THE LAST TIT-BITS OF THE BANQUET--SUBSEQUENT EVENTS IN THE HISTORIES OF
DIFFERENT CHARACTERS--A CAVALRY CHARGE AT ANTIETAM--AND THE END.
When the banquet is over, whether the guests have been fully satisfied
or the opposite, there may still remain a few trifles which must be
discussed, if the proper respect is to be shown to each other and the
entertainer. When a story is almost ended, there may still remain a
fragmentary portion, perhaps not altogether worthy of attention from
those who have so far followed the fortunes of the different personages
involved, and yet impossible to ignore without manifesting a disregard
of the whole entertainment. To that stage this narrative has reached,
and all that remains is a hasty grouping together of those closing
events for which all that have preceded them would seem to have been
intended by the fates that overruled them.
* * * * *
It will be remembered that Josephine Harris, when first recovered from
the disappointment of Richard Crawford's absence from the city, penned a
letter and mailed it to Niagara, giving him a rapid detail of all that
she had been doing in his behalf--of events at West Falls--and of the
absolute necessity that he should at once apply some of his marvellously
recovered strength to the purposes of a journey thither. That letter,
which should have reached Niagara as soon as the travellers themselves,
suffered the fate of many-letters that are sent upon matters of life and
death with the magic word "haste" in the lower left-hand corner; and was
not delivered at the Cataract House until Saturday morning. Perhaps it
was quite as well that the detention had occurred on the road, for by
that means the partially-recovered invalid was spared two excitements in
one day, which might have seriously prostrated him.
Even as it was, the shock was a sudden and hazardous one, to a system no
more thoroughly restored than Richard Crawford's. He received that
letter on Saturday morning, with several others from the city, and went
up to his own room to read them. From prudential reasons, Bell, on the
disappearance of Marion Hobart, had taken the vacated room, adjoining
that of her brother; and when he had been for a few moments alone after
his return from the hotel "post-office," she was startled by what seemed
to be a groan issuing from his room. Instantly running to the door and
tapping, when she entered she found him sitting on the side of the bed,
white as the counterpane that covered it, and breathing heavily. She
flew at once to his side, applied the restoratives at hand, and had the
joy of seeing him almost instantly recover breath and voice. Then it was
that she observed that he held a letter in his hand, and that letter he
tendered her. She read, and her own excitement was scarcely less than
that of her brother. Now for the first time she understood the strange
words with reference to the destinies of her family, which had been
uttered by the sybil, and which had done so much to change the very
nature of, her womanhood. And what a revelation was here to her, of the
mental torture which Richard must have experienced through all his long
hopeless illness--of the uncomplaining patience with which he had borne
what must have seemed to him the crushing out of all the best hopes of
his life--of the murderous depravity which could exist in the heart of
one connected with her by the dear ties of blood, and daily taken by the
hand and trusted--and of the singular character of that young girl whom
she had observed so much and known so little, and to whose efforts
seemed to be owing all this happiness budding and blossoming out of the
ashes of past misery.
An hour restored the equanimity of Richard Crawford, though several
would be needed before he could recover all the strength of which he had
been temporarily deprived by the shock. But joy does not kill, like
grief; nor does it even enervate for any long period. Only a little time
elapsed before the steadfast lover, to whom the promise of joy was again
open after so long an obscuration, decided that he must and would be
strong enough to ride to Utica that night and to West Falls on Sunday
morning. He could not be allowed to go alone, and of course Bell, who
would not dissuade him, had no alternative but to accompany him With a
few words of apology to Walter Harding, for thus making a last break
into what would otherwise have been a pleasant sojourn of some days at
the Falls, and leaving him entirely alone,--but with the explanation
that family affairs of the gravest importance demanded their presence in
the neighborhood of Utica,--they left Niagara on Saturday afternoon,
slept a portion of the night at Utica, and reached West Falls on Sunday
morning, the Twelfth--a week from that eventful Sunday on which the
destinies of the whole Crawford family seemed to have been played for,
lost and won, in the little parlor of Aunt Betsey Halstead.
It is an old story which can never be told over half so well as it can
be acted--that of the meeting of lovers who have been once estranged by
wrong or misunderstanding. It was a trying moment when Mary Crawford,
altogether ignorant of the time of his coming, even if he would ever
again come at all,--was called to meet the man whom she had so wronged
and misunderstood. But how to perform the rites of reconciliation, is
one of the sublime mysteries which Nature teaches when she gives us the
other holy lessons of love; and who doubts that the cousin-lovers
clasped each other more fondly, and with a better knowledge of what each
was worth to the other, in the meeting embrace of that Sunday morning,
than they might ever have done during their whole lives if the tongue of
slander and the hand of injustice had not come temporarily between
them?
Their connection with this narration closes here. Poor old John Crawford
is yet living, though dying daily with weakness and the gradual wearing
away of the very power of life. Mary Crawford is a wife, and has been
since Wednesday, the twenty-sixth of November, 1862, on which day--the
day preceding the annual Thanksgiving--Richard Crawford religiously
believes that he repaid himself for all by-gone wrongs and
misunderstandings. For some cause, with which his past sufferings and
his changed domestic relations may have had more or less to do, he has
never yet joined the army of which he has always been thinking with a
longing desire. His pen has not been idle, even in his happiness--may
not that have done _his_ appointed work? It need scarcely be said that
the friendship between the people of the big house on the hill, and
those of the little Halstead house in the village, though for a time
interrupted by pride and neglect, has since been more warmly cemented
than ever before,--and that when little Susy marries the engineer, as
she will probably do before the summer closes, there will be no warmer
prayers put up for their happiness, than those uttered by two who have
trodden the same path but a little while before them.
* * * * *
We have not chosen to depict the storm which followed the sudden
departure of Colonel John Boadley Bancker from the house of Judge Owen,
near the Harlem River. That there _was_ a storm, is undeniable--such a
storm as the burly Judge had (and still retains) the faculty of getting
up at the shortest notice. One of those blind, indiscriminate storms,
which having no justice have no direction, and which consequently hurt
no one, though they offend all. Frank Wallace, for daring to play such a
masquerade in his house and offend a guest--Josephine Harris, for being
an accessory before or after the fact, to the plot (the pompous man
never knew which)--Emily for having been always a disobedient daughter
and a disgrace to the family, this event being another of the abundant
proofs thereof--Mrs. Owen and Aunt Martha for daring to live in the same
house where such things were about to occur, without preventing them,
whether they knew of the arrangement or not,--all received their share
in this blast of denunciation; and yet, strangely enough, all survived
it, and not one even quitted the house in disgust.
Colonel John Boadley Bancker has never since entered the house or held
any intercourse with its inmates. He would quite as soon, we suspect,
change places with Driesbach and tame a few tigers and hyenas for
exhibition, as trust himself once more to the tender mercies of people
who _detected and laughed at him_. If he prays (which is doubtful) he
prays first to be delivered from the wiles and machinations of a demon
in petticoats named Joe Harris. He does not wear shoulder-straps or a
blue uniform. He has not been drafted, and probably will not be, even in
the new eight-hundred-thousand levy. He is said to be still speculating,
and making money; and there have been rumors that he is looking for a
"job" in the operations of the Harbor-Defence Commissioners of the City
of New York.[18] But as those Commissioners are well known to be beyond
the reach of those evil influences which have made other operations of
the war a little costly beyond their return,--he cannot do otherwise
than fail in this instance.
[Footnote 18: March 21, 1863.]
Frank Wallace has not been banished the house of Judge Owen, since that
memorable night of July. He visits it, even takes Emily to the theatres,
and is neither insulted nor interrupted. It is supposed that the Judge
did not rule him out of the house, because he believed it to be of no
use, holding that a man who had begun to come in disguise might continue
the game if not allowed to come openly, and that to keep him out he
would be obliged to remain at home all the time himself, and keep a
sharp eye on the supposed milkman, the baker, the butcher, and even the
man who carried in the coal.
It may be that after this lapse of time, the Judge even tolerates the
scapegrace. Emily does, it is very evident, and as she has never since
swerved in her warm friendship with the wild girl who arranged the
masquerade, she is not at all likely to recede from her old position or
to marry otherwise than as she pleases. The Judge had better reconsider
his old decision, gracefully, for he is certainly overruled by that
"full bench" consisting of Emily herself (Mrs. Owen reserving her
opinion), Josephine Harris and Aunt Martha; and Frank Wallace will "take
judgment" some day before he is aware of it, in the shape of pretty
Emily Owen!
* * * * *
This is not a clergyman's or a county clerk's record of marriages, and
it is a matter of regret that we cannot carry out the system inaugurated
by Southworth and followed by Wood, of marrying off all the couples at
the close of the relation, even down to the footman and the
kitchen-girl. If we put them _en train_ for that pleasant consummation,
shall it not be held sufficient?
It would have been one of the pleasantest tasks of this narration to
marry Walter Lane Harding, merchant and good fellow, to Bell Crawford,
much more worthy to be his wife than when she was leaving the couch of
her sick brother, with the gallant Colonel of the Two Hundredth as her
attendant, in search of a peculiar shade of red ribbon. But Harding is a
man of mercantile regularity of idea, and not even a novelist can move
him more rapidly than _he_ chooses. He left Niagara on the Monday
following the departure of Bell Crawford and her brother on Saturday,
but business may have had more to do with his return to this city than
any outsider can know. He has since been very much in her society, and
friends believe that they are sincerely attached to each other. It is
highly probable that they will be at Kittatinny or the White Mountains
together, during the summer; and a marriage between them, which is one
of the eventual certainties, may take place at a moment when it is least
expected by others, but when they (the parties most deeply interested,
after all) happen to fancy that the time has come for such a culmination
of the pleasant acquaintance. Walter Harding, meanwhile, has forsaken
none of his old ways, and finds the same pleasure as of old, in the
street, in the country or at places of intellectual amusement, in the
company (when he can manage to light upon that ever-busy person) of his
friend and companion Tom Leslie.
* * * * *
It has already been said, in a previous chapter, that Tom Leslie and
John Crawford left the Cataract House within an hour after the discovery
of the abduction of Marion Hobart, taking carriage into Canada. Perhaps
neither of the two knew precisely what was his motive in the pursuit,
except the one before named--curiosity. If Crawford felt that he had a
duty to the young Virginian girl, and some claim upon her, under the
bequest of her dying grandfather, he was yet fully satisfied that she
had left with her own consent, and that she was now where he could take
no legal steps to reclaim her from any false position in which she might
have placed herself. Leslie had, and knew that he had, no right whatever
to meddle with the movements of the suspicious parties, except that he
might have obtained some description of Columbus' right by _discovery_.
However, the reasons being what they might, the fact was patent--they
were now in full chase of a will-of-the-wisp of most magnificent
dimensions.
There was not much difficulty, on enquiry, to find that the carriage
they were following (Leslie remembered that this was the _second_
carriage _he_ had followed, in that connection) had taken the road to
St. Catharine's; and thither the pursuers posted. Parties who bore the
description of those they named--one large, dark man and one very small
lady--had taken refreshments at the principal hotel there, two hours
before; and then they had apparently gone on to Toronto. They followed
to Toronto. Some hours were spent at Toronto, in discovering that they
had taken the rail to Montreal. The pursuers followed to Montreal, and
late at night, on the day following the departure from Niagara, were at
Donnegana's Hotel. No concealment had here been considered necessary by
the fugitives, whatever they might have practised before; and on the
register of Donnegana's, Leslie found an entry of the names of "Dexter
Ralston _and wife_!"
"Phew!" he said, calling the attention of Crawford to the book, "they
have been rapid. All my suspicious were correct, as usual. There never
was such a match; but they have now acquired a legal right to remain
together, even if there was power to separate them otherwise. They are
married!"
"The d--l they are!" said John Crawford, leaning over to examine the
register. "True enough! Then my guardianship is ended, with a witness.
But is _she_ his wife? Is it Marion Hobart, or may he not have been
married before?"
"No, said Leslie," remembering the picture, "she and no other."
They had not been aware that they were speaking loudly enough to be
easily overheard; but as the last words were spoken a well-known voice
sounded behind them, and Tom Leslie, as he turned, saw Dexter Ralston,
cigar in mouth, coming up from the door.
"You were speaking of my wife, gentlemen," he said, as he bowed to
Leslie. "Well, what of her?"
"If your wife is Marion Hobart," said John Crawford, turning, "we were
speaking of _my ward_, entrusted to my guardianship by her grandfather,
her last surviving relative, on his death-bed, and stolen away by you
from the Cataract House yesterday."
The words of Crawford were somewhat loud, and the face of the Virginian
flushed, though the office of the hotel was almost deserted and probably
no one but themselves understood what was being uttered. "_Stolen_ is a
hard word," he said, after a moment, "but if you are John Crawford, who
brought Marion Hobart safely away from Glendale, in Virginia, you are
licensed to say almost anything."
Tom Leslie spoke.
"Where shall I meet you next, Ralston?"
"That depends upon where you follow me," said the Virginian, in a tone
of dignified pleasantry which came near bringing the blood to Leslie's
cheek as it had lately been brought to that of the Virginian. The
journalist shook off the feeling, however, and laughed.
"Well, we _have_ followed you, of course," he said--"perhaps played
_spy_ upon you. But if I am not mistaken, I saw you playing very nearly
the same game on Goat Island and at the Cataract."
The Virginian echoed the laugh.
"Fairly hit back," he said. "I _have_ played the spy, more than once.
Who has not, I wonder?"
"What are you to-night?" asked Leslie, with a marked banter in his tone.
"It is none of my business, of course, here on Canadian ground, but the
other day, on Goat Island, you were--"
"A loyal American," answered Ralston, interrupting him. "To-night, and
on Canadian ground, I am a loyal _Virginian_, true to my own State,
first, last and forever."
"By George! I thought so all the while!" said Leslie, though there was
certainly no anger in his tone. (It is a matter of doubt whether within
the preceding few days that young man had not found himself so
pleasantly situated in some regards, as to be incapable of becoming very
easily vexed, even for the sake of _patriotism_).
"We differ on the national question, and I suppose conscientiously,"
said Ralston. "I hold the extreme doctrine of State Rights, and you that
of centralization. I am a rebel--you are a loyalist. All right--don't
let us quarrel, especially as we have been friends and as you are
certainly a jolly good fellow and I _ought_ to be."
"I ought to hate you and wish for your extermination," said Leslie, in
the same frank tone; "and if I heard you professing the same sentiments
at the St. Nicholas I should certainly help send you to Fort Lafayette.
And yet I rather like you, in spite of the fact that I believe you have
been concerned in some of the nests of secession in New York, through
which the enemy--that's your friends!--obtained knowledge of all that
was going on at the North."
"Never nearer right in your life!" said the Virginian. "In fact you are
more nearly correct than even you imagine. One of the reasons why the
Union cause can never succeed, is that the 'rebellion,' as you call it,
has emissaries among you in every class of society, from the club-house
to the brothel. You will scarcely believe, even with your experience,
how society is getting mixed up! I found Kate F----, the daughter of one
of my rich old neighbors, seduced and lured away from home, the inmate
of one of those houses I have just named; and as I could do nothing
better to relieve her just then, I employed her for _the cause_.
To-night she is asleep in this house, my wife's servant. You wouldn't
trust her, would you?--I would. But you need not suppose that the
machinery is all worked among the lower classes. Don't trust the
brown-stone houses too far! We had a brown-stone house up-town, until
not many days ago--"
"Yes, on East 5-- Street, not far from the Eastern Dispensary," said
Leslie, breaking in upon the Virginian in turn; "and another on Prince
Street, and--"
"Oh, you seem to know a good deal about it," said Ralston, trying to
keep up his tone of banter, but his voice showing that he was really a
little surprised. "And yet I do not think that you can be altogether
behind the curtain after all. The worst foes of what you call the 'Union
cause' have not been those who declared themselves secessionists. Some
of your leading officials, it may be pleasant to you to know, are as
arrant 'rebels' as even Virginia can furnish; and with them and the
correspondence carried on through their offices, we have worked more
effectively than in almost any other way."
"Yes," said Leslie, looking steadily at Ralston, and with a wicked smile
peeping out from under his moustache. "Yes--not only local officials,
but Congressmen, judging by the conversation that you held with the
Honorable ---- ----, under the arches of the Capitol, the night before
Lincoln's inauguration."
"What!" cried the Virginian, for once surprised out of his equanimity.
"The d--l! You know that?" Then he laughed and grew placid again. The
instant after he held out his hand to Leslie. "Leslie, you are keener
than I thought, and perhaps it is just as well that we are not to play
against each other any more. I am going to Europe by the next steamer
from Quebec. It is late--I must go to bed. Let me say good-bye."
"To Europe?" asked Leslie. "Eh? oh! more ships, cotton and tobacco
loans, I suppose."
"No!" said Ralston, and his voice sunk into a low tone of concentrated
bitterness, very different from the manner he had recently displayed.
"No! I am going to Europe to reside. I am done with the Confederate
cause, though I hate the Federal as much as ever. It was _Virginia_ I
was striving for, not to change the despotism of Lincoln to another and
a worse under Jeff Davis. That is enough--once more good night and
good-bye!"
"Stop!" said John Crawford, who had stood very near during all this
conversation, but taken no part in it. "You have yet a word or two to
answer to _me_. I charged you, a few moments ago, with the abduction of
a lady left to my care and under my solemn oath to protect her, by her
last living relative. I know there is no law here in my behalf; but as a
_man_ answering to a _man_, what have you to say to this?"
"Her last living relative?" said the Virginian, as if he had heard
nothing else of the words addressed to him. "Humph! as I said before, if
you are John Crawford, my wife and myself both owe you much, and perhaps
you are entitled to be satisfied before you go. Come up-stairs with me a
moment, and you shall see what foundation there is for your words."
He led the way from the office of the hotel, through the hall and up a
broad flight of steps to the next floor, the two friends following.
Turning to the left he tapped with his knuckles on the door of one of
the private parlors. There was no answer from within. He tapped again,
and still there was no answer. He turned the knob of the door and peeped
within, then opened the door a little wider and beckoned to Leslie and
Crawford.
"Look!"
The two companions looked within. Two of the burners of the chandelier
dependent from the ceiling were lit, and a flood of softened light from
the ground-shades filled the apartment. On a sofa at the left sat the
red woman of the Rue la Reynie Ogniard, red no longer now, but with the
matchless beauty of her face displayed as it had been for a moment when
Tom Leslie saw her unmasked at the house on Prince Street. But her dark
hair lay all dishevelled; and in the eyes, that seemed to be looking
down with a fixed and almost _hungry_ expression of love that could
never gaze enough, there were traces of late weeping. At her feet, on a
low ottoman, half sat and half knelt Marion Hobart--or she who had so
lately borne that name--her blonde hair thrown back from her brow, and
her eyes looking up with an answering expression of yearning affection
that would need years to satisfy. She was in white, and around her waist
were thrown the arms of the other, holding her in a clasp of agonized
force and intensity. Neither seemed to be aware that others were
near--apparently neither had heard the knock or the opening of the
door--for the time they seemed to be alone upon earth. A moment Leslie
and Crawford gazed upon this picture: then Ralston closed the door
again.
Leslie, who had for an instant started and trembled when the picture met
his view, as he had never failed to do in the presence of that
marvellous woman, uttered no word as the door closed.
"Well?" asked John Crawford, to whom nothing had as yet been revealed.
"You do not understand," said the Virginian. "I think that your friend
sees farther. I married Marion Hobart yesterday, at Toronto. You said
that you held a right over her by the bequest of her last living
relative--her grandfather: I tell you that I have to-night restored her
to a dearer relative, in whose arms she lies----"
"Her _mother_," said Leslie, the two words breaking from his lips as if
involuntarily.
"Her mother? Oh Lord!" broke out John Crawford, surprise completely
overmastering him.
"Her mother--a French lady by birth, and something of whose character
you know, Leslie. Her mother, the repudiated wife of Charles Hampden
Hobart, from whom Marion has been separated since childhood, and to whom
you unwittingly, and I of my own will, have just given her back. Have I
a right to her, now? Are you satisfied?"
"Yes," said John Crawford. "My duty is done, though I should rather have
seen it end differently. Good-night!"
"Good-night and good-bye!" said Tom Leslie, holding out his hand. Dexter
Ralston shook it, bowed to Crawford, and entered the parlor, closing the
door behind him, The two companions descended the stairs; and so closed
Tom Leslie's long adventure, which it must be confessed that he had not
brought to quite so practical an end as that reached by his female
counterpart in another direction. But then who ever heard of a man
managing a mystery or an intrigue with the same effective dexterity as a
woman, or making as much good or evil out of it in the end?
* * * * *
Tom Leslie left Montreal almost as suddenly as he had arrived there, in
company with John Crawford. He reached New York still in company with
the Zouave. His re-union with Joe Harris took place at that auspicious
time when the comedy at Judge Owen's had just come to a conclusion; and
one can very well imagine what a clatter of tongues and a ringing of
merry laughter there must have been in the parlor of Mrs. Harris's cozy
little house, as the two compared notes since their separation at Utica,
and as each revealed what had yet been necessarily kept hidden from the
other. Mrs. Harris, good soul, listened to the two rattle-pates on that
first evening, and laughed as merrily as either; but after a time the
good lady stole away, perhaps to her early bed; and then, strangely
enough, the merriment soon ceased, and they were silent. Were their
voices only for others, and did eye speak to eye, lip to lip, and heart
to heart, when they were alone together? One who knew both passed them
closely by without being observed, and arrived at that impression, when
they had stolen away from Mrs. Harris and the Ocean House at Newport, a
month later, on the night of the full moon of August, and were sitting
silent together, on the almost deserted piazza of the Stone Bridge
House, at the extreme north end of Rhode Island, and under the shadow of
Mount Hope, looking at the moon shining in placid beauty on the still
waters of the East River, and thinking of Indian canoes and the romance
of old history, as the little boats of the pleasure-seekers glided in
and out among the wooded islands, and the shouts of merriment rung out
ever and anon on the night air from lips that were bubbling over with
enjoyment.
And this brings us to a matter of no slight embarrassment. If this
narration has a heroine (which may be held as a matter of doubt) that
heroine is Josephine Harris, the wild, impulsive, loving girl, ever
ready for help or mischief, whose madcap pranks have played so important
a part in the fortunes of all. And if we have not been all the while
entirely without a hero, Tom Leslie, the journalist, cosmopolitan, lover
of nature, and strange mixture of boyish gayety and manly experience,
must supply that important place. The meeting of these two oddities has
been narrated, and their lives have seemed to blend together from that
moment; and yet the strange spectacle has been presented, of two who are
talking always and on all subjects, saying no word of love to each other
that reaches the pen of the narrator. There is one long pressure of the
hand on the first day of their meeting--one long, confiding pressure, in
which the two palms might almost grow together; and that is all.
Thenceforth they belong to each other, and yet without a single question
openly asked or answered. If the narrator should be asked, Why this
reticence?--he might not be able to explain the restraint which holds
his hand. They love each other dearly--so dearly that the blotting out
of one from existence would be leaving that existence a blank to the
other, for so many weary months and years that the very heart would grow
sick at contemplating the long expanse of bereavement yet to be
travelled over.
But they are not married? No. Months have passed over them, since each
knew each so thoroughly that often the one speaks the unbreathed thought
of the other; and yet they are not married. When will that marriage vow
be spoken? To-morrow? Next year? Never? Who knows, except God in heaven?
Perhaps there is something in this strange, wild, wayward love, between
two who may not dream of any reward beyond its existence, too sacred
even for its words to be recorded if they should fall upon the ear or
enter the mind of the romancer. Neither of them, perhaps, could attract
a love beside: neither of them might value another love, if it should
come at any call. Both of them will be Pariahs from the caste of hard
propriety, while the world lives or they exist. Both will chatter,
laugh, weep at times, fill unacknowledged places in the world, and weave
unreal romances of loving mischief in real life. And yet, married or
unmarried, they rest in each other--_rest_, in the truest and holiest
sense of that sacred word which almost encompasses heaven. Absent, they
will wish for each other: together, they will sometimes forget the
blessing that has been conferred, to remember it again some time through
sobs and kisses. And here let the record close.
No--let the record bear one more important suggestion. If they do marry,
for the protection of society let conspicuous labels be pinned on the
backs of their children: "Don't let these little people get into any
chance for mischief."
* * * * *
John Crawford, the Zouave, returned to New York within the succeeding
three days. Among the first of his researches in the city, was one as to
the state of the bank-account of Marion Hobart. The account was
closed--every dollar had been drawn, by check under her own hand, and
the fact gave only another proof that her abduction had been
accomplished without much violence, if not indeed with her own
connivance.
John Crawford rejoined the Advance Guard in October, and has since
shared in all the perils and glories of that gallant corps. He is still
a private--it may be because no commission has offered on such terms as
a true man could accept; and it may be because he believes the true
romance and glory of war to lie with the _soldier_, and not the
_officer_--the danger of the lonely picket-guard and the song and story
of camp and bivouac, supplying a fresh and glorious excitement to which
the superior must always remain a stranger.
* * * * *
From the moment when Colonel Egbert Crawford left West Falls so
suddenly, and took his way Southward by the cars of the New York Central
road on that Sunday evening of July, he seems to have passed away
entirely from the course of this narration. Let it not be supposed that
he has passed away from memory or that these closing words can be
complete without a knowledge of his subsequent movements.
It has been seen how calmly, to all outward appearance, the baffled and
detected man bore the knowledge of his ruin. _Ruin_, because nothing
less was involved in the failure of his plans. He had long been
embarrassed in money affairs, and for months before his business as a
Tombs lawyer had been falling away under that worst of all
cankers--neglect. The hand of Mary Crawford would have satisfied his
heart, and her fortune would have repaired the weakness of his own.
Failing both, he was hopelessly bankrupt. The Two Hundredth Regiment was
a failure, and he had known the fact for weeks. Perhaps he had never
believed that it would be otherwise. At all events, as may have been
suspected from his forced submission to the unpardonable insolence of
the Adjutant, he had been deceiving the authorities as to the number and
condition of the regiment, and applying to his own use sums that might
need to be some day strictly accounted for. The previous word will bear
repetition--this event in his life was absolute ruin.
Some men commit suicide under such circumstances. Others make one more
and a still greater departure from the path of honesty, and victimizing
all whom they can influence by the holiest of pleas and the most sacred
claims of friendship, flee away to bury their shame among strangers. A
few find such positions the turning-points in their lives, and
thenceforward develope some startling virtues which almost redeem the
lamentable past.
Egbert Crawford had proved himself a villain, even as the world goes. He
had trampled upon the dearest ties of blood, and been a constructive
murderer, only withheld from the actual crime by circumstances over
which he had no control. He had murdered character, and would have
murdered the happiness of a poor, weak, unoffending woman, who had the
double claim of youth and of kindred blood, demanding consideration at
his hands. He had trifled with the public service and defrauded the
government, as too many others were and have since been doing on every
hand--draining his Mother Country of her life-blood in her very hour of
need, and so aiding to commit that most deadly and horrible of
crimes--_matricide_. Could this man still have one virtue remaining? Let
this be seen.
He reached New York on Monday night, after a stay of a few hours at
Albany. What he did at the latter place has never been known and perhaps
will never be. On Tuesday, for an hour, he was at Camp Lyon, and some of
the other officers saw him walking backward and forward, on the piazza
of the hotel, in conversation with the Adjutant. Once or twice their
voices were heard to rise louder than good-feeling would have allowed,
though the words they uttered were not caught by any listener. Were they
haggling, as robbers have been known to do after successful operations
in plundering, over the division of the spoils? At nightfall the Colonel
returned to the city, and Camp Lyon and the Two Hundredth Regiment saw
him no more.
The morning papers of a day or two after announced that the Two
Hundredth Regiment, which seemed to have been lagging in the way of
recruits, for a few days before, had been abandoned as a separate
organization and would be consolidated with the One Hundred and
Ninety-ninth, then in the course of successful formation at a camp
within half a mile of its disbanded rival. With this addition, the One
Hundred and Ninety-ninth would be full and able to leave within a week.
The Colonel of the Two Hundredth, it was added, had accepted a
commission on staff-service, and had already left for the seat of war.
All this Was true, except so much of it as was mere speculation for the
future. Whether the One Hundred and Ninety-ninth did profit by the
consolidation and move within the week--whether any money, and if so how
much, was received by those who "sold out" the Two Hundredth--and
whether the One Hundred and Ninety-ninth (_not_ including Lieut.
Woodruff, who threw up his commission in disgust) entered and honored
the service, or was yet frittered away by the gross mismanagement of
those in command,--all these are matters that have no connection
whatever with the present relation. The gist of the newspaper paragraph
was true--the consolidation of the two regiments had been effected, and
Colonel Egbert Crawford had left Now York for Washington, on
staff-service.
When he left his legal office on the day of his departure for
Washington, he carried with him a package the shape of which none could
mistake. It contained a sword. So much any eye could see. But no eye
could see what lay beneath. It has been more than once indicated that so
far as an evil man could love purely, Egbert Crawford really loved the
little cousin for whom he was playing so unfairly. Sword-factories had
sprung up, since the breaking out of the war, along the little streams
which emptied into the Mohawk, through the Oneida Valley; and some of
them kept up the clink of the trip-hammers and the whirr of the
emory-wheels that shaped and polished sword-blades, not far from West
Falls. One day, in June, while his star seemed to be so certainly in the
ascendant in the family of John Crawford, Mary and himself had visited
one of those factories. Impressed by the intelligence of his remarks on
the manufacture, and perhaps willing to curry favor with the commander
of a regiment just going into the field, the superintendent of the
sword-factory had presented the officer with a splendid plain
light-cavalry sabre with its brazen hilt and heavy steel scabbard--a
most deadly and effective weapon, upon which one could depend in battle
almost as well as upon the best blade forged in Damascus. That sword
Mary had carried home in her own hands, presenting it to him afterwards,
in a moment of good feeling, with a playful word of confidence in his
valor, which he had never forgotten. That blade, hallowed by the little
hand of Mary Crawford which had once pressed its hilt, was the one which
he carried with him that day as he left his office for no imaginary
"field," but one of bloody reality.
Would he have been superstitious enough to connect the fact with his own
past or future fate, had he known that Aunt Synchy, the old Obi woman of
Thomas Street, was that very day lying dead on the floor of her
miserable room, having had a dose of one of her own insidious poisons
administered in her tea by Master Jeffy, who had become almost too much
of an expert in the art,--because she would not allow him the
extravagance of a whole penny to buy a top?
Josephine Harris, painfully correct in her general estimation of the
character of Egbert Crawford, had pronounced him, in addition to his
other vices, "a coward," and "amounting to nothing, as a soldier, except
his shoulder-straps and sword-belts." She "did not believe that he would
ever go to the war." How very easily, seeing one half the truth, we can
overleap too much intervening space and falsify the remaining half!
Egbert Crawford _did_ "go to the war," and under such circumstances that
his "shoulder-straps" and "sword-belts" counted for very little in
comparison with himself. Three days after he left New York, he joined
the army at Harrison's Landing, as a volunteer aid-de-camp to any
officer who needed rough-riding and sharp fighting. He was a dashing
rider--thanks to the education received many years before in the
country, and the steadiness with which he had since kept up the habit of
riding, at an expenditure of time and money which he could ill afford.
He bore excellent endorsements from Albany and New York, and he had
lately held a commission as Colonel. Besides these advantages, Hooker
saw something in the dark face of the lawyer--something in the set lips
and clouded brow, which while it might not have commanded confidence in
the selection of an agent to be specially trusted in matters of delicate
issue, told that there was desperation and _fight_. He joined the staff
of that General, with the honorary rank of Captain.
Then followed that terrible blunder which removed the Army of the
Potomac from the James River, unloosed the grasp of the Federals from
the very throat of the rebel power, and re-opened the Pandora's Box of
incursion which had been almost closed by the investiture of Richmond.
Then followed the still more terrible blunder of the appointment of Pope
to the leading command, and the commencement of that chain of disasters
which culminated in the disgraceful retreat of the Union forces towards
Washington, after the second battle of Bull Run, on the twenty-ninth of
August--a retreat which was only checked by the momentary return of the
"young Napoleon" from his temporary Elba, and a demoralization which was
only forgotten when the Potomac army, once more re-organized under the
old commander, moved up into Maryland to break the threatened invasion
of the Middle States.
The young aid-de-camp proved himself a man and a soldier, however raw
and unaccustomed, in the removal from Harrison's Landing and the
disastrous fights of Pope's campaign; but there was little opportunity,
indeed, for dash amid demoralization. And so matters passed rapidly on
until the morning of Antietam. One of the captains of General
Pleasanton's cavalry fell at Sharpsburg, leaving a vacancy which that
gallant officer filled, by General Hooker's consent, with his volunteer
aid-de-camp. Mary Crawford's cavalry sabre had at last found its true
field, though he had worn it through all, instead of the more showy
regulation blade, when on staff duty.
Antietam had begun to thunder, though the height of that terrible
battle, which up to this time[19] divides with Malvern Hill and Shiloh
the fearful honor of being the most destructive of any fought on the
American continent, had not yet been reached. One hundred and twenty
thousand of the Union troops held the eastern bank of Antietam Creek,
ready to cross and complete the expulsion of the rebels from Maryland,
while it was believed that not less than two hundred thousand of the
rebels held the high lands opposite. The slaughter of the day was fairly
commencing. Pleasanton held the upper of the three bridges over the
Creek, that at the Hagerstown road, over which Hooker was sweeping
forward to make his crossing. He had been ordered by Hooker to hold his
position without fail and at all hazards. The rebels seemed to be in
heavy force on the heights behind and farther up the creek, and
evidently they were prepared to make a desperate resistance to the
crossing of Hooker. The position of the cavalry was a painful one.
Hooker seemed slow in coming, and shot and shell kept continually
dropping among them, knocking from their saddles one and another of the
brave fellows who were so chafing with impatience and inaction. At
length, and just at the moment when the head of Hooker's column appeared
from behind the woods on the other side, a squadron of rebel horse, two
or three hundred strong, came into view, down the creek and a little
behind, on a low plateau which stretched from it towards the hills. The
advance guard came pricking in at the same moment. Pleasanton, who had
been anxiously observing the advance of Hooker, caught a word behind him
and turned. As he did so, and saw the rebel cavalry, he caught the word
repeated.
"Damnation!"
"Who spoke?" asked the General.
"I!" answered Captain Crawford, commanding the right company, and
consequently very near the commander.
"And what did you mean?" asked Pleasanton.
"My word was not for your ear, General, of course," said the young
officer. "What I meant was that it was a shame that Hooker was coming
just at this moment, and that we could not have a brush with those
rebels on horseback, yonder."
"Eh?" said the General. "What consequence?"
"This," answered Crawford. "They brag of the rebel cavalry--they say
that we have _none_. I should like to try them, if not more than two to
one."
"Good!" said Pleasanton. "The right feeling, though a little imprudent.
You are a young officer, Captain Crawford, but they tell me you have
dash, and that sounds like it. Dash is what we want, if we can only have
steadiness with it. Your eyes are younger than mine--how many of those
rebels are there?"
[Footnote 19: March 22d, 1863.]
The rebel cavalry were now within four hundred yards, and still
advancing, though at moderate speed. Crawford looked at them closely a
moment.
"From two to three hundred, I should think," was the answer.
"By the Lord you shall have a chance!" said the veteran. "You think you
can scatter them with less than two hundred. Try it, steel against
steel. Take two squadrons, and away with you!"
"Squadrons on the right--attention!" rung out the sharp voice of the
Captain, no despondency or vexation in it now! "Draw sabres! Squadrons
forward! Column to the left--march" and rapidly as the words were
uttered the movement was executed. Other words of command followed and
were executed with equal rapidity, as the squadrons moved down to the
left, then formed on the right into line facing the foe; and it seemed
but an instant after, when the concluding words rung out: "Squadrons
forward! trot--march! Gallop--march! Charge!" and the two squadrons of
the light dragoons, headed by the new Captain, were sweeping across the
plateau to meet the advancing rebels. Their long line of white steel
glittered ominously, and the solid earth of the plateau shook under the
hoofs of their galloping horses, few in number as they were. As they
swept on, coming nearer they discovered that their scant one hundred and
fifty were even more fearfully outnumbered than they had at first
believed; but no man drew rein and every one grasped the hilt of his
blade with a fiercer determination, as he drove the cruel spurs still
deeper into the flanks of his flying horse--lacerating the animal in
haste perhaps to impale himself!
In the more important details of the main battle of Antietam, this
cavalry charge has been almost overlooked by the newspaper chroniclers;
and yet it is doubtful whether even the Galloping Second when they
dashed into Fairfax Court-House, or Zagonyi's "Body-Guard" and Frank
White's "Prairie Scouts," at Springfield, displayed more of the true
dash of this undervalued arm of the American service, than those two
squadrons of Pleasanton on the little plateau over Antietam Creek. The
rebels met them with fierce determination and the inspiring
consciousness of superior numbers, but nothing could break that headlong
charge. Scarcely a pistol-shot was fired, until the rebel ranks were
completely broken. Like tongues of white flame those fierce blades rose
and fell, lopping arms, crashing through brains and emptying saddles;
and scarce once that they rose without some new stain caught from the
reeking life-blood. Poor little Mary Crawford's sword, before so bright
and spotless, caught terrible flames of red in its course, as the
Captain sped onward at the head of his destroying angels; and it was
only when the rebels wore completely broken and in full flight, and the
Union cavalry wheeling to rejoin the main body with their sadly
diminished number, that the blade so bloodily baptized grew still.
Crawford, at the very head of the charge, had passed beyond many of the
rebel horsemen, now flying fugitives; and as he turned to ride back,
drawing a long breath of exhaustion and relief, two or three of the
escaping rebels dashed towards him. He raised his sword and spurred
forward, for the moment unconscious of personal danger at the moment of
victory. But at that instant the hand of one of the rebel horsemen
dropped to his holster--before the Union officer could meet the motion
there was a quick flash, a report, and the bullet struck him full in the
throat. One gasp, one convulsive spouting of blood from the great
arteries, in which the whole flood of life seemed to be discharging
itself--and he reeled in his saddle and fell headlong from the stirrup,
his eyes already glazing in death, and the stained sword of the Oneida
Valley falling useless from his stiffening right hand.
Let the Koran be true, for him at least. Let the death of a patriot
soldier on the battle-field, when striking for the perilled land at its
sorest need, be held to atone for much of wrong and error, and even
something of crime, in the past. And let us say of him, as the
master-dramatist says of the perished Cawdor, and as some tired reader
may be disposed to say of this long and desultory narration--that
"nothing in his life became him like the leaving it."
THE END.