With these important works wrecked and dismantled, with the destruction
of great stores of ammunition and artillery which obviously placed the
system of defence in an imperfect condition, with the difficulty of
repair and supply which time and distance and insufficiency of
transportation rendered insurmountable, with the elation of victory that
so dashing an exploit, so thoroughly consummated, must communicate to
the Confederate troops, an attack by them in force was daily expected.
The capture of Roanoke City was considered an event of the near future,
anticipated with joy or gloom, according to the several interests of the
varied population, but in any case regarded as a foregone conclusion.
Daily the Northern trains, heavily laden, bore away passengers who had
no wish to become citizens of the Southern Confederacy. Perishable
effects, stocks of goods of the order that a battle would endanger or
destroy, were shipped to calmer regions. Reinforcements came by every
train, by every boat, till all the resources of the country were
strained to maintain them, and still the Southerners had not advanced to
the opportunity. It was one of those occasions of the Civil War when
the hand that took was not strong enough to hold. The Confederate force
near the town was inadequately supplied to enable it to do more than
seize the advantage, which must needs be relinquished. Its slim
resources admitted of no permanent occupation of the town, and the empty
glory of the capture of Roanoke City would have been offset by the
disastrous necessity of the evacuation of the post. Gradually the
Federal lines were extended until they lay almost as before the raid on
the works. The Confederate ranks had been depleted to furnish
reinforcements to a more practicable point. They were falling back, and
now and again sudden sallies brought in prisoners from such a distance
as told the story.
The town was once more secure, work was begun on the dismantled
fortifications, and daily the question of how so hazardous an enterprise
could have been devised and executed revived in interest. The commanding
general had not the loss of the town itself to account for, as at one
time was probable, but for the destruction of a great store of
ammunition, as well as the loss of life, of guns, of the works
themselves, representing many thousands of dollars and the labor of
regiments. All, however, seemed hardly commensurate with the disaster he
would sustain in point of reputation. That such a dashing, destructive
exploit could be planned and consummated under his own ceaselessly
vigilant eyes appeared little short of the miraculous, and for his own
justification he looked needfully into its inception.
It was discovered that there was a natural subterranean passage from the
grove of Judge Roscoe's place to a cellar, a portion of which had
constituted the powder magazine on the Devrett hill, and that this had
been exploded by means of a slow match through the grotto, previously
prepared, enabling the raiders to effect their escape. It was further
ascertained that Julius Roscoe, who had led the enterprise, had been in
hiding for some time at his father's home, and had been seen as he
issued thence covered with blood, evidently fresh from some personal
altercation with a Federal officer, for weeks a guest in the house.
Although bruised and bleeding, this officer could offer no account of
his wounds save a fall, impossible to have produced them; he had raised
no alarm, and had given no report of the presence of an enemy, whose
intrusion had wrought such damage and disaster to the Union cause.
One detail led to another, each discovery unveiled cognate mysteries,
the disclosure of trifles brought forward circumstances of importance.
The claim of the sentinel posted at Judge Roscoe's portico that he had
fired the first shot which raised the alarm, evoked the fact that an
earlier sentry had told Captain Baynell that he had heard marching
feet--a moving column in the cadenced step, he described it now--near,
very near, that murky night, and that Captain Baynell had waived it away
with the suggestion of "a corporal of the guard with the relief"--at
that hour!--when the next relief would not be due till nearly
midnight,--and had gone back into the parlor, where Mrs. Gwynn had begun
to sing, "Her bright smile haunts me still."
This account reminded several of his camp-fellows that, having been in
town on leave, they had met that dark night on the turnpike a force
marching in column, and naturally thinking this only the removal of
Federal troops from some point to another, here, so far within the
lines, they had quietly stood aside and watched the shadowy progress.
Nothing amiss had occurred to their minds. The men had all their
officers duly in position, and they were marching silently and with
great regularity. But by reference to the various written reports, it
was easily ascertained that there was no shifting of troops that day, no
assignment of a company to any duty which would have taken them out at
that hour, no detail reporting for service. Still following in the
footsteps of this column, something more was learned from a young negro,
who had been out to fish that night, which was the delight of the
plantation darkey at this season of the year, and had cast his lines
from under the bluff near Judge Roscoe's place; the night being foggy,
he had not noticed, till they were very near, the approach of three or
four large open boats, filled with soldiers, to judge by the rifles, who
were rowing very fast and hard against the current and keeping close in
to the shore. When they landed and beached the boats they were very
quiet, fell into order, and marched off without a word, except the
necessary curt commands. It had never occurred to him to give the alarm.
He had taken none. They had rowed so close in to shore, he thought, to
avoid such a collision as had happened in the mists earlier in the
night, when a large barge was run down by a gunboat and sunk. Doubtless
if they had passed the picket boats, the misty invisibility of all the
surface of the water protected them, but for the most part the patrol of
the river pickets was further down-stream. As they had come, so they had
gone, and the matter remained a nine days' wonder. The commanding
general almost choked when he thought of it.
"This is going to be a serious matter for Baynell," said Colonel Ashley,
one day. He had called at Judge Roscoe's partly because he did not wish
to break off with abrupt rudeness an acquaintance which he had persisted
in forming, and partly because he was not willing in the circumstances
that had arisen to seem to shun the house.
Judge Roscoe was not at home, but Mrs. Gwynn was in the parlor. Ashley
had asked her to sing. There was something "delightfully dreary," as he
described it, in the searching, romantic, melancholy cadences of her
sweet contralto voice. He had not intended to open his heart, but
somehow the mood induced by her singing, the quiet of the dim, secluded,
cool drawing-rooms, with the old-fashioned, high, stucco ceiling, and
the shadowy green gloom of the trees without, prevailed with him, and he
spoke upon impulse.
"What matter?" she asked. She had wheeled half around on the
piano-stool, and sat, her slim figure in its white dress, delicate and
erect, one white arm, visible through the thin fabric, outstretched to
the keyboard, the hand toying with resolving chords.
He had been standing beside the piano as she sang, but now, with the air
of inviting serious discussion, he seated himself in one of the stiff
arm-chairs of the carved rosewood "parlor set" of that day, and replied
gravely:----
"His association with Julius Roscoe."
Her eyes widened with genuine amazement.
"It seems," proceeded Ashley, slowly, "that a dozen or two of the
soldiers, who claimed to have seen a Confederate officer on the balcony
here, recognized him as Julius Roscoe, when he reappeared in command of
the forces that captured the redoubt. And the surgeon has always
insisted that Baynell's hurt was a blow, not a fall. There is a good
deal of smothered talk in various quarters."
He stroked his mustache contemplatively, looked vaguely about the room,
and sighed in a certain disconsolateness.
"I don't understand," said Mrs. Gwynn, sharply, fixing intent eyes upon
him. "How can Captain Baynell be called in question?"
"Oh, the general theory--however well or ill grounded--is that young
Roscoe was here on a reconnoitring expedition of some sort, or perhaps
merely on a visit to his kindred, and that Baynell winked at his
presence on account of friendship with the family, instead of arresting
him, as he should have done. It's an immense pity. Baynell is a fine
officer."
Mrs. Gwynn had turned pale with excitement.
"But _none of us_ knew that Julius Roscoe was in the house!" she
exclaimed. She hesitated a moment as the words passed her lips. Judge
Roscoe's reticence on the subject might imply some knowledge of the
harbored Rebel.
Ashley was suddenly tense with energy.
"Don't imagine for one moment, my dear madam, that I have any desire to
extract information from you. It is no concern of mine how he came or
went. I only mention the subject because it is very much on my mind and
heart. And I don't see any satisfactory end to it. I have a great
respect for Baynell as a man, and especially as an artillerist, and
somehow in these campaigns I have contrived to get fond of the
fellow!--though he is about as stiff, and unresponsive, and prejudiced,
and priggish a bundle of animal fibre as ever called himself human."
"Why, he doesn't give me that idea," exclaimed Leonora, her eyes
widening. "He seems unguarded, and impulsive, and ardent."
Colonel Ashley was very considerably her senior and far too experienced
to be ingenuous himself. He made no comment on the conviction her words
created within him. He only looked at her in silence, receiving her
remark with courteous attention. Then he resumed:----
"Of course in a civil war there are always some instances of undue
leniency,--the pressure of circumstances induces it,--but rarely indeed
such as this; it amounts to aiding and abetting the enemy, however
unpremeditated. Young Roscoe could not have secured the means or
information for his destructive raid had not Baynell permitted him to be
housed here. Doubtless, however, Baynell thought it a mere visit of the
boy to his father's family."
"But Captain Baynell never dreamed that Julius Roscoe was in the house!"
she exclaimed.
"That's just what he says he _did_--dreamed that he saw him! I can rely
on you not to repeat my words. But I have had no confidential talk with
him."
"I am sure--I _know_--they were never together for a moment."
"The surgeon says that Roscoe's knuckles cut to the bone," commented
Ashley, with a significant smile. But the triumphs of stultifying Mrs.
Gwynn in conversation were all inadequate to restore his usual serene
satisfaction, and once more he looked restlessly about the rooms and
sighed.
"What do you think Captain Baynell was guilty of? Permitting an enemy to
remain within the lines, _perdu_, unsuspected, to gather information,
and make off with it--conniving at the concealment, and assisting the
escape of an enemy? And _you_ call yourself his friend!"
Leonora's cheeks were flushed. Her voice rang with a tense vibration.
She fixed her interlocutor with a challenging eye.
"Oh--I don't _know_ what he intended," replied Ashley, almost irritably.
"Doubtless he had some high-minded motive, so intricate that he can
never explain it, and nobody else can ever unravel it. I only know he
has played the fool,--and I _fear_ he has ruined himself irretrievably."
"But you don't answer my question--what do _you think_ he has done?"
Ashley might have responded that his conclusions were not subject to her
inquisition. But his suave methods of thought and conduct could not
compass this unmannerly retort. Moreover, it was a relief to his
feelings to canvass the matter so paramount in his mind with an
irresponsible woman, rather than with his brother officers, among whom
it was rife, thereby sending his speculations and doubts and views
abroad as threads to be wrought into the warp and woof of their
opinion, and possibly give undue substance and color to the character of
the fabric.
"Why,--of course this is just my own view,--formed on what I hear from
outsiders,--and I think it is the general view. Baynell knew the young
man was hidden in the house, on a stolen visit to his father, thinking
he had no ultimate intentions but to escape at a convenient opportunity.
These separations must be very cruel indeed, with no means of
communication. Baynell, though very wrongfully, _might_ have indulged
this concealment from motives of--ah--er--friendship to the family, for
young Roscoe would undoubtedly have been dealt with as a spy, had he
been captured in lurking here. The two _may_ have been more or less
associated,--certainly they came together in an altercation that
resulted in blows. _I_ think Baynell possibly discovered Roscoe's
scheme, and threatened him with arrest. Roscoe knocked him down the
stairs and fled from the house to the grotto, considering this safe, for
he might have crossed from the balcony to the firs without observation
if he had been lucky, as at that time none of us knew that the grotto
existed. Now these are _my_ conclusions--but for the integrity of the
service Baynell's acts and his motives must be sifted. They may not bear
to an impartial mind even so liberal a construction as this. It is a
threatening situation, and I am apprehensive--I am very apprehensive."
Mrs. Gwynn's hand fell with a discordant crash on the keys of the piano.
"Why--why--what can they do to him?" she gasped.
Vertnor Ashley shied from the subject like a frightened horse.
"Ah--oh--ah--er--well," he said, "let us not think of that." He paused
abruptly. Then, "To forecast the immediate future is enough of disaster.
There is already said to be an official investigation on the cards. No
doubt charges will be preferred, and he will be brought to a
court-martial."
He sighed again, and looked about futilely, as if for suggestion. He
rose at length, and with his pleasant, cordial manner and a smile of
deprecating apology, he said, "I am afraid my grim subjects do not
commend me for a lady's parlor." Then with a light change of tone, "So
much obliged for that lovely little French song--what is it--_Quel est
cet attrait qui m'attire_? I want to be able to distinguish it, for may
I not ask for it again some time?" And bowing, and smiling, and
prosperous, he took his graceful departure.
Mrs. Gwynn stood motionless, her eyes on the carpet, her mind almost
dazed by the magnitude, by the terrors, of the subjects of her
contemplation. She felt she must be more certain; she could not leave
this disastrous complication thus. She could not speak to this man,
friendly though he had seemed, lest she betray some fact of her own
knowledge that might be of disadvantage to another who had meant no
ill--nay, she was sure had done no ill. Then she was beset by the
realization of the sophistry of circumstance. But if circumstance could
be adduced against Baynell, should it not equally prevail in his favor?
When she, knowing naught of the lurking Julius, had sent to his
hiding-place this Federal officer, did not instantly the clamors of
discovery resound through the house? She could hear even now in the
tones of his voice, steadied and sonorous by the habit of command, sharp
and decisive on the air, the words, "You are my prisoner!" twice
repeated, that had summoned her, stricken with sudden panic, from her
flowers on the library table to the hall, where she saw the balustrade
of the stairs still shaking with the concussion of a heavy fall. And as
she stood there, another moment--barely a moment--brought the apparition
of Julius, flying as if for his life, a pistol in his hand, and covered
with blood. Dreams! Who said aught of dreams! This was not the course a
man would take who desired to shield a concealed Rebel. There was no
eye-witness of the altercation. But she, on the lower floor, had heard
it all--the swift ascent for the book, the exclamation of amazement,
then the stern voice of command, the words of arrest, the impact of the
blow, and the clamors of the fall. Then the flight; she had seen Julius,
fleeing for safety, fleeing from the house into the very teeth of the
camps.
Should not Baynell know this, the event that preceded the long
insensibility which had so blunted his impressions, his recollections?
She resolved to confer with Judge Roscoe. How much he knew of Julius
Roscoe's lurking visit, how much he cared for her to know, she could not
be sure. She suspected that old Ephraim was fully informed, for without
his services the visitor could hardly have been maintained. But neither
had been at hand at the moment of discovery, of collision.
When Judge Roscoe came in she submitted this question to his judgment.
To her surprise he did not canvass the matter. He said at once: "By all
means Captain Baynell ought to know this. It would be best to send for
him and explain to him what you saw and heard,--the whole occurrence.
Captain Baynell should be made aware of all the details of the actual
event that you more nearly than any one else witnessed."
The house in these summer days, with the shutters half closed and the
doors all open, seemed more retired, more solitary, than when all the
busy life of the place was drawn to the focus of the library fire. She
was quite alone, as she traversed the hall and sat down to write at the
library table. The "ladies" were playing out of doors, close in to the
window under a tree. Judge Roscoe had business in the town and walked
thither leaning rather heavily on his cane, for no news came of Acrobat,
and somehow he no longer cared to ride the glossy iron-gray that Captain
Baynell still left grazing in his pastures. So still were all the
precincts she feared she might not find a messenger as she went out on
the latticed gallery searching for old Ephraim. But there he sat in the
sun in front of the kitchen door. He was not wont to be so silent. He
said naught when she handed him the missive with her instructions, but
he looked unwilling, with a sort of warning wisdom in his expression,
and several times turned the note gingerly in his hand, as if he thought
it might explode. He would fain have remonstrated against the renewal of
communication with the elements that had brought so much disquiet into
the calm life of the old house hitherto. But his lips were sealed so far
as the "Yankee man" and Julius were concerned. And he would maintain
that he had never seen or heard of the grotto till indeed it was blown
up.
"All dese young folks is a stiff-necked and tarrifyin' generation, an'
ef dey will leave ole Ephraim in peace, he p'intedly won't pester dem,"
he said to himself.
Therefore, merely murmuring acquiescence, "Yes'm, yes'm, yes'm," while
he received his orders, he put on his hat which he had hitherto held in
his hand, and walked off briskly to the tent of the artillery captain.
The succinct dignified tone of Mrs. Gwynn's note requesting to see
Captain Baynell at his earliest convenience on a matter of business
precluded effectually any false sentimental hopes, had any communication
from her been calculated to raise them. He was already mounted, having
just returned from afternoon parade; and saying to Uncle Ephraim that he
would wait on Mrs. Gwynn immediately, he wheeled his horse and forthwith
disappeared in the midst of the shadow and sheen of the full-leaved
grove.
Baynell had changed, changed immeasurably, since she had last seen him.
Always quiet and sedate, his gravity had intensified to sternness, his
dignified composure to a cold, impenetrable reserve, his attentive
interest to a sort of wary vigilance, all giving token of the effect
wrought in his mental and moral endowment by the knowledge of the
suspicions entertained concerning his actions, and the charges that were
being formulated against him.
In one sense these had already slain him. His individuality was gone. He
would be no more what once he was. His pride, so strong, so vivid, as
essential an element of his being as his breath, as his soul, had been
done to death. It had been a noble endowment, despite its exactions, and
maintained high standards and sought finer issues. It had died with the
woe of a thousand deaths, that calumny should touch his name; that
accusation could ever find a foothold in his life; that treachery should
come to investigation in his deeds.
She rather wondered at his calmness, the self-possession expressed in
his manner, his face. He had himself well in hand. He was not nervous.
His haggard pallor told what the sleepless hours of self-communing
brought to him, yet he was strong enough to confront the future. He
would give battle to the false charge, the lying circumstance, the
implacable phalanxes of the probabilities. The truth was intrinsically
worth fighting for, in any event, and even now his heart could swell
with the conviction that the truth could only demonstrate the impeccancy
of his official record.
He met her with that grave, conventional, inexpressive courtesy which
had always characterized him, and it was a little difficult, in her
unusual flutter and agitation, to find a suitable beginning.
She had seated herself in the library at the table where she had written
the note, and she was mechanically trifling with an ivory paper-knife,
the portfolio and paper still lying before her. He took a chair near at
hand and waited, not seeking to inaugurate the conversation.
"I sent for you, Captain Baynell, because I have heard something--there
are rumors--"
He did not take the word from her, nor help her out. He sat quietly
waiting.
"In short, I think you ought to know that I overheard all that passed
between you and Julius Roscoe on the stairs that morning."
Captain Baynell's rejoinder surprised her.
"Then he was really in the house?" he said meditatively.
"Oh, yes,--though I did not know it till he dashed past me in the hall.
Two minutes had not elapsed since you had left me here standing by the
table."
She detailed the circumstances, and when she had finished speaking he
thanked her simply, and said that the facts would be of value to him.
"I thought you ought to know them, hearing Colonel Ashley describe the
various rumors afloat--but, but these--they--they will soon die out?"
She looked at him appealingly.
He did not answer immediately. Then--
"I shall be court-martialled," he said succinctly.
Her heart seemed almost to stand still in the presence of this great
threat, yet she strove against its menace.
"Of course I know this is serious, and must trouble all your friends,"
she said vaguely. "But doubtless--doubtless there will be an acquittal."
"It is a matter of liberty, and life itself," he said. "But I do not
care for either,--I deprecate the reflections on my character as a
soldier." He hesitated for one moment, then broke out with sudden
passion, "I care for the jeopardy of my honor--my sacred honor!"
There was an interval of stillness so long that a slant of the sunset
light might seem to have moved on the floor. The soft babble of the
voices of the children came in at the open window; the mocking-bird's
jubilance rose from among the magnolia blooms outside. The great bowl on
the table was full of roses, and she eyed their magnificence absently,
seeing nothing, remembering all that Ashley had said, and realizing how
difficult it would be to convince even him, with all his friendly
good-will, of the simplicity of the motives that had precipitated the
real events, so grimly metamorphosed in the monstrous mischances of war.
"Oh--" she cried suddenly, with a poignant accent, "that this should
have fallen upon you in the house of your friends! We can never forgive
ourselves, and you can never forgive us!"
"There is nothing to forgive," he said heartily; "I have no grievance
against this kind roof. I could not expect Judge Roscoe to betray his
own son, and deliver him up to capture, to death as a spy--because I
happened to be here, a temporary guest. And I could not expect the young
man to voluntarily surrender--for my convenience. No--I blame no one."
"You are magnanimous!" exclaimed Mrs. Gwynn, her luminous gray eyes
shining through tears as she looked at him.
"Only omniscience could have foreseen and guarded against this
disastrous complication of adverse circumstances. But the results are
serious enough to justify doubt and provoke investigation. Knowing the
simple truth, it seems a little difficult to see how it can fail to be
easily established--it is the imputation that afflicts me. I am not used
to contemplate myself as a traitor--with my motives."
"Oh, it is so unjust--so rancorously untrue! You arrested him the moment
you saw him--although he was in Judge Roscoe's house. You must have
known that he was Judge Roscoe's son."
"I recognized him from his portrait--" Baynell checked himself. He would
not have liked to say how often, with what jealous appraisement of its
manly beauty and interest of suggestion, he had studied the portrait of
Julius on the parlor wall, knowing him as a man who had loved Leonora
Gwynn, and fearing him as a man whom possibly Leonora Gwynn loved.
"But I was obliged to arrest him on the spot--why, I was in honor
bound."
His face suddenly fell--in this most intimate essential of true
gentlemanhood, in this dearest requisition of a soldier's faith, that is
yet the commonest principle of the humblest campaigner, he was held to
have failed, in point of honor. He was held to have paltered and played
a double part, to have betrayed alike his country, the fair name of his
corps, and his own unsullied record. And this was the fiat of
fair-minded men, comrades, countrymen, to be expressed in the preferred
charges.
Bankrupt in all he held dear, he shrank from seeming to beg the sheer
empty bounty of her sympathy. He hardly cared to face these reflections
in her presence. He arose to go, and it was with composed, conventional
courtesy, as inexpressive as if he were some casual friendly caller,
that he took his leave, resolutely ignoring all the tragedy of the
situation.
The next day came the news that charges having been duly preferred he
had been placed in arrest to await the action of the general
court-martial to be assembled in the town.