AN ALARMING MESSAGE
One pleasant afternoon in July Colonel Thomas came again, bringing
Elizabeth the books which he had promised. He made the journey not only
for her sake, but to satisfy his own desire for an audience. He had
begun to believe that the position of Elizabeth and her brother would
not be intolerable if they had courage to persist. His car waited at
the road’s edge, and he walked in to the door.
“A car doesn’t seem to belong in here, does it?” said he.
“We’re going to have one ourselves some day,” declared Elizabeth.
“You’re going to stay, are you?”
“I shan’t be driven away. I’ve really had a peaceful time for three
weeks. We sold our goods anonymously in Chambersburg.” Elizabeth smiled
wearily. “Please come and sit down. You are our first unarmed caller.”
“They haven’t bothered you again?”
“No.”
“Perhaps they are really frightened,” said Colonel Thomas. “I came up
partly to see you and partly to have a look at the ruins of the old
furnace.”
“Do you mean the ruins near the park?”
“Yes; that was Thad Stevens’s furnace and the Confederates burned it.
Great man, Thaddeus Stevens, young lady, as great as the hatred felt
for him and that’s saying a good deal. He had a vision--the equality
of men before their Creator and nothing else mattered, personal safety
least of all. He lived here in this county from 1818 till 1842, and
this county sent him to the legislature, as its representative. When
he first came South, he saw in Maryland a slave girl being sold. He
had three hundred dollars in the world to buy his law library, and
instead he bought the girl and set her free. He was a representative
from this district when he said, ‘Hereditary distinctions of rank
are sufficiently odious; but that which is founded upon poverty is
infinitely more so.’
“I tell you--” suddenly the old gentleman thrust out his arms, as
though to free his elbows from restraint. Then he leaned back and began
to rock. His daughter, if she had been present, would have laid down
her book and taken up her sewing and would have begun a long seam.
“I tell you that this is the most interesting State in the United
States and this the most interesting county in the State. We had
squatter troubles, whites pushing into the country which had not yet
been bought from the Indians, and thereby endangering the safety of
the whole border, men who refused to move back, pioneers of the finest
water, but law-breakers in fact. It’s interesting to think where the
world would have been by this time if laws hadn’t been broken, if
squatters hadn’t pushed on and buccaneers hadn’t sailed the main.”
Elizabeth sat on the doorstep, her hands clasped round her knees. If
only Herbert were here!--but Herbert had ridden up into the woods.
“Then we had interesting Jesuit settlements, overflow by mistake from
Lord Baltimore’s land to the south. We had all the ante-war troubles,
slaves escaping over the border and claiming our protection. We
protected ’em too with a flourishing underground railroad. But the
brigands used to capture them; sometimes they captured our own free
darkies and carried them off. There was a young black woman with her
children who had lived as a free woman in our county, who was captured
and carried screaming in the dead of night through the streets of
Gettysburg, she and each of her children across the saddle of a rascal.
A posse was made up, but they couldn’t be rescued. In the end they got
back, and one of those children grew up in my grandfather’s family.
When the Confederates came she crept under the old valanced bed in the
downstairs bedroom, and my little brother who crept in there too always
remembered two details, the spurred feet of the officers which he
could see under the valance and the deathly green-gray of that young
girl’s face. She must have been almost twenty, but the terror had never
left her.
“Then we had the battle, and you will acknowledge that that was
something!”
“Yes,” said Elizabeth. “What happened about here at the time of the
battle?”
Colonel Thomas stooped and picked up one of the books which he had laid
on the doorstep.
“The best lengthy account of the battle was written by a famous
Frenchman, the Count of Paris. Here it is.” He turned from page to
page.
“This will answer your question. This is after the first day’s fight.
‘Lee, having determined not to provoke a decisive battle until the
concentration of his army was accomplished, must naturally have
resorted to every device in order to complete this concentration before
that of his adversary. This was easy for him to do, for two of his
three army corps were entirely under his control at the close of the
first day. Longstreet was still absent. Pickett’s division had remained
at Chambersburg for the purpose of covering the defiles of South
Mountain; an order to join the army was forwarded to him, but it could
not reach him until the next day. The other two divisions, under McLaws
and Hood, had started from Greenwood in the morning, after having
successfully aided in the passage of Johnson’s division.’”
Colonel Thomas stopped and looked at Elizabeth uneasily.
“Go on,” said Elizabeth.
“‘They all followed the same road. Messengers were sent to expedite
their movements; an extraordinary order which had directed the supply
train to pass before them had caused a great loss of time which
could not be repaired; in fact, the road, muddy and broken up, was
encumbered by vehicles, loaded with provisions and ammunition, that
were proceeding in the direction of the battle-field, and by others
that were already returning with some of the wounded.’ You see there
was dreadful congestion and confusion.”
Elizabeth looked at him steadily.
“Was that when my grandfather was supposed to have given them help?”
“Yes,” answered Colonel Thomas. “They wanted to find another way to get
in.”
Elizabeth said nothing. But she thought of the old map with its center
gone.
“But I don’t believe it!” said she stubbornly.
Colonel Thomas acted upon impulse.
“I have been making some investigations,” said he, quite as though
he had not determined to say nothing whatever to Elizabeth about
his investigations. “I looked again at General Adams’s letter. His
statement about John Baring is followed by a row of asterisks,
signifying that something was omitted at that place. They may have
forced your grandfather--that would be a mitigation. If I find
anything, I’ll straighten the matter out publicly; I promise you that!”
Then he rose to go.
“My brother will be back soon. I wish he might have seen you.”
“I’d like to see him. But I’m a little late for an appointment now.
I’ll come another time. I’m old-fashioned and I don’t like to think of
you here all by yourself.”
“I’m not afraid.”
Elizabeth thanked him once more for the books, then she walked with
him to his car. She watched it plunge down the mountain-side. Colonel
Thomas was apparently afraid neither of speed nor of speed laws.
When she returned to her doorstep, she found another visitor, a tall,
middle-aged woman in a serviceable blue dress with a white collar.
“I came down through the woods,” she explained. “I’m the State nurse.”
Elizabeth hastened to welcome her. Her cheeks glowed. Here was the sort
of friendliness of which she had dreamed! Did the nurse know nothing
about them, or didn’t she care what their grandfather was said to have
done?
“I’ve been up to see Old Mammy Sheldon, and she tells me some one made
a will for her. I met the road-menders, and they told me where you
lived. I’m going to stop some day to talk about those wretched people,
if I may.”
“You may, indeed!”
“Next winter I’m going to have this side of the mountain for my
bailiwick. I wonder whether you would take me to board and lodge?”
The nurse, watching Elizabeth, thought with a start that she grew pale.
“I will, indeed!”
Elizabeth walked with her guest to the road and watched her out of
sight. Then she stood still. She had been meaning for days to attend
to an important errand. On a cross-road a half-mile below them lived
the farmer who had been recommended to her to set out the orchard, and
it was quite time that the bargain with him was made. Now, without
returning for her hat, she walked down the road.
She met the farmer at the entrance to his lane, and there stated her
errand. She had not got farther than the first sentence when she saw
that he knew who she was and that her request was in vain.
“They tell me that you know all about setting out orchards.”
The farmer shook his head.
“Miss, I tell you how it was. My father lost everything in the war,
even his own life. Then the Confederates came here and, thanks to John
Baring, they found out all about us, and they took everything my mother
had, all our money and stock, and they ruined our fields and gardens.
I know it was part of war and all that. I forgive the soldiers. But I
can’t forgive John Baring. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I can’t
work for you. I don’t believe I could stay in the neighborhood. Folks
wouldn’t be friendly with me; that is the way it would work out. I know
you’re all right, a good, law-abiding citizen, and I’m sorry for you.
You see, the folks round here are afraid of the Baring stock, that’s
the sum total of it. I _am_ sorry for you, young lady. Ain’t there any
other place that you can live?”
“I’ve talked to people about him,” said Elizabeth. “They all say he was
considered to be a good man.”
“Yes, I guess that’s right.” The farmer repeated his question. “Isn’t
there any other place you could live, miss? I tell you why I ask. That
place has a bad name. Nobody who ever rented it had good luck. They
died, or they went crazy, or the men didn’t keep sober. You must know
that it was empty most of the time.”
“Why had it a bad name?”
“Well, of course I don’t believe those things. But I’ve heard tell as
how folks _saw_ John Baring wandering about. He had a long white beard
and he--”
“But he didn’t have a long white beard!” contradicted Elizabeth. “He
wasn’t an old man, he wasn’t even middle-aged! It’s the mountaineers
who go wandering about. They think the place is theirs.”
The farmer looked at her and shook his head again.
“I wouldn’t get their ill-will, miss. They’re thieves, and they set
things afire, and I expect they wouldn’t stop at murder.”
“I can’t see why you citizens have allowed them to remain as they are
all these years.”
The farmer opened his gate.
“It’s better to let some things be,” he explained. “There are some
things you’d better just stand, like skunks and weasels. They can’t be
brought to judgment, they’re too all-fired sly and disagreeable.”
Elizabeth climbed the road slowly. She saw that in another week the
golden-rod would be in bloom. Already, though it was only July, a
bright red branch of a gum tree showed here and there in the woods.
Then she quickened her steps. She had not seen Herbert since noon and
that was a long time for him to spend alone in the woods. For several
days he had been more quiet than usual and she believed that he was
growing more depressed. At first he had gained in strength and weight,
but now he was losing. Herbert was all she had; it would be madness to
carry her plans for him to the point of risking his life! They would go
to a city; they would do anything in the world that he wished to do.
Then as she entered the yard the old place put its spell upon her once
more. If this cloud could be removed, Herbert would be as anxious to
stay as she. It was theirs, and never in the world could they possess
elsewhere anything so beautiful.
To her astonishment Herbert had not come, though the woodland must be
by this time almost dark.
“He rode to the upper end and Joe is slow as molasses,” said she aloud
for the sake of hearing a human voice. Then she set about preparing the
kind of supper that Herbert liked. For a while she whistled; then her
own whistling disturbed her. When supper was prepared she walked to
the edge of the woodland and called, then she walked back to the house.
She remembered now that she had a new blow to transmit to him. If their
orchards could not be planted, then they had reason for anxiety. At
least she would not tell him until after supper. She said aloud her
mother’s proverb about an empty stomach. She knew as she said it that
she was trying to keep out of her mind another thought.
But the thought was not to be put off.
“In a few minutes it will be quite dark!” said Elizabeth in terror. She
walked again to the border of the woods, and again back to the house.
She should never have allowed him to go alone. But he had proposed to
look for traces of old boundary lines and she had consented, glad of
his independence.
As she reached the edge of the woods once more, she looked back over
her shoulder at the house. She had been in but one room and she felt
suddenly afraid, afraid of the great bulk, afraid of the dark corners,
afraid of the deep cellar and the cubby-holes in the attic. She turned
and crossed the yard to the barn.
“If he has come back, Joe is here!”
But the stable was empty. Elizabeth then walked directly to the front
door and back to the kitchen and there lit the lamp and lifted it from
the table.
“Shall I find another vague notice?” said she to herself. “Or a
positive threat of kidnapping?”
A notice was exactly what she found. Tossed in at the window of her own
room, lying just where the first soiled scrap of paper had lain, was
another. Upon it was the same gruesome sign of skull and cross-bones
and below another ill-written message.
You bring that paper and you can hav him back.
“What paper?” said Elizabeth. “Have him back! Who! Where is he?”
But no voice answered, either from the house or from the dusky
woodland.