The Iron Game Part 34

"Guard, don't give yourself the trouble." And Barney arose nimbly and came to the grating. "O captain, dear, why didn't ye tell me there were ladies here? You could have spared your eloquence and your authority if you had told me that the star of beauty, the smile of angels, the--"

"Never mind, sir; be respectful, and wait till you're spoken to."

"Then, captain, dear, do you profit by your own advice; let the ladies talk. I'm all ears, as the rabbit said to the weasel."

But at this interesting point of the combat Jack returned, and, pus.h.i.+ng-to the door, cried, as if in surprise, "h.e.l.lo, Barney, boy, what are you doing here?"

"Diverting the ladies, Jack, dear, and giving the captain a chance to practice command, for fear he'll not get a show in battle." The roar that saluted this retort subdued the b.u.mptious cavalier, and he affected deep interest in the whispered questions of one of the young women in the rear of the group.

"You're the same old Barney. Marc Anthony gave up the world for a kiss, you'd capitulate a kingdom for a joke," Jack said, striving to catch Barney's eye and warn him to be prudent.

"Well, Jack, dear, between the joke and the kiss, I think I'd go out of the world better satisfied with the kiss; at all events, it wouldn't be dacent to say less with so many red lips forninst me," and Barney winked untold admiration at the laughing group before him, all plainly delighted with his conquest of the captain.

"But, Barney, you should be thinking of more serious things."

"Sure I've thought of nothing else for three months. The trees can't go naked all the year; the brook can't keep ice on it in summer; the swan sings before it dies; the gra.s.shopper whirrs loudest when its grave is ready. Why shouldn't I have me joke when I've had nothing but hard knocks, loneliness, and the company of the prison for half the year?"

"Poor fellow!" Rosa murmured in d.i.c.k's ear, who had not trusted himself in sight of his old comrade. "I don't believe he's a bad man; I don't believe he came to our house. Oh! pray, Mr. Jack, do talk with him.

Encourage him to be frank, and we will get Mr. Davis to pardon him."

"Pardon, is it, me dear? Sure there's no pardon could be as sweet as your honest e'en--G.o.d be good to ye!--an' if I were Peter after the third denial of me Maker, your sweet lips would drag the truth from me!

What is it you would have me tell?"

"The captain, here, desires me to talk with you. He thinks that perhaps I can convince you of the wiser course to follow," Jack said, with a meaning light in his eye.

"Oh, if that's what's wanted, I will listen to you 'till yer arms give out, as Judy McMoyne said, when Teddy tould his love, I promise, in advance, to do what you advise."

"I knew you would," Jack said, approvingly.--"Now, captain, if you can give me five minutes--"

The captain beckoned the guard, whispered a moment, and then said, exultingly:

"The guard will stand in the pa.s.sage until you have finished with the prisoner. We shall await you in the porch."

"Now, Barney, I must be brief, and you must not lose a syllable I say.

Here, sit on the cot, so that I may slip this bayonet under the blanket.

You can work through this wall with that. You must do it to-night and to-morrow. Be ready Thursday at daylight. You will be met on the outside either by d.i.c.k or myself. We have the route all arranged, and friends in many places to lull suspicion."

"But I won't stir a foot without Jones. Do you know who he is?" Barney whispered, eying Jack curiously.

"No other than that he seems a very desperate devil-may-care fellow. Who is he?"

"An agent and crony of Boone's."

"Good G.o.d!"

"It's a long story I can't tell it now, but if your plan takes him in, I'm ready, and will be on hand."

"I have seen him, and have given him better tools than I have brought you for the work."

"That's all right. I ask nothing better than the bayonet. The other fellows that got out of Libby didn't have nearly so good."

"You know how I am fixed here. I have grown tired of this sort of hostage life, and I am going North with you. So, Barney, I beg of you to be careful, for other lives than your own are at stake. I should be specially hateful to the authorities if I were retaken--for the whole Southern people clamor to have an example made of the a.s.sa.s.sins of the President, as they call you."

"Don't fear, Jack; I'll be quiet as a sucking pig in star light. I'll be yer shadow and never open me mouth, even if a jug, big as Teddy Fin's praty-patch, stud furninst me!"

"It isn't your tongue I'm so much afraid of as your propensity to combat. You must resist that delight of yours--whacking stray heads and flouris.h.i.+ng your big fists."

"My fists, is it? Then I'll engage to keep them still as O'Connell's legs in Phoenix Square."

"Now, I shall report that you are considering my advice. You must be very gentle and placating to the guard, and let on that you have something on your mind."

"Indeed, I needn't let on at all. I have as much on me mind as Biddy McGinniss had on her back when she carried Mick home from the gallows."

"O Barney, Barney, you would joke if the halter were about your neck!"

"An' why wouldn't I, me bye? What chance would I have if I didn't? I couldn't joke when I was dead, could I?"

"Well, well, think over what I've said, and remember that penitence half absolves guilt."

This was said for the benefit of the guard, who had approached as Jack arose to take his leave.

CHAPTER XXIII.

ALL'S FAIR IN LOVE AND WAR.

Opportunity is an instinct to the man who dares. To him the law of the impossible has no meaning. To him there is no such thing as the unexpected. What he wants comes to pa.s.s, because he can not see danger, difficulty, nor any of the obstacles that daunt the prudent and the temporizing. It is, therefore, the impossible that is fulfilled in many of the crises of life. By the same token it is the foolhardy and preposterous thing that is most readily done in determinate conjunctures. We guard against the possible, but we take little note of the enterprises that involve foolhardiness or desperation. Daring has safeguards of its own that are understood only when mad ventures have come to successful issue. Helpless and hopeless as Jack's situation seemed, the very poverty of his resources, helped the daring scheme of escape that filled his mind night and day during these apparently indolent weeks of pleasuring in the ranks of his enemies. Then, too, the arrogant self-confidence of his captors was an inestimable aid. Military discipline and provost vigilance were at their slackest stage in the rebel lines at this triumphant epoch in the fortunes of the Confederacy.

The easily won combat at Bull Run had filled the authorities--as well as the rank and file--with overweening contempt for the resources of the North, or the enterprise of its soldiers. It was not until long after the time I am now writing about, that the prisoners were closely guarded and access refused to the idle and curious. But, as a matter of fact, nothing in the fortunes of our friends equals the truth of the thrilling and desperate chances taken by Northern captives to escape the lingering death of prison in the South. Since the war, volumes have been written of personal experience, amply attested, that would in romance receive the derisive mark of the critics. Danger daily met becomes a commonplace to men of resolution. Things which appall us when we read them become a simple part of our purpose when we live in an atmosphere of peril and put our hope only in ending the ordeal.

The incident I am narrating were the work of many hands. Mrs. Gannat had from the first given her heart to the Union cause. A woman of high standing in society, well known throughout the State for her mind, her manners, and her benevolence, it was not difficult for her, by adroit management, to aid such prisoners as fell into rebel hands during the early years of the war. Before Richmond became a mart in the modern sense, the Gannat mansion, set far back among the trees of a n.o.ble grove, was a shrine to the tradition loving citizens, for, beyond any Southern city, save perhaps New Orleans, Richmond folk cherished the memory of aristocratic and semi-regal ancestors. There were those still living when the war began, who had heard their fathers and mothers talk of the last royal Governor and the splendid state of the great n.o.blemen who had flocked to the city of Powhatan when Virginia was the gem of England's colonial coronet. The patrician caste of the city still held its own, aided by the helot hand of slavery. Among the most reverently considered in this sanctified group, Mrs. Gannat was, if not first, the conceded equal. She was the dowager of the ancient n.o.blesse. The young Virginian received in her drawing-rooms carried away a distinction which was recognized throughout the State. The dame admitted to Mrs. Gannat's semi-literary _levees_ was accepted as all that society demanded of its votaries.

In other years this great lady had been the admired center of the court circle in Was.h.i.+ngton. There she had known very intimately Senator--then Congressman--Sprague. Jack remembered vaguely the gossip of an engagement between his father and a famous Southern beauty; and when the lady in the course of the conspiring said, as they talked, "My son, I might have been your mother," he knew that this gentle-voiced, kindly-eyed matron was the woman his father had loved and lost. I don't propose to rehea.r.s.e the ingenuities of the complicated plans whereby the group we are interested in were to be delivered. Mrs. Gannat's perfect knowledge of the city, her intimacy with the President, Cabinet, and leading men, her vogue with the officials, all tended to make very simple and easy that which would seem in the telling hare-brained and impossible. Jack's unique position, and d.i.c.k's att.i.tude of the half-acknowledged _fiance_ of an Atterbury, broke down bars that even Mrs. Gannat's far-reaching sagacity might not have been able to cope with in certainty. The night chosen for the escape was fatefully propitious. The President was entertaining the newly arrived French delegate and the ministers Mason and Slidell, just appointed to the courts of St. James and the Tuileries. Everybody that was anybody was of the splendid company.

Jack, however, was tortured by a doubt of d.i.c.k's constancy when it came to an abrupt quitting of his sweetheart. Poor lad, he fought the battle bravely, making no sign; and when Rosa, the picture of demure loveliness, in her girlish finery, asked him maliciously as the carriage drove toward the Executive Mansion--

"Don't you feel like a traitor, you sly Yankee?" d.i.c.k gave a great groan and said:

"O Rosa, Rosa, I can't go! I do feel like a traitor. I am a traitor."

Jack, luckily, was sitting beside him, and brought his heel down on the lad's toes with such emphasis that he uttered a cry of pain. Rosa was all solicitude at this.

"What is it, Richard; have I wounded you? Don't mind my chatter; I only do it to tease you. He shall be a Yankee; he shall make nutmegs; he shall abuse the chivalrous South; he shall be what he likes; he sha'n't be teased--" and she wound her bare arms about his neck, quite indifferent to the reproving nudges of mamma and the sad mirthfulness of Jack.

d.i.c.k found means in the noise of the chariot, and the crush they presently came into, for saying something that seemed to lessen the self-reproachful tone of the penitent, and, when they entered the modest portals of the presidency, Rosa was radiant and d.i.c.k equable, but not in his usual chattering volubility.