by G. A. Henty
It was not until he retired for the night that Vincent allowed his thoughts to turn again to the missing woman. Her loss annoyed and vexed him much more than he permitted his mother to see. In the first place, the poor girl’s eagerness to show her gratitude to him upon all occasions, and her untiring watchfulness and care during his illness from his wound, had touched him, and the thought that she was now probably in the hands of brutal taskmasters was a real pain to him. In the next place, he had, as it were, given his pledge to Tony that she should be well cared for until she could be sent to join him. And what should he say now when the negro wrote to claim her? Then, too, he felt a personal injury that the woman should be carried off when under his mother’s protection, and he was full of indignation and fury at the dastardly revenge taken by Jackson. Upon hearing the news he had at once mentally determined to devote himself for some time to a search for Dinah; but the news that a great battle was expected at the front interfered with his plan. Now that he was back, capable of returning to duty, his place was clearly with his regiment; but he determined that while he would rejoin at once, he would as soon as the battle was over, if he were unhurt, take up the search. His mother and sisters were greatly distressed when at breakfast he told them that he must at once report himself as fit for duty, and ready to join his regiment.
“I was afraid you would think so,” Mrs. Wingfield said, while the girls wept silently; “and much as I grieve at losing you again directly you have returned, I can say nothing against it. You have gone through many dangers, Vincent, and have been preserved to us through them all. We will pray that you may be so to the end. Still, whether or not, I as a Virginian woman cannot grudge my son to the service of my country, when all other mothers are making the same sacrifice; but it is hard to give you up when but yesterday you returned to us.”
WITH LEE IN VIRGINIA [Part 3]
CHAPTER XV
FREDERICKSBURG
As soon as breakfast was over Vincent mounted Wildfire—which had been sent back after he had been taken prisoner, and rode into Richmond. There he reported himself at headquarters as having returned after escaping from a Federal prison, and making his way through the lines of the enemy.
“I had my shoulder-bone smashed in a fight with some Yankees,” he said, “and was laid up in hiding for six weeks; but have now fairly recovered. My shoulder, at times, gives me considerable pain, and although I am desirous of returning to duty and rejoining my regiment until the battle at Fredericksburg has taken place, I must request that three months’ leave be granted to me after that to return home and complete my cure, promising of course to rejoin my regiment at once should hostilities break out before the spring.”
“We saw the news that you had escaped,” the general said, “but feared, as so long a time elapsed without hearing from you, that you had been shot in attempting to cross the lines. Your request for leave is of course granted, and a note will be made of your zeal in thus rejoining on the very day after your return. The vacancy in the regiment has been filled up, but I will appoint you temporarily to General Stuart’s staff, and I shall have great pleasure in today filling up your commission as captain. Now let me hear how you made your escape. By the accounts published in the Northern papers it seemed that you must have had a confederate outside the walls.”
Vincent gave a full account of his escape from prison and a brief sketch of his subsequent proceedings, saying only that he was in the house of some loyal people in Tennessee, when it was attacked by a party of Yankee bushwhackers, that these were beaten off in the fight, but that he himself had a pistol bullet in his shoulder. He then made his way on until compelled by his wound to lay up for six weeks in a lonely farmhouse near Mount Pleasant; that afterward in the disguise of a young farmer he had made a long detour across the Tennessee river and reached Georgia.
“When do you leave for the front, Captain Wingfield?”
“I shall be ready to start tonight, sir.”
“In that case I will trouble you to come round here this evening. There will be a fast train going through with ammunition for Lee at ten o’clock, and I shall have a bag of despatches for him, which I will trouble you to deliver. You will find me here up to the last moment. I will give orders that a horse-box be put on to the train.”
After expressing his thanks Vincent took his leave. As he left the general’s quarters, a young man, just alighting from his horse, gave a shout of greeting.
“Why, Wingfield, it is good to see you! I thought you were pining again in a Yankee dungeon, or had got knocked on the head crossing the lines. Where have you sprung from, and when did you arrive?”
“I only got in yesterday after sundry adventures which I will tell you about presently. When did you arrive from the front?”
“I came down a few days ago on a week’s leave on urgent family business,” the young man laughed, “and I am going back again this afternoon by the four o’clock train.”
“Stay till ten,” Vincent said, “and we will go back together. There is a special train going through with ammunition, and as everything will make way for that it will not be long behind the four o’clock, and likely enough may pass it on the way. There is a horse-box attached to it, and as I only take one horse there will be room for yours.”
“I haven’t brought my horse down,” Harry Furniss said; “but I will certainly go with you by the ten o’clock. Then we can have a long talk. I don’t think I have seen you since the day you asked me to lend you my boat two years ago.”
“Can you spare me two hours now?” Vincent asked. “You will do me a very great favor if you will.”
Harry Furniss looked at his watch. “It is eleven o’clock now; we have a lot of people to lunch at half-past one, and I must be back by then.”
“You can manage that easy enough,” Vincent replied; “in two hours from the time we leave here you can be at home.”
“I am your man, then, Vincent. Just wait five minutes. I have to see some one in here.”
A few minutes later Harry Furniss came out again and mounted.
“Now which way, Vincent? and what is it you want me for?”
“The way is to Jackson’s place at the Cedars, the why I will tell you about as we ride.”
Vincent then recounted his feud with the Jacksons, of which, up to the date of the purchase of Dinah Morris, his friend was aware, having been present at the sale. He now heard of the attack upon young Jackson by Tony, and of the disappearance of Dinah Morris.
“I should not be at all surprised, Wingfield, if your surmises are correct, and that old scoundrel has carried off the girl to avenge himself upon Tony. Of course, if you could prove it, it would be a very serious offense; for the stealing a slave, and by force too, is a crime with a very heavy penalty, and has cost men their lives before now. But I don’t see that you have anything like a positive proof, however strong a case of suspicion it may be. I don’t see what you are going to say when you get there.”
“I am going to tell him that if he does not say what he has done with the girl, I will have his son arrested for treachery as soon as he sets foot in the Confederacy again.”
“Treachery!” Furniss said in surprise; “what treachery has he been guilty of? I saw that he was one of those who escaped with you, and I rather wondered at the time at you two being mixed up together in anything. I heard that he had been recaptured through some black fellow that had been his slave, but I did not read the account. Have you got proof of what you say?”
“Perhaps no proof that would hold in a court of law,” Vincent replied, “but proof enough to make it an absolute certainty to my mind.”
Vincent then gave an account of their escape, and of the anonymous denunciation of himself and Dan.
“Now,” he said, “no one but Dan knew of the intended escape, no one knew what clothes he had purchased, no one could possibly have known that I was to be disguised as a preacher and Dan as my servant. Therefore the information must have been given by Jackson.”
“I have not the least doubt but that the blackguard did give it, Wingfield; but there is no proof.”
“I consider that there is a proof—an absolute and positive proof,” Vincent asserted, “because no one else could have known it.”
“Well, you see that as a matter of fact the other officer did know it, and might possibly have given the information.”
“But why should he? The idea is absurd. He had never had a quarrel with me, and he owed his liberty to me.”
“Just so, Wingfield. I am as certain that it was Jackson as you are, because I know the circumstances; but you see there is no more absolute proof against one man than against the other. It is true that you had had a quarrel with Jackson some two years before, but you see you had made it up and had become friends in prison—so much so that you selected him from among a score of others in the same room to be the companion of your flight. You and I, who know Jackson, can well believe him guilty of an act of gross ingratitude—of ingratitude and treachery; but people who do not know would hardly credit it as possible—that a man could be such a villain. The defense he would set up would be that in the first place there is no shadow of evidence that he more than the other turned traitor. In the second place he would be sure to say that such an accusation against a Confederate officer is too monstrous and preposterous to be entertained for a moment; and that doubtless your negro, although he denies the fact, really chattered about his doings to the negroes he was lodging with, and that it was through them that some one got to know of the disguise you would wear. We know that it wasn’t so, Wingfield; but ninety-nine out of every hundred white men in the South would rather believe that a negro had chattered than that a Confederate officer had been guilty of a gross act of treachery and ingratitude.”
Vincent was silent. He felt that what his companion said was the truth; and that a weapon by which he had hoped to force the elder Jackson into saying what he had done with Dinah would probably fail in its purpose. The old man was too astute not to perceive that there was no real proof against his son, and would therefore be unlikely at once to admit that he had committed a serious crime, and to forego his revenge.
“I will try at any rate,” he said at last; “and if he refuses I will publish the story in the papers. When the fellow gets back from Yankee-land he may either call me out or demand a court of inquiry. I may not succeed in getting a verdict from twelve white men, but I think I can convince every one of our own class that the fellow did it; and when this battle that is expected is over I have got three months’ leave, and I will move heaven and earth to find the woman; and if I do, Jackson will either have to bolt or stand a trial, with the prospect of ten years’ imprisonment if he is convicted. In either case we are not likely to have his son about here again; and if he did venture back and brought an action against me, his chance of getting damages would be a small one.”
Another half-hour’s ride brought them to the Cedars. They dismounted at the house, and fastening their horses to the portico knocked at the door. It was opened by a negro.
“Tell your master,” Vincent said, “that Mr. Wingfield wishes to speak to him.”
Andrew Jackson himself came to the door.
“To what do I owe the very great pleasure of this visit, Mr. Wingfield?” he said grimly.
“I have come to ask you what you have done with Dinah Morris, whom, I have every ground for believing, you have caused to be kidnaped from my mother’s house.”
“This is a serious charge, young gentleman,” Andrew Jackson said, “and one that I shall call upon you to justify in the law-courts. Men are not to be charged with criminal actions even by young gentlemen of good Virginian families.”
“I shall be quite ready to meet you there, Mr. Jackson, whenever you choose; but my visit here is rather to give you an opportunity of escaping the consequences that will follow your detection as the author of the crime; for I warn you that I will bring the crime home to you, whatever it costs me in time and money. My offer is this: produce the woman and her child, and not only shall no prosecution take place, but I will remain silent concerning a fact which affects the honor of your son.”
Andrew Jackson’s face had been perfectly unmoved during this conversation until he heard the allusion to his son. Then his face changed visibly.
“I know nothing concerning which you can attack the honor of my son, Mr. Wingfield,” he said, with an effort to speak as unconcernedly as before.
“My charge is as follows,” Vincent said quietly: “I was imprisoned at Elmira with a number of other officers, among them your son. Thinking that it was time for the unpleasantness that had been existing between us to come to an end, I offered him my hand. This he accepted and we became friends. A short time afterward a mode of escape offered itself to me, and I proved the sincerity of my feelings toward him by offering to him and another officer the means of sharing my escape. This they accepted. Once outside the walls, I furnished them with disguises that had been prepared for them, assuming myself that of a minister. We then separated, going in different directions, I myself being accompanied by my negro servant, to whose fidelity I owed our escape. Two days afterward an anonymous writer communicated to the police the fact that I had escaped in the disguise of a minister, and was accompanied by my black servant. This fact was only known to the negro, myself, and thetwo officers. My negro, who had released me, was certainly not my betrayer; the other officer could certainly have had no possible motive for betraying me. There remains, therefore, only your son, whose hostility to me was notorious, and who had expressed himself with bitterness against me on many occasions, and among others in the hearing of my friend Mr. Furniss here. Such being the case, it is my intention to charge him before the military authorities with this act of treachery. But, as I have said, I am willing to forego this and to keep silence as to your conduct with reference to my slave Dinah Morris, if you will restore her and her child uninjured to the house from which you caused her to be taken.”
The sallow cheeks of the old planter had grown a shade paler as he listened to Vincent’s narrative, but he now burst out in angry tones:
“How dare you, sir, bring such an infamous accusation against my son—an accusation, like that against myself, wholly unsupported by a shred of evidence? Doubtless your negro had confided to some of his associates his plans for assisting you to escape from prison, and it is from one of these that the denunciation has come. Go, sir, report where you will what lies and fables you have invented; but be assured that I and my son will seek our compensation for such gross libels in the courts.”
“Very well, sir,” Vincent said, as he prepared to mount his horse; “if you will take the trouble to look in the papers tomorrow, you will see that your threats of action for libel have no effect whatever upon me.”
“The man is as hard as a rock, Wingfield,” Furniss said, as they rode off together. “He wilted a little when you were telling your story, but the moment he saw you had no definite proofs he was, as I expected he would be, ready to defy you. What shall you do now?”
“I shall ride back into Richmond again and give a full account of my escape from the jail, and state that I firmly believe that the information as to my disguise was given by Jackson, and that it was the result of a personal hostility which, as many young men in Richmond are well aware, has existed for some time between us.”
“Well, you must do as you like, Wingfield, but I think it will be a risky business.”
“It may be so,” Vincent said; “but I have little doubt that long before Jackson is exchanged I shall have discovered Dinah, and shall prosecute Jackson for theft and kidnaping, in which case the young man will hardly venture to prosecute me or indeed to show his face in this part of the country.”
That evening the two young officers started for the front, and the next morning the Richmond papers came out with a sensational heading, “Alleged Gross Act of Treachery and Ingratitude by a Confederate Officer.”
It was the 10t
h of December when Vincent joined the army at Fredericksburg. He reported himself to General Stuart, who received him with great cordiality.
“You are just in time, Wingfield,” he said. “I believe that in another twenty-four hours the battle will be fought. They have for the last two days been moving about in front, and apparently want us to believe that they intend to cross somewhere below the town; but all the news we get from our spies is to the effect that these are only feints and that they intend to throw a bridge across here. We know, anyhow, they have got two trains concealed opposite, near the river. Burnside is likely to find it a hard nut to crack. Of course they are superior in number to us, as they always are; but as we have always beat them well on level ground I do not think their chances of getting up these heights are by any means hopeful. Then, too, their change of commanders is against them. McClellan fought a drawn battle against us at Antietam and showed himself a really able general in the operations in front of Richmond. The army have confidence in him, and he is by far the best man they have got so far, but the fools at Washington have now for the second time displaced him because they are jealous of him. Burnside has shown himself a good man in minor commands, but I don’t think he is equal to command such a vast army as this; and besides, we know from our friends at Washington that he has protested against this advance across the river, but has been overruled. You will see Fredericksburg will add another to the long list of our victories.”
Vincent shared a tent with another officer of the same rank in General Stuart’s staff. They sat chatting till late, and it was still dark when they were suddenly aroused by an outbreak of musketry down at the river.