The Iron Game Part 19

"What have you found out, you young conspirator?"

"Wesley Boone's trying to get the negroes to help him off."

"The devil he is!"

"Yes. Last night I was down in the rose-fields. Young Clem, Aunt Penelope's boy, was sitting under a bush talking with a crony. I heard him say, 'De cap'n'll take you, too, ef you doan say noffin'. He guv Pompey ten gold dollars.'

"'De Lor'! Will he take ev'ybody 'long, too, Clem?'

"'Good Lor', no! He's goin' to get his army, and den he'll come an'

fetch all de n.i.g.g.ahs.'

"'De Lor'!'

"Trying to get closer, I made a rustling of the bushes, and the young imps shot through them like weasles before I could lay hands on them.

Now, what do you think of that?"

"If it is only to escape, all right; but if it is an attempt to stir up insurrection, I will stop Wesley myself, rather than let him carry it out!"

"Wouldn't it be the best thing to warn Vincent? It would be a dreadful thing to let him go and leave his poor mother and sister here unprotected."

"Let me think it over. I will hit on some plan to keep Wesley from making an ingrate of himself without bringing danger on our benefactors."

Kate was dawdling on the lawn as the two returned to the house. Jack challenged her to a jaunt.

"Where shall it be?" she asked, readily, moving toward him. "The garden of the G.o.ds?"

"The garden of the G.o.ddesses, you mean, if it is the rose-field."

"That's true; a G.o.d's garden would be filled with thorns and warlike blossoms."

"I don't know; a rose-garden grew the wars of the houses of York and Lancaster."

"Do you remember the scene in Shakespeare where Bolingbroke and Gaunt pluck the roses?"

"Quite well. There is always something pathetic to me in the fables historians invent to excuse or palliate, or, perhaps it would be juster to say, make tolerable, the stained pages of the past. It is brought doubly nearer and distinct by this miserable war, and the strange fate that has fallen upon us--to be the guests of a family whose hopes are fixed upon what would make us miserable if it ever happened."

"It never will. That's the reason I listen with pity to the childish vauntings of these kind people. They have, you see, no conception of the Northern people--no idea of the deep-seated purpose that moves the States as one man to stifle this monstrous attempt."

They walked on in silence a few paces, and Kate continued: "I don't know how you feel, Mr. Sprague, but I am wretched here. I feel like a traitor, receiving such kindness, treated with such guileless confidence, and yet my heart is filled with everything they abhor. It is not so hard for you, because you and Vincent have been close friends. He has made your house his home, but I certainly feel that Wesley and I should go elsewhere, now that he is able to be about."

"Does Wesley feel this--this embarra.s.sment?"

"Pa.s.sionately. He said, last night, he felt like a sneak. He would fly in an instant, if he could see any possible way to our lines."

"Pray, Miss Boone, tell him to be very circ.u.mspect. I know the Southern nature. When they give you their heart they give entirely. But the least sign of--of--distrust will turn them into something worse than indifference. We may see our way out soon. Caution Wesley against any act--any act"--he emphasized the words--"that may lead these kind people to think that he doesn't trust them, or that he would take advantage of servile insurrection to gain his liberty. Of course, they know that we are all restive here; that we shall be even more impatient when Vincent goes--but they could not understand any surrept.i.tious movement on our part, to enable us to get away."

He hoped that, if she were in Wesley's confidence, she would understand his meaning. But she gave no sign. She a.s.sented with an affirmative movement of the head, and they walked through the fragrant paths, plucking a rose now and then that seemed more tempting than its fellows.

At the end of the field of roses a Cherokee hedge grew so thick and high that it formed a screen and rampart between the house land and a dense grove of pines which was itself bordered by a stream that here and there spread out into tiny lakelets. On the larger of these there were rude "dug-outs," made by the darkies to cut off the long walk from their quarters to the tobacco and corn fields.

"Was there ever an Eden more perfect than this delicious place?" Kate cried, as the flaming sun sent banners of gold, mingled in a rainbow baldric with the blooming parterres of roses.

"I don't know much about Eden, and the little I do know doesn't give me a sympathetic reminiscence of the place; but I agree with you that Rosedale is about as near a paradise as one can come to on this earth,"

Jack qualifiedly replied.

"And yet we want to fly from it?"

"Ah, yes; because the tree of our life, the volume of our knowledge, or, in plain prose, our hearts, are not here, and scenic beauty is a poor subst.i.tute for that. Duty, I am convinced, is the key of the best life.

There are hearts here, n.o.ble ones--duties here, inspiring ones. But they do not satisfy us: they are become a torment to me. I feel like a soldier brought from duty; a priest fallen into the ways of the flesh."

"Your rhapsodies are like most fine-sounding things, more to the hope than the heart," Kate murmured, gazing dreamily into the purple ma.s.s of color hovering changefully over the opaque water at their feet. "You mean they do not reach your heart; that your soul is far away as to what is here. I think Vincent and Rosa would not agree that life has any more or narrower limitations here than we recognize at Acredale."

"Let us go on the water." He pulled the rude shallop to her feet and they got in and went on, Jack not heeding her gibe. "These brackish, threatening deeps remind me of all sorts of weird and uncanny things; Stygian pools--Lethe--what not mystic and terrifying. See, the tiny waves that curl before our boat are like thin ink; a thousand roots and herbs and who knows what mysterious vegetable mixture colors these dark deeps? I could fancy myself on an uncanny pilgrimage, seeking some demon delight."

There was but one oar in the boat, which the negroes used as a scull.

Jack made a poor fist with this, but there was no need of rowing. Kate, catching a projecting limb from the thick bushes on the margin, sent the little, wabbling craft onward in noisless, spasmodic plunges. Deep fringes of wild columbine fell in fluffy sprays from the higher banks as the boat drifted along the other side. The thickets were musical with the chattering cat-birds and whip-poor-wills, mingled with a score of woodland melodists that Jack's limited woodcraft did not enable him to recognize.

"Who would think that we are within a half-mile of a completely appointed country house? We are as isolated here from all vestiges of civilization as we should be in a Florida everglade," Kate said, as the little craft swam along in an eddy.

"It seems to me typical of the people--this curiously wild transition from blooming, well-kept gardens, to such still and solemn nature. The place might be called primeval: look at those gnarled roots, like prodigious serpents; see the s.h.i.+ning bark of the larch--I think it is larch--I should call it 'slippery' elm if it were at Acredale; but see the fantastic effects of the little lances of sunlight breaking through!

Isn't it the realization of all you ever read in 'Uncle Tom' or 'Dred'?"

Kate glanced into the weird deeps of foliage, where a bird, fluttering on the wing, aroused strange echoes. "Ugh!" she said, in a half-whisper, "I can imagine it the meeting-place of 'Tam o' Shanter's' eldritches seeing this--but, all the same, do you know it is fascinating beyond words to me? Should you mind going in a little farther--I should like the sensation of awe the place suggests, since there can be no danger--while you are here?"

He gave her a quick glance, but her eyes were fastened on the dark recesses beyond.

"I should be delighted, but I won't insure your gown, nor--nor half promise that we shall come out alive."

"Oh, as to that, I'll take the risk."

"I don't know the habits of Southern snakes; but if they are as well-bred as ours, they retire from the ken of wicked men at sundown, so we needn't fear them, as the sun is too far down for the snake of tradition to see or molest us."

They stepped out of the boat at a green, sedgy point, extending from a labyrinth of flowering vines and creepers. Once inside the delicious odorous screen, they found themselves in an archipelago of green islets, connected by monster roots or moss-covered trunks that seemed laid by elfin hands for the penetration of this leafy jungle.

"Yes; I was going to say," Jack continued, "this swift transposition from the cultivation of civilization to the handiwork of Nature is whimsically ill.u.s.trative of the people. Did you ever see or hear or read of such open-handed, honest-hearted hospitality as theirs; such refinement of manners; such sincerity in speech and act? Contrast this with their fairly pagan creed as to the slaves; their intolerance of the Northern people; their clannish reverence for family."

"But isn't the inequality of the Southern character due to their strange lack of education? Few of them are cultivated as we understand education. Do you notice that among the people we met at Williamsburg--officers as well as civilians--none of them were equal to even a very limited range of subjects? All who are educated have been in the North. Ah--good Heavens!"

Kate's exclamation was due to a sudden sinking in the mossy causeway until she was almost buried in the tall ferns. Jack helped her out, s.h.i.+vered a moment, doubtingly, as he exclaimed:

"The sun is nearly down now, though the air is transparent, or would be if we were in the free play of daylight. I think it would be better to go back." But they made no haste. Such trophies of ferns and lace-like mosses were not to be plucked in every walk, and they dawdled on and on skirmis.h.i.+ng, with delighted hardihood, against the pitfalls of bog that covered mora.s.s and pitch-black mud. When the impulse finally came to hasten back, they were somewhat chagrined to discover that they had lost their own trail. The point where they had quit the stream could not be found. Clambering plants, burdened with blossoms, fragrant as honeysuckle, grew all along the bank, and the bush that had attracted them was no longer a landmark.

"Well," Jack said, confidently, "the sun disappeared over there; that is southwest. The house is in that direction--northeast. Now, if you will keep that big sycamore in your eye and follow me, we shall be nearing the house, as I calculate."

They pushed on in that direction, but had only gone a few yards when the ground became a perfect quagmire of black loam, that looked like coal ground to powder, and was thin as mush.

"This is a brilliant stroke on my part, I must say," Jack cried, facing Kate ruefully. "We must go back and examine the ground, as Indians do, and find our entrance trail in that way. I will watch the ground and you keep an eye on the shrubs. Wherever you see havoc among them you may be sure my manly foot has fallen there."