After the escape of Julius Roscoe time held to a tranquil pace in the
placidities of the storm centre. The rose-red dawns burst into bloom and
the days flowered whitely, full of fragrance and singing birds, of
loitering sunshine and light-winged breezes. One by one the still noons
glowed and glistered, expanding into summer radiance, and dulled
gradually to the mellow splendors of the sunset. Then fell the serene
dusk, blue on the far-away mountains, violet nearer at hand, with a
white star in the sky, and a bugle's strain leaping into the air like a
thing of life, a vivified sound. And all the panorama of troops, and
forts, and camps, and cannon might be some magnificent military
spectacle, so remote seemed the war--so unreal. Every morning the
"ladies" wrought at their lessons in the library, and Leonora cut their
small summer garments and helped the seamstress, who came in by the day,
to sew. Despite these absorptions Mrs. Gwynn managed to find leisure to
read aloud to Judge Roscoe his favorite old novels, and essays, and dull
antiquated histories. She evolved subjects of controversy on which to
argue with him, and was facetious and found occasion to call him "Your
Honour" oftener than heretofore. For he had grown old suddenly; his step
had lost its elasticity; he looked up a cane that had once been
presented to him by some fraternity; his hair was turning white
and--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 obviously
fallen into that indifference to life incident to advancing age, and was
sensible of a not involuntary gravitation toward the tomb. Later he
asked her if she did not think those lines of Stephen Hawes's had a most
mellow 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 he
had 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 this
was only a constructive knowledge on her part, and founded on no
assurance. When once more Baynell was able to come downstairs, she
perceived 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 in
getting himself away.
"Positively my last appearance!" He was reduced even to the hackneyed
phrase.
Mrs. Gwynn made the conventional polite protest, and the "ladies"
joyously and affectionately flocked around him, and his heart expanded
to the grave kindness of his host. Nevertheless he appreciated a subtle
change. Despite the enhancing charm of the season, which even a few days
had wrought to a deeper perfection, the place had somehow fallen under a
tinge of gloom. But the roses were blooming at the windows, the lilies
stood in ranks, tall and stately, in the borders, the humming-birds were
rioting all day in the honeysuckle vines over the rear galleries and the
side porch, the breeze swept back and forth through the dim, perfumed,
wide spaces of the house, which seemed expanded, with all the doors
open. Sometimes he attributed the change to the tempered light, for all
the trees were in full leaf, and the deeply umbrageous boughs
transmitted scarce a beam to the windows, once so sunny; much of the
time, too, the shutters were partially closed. And though the children
flitted about like little fairies, in their thin white dresses, and Mrs.
Gwynn, garbed, too, in white, seemed, with her floating draperies, in
the transparent green twilight, like some ethereal dream of youth and
beauty, there was a pervasive sense of despondency, of domestic
discomfort, of impending disaster. Sometimes he attributed the change to
one or two untoward chances, a revelation of the real character of war
that 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, a
visitor of Aunt Chaney's, had detailed to them the sentence of a soldier
to 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 along
the turnpike as the poor wretch was taken out with a detail from the
city limits; then, only the drum, a terrible sound, a dull, muffled
thud, at intervals, that barely timed the marching footfall, while the
victim was in the midst! And still the vibration of the mournful drum,
seeking out every responsive nerve of terror within the shuddering
children!
Their painful, tearless cries, their clinging hands, their frantic
appeals for help for the doomed creature--would no one help him!--were
most pathetic.
And though Leonora could shut the windows and gravely explain, then tell
a story and divert the moment,--they were so young, so plastic, so
trustful,--no ingenuity could find a satisfactory method to account for
the anti-climax of the tragedy, when within the hour came the same
detail, marching briskly back along the turnpike, with fife and drum
playing a waggish tune. The wide, daunted eyes of the children, their
paling cheeks, their breathless silence, annotated the lesson in
brutality, in the essential heartlessness of the world, except for the
tutored graces of a cultivated philanthropy. For a long time one or the
other would wake in the night to cry out that she heard the muffled
drum,--they were taking the man out to shoot him, kneeling on his
coffin,--and again and again would come the plaintive query, "And is
nobody, _nobody_ sorry?"
The incident passed with the events of the crowded time, but even within
the domestic periphery harmony had ceased to reign as of yore. Old
Ephraim was a bit sullen, gloomy, did his work with an ill grace, and
repudiated all acquaintance with "Brer Rabbit" and "Brer Fox." The
soldiers in the neighboring camps--possibly to secure an influence, his
alienation from the interest of his quasi-owner, in order to ferret out
more of the mystery concerning the Confederate officer, possibly only
animated by political fervor, and it may be with a spice of mischief,
finding amusement in the old negro's garrulous grotesqueries--had been
talking to him of slavery, making the most of his grievances, setting
them in order before him, and urging him to rouse himself to the great
opportunities of freedom.
"I done make up my mind," he said autocratically, one day in the
kitchen. "I gwine realize on my forty acres an' a muel!"
For this substantial bonanza freedom was supposed to confer on each
ex-slave.
"Forty acres an' a mule!" the old cook echoed in derisive incredulity
and with a scornful black face. "You _done_ realize on de mule--a mule
is whut you is, sure! Here's yer mule! An' now you go out an' fotch me a
pail of water, else I'll make ye realize on enough good land ter kiver
ye! Dat's whut! It'll be six feet--not forty acres,--but it kin do yer
job!"
He might have made a fractious politician but for this adverse
influence, for he had the variant moods of a mercurial nature, and in
gloom showed a morose perversity that could have been easily manipulated
into a spurious sense of martyrdom, lacking a tutored ratiocination to
enable him to discriminate the facts. But despite his failings, his
ignorance, the bewildering changes in his surroundings, never a word
concerning his young master escaped his lips, never an inadvertent
allusion, a disastrous whisper. He scarcely allowed himself a thought, a
speculation.
"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 atmosphere
as well. It was perhaps the inauguration of the chill interval known as
"blackberry winter." Everywhere the great brambles were snowy with
bloom, and in the house the "ladies" shivered and clasped their cold
elbows in the sleeves of their thin summer dresses till the fenders and
fire-dogs were brought out once more, and the flicker of hearthstone
flames made cheery the aspect of the library, and dispensed a genial
warmth. The air was moist; the trains ran with a dull roar and an
undertone of reverberation; there was a collision of boats in the fog on
the river, involving loss of life, and one night, the window being up,
the sentry in passing called Captain Baynell out on the portico. He said
he hesitated to summon the corporal of the guard, lest the sound should
pass 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 glimmering
through the mists afforded scant illumination to the earth. The fires of
the troops in bivouac about the town shone like thousands of
constellations, reflected by the earth. The wind was surging fitfully
among the pines. There was a dull iterative beat, rather felt than
heard.
"The train?" suggested Baynell.
"The train is in, sir."
"Must have been a freight," Baynell hazarded, for the indefinite
vibration had ceased.
"That's 'hep, hep, hep,'--that's marching feet, sir,--that's what it
is!"
"Well, what of that?" Baynell demanded. "It's the corporal of the guard
going 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 by
was dripping; they could hear the drops fall, and a silent interval, and
again a falling drop.
"There is nothing now," said Baynell. "It was doubtless some patrol. The
air is very moist, and sounds are heavier than usual."
"This seemed to me very near, sir," said the soldier, discontentedly. He
wished he had fired his piece and called for the corporal of the guard.
He had hesitated, for the corporal had scant patience with a military
zealot 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 a
secret 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 drums
were beating the tattoo. From down the valley and over the river the
bugle iterated the strain. Near the town and along the hills it was
duplicated anew, and all the echoes of the crags and the rocks of the
river bank repeated it, and called out the mandate, and sang it again in
a different key; at last it died into a fitful repetition; silence once
more; an absolute hush.
A rocket went up from the fort hard by; another rose, starlike and
stately, from unseen regions beyond a hill. Presently the lights were
dying out like magic all along the encampments, as if some great
cataclysm were among the stellular reflections, blotting them from the
sphere of being. The constellations above glowed more brightly as the
earth darkened. The wind was gathering force. Baynell listened as the
boughs 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, as
he was destined to do for some time yet, and listened with all the keen
intentness of which he was capable. And heard nothing.
The next morning--it was still before dawn--a sudden sharp clamor rose
from a redoubt within which was a powder magazine near the main works,
lying on the hither side of the river. The mischief which the earlier
sentinel at the Roscoe place anticipated had come; how, whence,--the man
now 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 the
redoubt. A general alarm ensued. The drums were beating the long roll
in the infantry camps,--a nerve-thrilling, terrifying vibration; and the
sharp cry, "Fall in!--Fall in!" was like an incident of the keen, rare,
matutinal air, the iterative command sounding like an echo from every
quarter in which the lines of tents were beginning to glimmer dimly.
From where the cavalry horses were picketed in long rows came the clash
of accoutrements and the tramp of hoofs as the trumpets sang "Boots and
Saddles!" Once a courier--a shadowy, mounted figure, half
distinguishable in the gray obscurity, seeming gigantic, like some
horseman of a fable--dashed past in the gloom, going or coming none
could know whither. The clamors increased, the shots multiplied, then
the clear, chill light came gradually over the turmoils of darkness and
sudden surprise. The first rays of the sun struck upon the Confederate
flag flying from the redoubt, and its paroled garrison were trooping
across to the main line of fortifications, bearing the miraculous story
that they had awakened to find the work full of Confederate soldiers who
seemed to have mined their way into the place from some subterranean
access, and who were now in the name of Julius Roscoe, their ranking
officer, demanding the surrender of the fort which the redoubt
overlooked.
The Federal commander would have shelled them out of their precarious
advantage with very hearty good-will, but he feared for the stores of
powder, which he really could not spare. Moreover, the explosion of the
magazine at such close quarters could but result in the total demolition
of the main work and its valuable armament, inflicting also great
destruction of life. Thus, although the burly and experienced warrior,
Colonel Deltz, was fairly rampant with indignation at the insignificance
of this bold enemy both in point of the subordinate rank of the leader
and the small number of the force, he was fain to hold parley, instead
of opening fire upon the redoubt at once and wiping the raiders, with
one hand, as it were, from the face of the earth. It may be doubted if
any capable and trusted military expert ever discharged a more
distasteful duty. Nevertheless, it was performed _secundum artem_, with
every show of those amenities which of all professional courtesies have
the slightest root in truth and real feeling. He invited the surrender
of the redoubt, ignoring the demand for the surrender of the fort as a
puerile and impudent folly, offering the usual fine and humane
suggestions touching the avoidance of the useless effusion of blood,
such as often before have been heard when a sophistry must needs fill
the breach in lieu of force. When this was declined, Julius Roscoe was
reminded, in the most cautious terms, of the personal jeopardy incurred
by a commander who undertakes to hold out an untenable position. Julius
Roscoe'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 an
army, intimated that he was popularly supposed to be able to take care
of himself; that so far from being unprepared to hold the redoubt which
he had captured, he had means at his disposal to possess himself of the
fort itself, and if its garrison would but await his onset, he should be
happy to entertain Colonel Deltz in his own quarters at dinner in a
campaigner's simple way--say, at one of the clock.
These covert allusions to the signal advantages of his situation showed
that Lieutenant Roscoe was fully apprized of the very large quantity of
ammunition stored in the magazine, and the tone of his rejoinder
intimated that he would avail himself to the uttermost of its
efficiency. The works were close enough to render visible the
occupations of the Confederates. Though gaunt and half-starved, many
ragged and barefoot, they were as merry as grigs and as industrious as
beavers, destroying such Federal stores as they could not remove,
spiking or otherwise disabling the ordnance that they could not
use,--the heavy howitzers at the embrasures,--and briskly preparing to
serve the barbette battery, that they had shifted to command the fort
and a line of intrenchments taken at a grievous disadvantage in the
rear, and some lighter swivel artillery that could sweep all the horizon
within 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 a
fierce and summary devoir. But the true soldier rarely allows personal
antagonism or a sentimental theory to influence the line of conduct to
which duty and prudence alike point. He swallowed his fury, and it was a
great gulp for a heady and choleric man who had lived by burning
gunpowder--lo, these many years. He perceived that his garrison, able to
descry the antics of the Confederates in the redoubt, were apprized of
their own imminent peril from the magazine in the hands of their
enemy--now, practically a mine. There was a doubt among his observant
officers as to whether the reckless band were taking any of the usual
precautions, requisite in dealing with so extensive a store of
explosives, as they joyfully loaded the cannon. Under these
circumstances, attack being out of the question, Colonel Deltz could
hardly be assured of the efficiency of his force in defence. His
garrison were palsied by surprise, the mysterious appearance of the
Confederates, and the impunity of their situation. They could only be
shelled out of the redoubt by the jeopardy of the powder magazine
itself, and its explosion would destroy the lives of the besiegers as
well as the besieged. Hence strategy was requisite. The fort was
gradually 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 artillery
fire opened, the shells falling at first at uncertain intervals, seeking
to ascertain the range; then, in fast and furious succession, hurtling
down upon the guns of the masked battery beside the river. The missiles
seemed but tiny clouds of white smoke, each with a heart of fire, the
fuse redly burning against the densely blue sky, till dropping
elastically to the moment of explosion it was resolved into a fiercely
white 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 with
all the world gone mad, the atmosphere itself a field of pyrotechnic
magnificence, the familiar old mountains but a background to display the
curves a flying shell might describe, now and again bursting in mid-air
ere it reached its billet, the non-combatant populace was
panic-stricken. Streets were deserted. All ordinary vocations ceased.
The more substantial buildings of brick or stone were crowded, their
walls presumed to be capable of resisting at least the spent balls, wide
of aim, for these were often endowed with such a residue of energy as
still to be destructive. Cellars were in request, and while the darkness
precluded the terrifying glare of the bursting projectiles, nevertheless
the tremendous clamor of the detonation, the wild reverberations of the
echoes, the shouts of cheering men, the sound of bugles and drums and of
voices in command in the distance, gave intimations of what was going
forward, and uncertainty perhaps enhanced fear.
"Dar, now, de Yankee man's battery is done gone too!" exclaimed Uncle
Ephraim, as the voice of authority rang out sharply, with all its
echo-like variants in the subalterns' commands. The clangor of
accoutrements, the heavy but swift roll of the wheels of gun-carriages
and caissons, the tumultuous hoof-beats of horses at full gallop, the
spirited cheering of the artillerymen, filled the air--and then silence
ensued, deep and dark, the stone walls of the cellar vaguely glimmering
with one candle set on the head of a barrel.
"He's gone wid 'em,--dat man! Time dat bugle blow he tore dat bandage
off 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 of
steps that led down from a cautiously closed door. The "ladies" kept
their fingers in their ears as a protection against sound, but the
deaf-mute, strangely enough, was the most acute to discern the crash,
possibly by reason of the vibrations of the air, since she could not
hear 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, my
King!" she cried in an altered voice, while the three "ladies" hid their
faces in the folds of her apron as a terrific explosion took place in
mid-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 the
occasion. "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 full
of Irish potatoes for late planting in the "garden spot."
The "ladies," reassured by the joke, laughed shrilly, a little off the
key, and clung to her comfortable fat arm that so inspired their
confidence.
"_I_ gwine sit in de cellar tell _I_ sprout lak a 'tater, ef disher
tribulation 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 trembling
charges. "Dese triflin' sodjers ain't got much aim. Yer gran'pa an' yer
cousin Leonora wouldn't stay up dere in de lawbrary ef dere was
destruction 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 Aunt
Chaney. "I ain't no perfessor ob war, nohow, an' my eyes ain't practised
ter 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 de
war is ober an' we tell 'bout dis fight, we gwine make out dat when de
shellin' wuz at de wust, you three ladies an' me jus' stood up on de
highest aidge ob de rampart ob de fort, an' 'structed de men how ter
fire de cannon, an' p'inted out de shells flyin' through de air wid dat
ar 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 ob
dem we is talkin' to!"
A rat whisked over the floor, across the dim slant of light that fell
from the candle on the head of the barrel. Uncle Ephraim, his elbows on
his 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?" cried
Adelaide, meditating on the flattering contrast.
"Dat's de ve'y way de tales 'bout dis war is gwine be tole, honey, you
mark my words," declared the prophetess.
The contrast of the imaginative future account with the troublous
actuality of the present so delighted Adelaide that she spelled it off
on her fingers to Lucille, both repairing to the side of the barrel
where the candle was glimmering, in order to have the light on their
twinkling fingers in the manual alphabet. The humors of the expectation,
the incongruity of their martial efficiency, the boastful resources of
the future, elicited bursts of delighted gigglings, and when the next
shell exploded, neither took notice of the hurtling bomb shrieking over
the house and bound for the river.
The rest of the populace were enjoying no such solace from any waggish
interpretation of the future. The present, that single momentous day,
was for them as much of time as they cared to contemplate. Doubtless the
satisfaction was very general among the citizens, regardless of
political prepossessions, when it became known that Captain Baynell with
a detachment of horse artillery had gone out and taken up a position
that had enabled him at last to silence the Confederate guns on the
pinnacle, not, however, before the masked battery by the river was
practically dismounted.
Now both infantry and cavalry were ordered out in an effort to intercept
the venturesome Rebel artillerymen as they sought to descend from their
steep pinnacle of rock. The dust on the turnpike, redly aflare in the
sunset rays, betokened the progress of the march, and now and then it
was harassed by shells and grape from the swivel guns of the fort, for
Roscoe's limited command had not been able to bring the heavier ordnance
of the embrasures to bear upon the camps around the town.
The whole community was in a panic, for this might soon betide. But a
gunboat 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 the
main work. Their capture was momently expected, but they made good their
retreat to their former position in the redoubt, with the intention
unquestionably of escaping thence by the secret passage which had
afforded them access. In leaving, however, the powder magazine was blown
up by accident or design, destroying the integrity of the whole
fortification, and shattering nearly every pane of glass in the town,
the force of the concussion indeed bringing the tower of the hospital
hard by to the ground. That the raiders had perished was not doubted,
till news came of a sharp skirmish which took place under cover of
darkness at the mouth of a sort of grotto in Judge Roscoe's grove, and
in the confusion, surprise, and obscurity all escaped save some
half-dozen left dead upon the ground.