CHAPTER XVI

THE FLOWER OF CHIVALRY

In the meantime we were growing more and more uneasy about Captain Locke. We felt that he was suspected and covertly watched, but he laughed at our fears.

He and I had begun to discuss ways and means of getting back to Virginia. One day, as usual, he was sitting beside me in the parlor after dinner, and, as usual, we were talking together in low tones, and again, as usual, the parlors were full. At one end of the room sat Major Brooks and Colonel Whipple, honoring us now and then with the covert and curious observation to which I could never become hardened. Captain Hosmer was walking restlessly up and down the floor, and casting uneasy glances toward us. He was too much of a gentleman to catechize me about my friend, but I knew he was not only curious but concerned in regard to my intimacy with Captain Locke.

Captain Locke was saying to me that he was in favor of our taking some schooner going down the bay and landing somewhere in Gloucester County, when I became so painfully conscious that the eyes of the enemy were upon us that I could not attend to what he was saying.

“What is the matter with you?” he asked. “You are not thinking at all of what I am saying. I reckon your mind is on Dan Grey.”

“I am thinking about you,” I said, on the verge of tears. “If you are not more careful, you won’t get back home at all, I’m afraid.”

“Why?” he asked innocently, and as if he were the most prudent person in the world.

“Only what Milicent and I have been telling you all along. You come here openly and boldly in the presence of all these Yankees. You visit us, and we feel responsible for any misfortune that might come to you through it. It is well known now, I think, by everybody in the house that we are Southerners and blockade-runners. No one in the house except ourselves and Mrs. Harris knows who you really are. Don’t you suppose people wonder?”

He had been introduced several times to ladies as Mr. Moore, but we had not introduced him generally. We did not know what to do with him. For ourselves, we felt safe by this time, but I never sat on that sofa by Captain Locke’s side without the fear in my heart that a sergeant-at-arms might walk in and lay hands on his shoulder.

“Don’t you see,” I went on, “how Captain Hosmer is watching you?”

For Hosmer was watching him with a scrutiny which could be felt in spite of all his courteous efforts at concealment. “And can’t you see with what suspicious looks those officers across the room regard you?”

“That’s so. You must introduce me to some of these people.”

I was dumfounded. So this was the result of my caution!

“By which of your names shall I call you?” I asked satirically, but the satire was lost on him.

“The last one. That is a good name. It is nearly as common as Smith. Besides, I really have a right to it. I came by it honestly. I have a friend in New York by that name and he has kindly lent it to me for emergencies. So if anybody wants to write or telegraph to New York about it, they will find me all right. My cousin in New York--who really _is_ my cousin many degrees removed--will acknowledge me. He is well known in business circles there.”

“Whom shall I introduce you to?”

“I would rather meet those officers.”

“Good gracious!”

He smiled. “They can give me more, and more accurate, information than anybody else, and of just the kind I want.”

“You are going to get yourself shot before you start home. I won’t be responsible for you.”

“They don’t shoot spies--they hang ’em,” he said cheerfully.

I believe his cheerful ease carried us safely through this conversation under the eyes of the enemy, as it had done before.

“Those gentlemen would hardly think me entitled to the courtesy of a bullet,” he went on with the utmost _sang-froid_. “A rope is more in accordance with my expectations if I am caught. But I do not expect to be caught. Really, little madam, the frank and open plan is the best. If I were to visit you clandestinely it would create more suspicion. Don’t you see the fact that you haven’t presented me to those gentlemen is in itself suspicious? Call those officers up and do the honors.”

“I will call Captain Hosmer,” I said faintly. “I really haven’t the nerve to summon the other two.--Captain Hosmer!” I called.

He came instantly, and I saw that he was glad to be called.

“Captain Hosmer, let me introduce you to my friend, Mr. Moore.”

“Mr. Moore” rose, and the two gentlemen bowed and shook hands with each other. Then they sat down, the Federal captain on one side of me, the rebel captain on the other, and we had a pleasant chat. Captain Hosmer asked “Mr. Moore” if he was related to Henry P. Moore, of New York, and “Mr. Moore” replied in the affirmative. Captain Hosmer knew this gentleman very well. Captain Locke was introduced to Major Brooks and Colonel Whipple, and it ended by Captain Locke and Schenck’s adjutant walking down the street together. Captain Hosmer and I watched them from the window as they strolled past, smoking their cigars.

“Your friend is a very handsome man,” he said.

“You think so? Dan is ever so much handsomer.”

“No doubt of it,” he laughed.

The next day I said to Captain Locke: “You--you wouldn’t have to use information received from these gentlemen in any way that might ever hurt them, would you? We wouldn’t have to do that, would we?”

“Dear little madam, it is not probable that they will honor me with too much confidence. No hurt could ever come to one who is kind to you through me. My first duty is to the South; so is yours. But honor between man and man is honor, and friendship is friendship, even in war times. In my life it has sometimes been very hard to know the line.”

And there rested on his face at this moment the nearest thing to a shadow that I had ever seen there.

“I don’t want you to think I have been reckless of your safety in coming here to see you. I am quite sure of my ground. You are not involved in any of my operations. And if anything _were_ to happen, I have friends here who could extricate you even if they could not save me. The principal thing I wish to find out, now, from your Federal friends here is how you may get back to Virginia safely--since you will go. If I find out that my attendance on you will be to your disadvantage, little madam, we must give that up.”

It was I who had shown most anxiety that we should go together. While we were talking Captain Hosmer came in, and I made room for him on the other side of me. The two men greeted each other cordially. They had taken a liking to each other, and the rebel captain said to the other:

“My friend here has just been consulting me as to the route she had best take in getting home. I suggested that you might advise her to better purpose.”

“I deplore Miss Duncan’s determination to go,” said Captain Hosmer. “Almost any route is unsafe just now--if possible. However, I will be glad to do anything I can. Have you any plan under consideration?”

“Wait a minute, captain,” I said, rising. “I will go and get a little map I have, and show you the route which Mr. Moore advised me to take.”

I went out, leaving the two officers together. When I returned I resumed my seat between them, spread the map open upon my lap, and they bent over it, Federal and Confederate heads touching, while I traced the route with my finger.

“You see, Mr. Moore thinks I might go down the bay in a schooner and land somewhere here in Gloucester County.”

“No! no! you mustn’t go that way!” exclaimed Captain Hosmer quickly. “You are sure to be taken up if you try that. With all due deference to you, Mr. Moore, my knowledge of the position of our forces convinces me that that is impossible.”

“Of course, as an officer in the army, you must be better informed than I am,” Captain Locke said simply. “That is why I advised Miss Duncan to consult you.”

“Your best plan is to go by Harper’s Ferry. It is a difficult matter to get through anywhere now, but if you get to Virginia at all I think it must be by way of Harper’s Ferry.”

Major Brooks and Colonel Whipple joined us, and the matter ended as on the previous day, by Captain Locke and Colonel Whipple walking off down the street together.

“Moore is a splendid fellow,” Captain Hosmer said to me, when we had the sofa to ourselves. “I am glad you introduced us. Your not doing so looked suspicious, and I was troubled for fear he would get you into some scrape or other.”

Dear, generous fellow, how I hated to deceive him, and how it was on the tip of my tongue to tell him who Captain Locke was, until I remembered what his duty would be if I told him! And Captain Locke’s secret was mine to keep. He had been ready to risk his life rather than leave me alone at Berlin! Then, too, poor fellow, he had such a slender chance, I thought, of getting home alive that not even an enemy would care to make it worse. I used to look at his bonnie white throat and shudder.

“God bless you,” he said to me once, “for all your goodness to a poor, lonely, stray fellow! You shouldn’t be afraid for me. You say your ‘Hail Marys’ for me, you know.”

I had been telling him I was afraid for him, and he had, as usual, tried to reassure me and to laugh me out of it. He was never afraid for himself--I believe he would have stood up to be shot with a laugh on his lips. I wonder if he _was_ laughing when they shot him--my dear, brave friend!

In the meantime we had heard that Mr. Holliway had been arrested in West Virginia, was lying in prison somewhere, and that his friends were trying to get him out, and before I left Baltimore we heard that he had died in prison just as an exchange had been arranged.

My return to Virginia was the subject of daily discussions between me and my two captains, and in this way Captain Locke continued to find out ways that he must not go, and eventually that we must not go together. It was he who first said it.

“I should be no earthly good, but a disadvantage to you, little madam. Hosmer is going to see you through this thing all right.”

Then, seeing my downcast look, he went on cheerily: “I’ll get through somehow all right, sooner or later, and we’ll meet in Old Virginia. Don’t bother your dear little head about me.”

Captain Hosmer tried in vain to dissuade me from going. He felt that the journey under present conditions would be uncomfortable and unsafe, and that it was in every way advisable for me to stay where I was. But I was beginning to be very uneasy about Dan. I had heard from him only once since reaching Baltimore. Then his letters came in a batch, and I received them through the kindly agency of Mr. Cridland, British consul at Richmond, who had been my father’s personal friend and frequent guest, and who had dandled a small person named “Nell” on his knee many times. Captain Hosmer still insisted that I must go by Harper’s Ferry if I went at all, and he said that a pass was necessary.

“How on earth am I to get it?” I asked.

“I must arrange that for you,” he said.

I think one reason that Captain Hosmer was so good to me was because his wife was a Southern woman. Her parents were Southern, her brothers were in the Southern army, and her husband was a Federal officer. They loved each other, but somehow they were separated, she living South with her parents. Under the pressure of the times there was a sectional conscience, and people did things which they did not wish to do, because they thought it was right. I don’t know what I should have done then if I had been situated as Mrs. Hosmer was, but I know that at the present time I should stick to Dan, no matter what flag he fought under. Perhaps we are not as great or good in peace as in war times.

The captain had a beautiful country-seat several miles out of town. We had heard much of this place and its old-time hospitalities; and we also heard that it had been virtually closed since Captain Hosmer’s separation from his wife. The captain went there frequently alone, and occasionally with a few friends, but the place had known no festivity since its mistress had gone away on that visit from which, by the way, she returned before we left Baltimore.

But before she came back there was a stag party at the captain’s country place, given in honor of General Fish, the provost marshal at Baltimore, and other prominent officers.

The next time I saw Captain Hosmer he had a smile for me.

“You will get your passes,” he said. “I have spoken to General Fish for them.”

Milicent had decided that she could not risk little Bobby on such a journey and at this season, but mother was to go with me. The day before we were to start she and I went down to General Fish’s office. He was out, but an orderly told us rather rudely to sit down and wait, which invitation or command we humbly acted upon. Presently General Fish entered. We stated our case.

“We are Southerners, general, and we wish to go south by way of Harper’s Ferry.”

“Mrs. and Miss Duncan, I think you said?”

“Yes, general.”

“You are the ladies I heard of from Captain Hosmer, then?”

We gave him a note from Captain Hosmer.

“Excuse me, ladies, while I read this, and I will see what I can do for you.”

He finished the note and then said:

“That’s all right. I will make out your passes, ladies,” and in a few minutes the important papers were in our hands.

“These will take you to General Kelly at Harper’s Ferry. There my power ends. You will find General Kelly courteous and considerate, though I make no promises for him, understand. I will furnish you an escort to Harper’s Ferry, and an officer will be sent to your boarding-house this afternoon to examine your baggage. Your address, please.” He wrote a few words rapidly, and called the orderly:

“Take that order,” he said.

The orderly saluted and got as far as the door, then he turned.

“Do these women go?” he asked of the general.

“These _ladies_ go. Obey my order, sir!”

Upon which the orderly went quickly about his business.

When the officer came to examine our baggage I was on thorns. I had come north intending to make certain purchases, and I had made them, and the fruit of my money and labors was in those two trunks of mother’s and mine. Mother’s trunk was quite a large one, and both of those honest-looking trunks to which I yielded the keys so freely were crammed with dishonest goods--that is, dishonest according to blockade law. I had paid good gold for them, and anxiety enough, Heaven knows, for them to be properly mine.

I had shoes in the bottom of those trunks, and on top of the shoes cloth made into the semblance of female wear and underwear; and, lastly, I had put in genuine every-day garments. There were handkerchiefs, pins, needles, gloves, thread, and all sorts of odds and ends between the folds of garments, here, there, and everywhere in those trunks. They were as contraband trunks as ever crossed into Dixie. But, again, my Yankee was a _gentleman_.

“This is an unpleasant duty, miss,” he said when I handed him my keys, “but I will disarrange your property as little as possible. It is only a form.”

The orderly lifted the trays and set them back again, scarcely glancing underneath. What a dear, nice Yankee, I thought! He locked the trunks and sealed them.

“Will those seals be broken anywhere, and my trunks examined again?” I asked in some trepidation--this examination was so satisfactory to me that I wanted it to do for one and all.

“I can not tell, miss. They may be at Harper’s Ferry. But I hardly think so. I think this seal will carry you through.”