Chapter 50
"I will, I will," responded Miss ORDETH, lifting first one white shoulder and then the other, as though she would thereby work down her waist more firmly into the belt formed by Mr. BOB PETERS' right arm; "but now, dear BOB, we must think of how you are to be got safely away from this house and out of the city. If my pa should find out that you have been here all this time, when he thought you were running for dear life, he would--I really believe"--said Miss LIBBY ORDETH, with increasing eyes, "that he would actually apply the torch to me without waiting for the Yankees!"
Mr. BOB PETERS shuddered and turned pale, barely saving himself from fainting by clasping his companion more tightly and leaning heavily against her lips.
The infatuated girl did not see the face peering in through the half open door behind her, as she continued:--
"_Quarter-past twelve is the hour_, BOB, though I can't say on what night it shall be, yet. You must be already to start on any night, and in the meantime our meetings are, if possible, to be continued."
"You say that quarter-past twelve is the hour?" observed Mr. PETERS, reflectively, patting the head against his shoulder in a somewhat paternal manner.
"Yes, dear BOB; and I wish I could be sure of pa's going to bed earlier than that; for I know it will be hard for you to go out into the street at that time of night. You are not accustomed to such late hours at home."
And, indeed, he was not; for Mr. BOB PETERS' "hours" at home were apt to be considerably later, especially when he went into morning for some dear friend.
"Sweet innocence!" exclaimed the young man, much affected by this evidence of thoughtfulness in his behalf, "your kindness almost makes me forget the treatment I have experienced at the hands of your being's author."
"I think you can get off next Sunday night," continued LIBBY, "if brother is sergeant of the guard; for he promised to see that you got across the bridge and past the patrol. JOCKO will open the street door for you when you start: and I want you to send me word, if you can, after you get to New-York, what kind of bonnets they're going to wear this summer."
"Dear girl!" murmured BOB, fondly, "I'll find out the style and mention it to one of our Generals, who will let you know by note, as soon as he arrives here."
"Dear BOB!--but I must go now. Is there anything I can send you to make you more comfortable?"
As they stood there facing each other, Mr. BOB PETERS closed his right eye for an instant, and suffered the muscles of his month to relax, thereby expressing some want too deep for words.
"You shall have it," said the young girl, turning to leave the room. At the door she was met by JOCKO, who entered as she pa.s.sed out, for the ostensible purpose of removing the remains of the captive's recent surrept.i.tious breakfast.
The sound of the maiden's light footsteps soon died away in the pa.s.sage, like the vibrations of a high-strung instrument in a pa.s.sage of music, and the two men stood alone together.
There they were--the White and the Black; the one a freeman in all save being deprived of his liberty; the other a slave in all save being unrestricted of his freedom. Who could tell what was working in the mind of each? Who should draw the line between those men, when all was dark for the white and a luckless wight was the black? Who should say that the white man was anything better than the black man, that the latter should bear the bonds of slavery--bonds as hard to bear even as Confederate bonds? Look at inanimate nature. Is it not the _White_ of an egg that bears the yolk? Then why should the white man turn the yoke altogether over to the black man? But I must refuse to follow out this great metaphysical question any further. The weather is too warm. I will leave it to the Awful and Unfathomable German Mind, which delights to toy heavily with the elephants of Thought.
"Mars'r," said JOCKO, handing a folded paper to the fugitive prisoner, "dis was gub to me for you by my chile EFRUM, dat b'longs to Missus ADAMS; and I hope, Mas'r, dat you will read um with fear an' trem'lin, for the Lor' is very good to let you lib in your great sins, Mars'r."
How beautiful, _mon ami_, is that strong spirit of piety we often find developed in the uncultivated, like the rich oyster found on the barren sea-sh.o.r.e. Taken in connection with the children of HAM, it is as mustard to a sandwich, for moving us to occasional tears.
Mr. BOB PETERS waved the faithful black from his presence, and read the note, which ran thus:
"MR. PETERS,--SIR:--Though, as a daughter of the Sonny South, I cannot but regard you as a traitor to our country, the memory of past hours in my soul-life induces me to act toward you as a heart-friend. I have heard, through those faithful beings of which your friends would rob and murder us, that you are a prisoner, and will save you. Contrive to get out of the house in some way on Sunday (to-morrow) evening, at _a quarter of twelve_, and you will find those waiting for you who will deliver you for a time from our vengeance. It is the impulsive heart-throb of a weak woman that bids me do this--not the spirit-aspiration of the Southern daughter.
"EVE ADAMS."
Mr. BOB PETERS lowered the hand holding the note until it rested heavily on his right knee, and gazed before him, as he sat on his couch, with a puzzled expression of countenance. He had been sitting in this way, perfectly motionless, for five minutes perhaps, when the door was
His Mistress had understood that last subtle glance he gave her. With the wonderful insight of man's deeper nature peculiar to girls about eighteen years old, she had divined the one thing required to make the captive comfortable.
Oh, woman, woman! In the language of a revised poet--
"Without the smile from partial beauty won, Ah, what were man!--a world without a son!"
CHAPTER III.--THE WIDOW'S MITE.
The ADAMSES resided in one of the aristocratic by ways crossing Main Street, and were directly descended from those distinguished and chivalric _anciens pauvres_ of the Old Dominion, who boasted the blood of the English cavaliers, and were a terror to their foes and creditors. ADAMS, the husband and father, was a fine specimen of the Southern gentleman in his day, possessing an estate in Louisa County, so completely covered with mortgages that no heir could get to it, and having won great fame by inventing an entirely new and singularly humorous oath for the benefit of a Yankee governess, when that despised hireling presumed to ask for a portion of her last year's salary. He might have lived to a green old age, but for the extraordinary joy he experienced at having negotiated a second mortgage on some property not worth quite half the first, which filled this worthy man with such exceeding great joy, that he drank rather more at a sitting than would start an ordinary hotel-bar, and died soon after of _delirium tremens_, as such n.o.ble and chivalric souls are very apt to do. The family left by the lamented ADAMS, consisting of a wife and one child--a daughter, at once a.s.sumed the most becoming style of mourning, moved in a funeral procession through society for six months, and then resigned themselves to the will of Providence with that beautiful cheerfulness which may either denote a high order of Christianity, or a low order of memory, as the case may be.
At the period of which the present veracious history treats, the bereaved mother and daughter were living in subdued style in the locality designated above. Among their most intimate a.s.sociates were the ORDETHS, between whose family and theirs there existed that pleasing and kindly familiarity which permits the most open recognition of mutual virtues in society and the most searching criticism of individual weaknesses at home. The ADAMSES and ORDETHS met at each other's houses with gushes of endearment that edified all beholders; and if Miss EVE said to her mother on their way home from church that LIBBY ORDETH looked like a perfect fright in that ridiculous new bonnet of hers, it was only because her affectionate heart felt a pang at seeing her bosom-friend appear to less advantage than her own self-sacrificing self.
It is a touching peculiarity of this modern friends.h.i.+p, _mon ami_, that a majority of the errors its fairest votaries detect in each other, are those of the head--not of the heart. EVE ADAMS, whose diminutive size had given occasion to the _mot_ by which she was denominated the "Widow's Mite," was calling at the ORDETHS when Mr. BOB PETERS first came in under a flag of truce from Fortress Monroe, and was witness to the chivalric reception accorded to that gentleman by his relatives, before his pecuniary mission was known. In the exuberance of his nature, Mr. PETERS had kissed her with the rest of the family, and from the moment of receiving that chaste salutation, EVE had selected the Northern stranger as her hero in that ideal novel of spiritual yellow-covers in which all maidens live, and move and have their beings until stern reality bursts upon them in the shape of a husband or a snub.
From thenceforth she was a frequent visitor at the ORDETHS, and laid close siege to the gay ROBERT'S heart with all the languishment deemed necessary in such cases, and a tremendous flirtation was going on before the maiden discovered that the affections of the youth were already given to another. Then came a revulsion of feeling, opening the eyes of the Widow's Mite to the fact that Mr. BOB PETERS was a thieving abolitionist, unworthy the toleration of any true daughter of the South. After this overpowering revelation, it was the first thought of EVE ADAMS to at once inform the festive PETERS of the utter detestation in which she held him, and a favorable opportunity soon offered. At a social gathering at the ORDETH'S, she had withdrawn for a moment to an ante-room, for the purpose of drawing from her bosom an elegant silver snuff-box, dipping therein a small brush, and subsequently applying the same to her pearly teeth, when Mr. BOB PETERS entered unannounced, and agreeably demanded a "pinch." The situation was favorable to an avowal of enmity, and a suitable expression was rising to the lips of the maiden, when the thought of a still keener revenge kept her silent, and she contented herself with a temporary sneer and a majestic exit from the apartment.
It was soon after this incident that Mr. BOB PETERS' presentation to Mr. ORDETH of the bill for furniture which he had been empowered to collect by a New York house, reminded the latter that it was his duty, as a patriot, to sacrifice even his cousin's son for the good of the Confederacy. With the stern self-devotion of an ancient Roman, Mr.
ORDETH not only accused his hapless relative of flagrant Abolitionism, but at once made arrangements with the military authorities for that relative's immediate incarceration as an enemy to the Commonwealth. An enemy to the Commonwealth of Virginia must be indeed an unnatural wretch; for no such wealth is known to be in existence just now, and enmity to the dead is a thing inexcusable. It was a crime of which Mr.
BOB PETERS was incapable; yet would he have suffered for it, had not the devoted LIBBY concealed him in the hour of danger.
Of this concealment, Miss EVE had learned from EFRUM, the son of JOCKO, though she knew not how long it was to be continued.
CHAPTER IV.--"TWO HEARTS THAT BEAT AS ONE."
Several of the Richmond churches were opened that Sunday night, and thither repaired many of the Cottonocracy, devotional children of Bale, to implore Providence in behalf of an army whose heroes have generally appeared, in the eyes of the Federal troops, to be wholly Leave-ites.
The recent intelligence of "another confederate victory," at Williamsburg, had added a finis.h.i.+ng touch to the panic created by reports of the triumphal retreat from Yorktown previously received, and the fervor of Richmond's piety on that evening was eminently worthy of a city liable at any moment to be cannonized. The reverend clergy of the rebel capital selected their texts from Exodus by instinct, as it were, and proved so conclusively that the Yankee invader was no man, that the listening congregations were impressed with an instructive and repentant sense of their own wickedness, (for they are the wicked who invariably flee when "no man" pursueth,) and several members evinced their new-born disgust at this sinful world by resolutely closing their eyes upon it at once.
In his pew sat Mr. VICTOR E. ORDETH, with his wife and son, the latter a member of the Richmond Home Guard. Stiff and erect he sat, like a solemn note of admiration in a printer's case, ready to be used at the end of any sounding pa.s.sages, suffering an expression of weighty approval to cross his countenance when the preacher hoped the same planets might not thereafter be destined to s.h.i.+ne on the North and the South.
And well he might; for there had been something in the late capture of New Orleans and other ports by the Union fleets to impress the Southern mind with no small dread of the North's tar.
LIBBY remained at home under plea of sick-headache; but no sooner were her parents fairly out of the house, than said plea proved to be entirely invalid. At least, the young lady darted to her own private room in a very sprightly manner, brought out from thence a small package, and finally repaired to the apartment wherein Mr. BOB PETERS kept solitary vigils and a bright lookout. Before pa.s.sing in, however, she paused to have a few words with the faithful JOCKO, whom she discovered on his knees before the door of the captive's cell, with his right eye slightly to the left of the k.n.o.b.
"JOCKO!" she exclaimed, reproachfully, "what are you doing here, you ridiculous thing?"
"Miss LIBBY," said the humble servitor, looming dimly in the shadow of the hall as he slowly arose from his feet, "Ise ben prayin' dat you might become a christian, and one ob these days, when de great Hallelugerum come, hab wings and a harp."
Scarcely were these affecting words uttered, when Mr. PETERS tore open the door rather disrespectfully, so greatly discomposing the devoted black that the latter incontinently fled.
"My dear girl," said BOB, leading his fair visitor into the room, "I'm delighted to see you. The shutters are up, the gas is lit, and I'm prepared to do the sentimental. Oh-um-m--Lubin's Extracts!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mr. BOB PETERS. For he had kissed her.
"There, dear ROBERT, don't be so absurd. You know you are going to leave us to-night, and I have brought you--" here LIBBY blushed with that exquisitely ingenuous emotion which is excited by the consciousness of benefiting one we love--"I have brought you some things that may be of use on your journey. You won't be angry with me for it, will you, dear BOB? There's a smoking cap, and a pair of crochet slippers, and some drawing pencils, and a volume of TUPPER."
"My darling LIBBY!" remarked the deeply affected ROBERT, alighting on those tempting lips once more. "But did you think, love--did you think to put a quart of ice-cream and a few hair-pins in the package?"
"Why, no."
"Ah, well," said Mr. BOB PETERS, abstractedly, "I suppose I can buy them on the road."
Silence, disturbed only by the beating of those two hearts, reigned for a few seconds, then--
"BOB," said LIBBY, looking shyly up to him, "we shall be very happy when we are married and live North?"
"Yes, indeed," said BOB.
"We'll live in such a beautiful house on Fifth Avenue, dear, and have such nice things. Because, you know, you can make so much money by your writings."