An Original Belle Part 45

"Only a bullet-hole through it. That's nothing for Gettysburg.

I was captured, and escaped on the first night's march. Dark and stormy, you know. But it's a long story, and I'm hungry as a wolf.

Where's Blauvelt?"

"He's a guest at Mr. Vosburgh's."

"Lucky fellow!" exclaimed Strahan; and for some reason the edge of his appet.i.te was gone.

"Yes, he IS a lucky fellow, indeed; and so are you," said Merwyn, bitterly. "I was there last evening till after midnight;" and he explained what had occurred, adding, "Blauvelt trumpeted your praise, and on the night of the 3d he went inside the enemy's picket line in search of you, at the risk of his life.'

"Heaven bless the fellow! Wait till I spin my yarn. I shall give him credit for the whole victory."

"Write a note to Miss Vosburgh, and I'll send it right down."

"Confound it, Merwyn! don't you see I'm winged? You will even have to cut my food for me as if I were a baby."

"Very well, you dictate and I'll write. By the way, I have a note for you in my pocket."

Strahan seized upon it and forgot his breakfast. Tears suffused his blue eyes before he finished it, and at last he said, "Well, if you HAD found me in some hospital this would have cured me, or else made death easy."

Merwyn's heart grew heavy, in spite of the fact that he had told himself so often that there was no hope for him, and he thought, "In the terrible uncertainty of Strahan's fate she found that he was more to her than she had supposed, and probably revealed as much in her note, which she feared might reach him only when death was sure."

The glad intelligence was despatched, and then Merwyn said: "After you have breakfasted I will send you down in my coupe."

"You will go with me?"

"No. There is no reason why I should be present when Miss Vosburgh greets her friends. I remained last night by request, that I might be better informed in prosecuting my search."

Strahan changed the subject, but thought: "She's loyal to her friends.

Merwyn, with all his money, has made no progress. Her choice will eventually fall on Lane, Blauvelt, or poor little me. Thank Heaven I gave the Johnnies the slip! The other fellows shall have a fair field, but I want one, too."

Before they had finished their breakfast Blauvelt came tearing in, and there was a fire of questions between the brother-officers.

Tears and laughter mingled with their words; but at last they became grave and quiet as they realized how many brave comrades would march with them no more.

In a few moments Blauvelt said, "Come; Miss Marian said she would not take a mouthful of breakfast till you returned with me."

Merwyn saw them drive away, and said, bitterly, "Thanks to my mother, I shall never have any part in such greetings."

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.

STRAHAN'S ESCAPE.

AFTER Blauvelt had left Mr. Vosburgh's breakfast-table in obedience to his own and Marian's wish to see Strahan at once, the young girl laughed outright--she would laugh easily to-day--and exclaimed:--

"Poor Mr. Merwyn! He is indeed doomed to inglorious inaction. Before he could even start on his search, Strahan found him. His part in this iron age will consist only in furnis.h.i.+ng the sinews of war and dispensing canned delicacies in the hospitals. I do feel sorry for him, for last night he seemed to realize the fact himself. He looked like a ghost, back in the shadow that he sought when Captain Blauvelt's story grew tragic. I believe he suffered more in hearing about the sh.e.l.ls than Mr. Blauvelt did in hearing and seeing them."

"It's a curious case," said her father, musingly. "He was and has been suffering deeply from some cause. I have not fully accepted your theory yet."

"Since even your sagacity can construct no other, I am satisfied that I am right. But I have done scoffing at Mr. Merwyn, and should feel as guilty in doing so as if I had shown contempt for physical deformity. I have become so convinced that he suffers terribly from consciousness of his weakness, that I now pity him from the depths of my heart. Just think of a young fellow of his intelligence listening to such a story as we heard last night and of the inevitable contrasts that he must have drawn!"

"Fancy also," said her father, smiling, "a forlorn lover seeing your cheeks aflame and your eyes suffused with tears of sympathy for young heroes, one of whom was reciting his epic. Strahan is soon to repeat his; then Lane will appear and surpa.s.s them all."

"Well," cried Marian, laughing, "you'll admit they form a trio to be proud of."

"Oh, yes, and will have to admit more, I suppose, before long.

Girls never fall in love with trios."

"Nonsense, papa, they are all just like brothers to me." Then there was a rush of tears to her eyes, and she said, brokenly, "The war is not over yet, and perhaps not one of them will survive."

"Come, my dear," her father rea.s.sured her, gently, "you must imitate your soldier friends, and take each day as it comes. Remembering what they have already pa.s.sed through, I predict that they all survive. The bravest men are the most apt to escape."

Marian's greeting of Strahan was so full of feeling, and so many tears suffused her dark blue eyes, that they inspired false hopes in his breast and unwarranted fears in that of Blauvelt. The heroic action and tragic experience of the young and boyish Strahan had touched the tenderest chords in her heart. Indeed, as she stood, holding his left hand in both her own, they might easily have been taken for brother and sister. His eyes were almost as blue as hers, and his brow, where it had not been exposed to the weather, as fair. She knew of his victory over himself. Almost at the same time with herself, he had cast behind him a weak, selfish, frivolous life, a.s.suming a manhood which she understood better than others.

Therefore, she had for him a tenderness, a gentleness of regard, which her other friends of sterner natures could not inspire. Indeed, so sisterly was her feeling that she could have put her arms about his neck and welcomed him with kisses, without one quickening throb of the pulse. But he did not know this then, and his heart bounded with baseless hopes.

Poor Blauvelt had never cherished many, and the old career with which he had tried to be content defined itself anew. He would fight out the war, and then give himself up to his art.

He could be induced to stay only long enough to finish his breakfast, and then said: "Strahan can tell me the rest of his story over the camp-fire before long. My mother has now the first claim, and I must take a morning train in order to reach home to-night."

"I also must go," exclaimed Mr. Vosburgh, looking at his watch, "and shall have to hear your story at second hand from Marian. Rest a.s.sured," he added, laughing, "it will lose nothing as she tells it this evening."

"And I order you, Captain Blauvelt, to make this house your headquarters when you are in town," said Marian, giving his hand a warm pressure in parting. Strahan accompanied his friend to the depot, then sought his family physician and had his wound dressed.

"I advise that you reach your country home soon," said the doctor; "your pulse is feverish."

The young officer laughed and thought he knew the reason better than his medical adviser, and was soon at the side of her whom he believed to be the exciting cause of his febrile symptoms.

"Oh," he exclaimed, throwing himself on a lounge, "isn't this infinitely better than a stifling Southern prison?" and he looked around the cool, shadowy drawing-room, and then at the smiling face of his fair hostess, as if there were nothing left to be desired.

"You have honestly earned this respite and home visit," she said, taking a low chair beside him, "and now I'm just as eager to hear your story as I was to listen to that of Captain Blauvelt, last night."

"No more eager?" he asked, looking wistfully into her face.

"That would not be fair," she replied, gently. "How can I distinguish between my friends, when each one surpa.s.ses even my ideal of manly action?"

"You will some day," he said, thoughtfully. "You cannot help doing so. It is the law of nature. I know I can never be the equal of Lane and Blauvelt."

"Arthur," she said, gravely, taking his hand, "let me be frank with you. It will be best for us both. I love you too dearly, I admire and respect you too greatly, to be untrue to your best interests even for a moment. What's more, I am absolutely sure that you only wish what is right and best for me. Look into my eyes. Do you not see that if your name was Arthur Vosburgh, I could scarcely feel differently? I do love you more than either Mr. Lane or Mr. Blauvelt.

They are my friends in the truest and strongest sense of the word, but--let me tell you the truth--you have come to seem like a younger brother. We must be about the same age, but a woman is always older in her feelings than a man, I think. I don't say this to claim any superiority, but to explain why I feel as I do. Since I came to know--to understand you--indeed, I may say, since we both changed from what we were, my thoughts have followed you in a way that they would a brother but a year or two younger than myself,--that is, so far as I can judge, having had no brother. Don't you understand me?"