“I WILL NOT BELIEVE IT!”
Elizabeth had a great deal of time to think on the way home. Old
Joe, who in three days had traveled about fifty miles, could not be
encouraged beyond a slow walk. But she did not think very connectedly.
Mind and soul were weary; her troubles presented themselves rather as
a dull, undefined pain than as a sharp anxiety. Things could wait, she
said to herself.
It would be necessary, of course, for her to tell Herbert, and she
trembled for the effect upon him. She had feared for weeks that his
very nature had been affected by his illness and that he would remain
a sort of dependent child instead of becoming a man. But what she had
heard to-day threw another light on his condition. Could it be that it
was an inherited weakness, the result of the shame which their mother
must have felt? Their mother had been a woman of strong will, but
might it not have been that her grief and anxiety had affected Herbert?
She must have felt her father’s act to be a disgrace--it could not be
otherwise. It was from that poor mother that Elizabeth had learned to
love her country!
But not even the word of a Colonel Thomas and the printed statement
of a book could in an hour or two alter the conscious and unconscious
convictions of Elizabeth’s life. The belief that one has been
“well-born” is not easily yielded, even though one may have hitherto
felt no conscious satisfaction. When, at last, she turned a weary Joe
in upon the grassy drive, her lips were set.
“I don’t believe it,” said she stubbornly.
Herbert came to meet her and to take the horse. He glanced back over
his shoulder into the woods. All day poor Herbert had been looking over
his shoulder.
“Well, Elizabeth?” he asked nervously. “What did you find out?”
“We will talk after we have had supper,” said Elizabeth cheerfully.
“You remember mother used to say that ‘empty stomachs make cowards.’”
“All right,” agreed Herbert.
Sometimes through the meal he looked at Elizabeth uneasily, but most of
the time he seemed to be occupied with a trouble of his own. He had had
that day a peculiar kind of anonymous communication meant for him and
he was meditating upon it.
When the supper dishes were put away, the two sat down on the doorstep.
The lovely weather continued, the rising moon shone once more over the
beautiful plain, the whip-poor-wills called mysteriously.
“This is the home of my soul, the earthly home at least,” said
Elizabeth to herself. Then she laid her hand on Herbert’s knee. “My
dear, things are a little worse than I imagined. I visited the old
gentleman and he tells me that our grandfather was supposed to have
helped the Confederates when they came into this county; he advised
them, and is said also to have guided them. This was common report
about here for many years. He disappeared with them and never returned.
I suppose this must have been pretty well forgotten in all this
time, especially as all the family had gone away, but a little while
ago a book was published, ‘The Recollections and Letters of General
Adams.’ This Confederate general said that John Baring had given them
information about roads. That is why they hate us!”
“It isn’t our fault!”
“No.”
“What shall we do, Elizabeth?”
“We shan’t do anything right away. We’re here and we can live even if
people won’t buy our things. Our trees are engaged and we’ll set them
out. We--”
“Oh, let us go away!” cried Herbert. “We should never be happy, we
should never see anything but scowling faces.”
“We shouldn’t make ourselves happy by going away,” said Elizabeth. “The
day would come when we’d regret it. And at any rate we shan’t go unless
things get worse. I shan’t be driven away whether the story is true or
untrue.”
“Do you think that there’s a chance that it might not be true?”
faltered Herbert.
“I don’t believe it yet,” said Elizabeth stoutly.
“Why not, Elizabeth?”
“I don’t know exactly. I just don’t believe it. I should have
difficulty believing such a thing about any living man whom I had
respected, and I’ll believe it still less about a man who is dead.
Moreover, we owe it to ourselves to follow it to its remotest
conclusion, Herbert. The possession of ancestors who are a credit is
no small possession. But it’s like good health, we don’t value it till
it’s gone.”
“Do you think we could make investigations and prove it untrue?”
“It might be possible.” Elizabeth was pleased. Herbert did not often
make original suggestions.
“I’ll do all the work on the place,” offered Herbert, looking uneasily
over his shoulder. “That is, if you have to go away anywhere. We
haven’t papers or records of any kind, have we?”
“Nothing.”
“And you’re _sure_ mother never said anything?”
Elizabeth’s brow puckered.
“I can’t remember that she did. I have been trying to think. It must
have been too dreadful to talk about and I wonder her heart didn’t
break.” Elizabeth looked back into the dark hall as though she could
see there a lonely figure.
“Have you any plan, Elizabeth?”
“No; except that I thought of hunting through the house. Years and
years have passed, but there might be something. There might be a nook
or cranny that had escaped the renters and that has escaped us.”
“What do you think you might find?”
“I don’t know,” said Elizabeth. “Now let us go to bed.”
The next day offered itself as a suitable time for indoor occupation.
The fine weather had broken and rain fell steadily. The plain was gray,
the woods were dim, there was all about the sound of running water,
water dripping from the eaves and falling from the sky and running
rapidly in the brook near the house.
“We’ll begin in the cellar,” said Elizabeth.
The cellar, explored inch by inch by the aid of lantern and candle,
yielded nothing but resolutions that it should be thoroughly
whitewashed as soon as possible.
“We can store bushels and barrels of stuff there,” said Elizabeth as
they came upstairs. “Now the first floor.”
Beside the fireplace in the parlor were two deep cupboards for wood.
These had been looked into often, but Elizabeth examined them again and
scrutinized them earnestly to be sure that they contained no secret
compartments. But the interior was plastered smoothly.
On the first floor there were no other cupboards or closets, and the
other rooms, occupied as a kitchen and as bedrooms, had been lived in
for too many weeks to hold any secrets.
At the top of the first flight of stairs, Elizabeth stood still.
“Herbert, this place has inexhaustible possibilities! See these many
rooms, how easily we could make this a comfortable place for quiet
people in summer! Water could be piped down from one of the springs.
I know that gravity alone would carry it higher than the house-top. I
wonder whether John Baring thought of that!”
Elizabeth went into the first room. It was large and bare and offered
no place of storage. She passed into the next and there for a moment
she forgot the purpose of her search. The view from the front door was
extensive, but from the second floor one could look over a spur of the
mountain to the right and see other miles of rain-drenched plain.
“There isn’t anything here, Elizabeth,” said Herbert.
“No, nothing. Now we’ll try the attic. That’s the traditional
hiding-place for documents.”
The attic was as bare as the rest of the house. If the family had left
any property there, it had been long since removed by the successive
renters.
Herbert went downstairs for a candle and they crept into the low
cubby-holes under the slanting roof. Mud wasps’ nests and spider webs
rewarded them.
“There is really nothing,” said Herbert drearily.
“Yes, there is!” cried Elizabeth. “Here is writing on this beam. I
can’t quite stretch to it, Herbert. What does it say?”
Herbert dropped the candle from his nervous hand.
“I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed,” said he after a glance. “It
doesn’t say anything about the battle.”
“What does it say?”
“It says, ‘I have built this house the best I know. God bless those who
go in and out.’ It’s signed ‘John Baring.’”
Elizabeth stood looking up at the inscription. Suddenly a tear rolled
down her cheek.
“I don’t believe he was a traitor,” said she. “I believe he was a good
man.”
They went carefully over each beam, and crept again into the dusty
cupboards.
“Now we’ll go to the barn,” said Elizabeth.
“What do you expect to find there?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going.”
As Elizabeth had left the attic for the last spot to be visited in the
house, so she left the barn chamber as the most promising quarter of
the barn. It was a large room on the main floor which had evidently
been used at one time as a living-room, for there was an opening in the
wall for a stovepipe.
“I think the hired man usually lived in the barn chamber,” said she.
“And I suppose the harness was kept in these cupboards. This could
easily be put in order for our chauffeur, Herbert!”
Herbert smiled faintly. He had opened the door of one of the cupboards
and drew out an old map.
“There’s nothing in here but this, Elizabeth.”
“Let’s unroll it.”
Then Herbert grew white. It was a map of Adams County. From its center
Gettysburg and the surrounding country had been cut, or rather slashed,
as though it were done hastily with a large knife.
“What’s the matter, Herbert?”
“Do you suppose he showed them with this, or gave them this piece?”
“No,” said Elizabeth. “I prefer to think that some one cut that out to
hide or destroy it. They might not have been able to destroy the whole
map quickly. It signifies nothing whatever.”
Herbert looked at her white face and shook his head.
After two days of rain the sky cleared. Brother and sister rested on
the doorstep at the end of a long day. They had not spoken again of
the writing or of the old map. Herbert wondered whether Elizabeth was
now convinced. Elizabeth sat silently, drinking in the beauty of the
evening. A faint gold showed where the moon would rise.
“Elizabeth!”
“What is it?”
“That man is watching us again with his dog and his gun. I can see him
quite plainly.”
Elizabeth lifted her voice. All her depression and anxiety were
transmuted into anger against these disturbers of her peace.
“I told Colonel Thomas in Gettysburg about the men who are prowling
about,” said she loudly and distinctly. “He said the State police
would be up here the minute I complained. From what I hear, there are
enough crimes in the past to put these men where they won’t bother us.
They can be punished for these even if they don’t do anything now.”
For a while there was not a sound.
“I didn’t see him go, but he’s gone,” said Herbert in a whisper. He
clasped his hands tightly. Again he had had his anonymous greeting, and
again by Herculean effort of will had kept it from Elizabeth. It was
not only because of its ignominious character, it was because at last
he was beginning to see his dependence. This was, moreover, his own
trouble; it was not Elizabeth’s, nor a trouble common to them both.
“I don’t suppose they’ve had much chance,” said Elizabeth at last; then
she added bitterly, “When I first saw this man I thought perhaps we
might help the women and children of such people. But now--”
She let her chin sink to her clasped hands.
“Have you any other plan?” asked Herbert.
“Yes, I have. I’m going to talk to the neighbors.”
“What neighbors?”
“I’m going all round this country and wherever there is an old person,
I’ll find out what he or she knows about John Baring. There must be
some who remember him, and he must have had some friends among them. I
believe that he was a good man and that he was kind.”
“But would that have any relation to this?”
“Yes, it would. Somebody might be able to give a clue.”
“What kind of a clue?”
“Well, somebody might have lived here, and have heard him refuse to
guide the Confederates. The Confederates might then have killed him, or
carried him away, or he might have met with an accident. Somebody might
have some testimony about his previous loyalty.”
“But the book said he had given them information!”
“The general might have been mistaken in the confusion. Some one else
might have given them information.”
Herbert shook his head. One could not move Elizabeth when she believed
that she was right.
“The people might shame you or insult you.”
“They can’t do either.”
“When are you going to start?”
“To-morrow morning. I’m going to leave you to guard the property.”
Herbert looked at her startled. His short period of courage had passed.
Again he was about to speak, then he covered his lips with his hand as
if forcibly to restrain himself. The words which he choked back were,
“Do not leave me alone, Elizabeth!” Poor Herbert rose filled with
despair. When Elizabeth called good-night to him, he did not answer,
being certain that he could not command his voice. He went into his
room and to bed. But he did not sleep.
It was a long time before Elizabeth closed her eyes. Her mind traveled
beyond her visits to the neighbors.
“When I have done that, what then?” said she. “If that fails, what can
I do?”
It was not merely the rehabilitation of John Baring which depended upon
the success of Elizabeth’s plans, it was livelihood itself. She saw in
her first drowsiness rows of young trees standing in attitudes which
were humanly expectant, awaiting planters who did not come. She was
at once wide awake. Suppose that no one would work for John Baring’s
grandchildren!
“I have signed the contract for the trees,” said she. “It would really
mean ruin!”