The Iron Game Part 18

CHAPTER XVI.

A MASQUE IN ARCADY.

In the latter days of September, the life at Rosedale was but a faint reminder of the hospital it had seemed in August. The young men were able to take part in all the simple gayeties devised by Rosa to make the time pa.s.s agreeably. Wesley was still subject to dizziness if exposed to the sun, but Jack and Vincent were robust as lumbermen. Mrs. Sprague and Merry sighed wearily in the seclusion of their chambers for the Northern homeside, but they banished all signs of discontent before their warm-hearted hosts. There was as yet no exchange arranged between the hostile Cabinets of Richmond and Was.h.i.+ngton. Even Boone's potent influence among the magnates of his party had not served him to effect Wesley's release nor enabled him to return to watch over the boy's fortunes. There was no one at Rosedale sorry for the latter calamity outside of Wesley and Kate. I believe even she was secretly not heart-broken, for she knew that her father would be antipathetic to the outspoken ladies of Rosedale.

There had been an almost total suspension of military movements East and West. Both sides were straining every resource to bring drilled armies into the field, when the decisive blow fell. In his drives and walks about the James and Williamsburg, Jack saw that the country was stripped of the white male population. The negroes carried on all the domestic concerns of the land. In these excursions, too, he marked, with a keen military instinct, the points of defense General Magruder, who commanded the department, had left untouched. He wondered if the Union arms would ever get as far down as this. If they did, and he were of the force, he would like to have a cavalry regiment to lead! Vincent was to rejoin his command at Mana.s.sas in October. Jack looked forward to the event with the most dismal discontent. To be tied up here, far from his companions; to seem to enjoy ease, when his regiment was indurating itself by drills, marches, and the rough life of the soldier for the great work it was to do, maddened him.

"I give you fair warning, Vint, if an exchange isn't arranged before you leave here, I shall cut stick: the best way I can."

"Good! How will you manage? It's a long pull between here and our front at Mana.s.sas. How will you work it? Just as soon as you quit the shelter of Rosedale, you are a suspect. Even the negroes will halt you. If you should make for Fortress Monroe, you have all of Magruder's army to get through. You would surely be caught in the act, and then I could do nothing for you. You would be sent to Castle Winder, and that isn't a very comfortable billet."

Some hint of Jack's discontent, or rather of his vague dream of flight, came into d.i.c.k's busy head, and when one day they were tramping down by the James together, he said, owlishly:

"I say, Jack, when Vincent goes, let us clear out!"

"I say yes, with all my heart, but how can it be done? We are more than forty miles from the nearest Union lines. Whole armies are between us.

Any white man found on the highway is questioned, and if he can't give a clear account of himself is sent to the provost prison. You remember the other day, when we left the rest to go through the swamp road near Williamsburg, we were hailed by a patrol, and if Vincent hadn't been within reach we would have been sent to the provost prison. Even the negroes act as guards."

"Don't be too sure of that. I've been talking to some of them. They are 'fraid as sin of the overseers, but you notice they shut up all the negroes in their own quarters at night, don't you? If they were all right, why should they do that?"

"Good heavens! you haven't been trying to make an uprising among the Rosedale servants, d.i.c.k? Don't you know that no end of ours could justify that? These people have been like brothers--like our own family to us. It would be infamous--infamous without power in the language for comparison--if we should requite their humanity by stirring up servile strife. I should be the first to take arms against the slaves in such revolt, and give my life rather than be instrumental in bringing misery upon the Atterburys."

"Oh, keep your powder dry, Jack! I never dreamed of stirring 'em up.

What I mean is, that they are all restless and uneasy. They have an idea that 'Ma.s.sa Linculm' is coming down with a big army to set them free.

Many of them want to fly to meet this army. Many, too, would almost rather die than leave their mistress. None of them--but the very bad ones--could be induced under any circ.u.mstances to lift their hands against the family or its property."

"I should hope not--at least through our instrumentality. The time must come when they will leave the family, for the one call only and in one way; that is, by cutting out slavery root and branch. However, that's for the politicians to manage; all we have to do is to stand by the colors and fight."

"I don't see much chance of standing by the colors here," d.i.c.k retorted, wrathfully. "If you'll give me the word, I'll arrange a plan, and, as soon as Vincent goes--we'll be off."

"I'm not your master, you young hornet; I can't see what you're doing all the time. All I can do is to approve or reject such doings of yours as you bring me to decide on."

d.i.c.k's eyes sparkled. "All right, I'll keep you posted, never fear."

They were a very jovial group that prattled about the long Rosedale dining-table daily now, since every one was able to come down. The house was furnished in the easy unpretentiousness that prevailed in the South in other days. Cool matting covered all the floors, the hallways, and bedchambers. The dining-room opened into a drawing-room, where Kate and Olympia took turns at the big piano. The day was divided, English fas.h.i.+on, into breakfast, luncheon, dinner, and supper, the latter as late as nine o'clock in the night. Jack being unprovided with regimentals, Vincent wore civilian garb, to spare the "prisoner" (as Jack jocosely called himself) mortification. Gray was the "only wear"

obtainable in Richmond, Mrs. Atterbury enjoying with gentle malice the rueful perplexities of her prisoner guests, Jack, Wesley, and Richard, as they surrounded the board in this rebel attire.

"I shall feel as uncertain of myself when I get back to blue, as I do in chess, after I have played a long while with the black, changing to white. I manoeuvre for some time for the discarded color," Jack said, one evening.

"Oh, you'll hardly forget in this case," Rosa said, saucily; "it is for the blacks you are manoeuvring constantly."

Jack looked up, startled, and glanced swiftly at d.i.c.k. Had that headstrong young marplot been detected in treason with the colored people? No. d.i.c.k met his glance clear-eyed, unconstrained. The shot must have been a random one.

"I think you do us injustice, Miss Rosa," Wesley said. "I, for one, am not interested in the blacks. All I want is the Union; after that I don't care a rus.h.!.+"

"I protest against politics," Mrs. Atterbury intervened, gently. "When I was a girl the young people found much more interesting subjects than politics."

Rosa: "Crops, mamma?"

Vincent: "A mistress's eyebrow?"

d.i.c.k: "Some other fellow's sister?"

Olympia: "Some other girl's brother?"

Mrs. Sprague: "Giddy girls?"

Merry: "Bad boys?"

"Well, something about all of these," Mrs. Atterbury resumed, laughing.

"I don't think young people in these times are as attached to each other as we used to be in our day--do you, Mrs. Sprague?"

"I don't know how it is with you in the South; but we no longer have young people in the North. Our children bring us up now--we do not bring them up."

"That accounts for the higher average of intelligence among parents noted in the last census," Olympia interrupts her mother to say.

"There, do you see?" Mrs. Sprague continues, with a smile, and in a tone that has none of the asperity the words might imply. "No reverence, no waiting for the elders, as we were taught."

"It depends a good deal, does it not, whether the elders are lovers?"

Vincent asked, innocently.

"Oh, don't look at me, Mrs. Sprague, for support or sympathy. Vincent is your handiwork; he was formed in the North. He is one of your new school of youth; he is Southern only in loyalty to his State. For a time I had painful apprehensions that that, too, had been educated away."

"It was his reason that kept him faithful there," Rosa ventured, and catches Vincent dropping his eyes in confusion from the demure glances of Olympia.

"Oh, no; pride. A Virginian is like a Roman, he is prouder to be a citizen in the Dominion than a king in another country," Mrs. Atterbury says, with stately decision. "No matter where his heart may be," and she glanced casually at Olympia, "his duty is to his State."

"Politics, mamma, politics; remember your young days. Talk of kings, courts, romance, madrigals--but leave out politics," Rosa cried, remonstratingly.

"Let's turn to political economy. How do you propose disposing of your tobacco and cotton this year?" Jack asked, gravely.

"We are under contract to deliver ten thousand bales at Wilmington to our agent," Vincent replied. "As for tobacco, we expect to sell all we can raise to the Yankee generals. We have already begun negotiations with some of your commanders who are too good Yankees to miss the main chance."

"You're not in earnest?" Jack cried, aghast.

"As earnest as a maid with her first love."

"But who--who--is the miscreant that degrades his cause by such traffic?"

"Oh, if you wait until you learn from me, you'll never be a dangerous accuser. I learn in letters from friends in the West that all the cotton crop has been contracted for by men either in the Northern army or high in the confidence of the Administration. You see, Jack, we are not the Arcadian simpletons you think us. This war is to be paid for out of Northern pockets, any way you look at it. We've got cotton and tobacco, you must have both; you've got money, we must have that. What we don't sell to you we'll send to England."

All at the table had listened absorbedly to this strange revelation, and Jack rose from the table shocked and discouraged.

Olympia seated herself at the piano, and, slipping out, as he supposed, unseen, Jack strolled off into the fragrant alleys of oleander and laurel. d.i.c.k, however, was at his heels. The two continued on in silence, d.i.c.k trolling along, switching the bugs from the pink blossoms that filled the air with an enervating odor.

"I say. Jack, I've found out something."