Clarence

B >> Bret Harte >> Clarence


She knew that he would do it. Yet her eyes suddenly beamed with a
new and awakening light; she put back her hair again, and half raised
herself upon the pillow, to gaze at his dark, set face.

"And as I shall let no other life but ours be periled in this affair,"
he went on quietly, "and will accompany you myself in some disguise
beyond the lines, we will together take the risks--or the bullets of the
sentries that may save us both all further trouble. An hour or two more
will settle that. Until then your weak condition will excuse you from
any disturbance or intrusion here. The mulatto woman you have sometimes
personated may be still in this house; I will appoint her to attend
you. I suppose you can trust her, for you must personate her again, and
escape in her clothes, while she takes your place in this room as my
prisoner."

"Clarence!"

Her voice had changed suddenly; it was no longer bitter and stridulous,
but low and thrilling as he had heard her call to him that night in the
patio of Robles. He turned quickly. She was leaning from the bed--her
thin, white hands stretched appealingly towards him.

"Let us go together, Clarence," she said eagerly. "Let us leave this
horrible place--these wicked, cruel people--forever. Come with me! Come
with me to my people--to my own faith--to my own house--which shall be
yours! Come with me to defend it with your good sword, Clarence, against
those vile invaders with whom you have nothing in common, and who are
the dirt under your feet. Yes, yes! I know it!--I have done you wrong--I
have lied to you when I spoke against your skill and power. You are a
hero--a born leader of men! I know it! Have I not heard it from the men
who have fought against you, and yet admired and understood you, ay,
better than your own?--gallant men, Clarence, soldiers bred who did not
know what you were to me nor how proud I was of you even while I hated
you? Come with me! Think what we would do together--with one faith--one
cause--one ambition! Think, Clarence, there is no limit you might
not attain! We are no niggards of our rewards and honors--we have
no hireling votes to truckle to--we know our friends! Even
I--Clarence--I"--there was a strange pathos in the sudden humility that
seemed to overcome her--"I have had my reward and known my power. I
have been sent abroad, in the confidence of the highest--to the highest.
Don't turn from me. I am offering you no bribe, Clarence, only your
deserts. Come with me. Leave these curs behind, and live the hero that
you are!"

He turned his blazing eyes upon her.

"If you were a man"--he began passionately, then stopped.

"No! I am only a woman and must fight in a woman's way," she interrupted
bitterly. "Yes! I intreat, I implore, I wheedle, I flatter, I fawn, I
lie! I creep where you stand upright, and pass through doors to which
you would not bow. You wear your blazon of honor on your shoulder;
I hide mine in a slave's gown. And yet I have worked and striven and
suffered! Listen, Clarence," her voice again sank to its appealing
minor,--"I know what you men call 'honor,' that which makes you cling to
a merely spoken word, or an empty oath. Well, let that pass! I am weary;
I have done my share of this work, you have done yours. Let us both fly;
let us leave the fight to those who shall come after us, and let us
go together to some distant land where the sounds of these guns or the
blood of our brothers no longer cry out to us for vengeance! There are
those living here--I have met them, Clarence," she went on hurriedly,
"who think it wrong to lift up fratricidal hands in the struggle, yet
who cannot live under the Northern yoke. They are," her voice hesitated,
"good men and women--they are respected--they are"--

"Recreants and slaves, before whom you, spy as you are--stand a queen!"
broke in Brant, passionately. He stopped and turned towards the window.
After a pause he came back again towards the bed--paused again and then
said in a lower voice--"Four years ago, Alice, in the patio of our house
at Robles, I might have listened to this proposal, and--I tremble to
think--I might have accepted it! I loved you; I was as weak, as selfish,
as unreflecting, my life was as purposeless--but for you--as the
creatures you speak of. But give me now, at least, the credit of a
devotion to my cause equal to your own--a credit which I have never
denied you! For the night that you left me, I awoke to a sense of my own
worthlessness and degradation--perhaps I have even to thank you for that
awakening--and I realized the bitter truth. But that night I found my
true vocation--my purpose, my manhood"--

A bitter laugh came from the pillow on which she had languidly thrown
herself.

"I believe I left you with Mrs. Hooker--spare me the details."

The blood rushed to Brant's face and then receded as suddenly.

"You left me with Captain Pinckney, who had tempted you, and whom I
killed!" he said furiously.

They were both staring savagely at each other. Suddenly he said, "Hush!"
and sprang towards the door, as the sound of hurried footsteps echoed
along the passage. But he was too late; it was thrown open to the
officer of the guard, who appeared, standing on the threshold.

"Two Confederate officers arrested hovering around our pickets. They
demand to see you."

Before Brant could interpose, two men in riding cloaks of Confederate
gray stepped into the room with a jaunty and self-confident air.

"Not DEMAND, general," said the foremost, a tall, distinguished-looking
man, lifting his hand with a graceful deprecating air. "In fact, too
sorry to bother you with an affair of no importance except to ourselves.
A bit of after-dinner bravado brought us in contact with your pickets,
and, of course, we had to take the consequences. Served us right, and we
were lucky not to have got a bullet through us. Gad! I'm afraid my
men would have been less discreet! I am Colonel Lagrange, of the
5th Tennessee; my young friend here is Captain Faulkner, of the 1st
Kentucky. Some excuse for a youngster like him--none for me! I"--

He stopped, for his eyes suddenly fell upon the bed and its occupant.
Both he and his companion started. But to the natural, unaffected dismay
of a gentleman who had unwittingly intruded upon a lady's bedchamber,
Brant's quick eye saw a more disastrous concern superadded. Colonel
Lagrange was quick to recover himself, as they both removed their caps.

"A thousand pardons," he said, hurriedly stepping backwards to the door.
"But I hardly need say to a fellow-officer, general, that we had no idea
of making so gross an intrusion! We heard some cock-and-bull story of
your being occupied--cross-questioning an escaped or escaping nigger--or
we should never have forced ourselves upon you."

Brant glanced quickly at his wife. Her face had apparently become rigid
on the entrance of the two men; her eyes were coldly fixed upon the
ceiling. He bowed formally, and, with a wave of his hand towards the
door, said,--

"I will hear your story below, gentleman."

He followed them from the room, stopped to quietly turn the key in the
lock, and then motioned them to precede him down the staircase.





CHAPTER VII.


Not a word was exchanged till they had reached the lower landing and
Brant's private room. Dismissing his subaltern and orderly with a
sign, Brant turned towards his prisoners. The jaunty ease, but not the
self-possession, had gone from Lagrange's face; the eyes of Captain
Faulkner were fixed on his older companion with a half-humorous look of
perplexity.

"I am afraid I can only repeat, general, that our foolhardy freak has
put us in collision with your sentries," said Lagrange, with a slight
hauteur, that replaced his former jauntiness; "and we were very properly
made prisoners. If you will accept my parole, I have no doubt our
commander will proceed to exchange a couple of gallant fellows of yours,
whom I have had the honor of meeting within our own lines, and whom you
must miss probably more than I fear our superiors miss us."

"Whatever brought you here, gentlemen," said Brant drily, "I am
glad, for your sakes, that you are in uniform, although it does not,
unfortunately, relieve me of an unpleasant duty."

"I don't think I understand you," returned Lagrange, coldly.

"If you had not been in uniform, you would probably have been shot down
as spies, without the trouble of capture," said Brant quietly.

"Do you mean to imply, sir"--began Lagrange sternly.

"I mean to say that the existence of a Confederate spy between this
camp and the division headquarters is sufficiently well known to us to
justify the strongest action."

"And pray, how can that affect us?" said Lagrange haughtily.

"I need not inform so old a soldier as Colonel Lagrange that the aiding,
abetting, and even receiving information from a spy or traitor within
one's lines is an equally dangerous service."

"Perhaps you would like to satisfy yourself, General," said Colonel
Lagrange, with an ironical laugh. "Pray do not hesitate on account of
our uniform. Search us if you like."

"Not on entering my lines, Colonel," replied Brant, with quiet
significance.

Lagrange's cheek flushed. But he recovered himself quickly, and with a
formal bow said,--

"You will, then, perhaps, let us know your pleasure?"

"My DUTY, Colonel, is to keep you both close prisoners here until I have
an opportunity to forward you to the division commander, with a report
of the circumstances of your arrest. That I propose to do. How soon I
may have that opportunity, or if I am ever to have it," continued Brant,
fixing his clear eyes significantly on Lagrange, "depends upon the
chances of war, which you probably understand as well as I do."

"We should never think of making any calculation on the action of an
officer of such infinite resources as General Brant," said Lagrange
ironically.

"You will, no doubt, have an opportunity of stating your own case to the
division commander," continued Brant, with an unmoved face. "And," he
continued, turning for the first time to Captain Faulkner, "when you
tell the commander what I believe to be the fact--from your name and
resemblance--that you are a relation of the young lady who for the
last three weeks has been an inmate of this house under a pass from
Washington, you will, I have no doubt, favorably explain your own
propinquity to my lines."

"My sister Tilly!" said the young officer impulsively. "But she is no
longer here. She passed through the lines back to Washington yesterday.
No," he added, with a light laugh, "I'm afraid that excuse won't count
for to-day."

A sudden frown upon the face of the elder officer, added to the perfect
ingenuousness of Faulkner's speech, satisfied Brant that he had not only
elicited the truth, but that Miss Faulkner had been successful. But he
was sincere in his suggestion that her relationship to the young officer
would incline the division commander to look leniently upon his fault,
for he was conscious of a singular satisfaction in thus being able to
serve her. Of the real object of the two men before him he had no doubt.
They were "the friends" of his wife, who were waiting for her outside
the lines! Chance alone had saved her from being arrested with them,
with the consequent exposure of her treachery before his own men, who,
as yet, had no proof of her guilt, nor any suspicion of her actual
identity. Meanwhile his own chance of conveying her with safety beyond
his lines was not affected by the incident; the prisoners dare not
reveal what they knew of her, and it was with a grim triumph that he
thought of compassing her escape without their aid. Nothing of this,
however, was visible in his face, which the younger man watched with a
kind of boyish curiosity, while Colonel Lagrange regarded the ceiling
with a politely repressed yawn. "I regret," concluded Brant, as he
summoned the officer of the guard, "that I shall have to deprive you of
each other's company during the time you are here; but I shall see that
you, separately, want for nothing in your confinement."

"If this is with a view to separate interrogatory, general, I can retire
now," said Lagrange, rising, with ironical politeness.

"I believe I have all the information I require," returned Brant, with
undisturbed composure. Giving the necessary orders to his subaltern, he
acknowledged with equal calm the formal salutes of the two prisoners as
they were led away, and returned quickly to his bedroom above. He paused
instinctively for a moment before the closed door, and listened. There
was no sound from within. He unlocked the door, and opened it.

So quiet was the interior that for an instant, without glancing at
the bed, he cast a quick look at the window, which, till then, he had
forgotten, and which he remembered gave upon the veranda roof. But it
was still closed, and as he approached the bed, he saw his wife still
lying there, in the attitude in which he had left her. But her eyes were
ringed, and slightly filmed, as if with recent tears.

It was perhaps this circumstance that softened his voice, still harsh
with command, as he said,--

"I suppose you knew those two men?"

"Yes."

"And that I have put it out of their power to help you?"

"I do."

There was something so strangely submissive in her voice that he again
looked suspiciously at her. But he was shocked to see that she was quite
pale now, and that the fire had gone out of her dark eyes.

"Then I may tell you what is my plan to save you. But, first, you must
find this mulatto woman who has acted as your double."

"She is here."

"Here?"

"Yes."

"How do you know it?" he asked, in quick suspicion.

"She was not to leave this place until she knew I was safe within our
lines. I have some friends who are faithful to me." After a pause she
added, "She has been here already."

He looked at her, startled. "Impossible--I"--

"You locked the door. Yes! but she has a second key. And even if she had
not, there is another entrance from that closet. You do not know this
house: you have been here two weeks; I spent two years of my life, as a
girl, in this room."

An indescribable sensation came over him; he remembered how he had felt
when he first occupied it; this was followed by a keen sense of shame
on reflecting that he had been, ever since, but a helpless puppet in the
power of his enemies, and that she could have escaped if she would, even
now.

"Perhaps," he said grimly, "you have already arranged your plans?"

She looked at him with a singular reproachfulness even in her
submission.

"I have only told her to be ready to change clothes with me and help me
color my face and hands at the time appointed. I have left the rest to
you."

"Then this is my plan. I have changed only a detail. You and she must
both leave this house at the same time, by different exits, but one of
them must be private--and unknown to my men. Do you know of such a one?"

"Yes," she said, "in the rear of the negro quarters."

"Good," he replied, "that will be your way out. She will leave here,
publicly, through the parade, armed with a pass from me. She will be
overhauled and challenged by the first sentry near the guardhouse, below
the wall. She will be subjected to some delay and scrutiny, which she
will, however, be able to pass better than you would. This will create
the momentary diversion that we require. In the mean time, you will have
left the house by the rear, and you will then keep in the shadow of the
hedge until you can drop down along the Run, where it empties into the
swamp. That," he continued, fixing his keen eyes upon her, "is the one
weak point in the position of this place that is neither overlooked nor
defended. But perhaps," he added again grimly, "you already know it."

"It is the marsh where the flowers grow, near the path where you met
Miss Faulkner. I had crossed the marsh to give her a letter," she said
slowly.

A bitter smile came over Brant's face, but passed as quickly.

"Enough," he said quietly, "I will meet you beside the Run, and cross
the marsh with you until you are within hailing distance of your lines.
I will be in plain clothes, Alice," he went on slowly, "for it will not
be the commander of this force who accompanies you, but your husband,
and, without disgracing his uniform, he will drop to your level; for the
instant he passes his own lines, in disguise, he will become, like you,
a spy, and amenable to its penalties."

Her eyes seemed suddenly to leap up to his with that strange look of
awakening and enthusiasm which he had noted before. And in its complete
prepossession of all her instincts she rose from the bed, unheeding her
bared arms and shoulders and loosened hair, and stood upright before
him. For an instant husband and wife regarded each other as unreservedly
as in their own chamber at Robles.

"When shall I go?"

He glanced through the window already growing lighter with the
coming dawn. The relief would pass in a few moments; the time seemed
propitious.

"At once," he said. "I will send Rose to you."

But his wife had already passed into the closet, and was tapping upon
some inner door. He heard the sound of hinges turning and the rustling
of garments. She reappeared, holding the curtains of the closet together
with her hand, and said,--

"Go! When she comes to your office for the pass, you will know that I
have gone."

He turned away.

"Stop!" she said faintly.

He turned back. Her expression had again changed. Her face was deadly
pale; a strange tremor seemed to have taken possession of her. Her hands
dropped from the curtain. Her beautiful arms moved slightly forward;
it seemed to him that she would in the next moment have extended them
towards him. But even then she said hurriedly, "Go! Go!" and slipped
again behind the curtains.

He quickly descended the stairs as the sound of trampling feet on the
road, and the hurried word of command, announced the return of the
scouting party. The officer had little report to make beyond the fact
that a morning mist, creeping along the valley, prevented any further
observation, and bade fair to interrupt their own communications with
the camp. Everything was quiet in the west, although the enemy's lines
along the ridge seemed to have receded.

Brant had listened impatiently, for a new idea had seized him. Hooker
was of the party, and was the one man in whom he could partly confide,
and obtain a disguise. He at once made his way to the commissary
wagons--one of which he knew Hooker used as a tent. Hastily telling him
that he wished to visit the pickets without recognition, he induced him
to lend him his slouched hat and frock coat, leaving with him his own
distinguishing tunic, hat, and sword. He resisted the belt and pistols
which Hooker would have forced upon him. As he left the wagon he
was amusedly conscious that his old companion was characteristically
examining the garments he had left behind with mingled admiration and
envy. But he did not know, as he slipped out of the camp, that Mr.
Hooker was quietly trying them on, before a broken mirror in the
wagon-head!

The gray light of that summer morning was already so strong that, to
avoid detection, he quickly dropped into the shadow of the gully that
sloped towards the Run. The hot mist which the scouts had seen was now
lying like a tranquil sea between him and the pickets of the enemy's
rear-guard, which it seemed to submerge, and was clinging in moist
tenuous swathes--like drawn-out cotton wool--along the ridge, half
obliterating its face. From the valley in the rear it was already
stealing in a thin white line up the slope like the advance of a ghostly
column, with a stealthiness that, in spite of himself, touched him with
superstitious significance. A warm perfume, languid and treacherous--as
from the swamp magnolia--seemed to rise from the half-hidden marsh.
An ominous silence, that appeared to be a part of this veiling of all
things under the clear opal-tinted sky above, was so little like
the hush of rest and peace, that he half-yearned for the outburst of
musketry and tumult of attack that might dispel it. All that he had ever
heard or dreamed of the insidious South, with its languid subtleties of
climate and of race, seemed to encompass him here.

But the next moment he saw the figure he was waiting for stealing
towards him from the shadow of the gulley beneath the negro quarters.

Even in that uncertain light there was no mistaking the tall figure,
the gaudily striped clinging gown and turbaned head. And then a strange
revulsion of feeling, quite characteristic of the emotional side of his
singular temperament, overcame him. He was taking leave of his wife--the
dream of his youth--perhaps forever! It should be no parting in anger as
at Robles; it should be with a tenderness that would blot out their past
in their separate memories--God knows! it might even be that a parting
at that moment was a joining of them in eternity. In his momentary
exaltation it even struck him that it was a duty, no less sacred, no
less unselfish than the one to which he had devoted his life. The light
was growing stronger; he could hear voices in the nearest picket line,
and the sound of a cough in the invading mist. He made a hurried sign to
the on-coming figure to follow him, ran ahead, and halted at last in
the cover of a hackmatack bush. Still gazing forward over the marsh,
he stealthily held out his hand behind him as the rustling skirt came
nearer. At last his hand was touched--but even at that touch he started
and turned quickly.

It was not his wife, but Rose!--her mulatto double! Her face was rigid
with fright, her beady eyes staring in their china sockets, her white
teeth chattering. Yet she would have spoken.

"Hush!" he said, clutching her hand, in a fierce whisper. "Not a word!"

She was holding something white in her fingers; he snatched it quickly.
It was a note from his wife--not in the disguised hand of her first
warning, but in one that he remembered as if it were a voice from their
past.

"Forgive me for disobeying you to save you from capture, disgrace, or
death--which would have come to you where you were going! I have taken
Rose's pass. You need not fear that your honor will suffer by it, for if
I am stopped I shall confess that I took it from her. Think no more of
me, Clarence, but only of yourself. You are in danger."

He crushed the letter in his hand.

"Tell me," he said in a fierce whisper, seizing her arm, "and speak low.
When did you leave her?"

"Sho'ly just now!" gasped the frightened woman.

He flung her aside. There might be still time to overtake and save her
before she reached the picket lines. He ran up the gully, and out on to
the slope towards the first guard-post. But a familiar challenge reached
his ear, and his heart stopped beating.

"Who goes there?"

There was a pause, a rattle of arms voices--another pause--and Brant
stood breathlessly listening. Then the voice rose again slowly and
clearly: "Pass the mulatto woman!"

Thank God! she was saved! But the thought had scarcely crossed his mind
before it seemed to him that a blinding crackle of sparks burst out
along the whole slope below the wall, a characteristic yell which he
knew too well rang in his ears, and an undulating line of dusty figures
came leaping like gray wolves out of the mist upon his pickets. He heard
the shouts of his men falling back as they fired; the harsh commands
of a few officers hurrying to their posts, and knew that he had been
hopelessly surprised and surrounded!

He ran forward among his disorganized men. To his consternation no one
seemed to heed him! Then the remembrance of his disguise flashed upon
him. But he had only time to throw away his hat and snatch a sword from
a falling lieutenant, before a scorching flash seemed to pass before
his eyes and burn through his hair, and he dropped like a log beside his
subaltern.

*****

An aching under the bandage around his head where a spent bullet had
grazed his scalp, and the sound of impossible voices in his ears were
all he knew as he struggled slowly back to consciousness again. Even
then it still seemed a delusion,--for he was lying on a cot in his own
hospital, yet with officers of the division staff around him, and the
division commander himself standing by his side, and regarding him
with an air of grave but not unkindly concern. But the wounded man felt
instinctively that it was not the effect of his physical condition, and
a sense of shame came suddenly over him, which was not dissipated by
his superior's words. For, motioning the others aside, the major-general
leaned over his cot, and said,--

"Until a few moments ago, the report was that you had been captured
in the first rush of the rear-guard which we were rolling up for your
attack, and when you were picked up, just now, in plain clothes on the
slope, you were not recognized. The one thing seemed to be as improbable
as the other," he added significantly.

The miserable truth flashed across Brant's mind. Hooker must have been
captured in his clothes--perhaps in some extravagant sally--and had not
been recognized in the confusion by his own officers. Nevertheless, he
raised his eyes to his superior.