He began to talk in flighty sentences, and she listened—his mother—his sister—and yes, she was sure as she bent nearer—a little sweetheart who lived next door. They all had sweethearts—these Southern boys. Again he was teasing his dog—and then back in battle.
At length he opened his eyes, great dark-brown eyes, unnaturally bright, with a strange yearning look in their depths as they rested on Elsie. He tried to smile and feebly said:
“Here’s—a—fly—on—my—left—ear—my—guns—can’t—somehow— reach—him—won’t—you—”
She sprang forward and brushed the fly away.
Again he opened his eyes.
“Excuse—me—for—asking—but am I alive?”
“Yes, indeed,” was the cheerful answer.
“Well, now, then, is this me, or is it not me, or has a cannon shot me, or has the devil got me?”
“It’s you. The cannon didn’t shoot you, but three muskets did. The devil hasn’t got you yet, but he will unless you’re good.”
“I’ll be good if you won’t leave me——”
Elsie turned her head away smiling, and he went on slowly:
“But I’m dead, I know. I’m sleeping on a cot with a canopy over it. I ain’t hungry any more, and an angel has been hovering over me playing on a harp of gold——”
“Only a little Yankee girl playing the banjo.”
“Can’t fool me—I’m in heaven.”
“You’re in the hospital.”
“Funny hospital—look at that harp and that big trumpet hanging close by it—that’s Gabriel’s trumpet——”
“No,” she laughed. “This is the Patent Office building, that covers two blocks, now a temporary hospital. There are seventy thousand wounded soldiers in town, and more coming on every train. The thirty-five hospitals are overcrowded.”
He closed his eyes a moment in silence, and then spoke with a feeble tremor:
“I’m afraid you don’t know who I am—I can’t impose on you—I’m a rebel——”
“Yes, I know. You are Colonel Ben Cameron. It makes no difference to me now which side you fought on.”
“Well, I’m in heaven—been dead a long time. I can prove it, if you’ll play again.”
“What shall I play?”
“First, ‘O Jonny Booker Help dis Nigger.’”
She played and sang it beautifully.
“Now, ‘Wake Up in the Morning.’”
Again he listened with wide, staring eyes that saw nothing except visions within.
“Now, then, ‘The Ole Gray Hoss.’”
As the last notes died away he tried to smile again:
“One more—‘Hard Times an’ Wuss er Comin‘.’”
With deft, sure touch and soft negro dialect she sang it through.
“Now, didn’t I tell you that you couldn’t fool me? No Yankee girl could play and sing these songs, I’m in heaven, and you’re an angel.”
“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself to flirt with me, with one foot in the grave?”
“That’s the time to get on good terms with the angels—but I’m done dead——”
Elsie laughed in spite of herself.
“I know it,” he went on, “because you have shining golden hair and amber eyes instead of blue ones. I never saw a girl in my life before with such eyes and hair.”
“But you’re young yet.”
“Never—was—such—a—girl—on—earth—you’re—an——”
She lifted her finger in warning, and his eyelids drooped In exhausted stupor.
“You musn’t talk any more,” she whispered, shaking her head.
A commotion at the door caused Elsie to turn from the cot. A sweet motherly woman of fifty, in an old faded black dress, was pleading with the guard to be allowed to pass.
“Can’t do it, m’um. It’s agin the rules.”
“But I must go in. I’ve tramped for four days through a wilderness of hospitals, and I know he must be here.”
“Special orders, m’um—wounded rebels in here that belong in prison.”
“Very well, young man,” said the pleading voice. “My baby boy’s in this place, wounded and about to die. I’m going in there. You can shoot me if you like, or you can turn your head the other way.”
She stepped quickly past the soldier, who merely stared with dim eyes out the door and saw nothing.
She stood for a moment with a look of helpless bewilderment. The vast area of the second story of the great monolithic pile was crowded with rows of sick, wounded, and dying men—a strange, solemn, and curious sight. Against the walls were ponderous glass cases, filled with models of every kind of invention the genius of man had dreamed. Between these cases were deep lateral openings, eight feet wide, crowded with the sick, and long rows of them were stretched through the centre of the hall. A gallery ran around above the cases, and this was filled with cots. The clatter of the feet of passing surgeons and nurses over the marble floor added to the weird impression.
Elsie saw the look of helpless appeal in the mother’s face and hurried forward to meet her:
“Is this Mrs. Cameron, of South Carolina?”
The trembling figure in black grasped her hand eagerly:
“Yes, yes, my dear, and I’m looking for my boy, who is wounded unto death. Can you help me?”
“I thought I recognized you from a miniature I’ve seen,” she answered softly. “I’ll lead you direct to his cot.”
“Thank you, thank you!” came the low reply.
In a moment she was beside him, and Elsie walked away to the open window through which came the chirp of sparrows from the lilac bushes in full bloom below.
The mother threw one look of infinite tenderness on the drawn face, and her hands suddenly clasped in prayer:
“I thank Thee, Lord Jesus, for this hour! Thou hast heard the cry of my soul and led my feet!” She gently knelt, kissed the hot lips, smoothed the dark tangled hair back from his forehead, and her hand rested over his eyes.
A faint flush tinged his face.
“It’s you, Mamma—I—know—you—that’s—your—hand—or—else—it’s—God’s!”
She slipped her arms about him.
“My hero, my darling, my baby!”
“I’ll get well now, Mamma, never fear. You see, I had whipped them that day as I had many a time before. I don’t know how it happened—my men seemed all to go down at once. You know—I couldn’t surrender in that new uniform of a colonel you sent me—we made a gallant fight, and—now—I’m—just—a—little—tired—but you are here, and it’s all right.”
“Yes, yes, dear. It’s all over now. General Lee has surrendered, and when you are better I’ll take you home, where the sunshine and flowers will give you strength again.”
“How’s my little sis?”
“Hunting in another part of the city for you. She’s grown so tall and stately you’ll hardly know her. Your papa is at home, and don’t know yet that you are wounded.”
“And my sweetheart, Marion Lenoir?”
“The most beautiful little girl in Piedmont—as sweet and mischievous as ever. Mr. Lenoir is very ill, but he has written a glorious poem about one of your charges. I’ll show it to you to-morrow. He is our greatest poet. The South worships him. Marion sent her love to you and a kiss for the young hero of Piedmont. I’ll give it to you now.”
She bent again and kissed him.
“And my dogs?”
“General Sherman left them, at least.”
“Well, I’m glad of that—my mare all right?”
“Yes, but we had a time to save her—Jake hid her in the woods till the army passed.”
“Bully for Jake.”
“I don’t know what we should have done without him.”
“Old Aleck still at home and getting drunk as usual?”
“No, he ran away with the army and persuaded every negro on the Lenoir place to go, except his wife, Aunt Cindy.”
“The old rascal, when Mrs
. Lenoir’s mother saved him from burning to death when he was a boy!”
“Yes, and he told the Yankees those fire scars were made with the lash, and led a squad to the house one night to burn the barns. Jake headed them off and told on him. The soldiers were so mad they strung him up and thrashed him nearly to death. We haven’t seen him since.”
“Well, I’ll take care of you, Mamma, when I get home. Of course I’ll get well. It’s absurd to die at nineteen. You know I never believed the bullet had been moulded that could hit me. In three years of battle I lived a charmed life and never got a scratch.”
His voice had grown feeble and laboured, and his face flushed. His mother placed her hand on his lips.
“Just one more,” he pleaded feebly. “Did you see the little angel who has been playing and singing for me? You must thank her.”
“Yes, I see her coming now. I must go and tell Margaret, and we will get a pass and come every day.”
She kissed him, and went to meet Elsie.
“And you are the dear girl who has been playing and singing for my boy, a wounded stranger here alone among his foes?”
“Yes, and for all the others, too.”
Mrs. Cameron seized both of her hands and looked at her tenderly.
“You will let me kiss you? I shall always love you.”
She pressed Elsie to her heart. In spite of the girl’s reserve, a sob caught her breath at the touch of the warm lips. Her own mother had died when she was a baby, and a shy, hungry heart, long hidden from the world, leaped in tenderness and pain to meet that embrace.
Elsie walked with her to the door, wondering how the terrible truth of her boy’s doom could be told.
She tried to speak, looked into Mrs. Cameron’s face, radiant with grateful joy, and the words froze on her lips. She decided to walk a little way with her. But the task became all the harder.
At the corner she stopped abruptly and bade her good-bye:
“I must leave you now, Mrs. Cameron. I will call for you in the morning and help you secure the passes to enter the hospital.”
The mother stroked the girl’s hand and held it lingeringly.
“How good you are,” she said softly. “And you have not told me your name?”
Elsie hesitated and said:
“That’s a little secret. They call me Sister Elsie, the Banjo Maid, in the hospitals. My father is a man of distinction. I should be annoyed if my full name were known. I’m Elsie Stoneman. My father is the leader of the House. I live with my aunt.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, pressing her hand.
Elsie watched the dark figure disappear in the crowd with a strange tumult of feeling.
The mention of her father had revived the suspicion that he was the mysterious power threatening the policy of the President and planning a reign of terror for the South. Next to the President, he was the most powerful man in Washington, and the unrelenting foe of Mr. Lincoln, although the leader of his party in Congress, which he ruled with a rod of iron. He was a man of fierce and terrible resentments. And yet, in his personal life, to those he knew, he was generous and considerate. “Old Austin Stoneman, the Great Commoner,” he was called, and his name was one to conjure with in the world of deeds. To this fair girl he was the noblest Roman of them all, her ideal of greatness. He was an indulgent father, and while not demonstrative, loved his children with passionate devotion.
She paused and looked up at the huge marble columns that seemed each a sentinel beckoning her to return within to the cot that held a wounded foe. The twilight had deepened, and the soft light of the rising moon had clothed the solemn majesty of the building with shimmering tenderness and beauty.
“Why should I be distressed for one, an enemy, among these thousands who have fallen?” she asked herself. Every detail of the scene she had passed through with him and his mother stood out in her soul with startling distinctness—and the horror of his doom cut with the deep sense of personal anguish.
“He shall not die,” she said, with sudden resolution. “I’ll take his mother to the President. He can’t resist her. I’ll send for Phil to help me.”
She hurried to the telegraph office and summoned her brother.
* * *
CHAPTER II
The Great Heart
The next morning, when Elsie reached the obscure boarding-house at which Mrs. Cameron stopped, the mother had gone to the market to buy a bunch of roses to place beside her boy’s cot.
As Elsie awaited her return, the practical little Yankee maid thought with a pang of the tenderness and folly of such people. She knew this mother had scarcely enough to eat, but to her bread was of small importance, flowers necessary to life. After all, it was very sweet, this foolishness of these Southern people, and it somehow made her homesick.
“How can I tell her!” she sighed. “And yet I must.”
She had only waited a moment when Mrs. Cameron suddenly entered with her daughter. She threw her flowers on the table, sprang forward to meet Elsie, seized her hands and called to Margaret.
“How good of you to come so soon! This, Margaret, is our dear little friend who has been so good to Ben and to me.”
Margaret took Elsie’s hand and longed to throw her arms around her neck, but something in the quiet dignity of the Northern girl’s manner held her back. She only smiled tenderly through her big dark eyes, and softly said:
“We love you! Ben was my last brother. We were playmates and chums. My heart broke when he ran away to the front. How can we thank you and your brother!”
“I’m sure we’ve done nothing more than you would have done for us,” said Elsie, as Mrs. Cameron left the room.
“Yes, I know, but we can never tell you how grateful we are to you. We feel that you have saved Ben’s life and ours. The war has been one long horror to us since my first brother was killed. But now it’s over, and we have Ben left, and our hearts have been crying for joy all night.”
“I hoped my brother, Captain Phil Stoneman, would be here to-day to meet you and help me, but he can’t reach Washington before Friday.”
“He caught Ben in his arms!” cried Margaret. “I know he’s brave, and you must be proud of him.”
“Doctor Barnes says they are as much alike as twins—only Phil is not quite so tall and has blond hair like mine.”
“You will let me see him and thank him the moment he comes?”
“Hurry, Margaret!” cheerily cried Mrs. Cameron, reëntering the parlour. “Get ready; we must go at once to the hospital.”
Margaret turned and with stately grace hurried from the room. The old dress she wore as unconscious of its shabbiness as though it were a royal robe.
“And now, my dear, what must I do to get the passes?” asked the mother eagerly.
Elsie’s warm amber eyes grew misty for a moment, and the fair skin with its gorgeous rose tints of the North paled. She hesitated, tried to speak, and was silent.
The sensitive soul of the Southern woman read the message of sorrow words had not framed.
“Tell me, quickly! The doctor—has—not—concealed—his—true—condition—from—me?”
“No, he is certain to recover.”
“What then?”
“Worse—he is condemned to death by court-martial.”
“Condemned to death—a—wounded—prisoner—of—war!” she whispered slowly, with blanched face.
“Yes, he was accused of violating the rules of war as a guerilla raider in the invasion of Pennsylvania.”
“Absurd and monstrous! He was on General Jeb Stuart’s staff and could have acted only under his orders. He joined the infantry after Stuart’s death, and rose to be a colonel, though but a boy. There’s some terrible mistake!”
“Unless we can obtain his pardon,” Elsie went on in even, restrained tones, “there is no hope. We must appeal to the President.”
The mother’s lips trembled, and she seemed about to faint.
“Could I see the President?” she as
ked, recovering herself with an effort.
“He has just reached Washington from the front, and is thronged by thousands. It will be difficult.”
The mother’s lips were moving in silent prayer, and her eyes were tightly closed to keep back the tears.
“Can you help me, dear?” she asked piteously.
“Yes,” was the quick response.
“You see,” she went on, “I feel so helpless. I have never been to the White House or seen the President, and I don’t know how to go about seeing him or how to ask him—and—I am afraid of Mr. Lincoln! I have heard so many harsh things said of him.”
“I’ll do my best, Mrs. Cameron. We must go at once to the White House and try to see him.”
The mother lifted the girl’s hand and stroked it gently.
“We will not tell Margaret. Poor child! she could not endure this. When we return, we may have better news. It can’t be worse. I’ll send her on an errand.”
She took up the bouquet of gorgeous roses with a sigh, buried her face in the fresh perfume, as if to gain strength in their beauty and fragrance, and left the room.
In a few moments she had returned and was on her way with Elsie to the White House.
It was a beautiful spring morning, this eleventh day of April, 1865. The glorious sunshine, the shimmering green of the grass, the warm breezes, and the shouts of victory mocked the mother’s anguish.
At the White House gates they passed the blue sentry pacing silently back and forth, who merely glanced at them with keen eyes and said nothing. In the steady beat of his feet the mother could hear the tramp of soldiers leading her boy to the place of death!
A great lump rose in her throat as she caught the first view of the Executive Mansion gleaming white and silent and ghostlike among the budding trees. The tall columns of the great facade, spotless as snow, the spray of the fountain, the marble walls, pure, dazzling, and cold, seemed to her the gateway to some great tomb in which her own dead and the dead of all the people lay! To her the fair white palace, basking there in the sunlight and budding grass, shrub, and tree, was the Judgment House of Fate. She thought of all the weary feet that had climbed its fateful steps in hope to return in despair, of its fierce dramas on which the lives of millions had hung, and her heart grew sick.
The Clansman Page 2