An envelope sealed with sealing-wax, unless it has also a wrapping of
twine or tape whose only knot is under the seal, can be opened without
breaking the seal. Gholson had once told me this. Hold a thin, sharp
knife-blade to the spout of a boiling tea-kettle; then press the
blade's edge under the edge of the seal. Repeat this operation many
times. The wax will yield but a hair's-breadth each time, but a
hair's-breadth counts, and in a few minutes the seal will be lifted
entire. A touch of glue or paste will fasten it down again, and a seal
so tampered with need betray the fact only to an eye already suspicious.
As I say, I slept. The door between me and the hall had a lock, but no
key; another door, letting from my room to the room in front of it, had
no lock, but was bolted. I slept heavily and for an hour or more. Then I
was aware of something being moved--slowly--slyly--by littles--under my
pillow. The pillow was in a case of new unbleached cotton. When I first
lay down, the cotton had so smelt of its newness that I thought it was
enough, of itself, to keep me awake. Now this odor was veiled by
another; a delicate perfume; a perfume I knew, and which brought again
to me all the incidents of the night, and all their woe. I looked, and
there, so close to the bedside that she could see my eyes as plainly as
I saw hers, stood Coralie Rothvelt. In the door that opened into the
hall were two young officers, staff swells, in the handsomest Federal
blue. The moonlight lay in a broad flood between them and me. It
silvered Miss Rothvelt from the crown of her hat to the floor, and
brightened the earnest animation of her lovely face as she daintily
tiptoed backward with one hand delicately poised in the air behind her,
and the other still in the last pose of withdrawing from under the
pillow--empty!
My problem was indeed simplified. The despatch had been stolen, opened,
read, re-sealed and returned. All I now had to do was to lie here till
daybreak and then get away if I could, deliver the despatch to Ned
Ferry, and tell him--ah! what?--how much? Oh, my bemired soul, how much
must I tell? My shame I might bear; I might wash it out in blood at the
battle's front; but my perfidy! how much was it perfidy to withhold; how
much was it perfidy to confess?
The heaviness of my soul, by reacting upon my frame and counterfeiting
sleep better than I could have done it in cold blood, saved me, I fancy,
from death or a northern prison. When I guessed my three visitors were
gone I stirred, as in slumber, a trifle nearer the window, and for some
minutes lay with my face half buried in the pillow. So lying, there
stole to my ear a footfall. My finger felt the trigger, my lids lifted
alertly, and as alertly reclosed. Outside the window one of the
officers, rising by some slender foothold, had been looking in upon me,
and in sinking down again and turning away had snapped a twig. He
glanced back just as I opened my eyes, but once more my head was in
shadow and the moonlight between us. When I peeped again he was
moving away.
Five, ten, fifteen minutes dragged by. Counting them helped me to lie
still. Then I caught another pregnant sound, a mumbling of male voices
in the adjoining front room. I waited a bit, hearkening laboriously, and
then ever so gradually I slid from the bed, put on everything except my
boots, and moved by inches to the door between the two rooms. It was
very thin; "a good sounding-board," thought I as I listened for life or
death and hoped my ear was the only one against it.
The discussion warmed and I began to catch words and meanings. Oftenest
they were old Lucius Oliver's, whose bad temper made him incautious.
While his son and the other two jayhawkers obstinately pressed their
scheme he kept saying, sourly, "That's--not--our--wa-ay!"
At length he lost all prudence. "Nn--o!--Nnno--o, sir! Not in this house
you don't; and not on this place! Wait till he's off my land; I'm not
goin' to have the infernal rebels a-turpentinin' my house and a-burnin'
it over my head. What _air_ you three skunks in such a sweat to git
found out for, like a pack o' daymn' fools! I've swone to heaven and
hell to git even ef revenge can ever git me even, and this ain't the way
to git even. It's not--our--wa-ay!"
His son's attitude exasperated him. "_You_ know this ain't ever been our
way; you'd say so, yourself, ef you wa'n't skin full o' china-ball
whiskey! What in all hell is the reason we can't do him as we've always
done the others?"
"Oh, shut your dirty face!" replied the son, while one of his cronies
warned both against being overheard. But when this one added something
further the old man snarled:
"What's that about the horse?--The horse might git away and be evidence
ag'inst us?--What?--Oh, now give the true reason; you want the horse,
that's all! You two lickskillets air in this thing pyo'ly for the
stealin's. Me and my son ain't bushwhackers, we're gentlemen! At least
I'm one. Our game's revenge!"
Not because of this speech, but of a soft rubbing sound on the
window-sill behind me, my heart turned cold. Yet there I saw a most
welcome sight. Against the outer edge of the sill an unseen hand was
moving a forked stick to and fro. The tip of one of its tines was slit,
in the slit was a white paper, and in the fork hung the bridle of my
horse. I glided to the window. But there bethinking me how many a man
had put his head out at just such a place and never got it back, I made
a long sidewise reach, secured the paper, and read it.
It was the envelope which had contained Coralie Rothvelt's pass. Its
four flaps were spread open, and on the inside was scrawled in a large
black writing the following:
_Yankees gone, completely fooled. Do not stir till day, then ride for
your life. We're not thwarting Lieutenant Ferry's plan, we're only
improving upon it. When you report to him don't let blame fall upon the
father and son whose roof this night saves you from a bloody death. Do
this for the sake of her who is risking her life to save yours. We serve
one cause; be wary--be brave--be true_.
I stood equally amazed and alert. The voices still growled in the next
room, and my horse's bridle still hung before the window. I peered out;
there stood the priceless beast. I came a sly step nearer, and lo! in
his shadow, flattened against the house, face outward, was Coralie
Rothvelt comically holding the forked stick at a present-arms.
Throbbing with a grateful, craving allegiance, I seized the rein. Then I
bent low out the window and with my free hand touched her face as it
turned upward into a beam of moonlight. She pressed my fingers to her
lips, and then let me draw her hand as far as it could come and cover it
with kisses. Then she drew me down and whispered "You'll do what
I've asked?"
When I said I would try she looked distressfully unassured and I added
"I'll do whatever risks no life but mine."
Her face spoke passionate thanks. "That's all I can ask!" she said,
whispered "When you go--_keep the plain road,"_--and vanished.
I sat by the window, capped, booted, belted, my bridle in one hand,
revolver in the other. In all the house, now, there was no sound, and
without there was a stillness only more vast. I could not tell whether
certain sensations in my ear were given by insects in the grass and
trees or merely by my overwrought nerves and tired neck. The moon sailed
high, the air was at last comfortably cool, my horse stood and slept. I
thought it must be half-past two.
"Now it must be three." Miss Rothvelt's writing lay in my bosom beside
my despatch. At each half-hour I re-read it. At three-and-a-half I
happened to glance at the original superscription. A thought flashed
upon me. I stared at her name, and began to mark off its letters one by
one and to arrange them in a new order. I took C from Coralie and h from
Rothvelt; after them I wrote a from Coralie and r from Rothvelt, l and o
from Coralie and two t's and an e from Rothvelt, and behold, Charlotte!
while the remaining letters gave me Oliver.
Ah! where had my wits been? Yet without a suspicion that she was
Charlotte Oliver one might have let the anagram go unsuspected for a
lifetime. Evidently it concealed nothing from General Austin or Ned
Ferry; most likely it was only the name she used in passing through the
lines. At any rate I was convinced she was a good Confederate, and my
heart rose.
But why, then, this ardent zeal to save the necks of the two traitors
"whose roof this night--" etc.? Manifestly she was moved by passion, not
duty; love drove her on; but surely not love for them. "No," I guessed
in a reverent whisper, "but love for Ned Ferry." It must have been
through grace of some of her nobility and his, caught in my heart even
before I was quite sure of it in theirs, that I sat and framed the
following theory: Ned Ferry, loving Charlotte Oliver, yet coerced by his
sense of a soldier's duty, had put passion's dictates wholly aside and
had set about to bring these murderers to justice; doing this though he
knew that she could never with honor or happiness to either of them
become the wife of a man who had made her a widow, while she, aware of
his love, a love so true that he would not breathe it to her while this
hideous marriage held her, had ridden perilously in the dead of night to
circumvent his plans if, with honor to both of them, it could be done.
The half-hour dragged round to four. My horse roused up but kept as
quiet as a clever dog. I heard a light sound in the hall; first a step
and then a slide, then a step again and then a slide; Lucius Oliver was
coming toward my door. The cords gathered in my throat and my finger
stole to the trigger; Heaven only knew what noiseless feet might be
following behind that loathsome shuffle. It reached the door and was
still. And now the door opened, softly, slowly, and the paralytic stood
looking in. The moonlight had swung almost out of the room, but a band
of it fell glittering upon the revolver lying in my lap with my fingers
on it, each exactly in place. Also it lighted my other hand, on the
window-sill, with the bridle in it. Old Lucius was alone. In the gloom I
could not see his venom gathering, but I could almost smell it.