Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession Part 18

"What have you learned?"

"Enough to make me welcome at headquarters. You were right about the battle. There'll be tough work soon. They're fixing for a general advance. If you expect to do your first fighting under the stars and bars, you must swear by them to-night."

"Have you been in Was.h.i.+ngton?"

"Every nook and corner of it. They don't keep their eyes skinned, I fancy, up there. Your fancy colonels have slippery tongues when the champagne corks are flying. If they fight as hard as they drink, they'll give us trouble. Well, what do you calculate to do?" he added, after a pause, during which Philip was moody and lost in thought.

Philip rose from his seat and paced the floor uneasily, while Rawbon filled a gla.s.s from a flask of brandy on the table. It was now quite dark without, and neither of them observed the figure of a woman crouched on the narrow veranda, her chin resting on the sill of the open window. At last Philip resumed his seat, and he, too, swallowed a deep draught from the flask of brandy.

"Tell me what I can count upon?" he asked.

"The same grade you have, and in a crack regiment. It's no use asking for money. They've none to spare for such as you--now don't look savage--I mean they won't buy men that hain't seen service, and you can't expect them to. I told you all about that before, and it's time you had your mind made up."

"What proofs of good faith can you give me?"

Rawbon thrust his hand into his bosom and drew out a roll of parchment.

"This commission, under Gen. Beauregard's hand, to be approved when you report yourself at headquarters."

Philip took the doc.u.ment and read it attentively, while Rawbon occupied himself with filling his pipe from a leathern pouch. The female figure stepped in at the window, and, gliding noiselessly into the room, seated herself in a third chair by the table before either of the men became aware of her presence. They started up with astonishment and consternation. She did not seem to heed them, but leaning upon the table, she stretched her hand to the brandy flask and applied it to her lips.

"Who's this?" demanded Rawbon, with his hand upon the hilt of his large bowie knife.

"Curse her! my evil genius," answered Philip, grating his teeth with anger. It was Moll.

"What's this, Philip!" she said, clutching the parchment which had been dropped upon the table.

"Leave that," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed her husband, savagely, and darting to take it from her.

But she eluded his grasp, and ran with the doc.u.ment into a corner of the room.

"Ha! ha! ha! I know what it is," she said, waving it about as a schoolboy sometimes exultingly exhibits a toy that he has mischievously s.n.a.t.c.hed from a comrade.

"It's your death-warrant, Philip Searle, if somebody sees it over yonder. I heard you. I heard you. You're going over to fight for Jeff.

Davis. Well, I don't care, but I'll go with you. Don't come near me.

Don't hurt me, Philip, or I'll scream to the soldier out there."

"I won't hurt you, Moll. Be quiet now, there's a good girl. Come here and take a sup more of brandy."

"I won't. You want to hurt me. But you can't. I'm a match for you both.

Ha! ha! You don't know how nicely I slipped away from the soldiers when they, were resting. I went into the thick bushes, right down in the water, and lay still. I wanted to laugh when I saw them, hunting for me, and I could almost have touched the young officer if I had wished. But I lay still as a mouse, and they went off and never found me. Ha! ha! ha!"

"Is she drunk or mad?" asked Rawbon.

"Mad," answered Philip, "but cunning enough to do mischief, if she has a mind to. Moll, dear, come sit down here and be quiet; come, now."

"Mad? mad?" murmured Moll, catching his word. "No, I'm not mad," she continued wildly, pa.s.sing her hands over her brows, "but I saw spirits just now in the woods, and heard voices, and they've frightened me. The ghost of the girl that died in the hospital was there. You knew little blue-eyed Lizzie, Philip. She was cursing me when she died and calling for her mother. But I don't care. The man paid me well for getting her, and 'twasn't my fault if she got sick and died. Poor thing! poor thing!

poor little blue-eyed Lizzie! She was innocent enough when she first came, but she got to be as bad as any--until she got sick and died. Poor little Lizzie!" And thus murmuring incoherently, the unhappy woman sat down upon the floor, and bent her head upon her knees.

"Clap that into her mouth," whispered Philip, handing Rawbon his handkerchief rolled tightly into a ball. "Quietly now, but quick. Look out now. She's strong as a trooper."

They approached her without noise, but suddenly, and while Philip grasped her wrists, Rawbon threw back her head, and forcing the jaws open by a violent pressure of his knuckles against the joint, thrust the handkerchief between her teeth and bound it tightly there with two turns of his sash. The shriek was checked upon her lips and changed into a painful, gurgling groan. The poor creature, with convulsive efforts, struggled to free her arms from Philip's grasp, but he managed to keep his hold until Rawbon had secured her wrists with the stout cord that suspended his canteen. A silk neckerchief was then tightly bound around her ankles, and Moll, with heaving breast and glaring eyes, lay, moaning piteously, but speechless and motionless, upon the floor.

"We can leave her there," said Rawbon. "It's not likely any of your men will come in, until morning at least. Let's be off at once."

Philip s.n.a.t.c.hed up the parchment where it had fallen, and silently followed his companion.

"We are going beyond the line to look about a bit," he said to the sergeant on duty, as they pa.s.sed his post. "Keep all still and quiet till we return."

"Take some of the boys with you, captain," replied the sergeant. "We're unpleasant close to those devils, sir."

"It's all right, sergeant. There's no danger," And nodding to Seth, the two walked leisurely along the road until concealed by the darkness, when they quickened their pace and pushed boldly toward the Confederate lines.

Half an hour, or less perhaps, after their departure, the sentry, posted at about a hundred yards from the house, observed an unusual light gleaming from the windows of the old farm-house. He called the attention of Lieutenant Williams, who was walking by in conversation with the sergeant, to the circ.u.mstance.

"Is not the captain there?" asked the lieutenant.

"No, sir," replied the sergeant, "he started off to go beyond the line half an hour ago."

"Alone?"

"No, sir; that chap that came in at dusk was with him."

"It's strange he should have gone without speaking to me about it."

"I wanted him to take some of our fellows along, sir, but he didn't care to. By George! that house is afire, sir. Look there."

While talking, they had been proceeding toward the farm-house, when the light from the windows brightened suddenly into a broad glare, and called forth the sergeant's exclamation. Before they reached the building a jet of flame had leaped from one of the cas.e.m.e.nts, and continued to whirl like a flaming ribbon in the air. They quickened their pace to a run, and bursting into the doorway, were driven back by a dense volume of smoke, that rolled in black ma.s.ses along the corridor.

They went in again, and the sergeant pushed open the door of the room where Moll lay bound, but shut it quickly again, as a tongue of flame lashed itself toward him like an angry snake.

"It's all afire, sir," he said, coughing and spluttering through the smoke. "Are there any of the captain's traps inside?"

"Nothing at all," replied the lieutenant. "Let's go in, however, and see what can be done."

They entered, but were driven back by the baffling smoke and the flames that were now licking all over the dry plastering of the room.

"It's no use," said the lieutenant, when they had gained their breath in the open air. "There's no water, except in the brook down yonder, and what the men have in their canteens. The house is like tinder. Let it go, sergeant; it's not worth saving at the risk of singing your whiskers."

The men had now come up, and gathered about the officer to receive his commands.

"Let the old shed go, my lads," he said. "It's well enough that some rebel should give us a bonfire now and then. Only stand out of the glare, boys, or you may have some of those devils yonder making targets of you."

The men fell back into the shadow, and standing in little groups, or seated upon the sward, watched the burning house, well pleased to have some spectacle to relieve the monotony of the night. And they looked with indolent gratification, pa.s.sing the light jest and the merry word, while the red flames kept up their wild sport, and great ma.s.ses of rolling vapor upheaved from the crackling roof, and blackened the midnight sky. None sought to read the mystery of that conflagration. It was but an old barn gone to ashes a little before its time. Perhaps some mischievous hand among them had applied the torch for a bit of deviltry. Perhaps the flames had caught from Rawbon's pipe, which he had thrown carelessly among a heap of rubbish when startled by Molly's sudden apparition. Or yet, perhaps, though Heaven forbid it, for the sake of human nature, the same hand that had struck so nearly fatally once, had been tempted to complete the work of death in a more terrible form.

But within those blistering walls, who can tell what ghastly revels the mad flames were having over their bound and solitary victim! Perhaps, as she lay there with distended jaws, and eyeb.a.l.l.s starting from their sockets, that brain, amid the visions of its madness, became conscious of the first kindling of the subtle element that was so soon to clasp her in its terrible embrace. How dreadful, while the long minutes dragged, to watch its stealthy progress, and to feel that one little effort of an unbound hand could avert the danger, and yet to lie there helpless, motionless, without even the power to give utterance to the shriek of terror which strained her throat to suffocation. And then, as the creeping flame became stronger and brighter, and took long and silent leaps from one object to another, gliding along the lathed, and papered wall, rolling and curling along the raftered ceiling, would not the wretched woman, raving already in delirium, behold the spectres that her madness feared, beckoning to her in the lurid glare, or gliding in and out among the wild fires that whirled in fantastic gambols around and overhead! Nearer and nearer yet the rolling flame advances; it commences to hiss and murmur in its progress; it wreathes itself about the chairs and tables, and laps up the little pool of brandy spilled from the forgotten flask; it plays about her feet, and creeps lazily amid the folds of her gown, yet wet from the brook in which she had concealed herself that day; it scorches and shrivels up the flesh upon her limbs, while pendent fiery tongues leap from the burning rafters, and kiss her cheeks and brows where the black veins swell almost to bursting; every muscle and nerve of her frame is strained with convulsive efforts to escape, but the cords only sink into the bloating flesh, and she lies there crisping like a log, and as powerless to move. The dense, black smoke hangs over her like a pall, but prostrate as she is, it cannot sink low enough to suffocate and end her agony. How the bared bosom heaves! how the tortured limbs writhe, and the blackening cuticle emits a nauseous steam! The black blood oozing from her nostrils proclaims how terrible the inward struggle. The whole frame bends and shrinks, and warps like a fragment of leather thrown into a furnace--the flame has reached her vitals--at last, by G.o.d's mercy, she is dead.