"Major Randolph," said the Confederate chieftain gravely, "you are justin time. We are about to go into action. I need your advice."
Randolph bowed. "Ask me anything you like," he said.
"Do you like the way I have the army placed?" asked Lee.
Our hero directed a searching look over the field. "Frankly, I don't,"he said.
"What's the matter with it?" questioned Lee eagerly. "I felt there wassomething wrong myself. What is it?"
"Your left," said Randolph, "is too far advanced. It sticks out."
"By Heaven!" said Lee, turning to General Longstreet, "the boy is right!Is there anything else?"
"Yes," said Randolph, "your right is crooked. It is all sideways."
"It is. It is!" said Lee, striking his forehead. "I never noticed it.I'll have it straightened at once. Major Randolph, if the Confederatecause is saved, you, and you alone, have saved it."
"One thing more," said Randolph. "Is your artillery loaded?"
"Major Randolph," said Lee, speaking very gravely, "you have saved usagain. I never thought of it."
At this moment a bullet sang past Eggleston's ear. He smiled.
"The battle has begun," he murmured. Another bullet buzzed past hisother ear. He laughed softly to himself. A shell burst close to hisfeet. He broke into uncontrolled laughter. This kind of thing alwaysamused him. Then, turning grave in a moment, "Put General Lee undercover," he said to those about him, "spread something over him."
In a few moments the battle was raging in all directions. TheConfederate Army was nominally controlled by General Lee, but in realityby our hero. Eggleston was everywhere. Horses were shot under him. Muleswere shot around him and behind him. Shells exploded all over him; butwith undaunted courage he continued to wave his sword in all directions,riding wherever the fight was hottest.
The battle raged for three days.
On the third day of the conflict, Randolph, his coat shot to rags, hishat pierced, his trousers practically useless, still stood at Lee'sside, urging and encouraging him.
Mounted on his charger, he flew to and fro in all parts of the field,moving the artillery, leading the cavalry, animating and directing theinfantry. In fact, he was the whole battle.
But his efforts were in vain.
He turned sadly to General Lee. "It is bootless," he said.
"What is?" asked Lee.
"The army," said Randolph. "We must withdraw it."
"Major Randolph," said the Confederate chief, "I yield to your superiorknowledge. We must retreat."
A few hours later the Confederate forces, checked but not beaten, wereretiring southward towards Virginia.
Eggleston, his head sunk in thought, rode in the rear.
As he thus slowly neared a farmhouse, a woman--a girl--flew from ittowards him with outstretched arms.
"Eggleston!" she cried.
Randolph flung himself from his horse. "Leonora!" he gasped. "You here!In all this danger! How comes it? What brings you here?"
"We live here," she said. "This is Pa's house. This is our farm.Gettysburg is our home. Oh, Egg, it has been dreadful, the noise of thebattle! We couldn't sleep for it. Pa's all upset about it. But come in.Do come in. Dinner's nearly ready."
Eggleston gazed a moment at the retreating army. Duty and affectionstruggled in his heart.
"I will," he said.
CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION
The strife is done. The conflict has ceased. The wounds are healed.North and South are one. East and West are even less. The Civil War isover. Lee is dead. Grant is buried in New York. The Union Pacific runsfrom Omaha to San Francisco. There is total prohibition in the UnitedStates. The output of dressed beef last year broke all records.
And Eggleston Lee Carey Randolph survives, hale and hearty, bright andcheery, free and easy--and so forth. There is grey hair upon his temples(some, not much), and his step has lost something of its elasticity (nota great deal), and his form is somewhat bowed (though not reallycrooked).
But he still lives there in the farmstead at Gettysburg, and Leonora,now, like himself, an old woman, is still at his side.
You may see him any day. In fact, he is the old man who shows you overthe battlefield for fifty cents and explains how he himself fought andwon the great battle.
VIII
BUGGAM GRANGE
A GOOD OLD GHOST STORY
_VIII.--Buggam Grange: A Good Old Ghost Story._
The evening was already falling as the vehicle in which I was containedentered upon the long and gloomy avenue that leads to Buggam Grange.
A resounding shriek echoed through the wood as I entered the avenue. Ipaid no attention to it at the moment, judging it to be merely one ofthose resounding shrieks which one might expect to hear in such a placeat such a time. As my drive continued, however I found myself wonderingin spite of myself why such a shriek should have been uttered at thevery moment of my approach.
I am not by temperament in any degree a nervous man, and yet there wasmuch in my surroundings to justify a certain feeling of apprehension.The Grange is situated in the loneliest part of England, the marshcountry of the fens to which civilization has still hardly penetrated.The inhabitants, of whom there are only one and a half to the squaremile, live here and there among the fens and eke out a miserableexistence by frog-fishing and catching flies. They speak a dialect sobroken as to be practically unintelligible, while the perpetual rainwhich falls upon them renders speech itself almost superfluous.
Here and there where the ground rises slightly above the level of thefens there are dense woods tangled with parasitic creepers and filledwith owls. Bats fly from wood to wood. The air on the lower ground ischarged with the poisonous gases which exude from the marsh, while inthe woods it is heavy with the dank odours of deadly nightshade andpoison ivy.
It had been raining in the afternoon, and as I drove up the avenue themournful dripping of the rain from the dark trees accentuated thecheerlessness of the gloom. The vehicle in which I rode was a fly onthree wheels, the fourth having apparently been broken and taken off,causing the fly to sag on one side and drag on its axle over the muddyground, the fly thus moving only at a foot's pace in a way calculated toenhance the dreariness of the occasion. The driver on the box in frontof me was so thickly muffled up as to be indistinguishable, while thehorse which drew us was so thickly coated with mist as to be practicallyinvisible. Seldom, I may say, have I had a drive of so mournful acharacter.
The avenue presently opened out upon a lawn with overgrown shrubberies,and in the half darkness I could see the outline of the Grange itself, arambling, dilapidated building. A dim light struggled through thecasement of a window in a tower room. Save for the melancholy cry of arow of owls sitting on the roof, and croaking of the frogs in the moatwhich ran around the grounds, the place was soundless. My driver haltedhis horse at the hither side of the moat. I tried in vain to urge him,by signs, to go further. I could see by the fellow's face that he wasin a paroxysm of fear, and indeed nothing but the extra sixpence which Ihad added to his fare would have made him undertake the drive up theavenue. I had no sooner alighted than he wheeled his cab about and madeoff.
Laughing heartily at the fellow's trepidation (I have a way of laughingheartily in the dark), I made my way to the door and pulled thebell-handle. I could hear the muffled reverberations of the bell farwithin the building. Then all was silent. I bent my ear to listen, butcould hear nothing except, perhaps, the sound of a low moaning as of aperson in pain or in great mental distress. Convinced, however, fromwhat my friend Sir Jeremy Buggam had told me, that the Grange was notempty, I raised the ponderous knocker and beat with it loudly againstthe door.
But perhaps at this point I may do well to explain to my readers (beforethey are too frightened to listen to me) how I came to be beating on thedoor of Buggam Grange at nightfall on a gloomy November evening.
A year before I had been sitting with Sir Jeremy Buggam, the presentbaronet, on the verandah of his ranch in Cal
ifornia.
"So you don't believe in the supernatural?" he was saying.
"Not in the slightest," I answered, lighting a cigar as I spoke. When Iwant to speak very positively, I generally light a cigar as I speak.
"Well, at any rate, Digby," said Sir Jeremy, "Buggam Grange is haunted.If you want to be assured of it go down there any time and spend thenight and you'll see for yourself."
"My dear fellow," I replied, "nothing will give me greater pleasure. Ishall be back in England in six weeks, and I shall be delighted to putyour ideas to the test. Now tell me," I added somewhat cynically, "isthere any particular season or day when your Grange is supposed to bespecially terrible?"
Sir Jeremy looked at me strangely. "Why do you ask that?" he said. "Haveyou heard the story of the Grange?"
"Never heard of the place in my life," I answered cheerily. "Till youmentioned it to-night, my dear fellow, I hadn't the remotest idea thatyou still owned property in England."
"The Grange is shut up," said Sir Jeremy, "and has been for twentyyears. But I keep a man there--Horrod--he was butler in my father's timeand before. If you care to go, I'll write him that you're coming. And,since you are taking your own fate in your hands, the fifteenth ofNovember is the day."
At that moment Lady Buggam and Clara and the other girls came troopingout on the verandah, and the whole thing passed clean out of my mind.Nor did I think of it again until I was back in London. Then, by one ofthose strange coincidences or premonitions--call it what you will--itsuddenly occurred to me one morning that it was the fifteenth ofNovember. Whether Sir Jeremy had written to Horrod or not, I did notknow. But none the less nightfall found me, as I have described,knocking at the door of Buggam Grange.
The sound of the knocker had scarcely ceased to echo when I heard theshuffling of feet within, and the sound of chains and bolts beingwithdrawn. The door opened. A man stood before me holding a lightedcandle which he shaded with his hand. His faded black clothes, onceapparently a butler's dress, his white hair and advanced age left me inno doubt that he was Horrod of whom Sir Jeremy had spoken.
Without a word he motioned me to come in, and, still without speech, hehelped me to remove my wet outer garments, and then beckoned me into agreat room, evidently the dining-room of the Grange.
I am not in any degree a nervous man by temperament, as I think Iremarked before, and yet there was something in the vastness of thewainscoted room, lighted only by a single candle, and in the silence ofthe empty house, and still more in the appearance of my speechlessattendant, which gave me a feeling of distinct uneasiness. As Horrodmoved to and fro I took occasion to scrutinize his face more narrowly. Ihave seldom seen features more calculated to inspire a nervous dread.The pallor of his face and the whiteness of his hair (the man was atleast seventy), and still more the peculiar furtiveness of his eyes,seemed to mark him as one who lived under a great terror. He moved witha noiseless step and at times he turned his head to glance in the darkcorners of the room.
"Sir Jeremy told me," I said, speaking as loudly and as heartily as Icould, "that he would apprise you of my coming."
I was looking into his face as I spoke.
In answer Horrod laid his finger across his lips and I knew that he wasdeaf and dumb. I am not nervous (I think I said that), but therealization that my sole companion in the empty house was a deaf mutestruck a cold chill to my heart.
Horrod laid in front of me a cold meat pie, a cold goose, a cheese, anda tall flagon of cider. But my appetite was gone. I ate the goose, butfound that after I had finished the pie I had but little zest for thecheese, which I finished without enjoyment. The cider had a sour taste,and after having permitted Horrod to refill the flagon twice I foundthat it induced a sense of melancholy and decided to drink no more.
My meal finished, the butler picked up the candle and beckoned me tofollow him. We passed through the empty corridors of the house, a longline of pictured Buggams looking upon us as we passed, their portraitsin the flickering light of the taper assuming a strange and life-likeappearance, as if leaning forward from their frames to gaze upon theintruder.
Horrod led me upstairs and I realized that he was taking me to the towerin the east wing, in which I had observed a light.
The rooms to which the butler conducted me consisted of a sitting-roomwith an adjoining bedroom, both of them fitted with antique wainscotingagainst which a faded tapestry fluttered. There was a candle burning onthe table in the sitting-room, but its insufficient light only renderedthe surroundings the more dismal. Horrod bent down in front of thefireplace and endeavoured to light a fire there. But the wood wasevidently damp and the fire flickered feebly on the hearth.
The butler left me, and in the stillness of the house I could hear hisshuffling step echo down the corridor. It may have been fancy, but itseemed to me that his departure was the signal for a low moan that camefrom somewhere behind the wainscot. There was a narrow cupboard door atone side of the room, and for the moment I wondered whether the moaningcame from within. I am not as a rule lacking in courage (I am sure myreader will be decent enough to believe this), yet I found myselfentirely unwilling to open the cupboard door and look within. In placeof doing so I seated myself in a great chair in front of the feeblefire. I must have been seated there for some time when I happened tolift my eyes to the mantel above and saw, standing upon it, a letteraddressed to myself. I knew the handwriting at once to be that of SirJeremy Buggam.
I opened it, and spreading it out within reach of the feeblecandlelight, I read as follows:
"My dear Digby,
"In our talk that you will remember, I had no time to finish telling you about the mystery of Buggam Grange. I take for granted, however, that you will go there and that Horrod will put you in the tower rooms, which are the only ones that make any pretence of being habitable. I have, therefore, sent him this letter to deliver at the Grange itself.
"The story is this:
"On the night of the fifteenth of November, fifty years ago, my grandfather was murdered in the room in which you are sitting, by his cousin, Sir Duggam Buggam. He was stabbed from behind while seated at the little table at which you are probably reading this letter. The two had been playing cards at the table and my grandfather's body was found lying in a litter of cards and gold sovereigns on the floor. Sir Duggam Buggam, insensible from drink, lay beside him, the fatal knife at his hand, his fingers smeared with blood. My grandfather, though of the younger branch, possessed a part of the estates which were to revert to Sir Duggam on his death. Sir Duggam Buggam was tried at the Assizes and was hanged. On the day of his execution he was permitted by the authorities, out of respect for his rank, to wear a mask to the scaffold. The clothes in which he was executed are hanging at full length in the little cupboard to your right, and the mask is above them. It is said that on every fifteenth of November at midnight the cupboard door opens and Sir Duggam Buggam walks out into the room. It has been found impossible to get servants to remain at the Grange, and the place--except for the presence of Horrod--has been unoccupied for a generation. At the time of the murder Horrod was a young man of twenty-two, newly entered into the service of the family. It was he who entered the room and discovered the crime. On the day of the execution he was stricken with paralysis and has never spoken since. From that time to this he has never consented to leave the Grange, where he lives in isolation.
"Wishing you a pleasant night after your tiring journey,
"I remain,
"Very faithfully,
"Jeremy Buggam."
I leave my reader to imagine my state of mind when I completed theperusal of the letter.
I have as little belief in the supernatural as anyone, yet I mustconfess that there was something in the surroundings in which I nowfound myself which rendered me at least uncomfortable. My reader maysmile if he will, but I assure him that it was
with a very distinctfeeling of uneasiness that I at length managed to rise to my feet, and,grasping my candle in my hand, to move backward into the bedroom. As Ibacked into it something so like a moan seemed to proceed from theclosed cupboard that I accelerated my backward movement to aconsiderable degree. I hastily blew out the candle, threw myself uponthe bed and drew the bedclothes over my head, keeping, however, one eyeand one ear still out and available.
How long I lay thus listening to every sound, I cannot tell. Thestillness had become absolute. From time to time I could dimly hear thedistant cry of an owl, and once far away in the building below a soundas of some one dragging a chain along a floor. More than once I wascertain that I heard the sound of moaning behind the wainscot. MeantimeI realized that the hour must now be drawing close upon the fatal momentof midnight. My watch I could not see in the darkness, but by reckoningthe time that must have elapsed I knew that midnight could not be faraway. Then presently my ear, alert to every sound, could justdistinguish far away across the fens the striking of a church bell, inthe clock tower of Buggam village church, no doubt, tolling the hour oftwelve.
On the last stroke of twelve, the cupboard door in the next room opened.There is no need to ask me how I knew it. I couldn't, of course, see it,but I could hear, or sense in some way, the sound of it. I could feelmy hair, all of it, rising upon my head. I was aware that there was a_presence_ in the adjoining room, I will not say a person, a livingsoul, but a _presence_. Anyone who has been in the next room to apresence will know just how I felt. I could hear a sound as of some onegroping on the floor and the faint rattle as of coins.
Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels Page 11