AN UNEXPECTED DISAPPEARANCE
Dorothea had not expected to sleep a wink but she suddenly found herself
awake with the sun streaming in at the window. She had a feeling that it
was still early, but in a little she heard sounds coming from the
direction of the cookhouse and there was a faint smell of fried bacon in
the air, so that she knew it was not any too early to start Larry
Stanchfield on his way, and she turned over to speak to Miss Imogene, a
little fearful lest they had overslept.
To her surprise Miss Imogene’s place was empty and the girl looked about
the room a little bewildered, and still somewhat sleepy. Then she jumped
out of bed and put on a dressing-wrapper to be ready for anything that
might happen.
She had not long to wait. In a few minutes Miss Imogene came noiselessly
into the room with a face of anxious perplexity.
“What is it?” whispered Dorothea.
“I don’t know, child,” was the answer. “He’s gone.”
“Mr. Stanchfield?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s all right,” murmured Dorothea.
“I wish I knew, but I’m afraid not,” Miss Imogene went on. “I couldn’t
sleep in that soft nightgown of yours after Macon Mills muslin, so, when
you were sound asleep, I slipped out. I wanted to see if there was any
chance of his getting off before the others woke; but, my dear, there
was Val Tracy’s whole troop camped around the house! I could see their
camp fires. That made me despair, for I wanted to get that bundle of
clothes out of the way at least. But the boy didn’t put them outside his
door. This was in the night, you understand, so I came back and waited.
Well, my dear, just before dawn I dozed off, but I was awake again as
the sun came up, and there wasn’t a trooper about! They’d all gone and I
determined to warn young Larry and send him off to take his chances—but
he isn’t there. The bed has been used and he had had his bath, but—but
what has happened I fear to think. I’m afraid Val has taken him, after
all.”
“I shall never want to speak to Mr. Tracy again if he has,” Dorothea
protested.
“Oh, you mustn’t say that, honey,” the elder woman returned. “He must do
his duty, you know. After all they are enemies, those two, and—”
She broke off a little tearfully and wiped her eyes.
“Could he have gotten out by the window?” Dorothea suggested.
“Oh, I don’t know—perhaps,” Miss Imogene replied. “I was so surprised to
find him gone that I didn’t think of anything else. He may have escaped
after all. I’m going back now to see if there is any clew to what
happened.”
“I’m coming with you,” said Dorothea, and the two tiptoed down the
hallway to Miss Imogene’s room.
“He has burned something in the fireplace,” Dorothea whispered, as she
looked down at the ashes in the grate.
“Clothing!” exclaimed Miss Imogene after an inspection. “I wonder what
he has worn away?”
“Are you sure?” Dorothea asked, surprised, stooping down beside her.
Miss Imogene picked up a piece of charred cloth. There could be no doubt
about that.
“It’s very curious,” murmured Dorothea, and went over to the window,
which she found fastened on the inside. “And he hasn’t gone out here,
either.”
“He’s been taken by Val Tracy,” Miss Imogene declared positively, all
hope gone.
This Dorothea could not well deny. It certainly looked as if no other
explanation of the young man’s disappearance would fit the facts. The
girl looked about the room hopelessly, and her eye fell upon the desk in
the corner. Miss Imogene followed her glance and then with a little cry
ran to it.
“I left this open,” she said hurriedly, letting down the lid as she
spoke.
It was long since the compartments had been filled with creamy sheets,
gone, too, were all the luxurious fittings. A dish of sand, a goose
quill pen or two, poke-berry ink, some home-made wafers and wallpaper
envelopes. For paper there was only a book of household receipts which
had been written upon one side only. That was the extent of the
stationery. But on one of these sheets was a note, propped up against
the inkstand. Miss Imogene tore it open, half frantically.
“Dear and gracious lady,” it began. “It is neither lack of gratitude nor
fear for my own skin that takes me off without a word of thanks and
farewell. Your kindness and that of the young lady at whose window I
knocked so unceremoniously, I shall never forget. But my presence here
cannot fail to be an embarrassment to you and a danger as well. In
happier days, perhaps, I shall see you both again, and if I should ever
be able to repay you for what you have done for a spent and rather
helpless wanderer, believe me, I shall not fail. What fortune is ahead
of me I cannot guess. I, at least, have hope. Always faithffully yours,
Laurence Stanchfield.”
“Now what do you make of that?” Miss Imogene questioned. “Has he escaped
or hasn’t he?”
“I should think he was going to try it,” Dorothea replied.
“But he couldn’t, with all those troopers about the house!” Miss Imogene
exclaimed. “And yet he talks as if he expected to be all right.”
“Perhaps he didn’t know they were there till afterwards,” Dorothea
suggested.
“That’s it!” Miss Imogene agreed; “and yet I don’t think he would have
tried to go without looking out of the window at least, and he could
have seen their camp-fires on every side. And then he would have had a
chance to add a postscript or—or—”
She stopped in perplexity, looking at the girl before her as if asking a
word of encouragement, but she shook her head.
“All we can do is to wait and see what Val Tracy says.”
“If I know Val, he won’t say anything,” Miss Imogene declared.
“But some one will know,” Dorothea insisted. “They couldn’t capture a
man who was trying to escape without any one hearing of it. I should
have thought we would have heard the noise.”
“That’s true, too,” Miss Imogene admitted. “I am usually like a cat, yet
I didn’t catch a sound, not even of the troopers riding away. I did fall
asleep for a few minutes. However, I know a struggle would have waked
me.”
“All we can do is to wait,” Dorothea repeated.
“And not say a word,” Miss Imogene added, and so it was agreed. Dorothea
went back to her room and, taking Miss Imogene’s advice to sleep longer
if she could, slipped back into bed again.
When she opened her eyes once more Harriot was sitting on the edge of
the bed, cross-legged, gazing down at her unwinkingly.
“I didn’t say a word,” she protested the moment Dorothea’s eyes were
opened. “I promised mother I wouldn’t wake you and I didn’t. I just
looked at you—and it was funny to see you squirm.”
Dorothea stretched and yawned luxuriously.
“Is it very late?” she asked a little conscience-stricken.
“Oh, no,” Harriot assured her. “Hardly anybody is up but me, except of
course, Val Tracy. He’s always out at daybreak with his troop. But he’s
in a fine temper this morning. Somebody stole his best horse right out
of our stable.”
Dorothea sat up in bed, suddenly very wide awake. She knew of one who
had need of a horse and she wondered if any one else would share her
suspicions.
“Who do you suppose borrowed it?” she asked innocently.
“I don’t know,” Harriot answered promptly. “Val insists that it must be
one of the negroes in the neighborhood who is taking his freedom and
wants to get away. I don’t think that’s it, but of course you can’t
tell. It might be Lee Hendon, for all we know. They say he’s out-laying,
and he may want to get over into Tennessee. But of course I wouldn’t
tell Val that. When he stops treating me like a child, I’ll help him to
find his old horse, but not before.”
Dorothea found in this much food for thought. For one thing she felt
certain that Val Tracy’s natural suspicion would fall upon the man who
was thought to have escaped from Andersonville and to be in the
neighborhood of the May house, if not actually in it. If he had not seen
them the night before with young Stanchfield, this would be his natural
conclusion. And, if he had seen them, there was only one interpretation
to put upon his inaction. Val, himself, had helped the man to escape,
furnishing him with a good horse for that purpose. This brought the
question, “Why should he have done such a thing?” To Dorothea’s thinking
there was only one explanation. Val Tracy was the mysterious Red String.
That would make clear much that had puzzled her. She had previously
taken for granted that this unknown person was a woman because
Stanchfield had evidently thought so. Now she wondered where Tracy wore
his tell-tale badge and determined to look for it at the first
opportunity. She would have liked to have a talk with Miss Imogene, but
Lucy opened the door with her breakfast tray and put an end to her
reflections.
After breakfast she and Harriot went down stairs together, and as they
descended the sounds of impatient horses and of men stamping about the
gallery jingling their spurs and accouterments drew them to the front
door. Lieutenant Tracy and his troop were back again, but evidently
preparing to leave at once, and the sight of them put another alarming
thought into Dorothea’s mind. Suppose, after all, she was mistaken and
that instead of Tracy’s helping Stanchfield he was then and there
preparing to hunt him down? This suggestion brought a sharp catch at her
heart.
Tracy himself seemed in anything but a good humor and greeted the two
with a gruff “good morning.”
“Where are you off to?” Harriot inquired innocently.
“Hunting!” he answered shortly, then turning to Dorothea, “Won’t you
wish me luck?”
“That depends upon what you are to hunt,” she answered quickly.
“There is only one quarry in war-times,” he answered shortly, and
snapping his sword to his belt he ran down the steps and mounted his
horse.
Dorothea’s eyes followed him and it came into her mind that after all he
was going upon a dangerous errand and might not come back.
“I wish you a safe return,” she called up to him.
He glanced down at her quickly, and a bright smile came over his face.
“Faith, that’s a better wish than the other,” he cried, gayly. “It will
take a fine lot of Yankees to keep me away if you’re wanting me to come
back!” And with a smile he rode off at the head of his troop.
The girls looked after them and Dorothea felt a little glow of warmth in
her heart at Val’s words. Perhaps, after all, he did value her good
wishes for his safe return and, yes, she admitted to herself that she
did not want anything to happen to him. And there had been a good deal
of earnestness in his tone, as if indeed he had meant what he said.
“He’s a great blarneyer is Val Tracy,” Harriot remarked calmly. “He
seems to think that every girls wants him to be in love with her. Such
silliness!”
Dorothea did not reply to this observation. She looked after the troop
till it was out of sight, then turned back into the house.
“What’s come over you all of a sudden?” Harriot demanded. “You look as
if you’d lost your best friend.”
“Nonsense!” Dorothea declared, but her cousin was not convinced.
It was not until well on in the afternoon that Dorothea saw Miss Imogene
alone and then there was a little satisfaction to be gotten out of
talking things over. The elder lady could offer no solution to the
problems that perplexed them both. Whether Val Tracy had helped
Stanchfield to escape or whether, on the other hand, he was at that
moment trying to effect his capture they neither of them could
determine. There was plenty of evidence to confirm either conclusion.
“All we can do is to wait till Val comes back,” Miss Imogene remarked
disconsolately.
“But even then we may not be able to tell, unless he says something
about it,” Dorothea replied.
“That is true too, honey,” Miss Imogene conceded. “But there is nothing
else for it. I only pray the boy has escaped. It was a bold move to take
Val’s horse, but it was only boldness that offered a chance of escape.”
“But we thought Val had helped him,” Dorothea suggested, and Miss
Imogene, nodding her head in agreement, replied,
“We only hoped, honey, but it was most improbable. At all events we
don’t know anything, we’ll just have to wait.”
The day passed slowly enough. Harriot attached herself to Dorothea but
complained that her cousin wasn’t like herself.
“I bring you cake and you just nibble it as if you were at a party being
polite,” she protested. “Then I beg Aunt Decent to make some goober
pralines and you don’t even look at them. You’re getting just like
April.”
Dorothea forced a laugh.
“That’s a compliment,” she said with as much gayety of manner as she
could muster.
“Oh, is it?” Harriot drawled scornfully. “Well, I didn’t mean it that
way. If growing up means just falling in love, then—”
“What are you talking about?” Dorothea interrupted sharply.
“You,” Harriot answered blandly, munching one of the scorned pralines
energetically. “I’ve been puzzling my head, trying to think who it could
be. Of course there’s Val Tracy, but ’most everybody thinks he’s in love
with April, and ’most everybody is, so I don’t be—”
“Stop talking nonsense!” Dorothea broke in again. “I’m not in love with
anybody.”
“Hum!” murmured Harriot doubtfully. “I don’t know anything else that
would take your appetite away, and you needn’t deny it’s gone.”
“It seems to me I’ve been eating ever since you woke me up this
morning,” Dorothea protested.
“I didn’t wake you up,” Harriot insisted, thus changing the subject much
to Dorothea’s delight.
But as the hours wore on she became more and more anxious for Val’s
return and when in the early evening she heard a horseman ride rapidly
up to the front of the house she was the first on the porch to welcome
him. It was not Tracy, however, but Hal, and he brought information that
was by no means welcome.
“We’re ordered off!” he announced.
He had little more to tell than that. Tracy was already on the move and
they need not expect to see him for a long time to come. The Confederate
Government was combing the country for men and big events were expected.
Hal gave his meager news and was off again ere they realized it, and the
household settled down to await events.
“That’s the way it goes,” Mrs. May sighed as they sat at the table that
night and looked about at the empty places. “In the morning the house is
full. In the evening we are deserted. We women haven’t the easiest part
in some ways.”
“That is the misfortune of being born a girl,” April said bitterly.
“We have our place, too, honey,” Miss Imogene replied with a gentle
rebuke in her tone. “I think our men need us just as we are. Fighting
isn’t just letting off guns.”
“But I might take the place of a man who won’t fight!” April burst out
and, jumping to her feet, she left the room amid a hush that lasted some
little time after she had gone. All knew of whom she was thinking, and
the rest of the meal was eaten in comparative silence.