight to stir the gorge of a professed soldier and a martinet.If aught of action could have availed, the colonel would have welcomed afierce and summary devoir. But the true soldier rarely allows personalantagonism or a sentimental theory to influence the line of conduct towhich duty and prudence alike point. He swallowed his fury, and it was agreat gulp for a heady and choleric man who had lived by burninggunpowder--lo, these many years. He perceived that his garrison, able todescry the antics of the Confederates in the redoubt, were apprized oftheir own imminent peril from the magazine in the hands of theirenemy--now, practically a mine. There was a doubt among his observantofficers as to whether the reckless band were taking any of the usualprecautions, requisite in dealing with so extensive a store ofexplosives, as they joyfully loaded the cannon. Under thesecircumstances, attack being out of the question, Colonel Deltz couldhardly be assured of the efficiency of his force in defence. Hisgarrison were palsied by surprise, the mysterious appearance of theConfederat
es, and the impunity of their situation. They could only beshelled out of the redoubt by the jeopardy of the powder magazineitself, and its explosion would destroy the lives of the besiegers aswell as the besieged. Hence strategy was requisite. The fort wasgradually evacuated as a lure to draw the raiders into the main works,where they could be dealt with, thus quitting their post of advantage.
Later in the day from a knob called Sugar Loaf Pinnacle an artilleryfire opened, the shells falling at first at uncertain intervals, seekingto ascertain the range; then, in fast and furious succession, hurtlingdown upon the guns of the masked battery beside the river. The missilesseemed but tiny clouds of white smoke, each with a heart of fire, thefuse redly burning against the densely blue sky, till droppingelastically to the moment of explosion it was resolved into a fiercelywhite focus with rayonnant fibres and stunning clamors.
The town itself was hardly in danger during this riverside bombardment,unless, indeed, from some accident of defective marksmanship. But withall the world gone mad, the atmosphere itself a field of pyrotechnicmagnificence, the familiar old mountains but a background to display thecurves a flying shell might describe, now and again bursting in mid-airere it reached its billet, the non-combatant populace waspanic-stricken. Streets were deserted. All ordinary vocations ceased.The more substantial buildings of brick or stone were crowded, theirwalls presumed to be capable of resisting at least the spent balls, wideof aim, for these were often endowed with such a residue of energy asstill to be destructive. Cellars were in request, and while the darknessprecluded the terrifying glare of the bursting projectiles, neverthelessthe tremendous clamor of the detonation, the wild reverberations of theechoes, the shouts of cheering men, the sound of bugles and drums and ofvoices in command in the distance, gave intimations of what was goingforward, and uncertainty perhaps enhanced fear.
"Dar, now, de Yankee man's battery is done gone too!" exclaimed UncleEphraim, as the voice of authority rang out sharply, with all itsecho-like variants in the subalterns' commands. The clangor ofaccoutrements, the heavy but swift roll of the wheels of gun-carriagesand caissons, the tumultuous hoof-beats of horses at full gallop, thespirited cheering of the artillerymen, filled the air--and then silenceensued, deep and dark, the stone walls of the cellar vaguely glimmeringwith one candle set on the head of a barrel.
"He's gone wid 'em,--dat man! Time dat bugle blow he tore dat bandageoff his haid--nicked or no,--dat he did!"
Uncle Ephraim was seated on an inverted cotton basket, and Aunt Chaney,with the three "ladies" clustered about her knees, sat on the flight ofsteps that led down from a cautiously closed door. The "ladies" kepttheir fingers in their ears as a protection against sound, but thedeaf-mute, strangely enough, was the most acute to discern the crash,possibly by reason of the vibrations of the air, since she could nothear the detonation of the shells.
Somehow the sturdy courage of that soldierly shout was reassuring.
"Dere ain't no danger, ladies," declared Aunt Chaney. Then, "Oh, myKing!" she cried in an altered voice, while the three "ladies" hid theirfaces in the folds of her apron as a terrific explosion took place inmid-air, the pieces of the shell falling burning in the grove.
"Jus' lissen at dat owdacious Julius!" muttered Uncle Ephraim,indignantly. "I never 'lowed he war gwine ter kick up sech a tarrifyin'commotion as dis yere, nohow."
"I wish Gran'pa would come down here," whined one of the twins.
"Where the cannon-balls can't catch him," whimpered the other.
"What you talking about, ladies?" demanded the old cook, rising to theoccasion. "You 'spec' a gemman lak yer gran'pa gwine sit in de cellar,lak--lak a 'tater!"--the simile suggested by a bushel-basket half fullof Irish potatoes for late planting in the "garden spot."
The "ladies," reassured by the joke, laughed shrilly, a little off thekey, and clung to her comfortable fat arm that so inspired theirconfidence.
"_I_ gwine sit in de cellar tell _I_ sprout lak a 'tater, ef dishertribulation ain't ober 'twell den," declared Uncle Ephraim. "Dar now!lissen ter dat!" as once more the clamorous air broke forth with sound.
The "ladies" exclaimed in piteous accents.
"Dat ain't nuffin ter hurt, honey," Aunt Chaney reassured her tremblingcharges. "Dese triflin' sodjers ain't got much aim. Yer gran'pa an' yercousin Leonora wouldn't stay up dere in de lawbrary ef dere wasdestruction comin'."
"Then why do _you_ come in the cellar?" asked the logical Adelaide.
"Jes' ter git shet o' de terror ob seein' it, honey!" replied AuntChaney. "I ain't no perfessor ob war, nohow, an' my eyes ain't practisedter shellin' an' big shootin'."
"Me, neither," said Adelaide.
"Nor me," whimpered Geraldine.
"De cannon-balls ain't gwine kill us, dough. We gwine live a long time,"Aunt Chaney optimistically protested. "I ain't s'prised none ef when dewar is ober an' we tell 'bout dis fight, we gwine make out dat when deshellin' wuz at de wust, you three ladies an' me jus' stood up on dehighest aidge ob de rampart ob de fort, an' 'structed de men how terfire de cannon, an' p'inted out de shells flyin' through de air wid datar actial little forefinger, an' kep' up de courage ob de troops."
"On which side, Aunt Chaney?" asked Adelaide, the reasonable.
"On bofe sides, honey," said Aunt Chaney, "'cordin' ter de politics obdem we is talkin' to!"
A rat whisked over the floor, across the dim slant of light that fellfrom the candle on the head of the barrel. Uncle Ephraim, his elbows onhis knees, his gray head slightly canted in a listening attitude,smiled vaguely, pleased like a child himself with Aunt Chaney's sketch.
"Oh, Aunt Chaney!--_do_ you s'pose we'll tell it _that_ way?" criedAdelaide, meditating on the flattering contrast.
"Dat's de ve'y way de tales 'bout dis war is gwine be tole, honey, youmark my words," declared the prophetess.
The contrast of the imaginative future account with the troublousactuality of the present so delighted Adelaide that she spelled it offon her fingers to Lucille, both repairing to the side of the barrelwhere the candle was glimmering, in order to have the light on theirtwinkling fingers in the manual alphabet. The humors of the expectation,the incongruity of their martial efficiency, the boastful resources ofthe future, elicited bursts of delighted gigglings, and when the nextshell exploded, neither took notice of the hurtling bomb shrieking overthe house and bound for the river.
The rest of the populace were enjoying no such solace from any waggishinterpretation of the future. The present, that single momentous day,was for them as much of time as they cared to contemplate. Doubtless thesatisfaction was very general among the citizens, regardless ofpolitical prepossessions, when it became known that Captain Baynell witha detachment of horse artillery had gone out and taken up a positionthat had enabled him at last to silence the Confederate guns on thepinnacle, not, however, before the masked battery by the river waspractically dismounted.
Now both infantry and cavalry were ordered out in an effort to interceptthe venturesome Rebel artillerymen as they sought to descend from theirsteep pinnacle of rock. The dust on the turnpike, redly aflare in thesunset rays, betokened the progress of the march, and now and then itwas harassed by shells and grape from the swivel guns of the fort, forRoscoe's limited command had not been able to bring the heavier ordnanceof the embrasures to bear upon the camps around the town.
The whole community was in a panic, for this might soon betide. But agunboat came, as it chanced, up the river, took a position of advantage,and with great precision of aim soon shelled the little force out of themain work. Their capture was momently expected, but they made good theirretreat to their former position in the redoubt, with the intentionunquestionably of escaping thence by the secret passage which hadafforded them access. In leaving, however, the powder magazine was blownup by accident or design, destroying the integrity of the wholefortification, and shattering nearly every pane of glass in the town,the force of the concussion indeed bringing the tower of the hospitalhard by to the ground. That the raiders had per
ished was not doubted,till news came of a sharp skirmish which took place under cover ofdarkness at the mouth of a sort of grotto in Judge Roscoe's grove, andin the confusion, surprise, and obscurity all escaped save somehalf-dozen left dead upon the ground.