Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales Part 12

Suddenly a woman, catching the peril of the situation, shrieked:

"They're going to fire on the gunboats! We'll all be killed."

Another caught the cry, and another. A mad panic ensued; women with babies in their arms gathered about Captain Doc, entreating him, with tears and cries, to desist.

But for once the tender old man, whose old boast had been that one tear from a woman's eyes "tore his heart open," was deaf to all entreaty.

The Riffraffs represented an injured faction. They had not been asked to enlist with the "Coast Defenders"--since gone into active service--and they seemed intoxicated by the present opportunity to "show the stuff they were made of."

At nearly nightfall the women, despairing and wailing, had gone home.

Amid all the excitement the little girl Idyl had stood apart, silent. No one had noticed her, nor that, when all the others had gone, she still lingered.

Even Mrs. Magwire, the overseer's wife, with whom she lived, had forgotten to hurry or to scold her. What emotions were surging in her young bosom no one could know.

There was something in the cannon's roar that charmed her ear--something suggestive of strength and courage. Within her memory she had known only weakness and fear.

After the yellow scourge of '53, when she was but four years old, she had realized vaguely that strange people with loud voices and red faces had come to be to her in the place of father and mother, that the Magwire babies were heavy to carry, and that their mother had but a poor opinion of a "lazy hulk av a girrl that could not heft a washtub without panting."

Idyl had tried hard to be strong and to please her foster-mother, but there was, somehow, in her life at the Magwires' something that made her great far-away eyes grow larger and her poor little wrists more weak and slender.

She envied the Magwire twins--with all their p.r.i.c.kly heat and their calico-blue eyes--when their mother pressed them lovingly to her bosom.

She even envied the black babies when their great black mammies crooned them to sleep.

What does it matter, black or white or red, if one is loved?

An embroidered "Darling" upon an old crib-blanket, and a daguerreotype--a slender youth beside a pale, girlish woman, who clasped a big-eyed babe--these were her only tokens of past affection.

There was something within her that responded to the daintiness of the loving st.i.tches in the old blanket--and to a something in the refined faces in the picture. And they had called their wee daughter "Idyl"--a little poem.

Yet she, not understanding, hated this name because of Mrs. Magwire, whose most merciless taunt was, "Sure ye're well named, ye idle dthreamer."

Mrs. Magwire, a well-meaning woman withal, measured her maternal kindnesses to the hungry-hearted orphan beneath her roof in generous bowls of milk and hunks of corn-bread.

Idyl's dreams of propitiating her were all of abstractions--self-sacrifice, patience, grat.i.tude.

And she was as unconscious as was her material benefactress that she was an idealist, and why the combination resulted in inharmony.

This evening, as she stood alone upon the levee, listening to the cannon, a sudden sense of utter desolation and loneliness came to her.

She only of all the plantation was unloved--forgotten--in this hour of danger.

A desperate longing seized her as she turned and looked back upon the nest of cabins. If she could only save the plantation! For love, no sacrifice could be too great.

With the thought came an inspiration. There was reason in the women's fears. Should the Riffraffs fire upon the fleet, surely guns would answer, else what was war?

She glanced at her full pail, and then at the row of cannon beside her.

If she could pour water into them! It was too light yet, but to-night--

How great and daring a deed to come to tempt the mind of a timid, delicate child who had never dared anything--even Mrs. Magwire's displeasure!

All during the evening, while Mother Magwire rocked the babies, moaning and weeping, Idyl, wiping her dishes in the little kitchen, would step to the door and peer out at the levee where the guns were. Every distant cannon's roar seemed to challenge her to the deed.

When finally her work was done, she slipped noiselessly out and started towards the levee, pail in hand; but as she approached it she saw moving shadows.

The Riffraffs were working at the guns. Seeing her project impossible, she sat down in a dark shadow by the roadside--studied the moving figures--listened to the guns which came nearer as the hours pa.s.sed.

It was long after midnight; accelerated firing was proclaiming a crisis in the battle, when, suddenly, there came the rattle of approaching wheels accompanied by a noisy rabble. Then a woman screamed.

Captain Doc was coming with a wagon-load of ammunition. The guns were to be loaded.

The moon, a faint waning crescent, faded to a filmy line as a pillar of fire, rising against the sky northward towards the city, exceeded the glare of the battle below.

The darkness was quite lifted now, up and down the levee, and Idyl, standing in the shadow, could see groups of people weeping, wringing their hands, as Captain Doc, pompon triumphant, came in sight galloping down the road.

In a second more he would pa.s.s the spot where she stood--stood unseen, seeing the sorrow of the people, heeding the challenge of the guns. The wagon was at hand.

With a faint, childish scream, raising her thin arms heavenward, she plunged forward and fell headlong in its path.

The victory was hers.

The tinselled captain was now tender surgeon, doctor, friend.

In his own arms he raised the limp little form from beneath the wheel, while the shabby gray coats of a dozen "Riffraffs," laid over the cannon-b.a.l.l.s in the wagon, made her a hero's bed; and Captain Doc, seizing the reins, turned the horses cautiously, and drove in haste back to his drug-store.

Farragut's fleet and "the honor of the Riffraffs" were forgotten in the presence of this frail embodiment of death.

Upon his own bed beside an open window he laid her, and while his eager company became surgeon's a.s.sistants, he tenderly bound her wounds.

For several hours she lay in a stupor, and when she opened her eyes the captain knelt beside her. Mrs. Magwire stood near, noisily weeping.

"Is it saved?" she asked, when at length she opened her eyes.

Captain Doc, thinking her mind was wandering, raised her head, and pointed to the river, now ablaze with light.

"See," said he. "See the steamboats loaded with burning cotton, and the great s.h.i.+p meeting them; that is a Yankee gunboat! See, it is pa.s.sing."

"And you didn't shoot? And are the people glad?"

"No, we didn't shoot. You fell and got hurt at the dark turn by the acacia bushes, where you hang your little lantern on dark nights. Some one ought to have hung one for you to-night. How did it happen, child?"

"It didn't happen. I did it on purpose. I knew if I got hurt you would stop and cure me, and not fire at the boats. I wanted to save--to save the plan--"

While the little old man raised a gla.s.s to the child's lips his hand shook, and something like a sob escaped him.

"Listen, little one," he whispered, while his lips quivered. "I am an old fool, but not a fiend--not a devil. Not a gun would have fired. I wet all the powder. I didn't want anybody to say the Riffraffs flinched at the last minute. But you--oh, my G.o.d!" His voice sank even lower.

"You have given your young life for my folly."

She understood.