country, where his unfortunate story was already known, and where as
much real interest was felt in him as the good people of Connecticut
ever accord to a duellist. He had a friend living farther out on the
New Haven road, and he took an early train to see her (this was a new
feature), returning to me in the evening. I met him at the depot. He
wore the superb uniform overcoat of the Gardecorps Kürassier, long,
flowing, and rich, with a broad, scarlet-lined fur collar. It was
caught across the throat with a scarlet snood, and hung loosely from
the shoulders. It made his six feet two really becoming. At home he
was easy but very quiet, saying little but saying it very well, and
he won as much confidence as the stain on his moral character would
allow. Like most of his class, he knew and cared absolutely nothing
for what interests the New England mind, and he would early have
palled on our taste but for his music. His performance was skilful; he
played difficult music, and he played it very well, but without vanity
or apparent consciousness. When not occupied in this way, and when
not addressed, he neither spoke nor read, apparently he did not even
think, but relapsed into a sad and somewhat vacant reticence. But for
our knowledge of his misfortunes, he would have been uninteresting.
On Sunday he gave me a new confidence. His friend up the road was
an Everett House acquaintance, made when he first came from Boston.
She was an angel! She knew his sad story, and she had given him her
Puritan heart. In the trying days to come I was to be the link that
should bind them in their correspondence. She must not know of his
degraded position, and all letters were to pass under cover to me. Even
_noblesse_ did not hide the tears that this prospect of long separation
wrung from him, and he poured out his grief with most touching
unrestraint. This was the one sorrow of his life that even his trained
equanimity could not conquer. It made me still more respect his simple,
honest nature and his unfeigned grief. I was doubly sorry that this
last trial of separated love should be added to his cup of bitterness.
In our long Sunday talk he told me of his home, and showed me the
singularly beautiful photographs of his mother and sister, and--quite
incidentally--one of himself in the full uniform of his regiment,
bearing on its back the imprint of a Berlin photographer. He evinced a
natural curiosity about the mode of our garrison life, and I prepared
him as gently as I could for a decided change from his former customs.
It was, of course, depressing to him, but he bore the prospect like
a man, and gave it no importance as compared with his more essential
downfall. He had seen enough of our troops to be especially uneasy at
the prospect of an ill-fitting uniform. In the matter of linen he was
well provided, but he was really unhappy over the thought of adapting
his long and easy figure to a clothing-contractor's idea of proportion.
So it was arranged that he should go to my tailor and be suitably clad,
according to regulation of course, but also according to measure. He
proposed, too, to leave his overcoat for some repairs and to be cared
for while he should have no use for it. I gave the tailor assurances of
prompt payment.
One fine morning Dohna came to my room in his new rig and bade me a
brave good-by. He was off for Fort Trumbull. I felt an almost parental
sorrow over his going, and had much misgiving as to his ability to
face his ill-bred soldier comrades. There came soon after a letter
to say that he was well treated personally, only the rations were so
horrible; pork and salt beef and beans and molasses. He could not eat
such things, and he was growing faint for want of food. I had seen such
dainty appetites cured too often to have any fear on this score, and
only replied in general terms of encouragement, and asked for frequent
letters. These came. There were no incidents of his life that were not
described almost with wonder, for a noble officer of the Gardecorps of
the king of Prussia knows really nothing of the ways of life of the
men he is supposed to command. Often there were thick letters for the
_fiancée_, and answers to these (also thick) had often to be forwarded.
I felt the enthusiastic glow natural to one who carries alone the
tender secrets of younger lovers, and was not altogether unhappy under
the subjective romance of my mediation.
Sometimes there were touching tales of trouble. Once he had been
detailed to the "police" squad, and had to clean spittoons and do other
menial work. This was a touch of reality that fairly opened his eyes to
his abasement, and he wrote much more sadly than ever before, making
me sad, too, to think how powerless I was to help him in any way. A
few days later he sent a wail of real agony. While he had been out on
drill, some scoundrel had broken into his satchel and had stolen all
his papers,--his letters from his mother, her photograph, and those
of his sister and his sweetheart, and all the bundle of affectionate
epistles over which he had pored again and again in his desolation. The
loss was absolutely heart-breaking and irreparable, and he had passed
hours sitting on the rocks at the shore, pouring bitter tears into the
Thames. This was a blow to me too. I knew that Dohna was of a simple
mind, and utterly without resources within himself; but he was also of
a simple heart, and one could only grieve over this last blow as over
the sorrows of a helpless little child. However, I wrote all I could
to encourage him, and was gratified, though a little surprised, to see
how soon he became cheerful again, and how earnestly he seemed to have
set about the work of becoming a really good soldier. After a time the
captain of his company--still in New York and maintaining a lively
interest in the poor fellow's case--procured an order for him to go to
Annapolis to be examined for promotion. He was already a sergeant, and
a pretty good one. He stopped in New York a few days on his way through
for some refitting,--again at my tailor's. On his way back he stopped
again to tell of his failure. I was delicate about questioning him too
closely, but I learned enough to suppose that different ideas as to
practical education are entertained by a board of army examiners and by
a fond young mother in the remote castle of Schlodien; but I encouraged
him to believe that a little more study would enable him to pass the
second examination that had been promised him, and he rejoined his
company.
In the general mustering-out Voisin had been set free and had joined
me in New York, and had, naturally, participated in all my interest in
the quondam Count. He gradually, as an adjutant should, assumed the
correspondence, which was voluminous, and by the time we were informed
that Dohna was detailed for recruiting duty in the city, neither he
nor I was glad to know it. Something more than a feeling of regretful
sympathy is necessary to the enjoyment of frequent companionship,
and we both felt that the fact of having credit with a tailor was a
dangerous element in the possible future combinations. However, Dohna's
arrival at our room followed close upon the announcement of the order.
He was still simple in his way and of modest deportment, but he seemed
to have accepted his new life almost too entirely, and he had come to
look not very much out of place among his comrades. Their quarters
were in a basement in Chambers Street, back of the City Hall, where we
occasionally dropped in to see him. After a while he was always out
when we called, and once when I stopped to give him a foreign letter,
sent to my care, I was told that he had not been there for a week, but
one of the men volunteered to find him. He came that night to the club
for his letter, in civilian's dress, and appeared much as he did when
I first saw him, except that he had two beautiful false teeth, in the
place of the defective ones. I gave him his letter, a long one from
Berlin, from his father. He showed Voisin the postscript, in which it
was stated that a box containing a breech-loading shot-gun, a dozen
shirts, and a draft for five hundred thalers would be forwarded by the
Hamburg line to my care. On the strength of this he hoped it would not
inconvenience us to advance him a couple of hundred dollars. It was
thus far inconvenient that we were obliged to decline, which gave him
no offence, and he invited us to dine with him the following day at the
Everett House.
At this point, in view of the extreme youth and inexperience of our
friend, we took occasion to read him a short homily on the value of
economy, and to urge him immediately to leave the Everett, return to
his barracks in Chambers Street, and as he valued his future peace
of mind to avoid running in debt; mildly hinting that, if found in
the public streets without his uniform, he would be very likely to
get himself into trouble. He begged that we would not expose him, and
promised to return that very night. Then for some time we lost sight
of him; his captain said that, so far as he knew, he was attentive
to his duty with the recruiting squad, and he certainly kept out of
our way. The box from Germany did not arrive. No more letters came,
and we had no occasion to seek him out. It was evident that he was no
longer unhappy, and so our interest in him, though still warm, remained
inactive.
* * * * *
One night I was awakened, quite late, by Voisin, sitting on the side
of my bed, big-eyed and excited, and with a wonderful story to tell.
He had been, at the request of the counsel of the Prussian Consul,
to the detectives' rooms at police headquarters. Here he had been
questioned as to his knowledge of one Adolph Danforth, _alias_ Graf zu
Dohna-Schlodien, _alias_ Fritz Stabenow, and had subsequently had an
interview with that interesting youth in the lock-up.
The glory had all departed. He had been there forty-eight hours, was
unwashed, uncombed, stolid, comfortable, and quite at home. There was
no remnant left of the simple and modest demeanor of the well-bred
aristocrat. It was hard to see a trace of likeness to the Kürassier
officer with whose photograph we were familiar. The obligations of
_noblesse_ seemed to be entirely removed, and there was nothing left
but plain, ignoble Fritz Stabenow. An examination of his pockets
developed a singular folly. He had kept every scrap of paper on which
a word had ever been written to him. Tailors' bills, love-letters,
duns, photographs of half a dozen different girls, all were huddled
together. He had a package of the Count Dohna cards and the plate
from which they had been printed,--made in Boston; a letter of credit
from a banking-house in Berlin to its New York correspondent had the
copperplate card of the firm on the paper, but the paper was ruled as
a German banker's paper never is, and the plate from which the card
had been printed (also made in Boston) was in the envelope with it. A
letter from plain father Stabenow enclosed photographs of still plainer
mother and sister Stabenow, which were a sad contrast to the glory of
the Countess Dohna's picture. The father's letter was full of kindly
reproof and affectionate regret. "Ach! Fritz, ich hätte das von Dir
nicht gedacht,"--"I never thought that of you"; but it was forgiving
too, and promised the remittance, clothing, and gun I have spoken of
before. The papers, for the loss of which such tears had been shed
at Fort Trumbull, were all there in their well-worn companionship
with a soiled paper-collar, and that badge of dawning civilization, a
tooth-brush.
Here were also two photographs, one of the statue of Frederick the
Great in Berlin on the card of a St. Louis photographer, and another of
himself in Prussian uniform, on the card of a Berlin photographer. The
pictures had been "lifted" and changed to the different cards. A more
careful neglect of track-covering was never known. The evidence of all
his deceptions had been studiously preserved.
Voisin had given him a dollar to buy some necessary articles, and had
left him to his fate.
The disillusion was complete, and I saw that I had been swindled
by a false count even more completely than I ever had been by real
barons,--which is much to say.
Voisin had gathered from the Consul's lawyer that this Stabenow, a
valet of the veritable Count Dohna, had been one of a party who had
robbed him and committed other serious crimes, and he had fled to
this country, with his master's uniform, a valuable wardrobe, and
costly jewels. He had here undertaken to personify the Count, and
had had on the whole not an unhappy time, especially since he came
to New York in recruiting service. He had finally been arrested on
the complaint of a lady, one of the many whom he had attempted to
blackmail, by threatening exposure through letters they had written
him in the kindest spirit. Fortunately this one had had the good sense
to refer the matter to her husband, who brought the interesting career
to a close. He had obtained several thousand dollars in this way
from different persons, and had contracted considerable debts in all
directions. The Everett House was an especial sufferer.
I felt that my claim was secured by the luggage at the express-office,
and I called for it the next day. The gentlemanly clerk of the
establishment blandly showed me my name, neatly written in a strange
Teutonic hand, to a receipt for the property. Just then I had
information that a box addressed to my care was lying at the Hoboken
office of the German steamers. Indiscreetly mentioning this fact to the
Prussian Consul's lawyer, I was informed that it would be necessary to
take the box in evidence, and I prudently refrained from making further
efforts for its recovery.
It was with a chastened spirit that I paid a considerable bill at my
tailor's and ordered the overcoat sent to my address; and it was with
only mitigated satisfaction that I heard of the sending in irons to his
company in California of deserter Stabenow.
If the Herr Lieutenant Graf zu Dohna-Schlodien of the Gardecorps
Kürassier is still living, I beg to inform him that his overcoat--the
only memento of a grave _Schwindelei_--is now a comfortable wrap to a
Rhode Island farmer, who hopes that its rightful owner is as snugly
clad in his winter rides about Versailles.
TWO SCOUTS.
In the desultory and sporadic warfare carried on in the Southwest,
the scout--or "skeout," according to the dialect of the region--was a
very important element of our organization, and it is amusing now to
recall the variety of odd-fish of every description who applied for the
remunerative employment that this branch of the service afforded.
The interest of our life at Union City was not a little enhanced by two
specimens of this genus with whom we had much to do,--Pat Dixon and
"The Blind Preacher."
One day the guard brought in a suspicious character from the
picket-line. He was about twenty-five years old, long, lank, and
dusky,--a sort of half-Indian, half-Irish looking fellow, with
uncombed hair and an over-prominent quid of tobacco. He rode the
usual "nag" of the country,--an animal with more blood than bone and
more vice than beauty. He dismounted, passed his bridle over his arm,
and "squatted,"--the usual posture of the country. "The Hun," the
professional bully of all our culprits, took this creature in hand, and
presently came in with a suggestion that I had better see him alone.
He followed me cautiously to one side, leading his horse with him, and
squatted again when we had halted at a safe distance from curious ears.
"I'm Pat Dixon. I live down Troy way on the North Fork. Ye see, when
this yer muss fust broke out I didn't go to take no sides in it. But
Merryweather's men they come along a little 'fore sun-up, last month
was a year, an' they taken the only nag we had left. I'd had him hid
out all summer, but some derned skunk done found him out. I heern the
cusses a trampin' roun' an' I was goin' to take a crack at 'em for
'good mornin',' but, you see, I knowed if I did they'd just burn the
old woman out, an' she don't git along but porely, anyhow, so I didn't.
They _con_scripted the old man the year afore, an' he hain't been heern
on sence. So I come to the conclushin that I wa'n't agoin' to stan' no
such treatmint as that--by King! an' I jest took to the bresh, an' I
reckon I've pestered them 'uns right smart. I ain't agoin' afoot long
as theys hosses in West Tannisy,--you bet! I was agoin' to jine you
Yanks, but thinks sez I: 'Old Pat, you kin do a heap better in the
bresh nor what you kin in no army,' and so I stuck to it. O, now, I'm
squar'! Frank Moore can tell you all 'bout me; I ain't no gum-game, I
ain't. If you want a skeout, I'm on hand, an' I don't want no pass, I
kin git 'roun' in this kentry.
"Which? _hoss?_ Well, 't ain't much of a nag, but theys more on 'em
roun', an' if this 'un tuckers out I'll git somethin' to ride. I ain't
goin' afoot.--no, mam!"
This was very much the sort of talk "Mr." Forrest's emissaries used in
seeking our services for his purposes; so, partly to secure ourselves
on this point, and partly to give Dixon a good character should he
go out from our camp in his professional capacity, he was sent for a
few days to the guard-house, until Frank Moore should return from an
expedition. I believe Frank knew most of the vagabonds of Obion County,
and he at once certified that this was no other than Pat Dixon; that
his story was true; and that, while his controlling motives were not
perhaps such as one would most admire, his unconquerable hatred of
Merryweather's men and all their confederates might be relied on with
implicit confidence; so Pat was engaged as an employé of our Secret
Service Department, and sent outside the lines with a conspicuous
assurance, as he left his fellow-prisoners, that if found again within
our reach he would be hanged forthwith for a spy. I was riding on the
road he took, and he gave me a leering wink as he departed,--with
instructions to watch the movements of all guerilla bands in our front,
and to bring speedily any information he might obtain.
During the remaining months of our stay he was almost ubiquitous.
Every scouting-party that we sent out in any direction, though entirely
without notice to him, was pretty sure to meet him with important
information, just when information was most needed.
This part of his work was done perfectly, but he seemed to regard his
relation with us as a warrant for unending private iniquities. After
his own code of morals he was a strictly virtuous man, but his code was
of an extremely loose and pliable character. It is probably safe to say
that he never murdered a Union man, and that, unless sorely tempted by
the difference in value of the animals, he never forcibly exchanged
horses with a Union widow; neither, I believe, did he commit any
offence against a known Rebel when there was a probability of his being
found out and caught; but the complaints that came to us of the manner
in which he vented his private wrongs and carried on the feuds of his
ancestors gave us frequent annoyance. Sometimes it seemed necessary to
recall his commission and declare him an outlaw, but just then there
would transpire some particularly brilliant achievement that showed him
invaluable for our purposes.
More than once, when our patrols reported the immediate presence of
the enemy, Pat would turn up with the assurance that it was only
so-and-so's "band," who had come into the neighborhood on a visiting or
a marauding expedition, but with no intention of putting themselves in
our way; and invariably we found his report to be correct. Indeed, so
frequently did this happen that we became almost too confident in his
assistance, and when an excitable picket shot at a donkey or a cow in
the night-time, although the patrol of the guard went through the usual
routine of investigation, we felt that there could be no serious attack
or Dixon would have notified us.
How he obtained his information we could not guess, and his own
account of the matter was never satisfactory; but I believe that no
considerable force of the enemy ever crossed the Memphis and Charleston
Railroad (the whole State's width to the south of us) without our
being speedily notified; and through this means we were several times
enabled to telegraph to Columbus early information of contemplated
raids,--information that was not always heeded, as the surprise of
Paducah (on the Ohio River) several days after our warning sufficiently
proved.
One ambition of this worthy man had to remain unsatisfied. How little
this was due to the fact that we at the headquarters were all perfectly
mounted, modesty makes it improper to state here; but in our frequent
meetings as we rode outside the lines, he rarely failed to tell of
some particularly fine horse belonging to some particularly bad man
and especially virulent Rebel, which it would really be a virtue to
"confisticate." The worthy fellow was not satisfied with his own
conspicuous appropriations; he would fain have mounted our regiments on
the weedy screws which the Rebel impressments had left for the horsing
of the crippled region of Western Tennessee. Possibly, too, he may have
had some lurking fear that there was a suspicion of iniquity in his
thefts, and longed for the reassurance of similar conduct on the part
of true men like ourselves.
It was, of course, not long after the commencement of this active
campaign against the rights of ownership, that we began to receive
assurances on every hand that unless we could do something to repress
Pat Dixon's vagabondage an outraged people would take the law into
their own hands, and avenge the wrongs he had inflicted. With a
laudable desire to prevent unnecessary bloodshed, I told him one day of
the state of feeling against him, urging him to be more circumspect and
to conduct himself like a decent man, else he would be hanged the first
time he was caught; intimating, too, that it would be improper for us
to continue to employ him to such needless injury to an inoffensive
people. His reply was characteristic.
"Inoffensive, _which_? Mebbe you know these people an' mebbe you
don't. I do! and a dern'der lot of unhung cutthroats an' hoss-thieves
you can't find nowheres. As for hangin', you needn't give yourself no
worryment 'bout that. They're safe enough to hang me if they ketch me,
an' I guess I sha'n't hang no higher if I go right on my own gait. If
you don't want to employ me you needn't; theys enough corn an' bacon in
th' Obion bottom to keep me awhile yet, and money ain't no 'count down
here; but, by King! if I kin git a chance to tell you anything that
them 'uns don't want you to know, you bet your skin I'll do it, an' you
kin trust me every time, for I ain't goin' to lie,--not to your side,
not if I know it. Why, you talk to me about inikities. I don't want to
do no man any hurt; but my old dad _he_ was _con_scripted, an' me an'
my brother Jake had to take to the bresh to save ourselves, an' then
Jake he was shot in cold blood right afore my eyes, an' I made up my
mind then an' there that I wouldn't give no quarter to the whole State
of West Tannisy till this war was over an' ther' was some stronger hand
than mine to do jestis an' to furnish revenge. That's all I've got to
say about it. You needn't give yourself no oneasiness 'bout my doin's,
I'll answer for the hull on 'em; an' p'r'aps the last thing you'll hear
of Pat Dixon will be that he's hangin' to a tree somewheres down Troy
way. I know I'm booked for that if I'm ketched, and till I am ketched
I'm goin' my own gait."
We had become too much accustomed to this state of feeling among the
scanty Union population of the Southwest to be so shocked by it as we
ought to have been, and it was not without sympathy with Dixon's wrongs
that I let him go, with an earnest caution that he should mend his
ways, if only for his own sake.
It remains only to say that he _did_ go his own gait, and that he went
it with a desperation and an _élan_ that I have never known equalled;
and that, months later, after our snug quarters at Union City had been
turned over to a feeble band of home-guards, word came that they had
been burned to the ground, and that Pat Dixon, betrayed at last into
the hands of the enemy, had been hanged in the woods near Troy. We
could find no fault with the retribution that had overtaken him; for,
viewed with the eyes of his executioners, he had richly merited it: but
we had learned to like him for his frank and generous qualities, and to
make full allowance for the degree to which his rough, barbaric nature
had been outraged and inflamed by the wrongs inflicted on his family.
* * * * *
A returning patrol one afternoon led to the parade-ground a sorry
horse drawing an open wagon in which were a man and a woman. The woman
had a cold-blooded, stolid look, and her eyes were filled with the
overflowing hatred we so often inspired among her sex at the South. Her
husband was dressed in black, and wore a rather scrupulously brushed
but over-old silk hat. In his hand was a ponderous and bulging cotton
umbrella.
They had been taken "under suspicious circumstances" at a house a few
miles outside the lines,--the suspicion attaching only to the fact that
they were not members of the family and seemed to have no particular
business in that region. When asked for an explanation, the woman said
she had nothing to say but that her husband was a blind clergyman
intending to fulfil an engagement to preach, and that she had driven
him, as was her habit. He said nothing. It was a rule of our system to
follow Hoyle's instructions, and "when in doubt to take the trick":
this pair were remanded to the guard-house.