Part 20

Silence fell over us in that wretched outshed where we were huddled together. I was hot with incipient fever, and growing light-headed enough, though I knew what passed before me, to speak to Dash once or twice in a dreamy idea that we were in the Shires watching the run-in for the "Soldiers' Blue Riband." The minutes dragged very drearily as the day wore itself away. There were the sullen monotonous tramp of the sentinels to and fro, and, from without, the neighing of horses, the bugle calls, the roll of the drums, the challenge of outposts--all the varied, endless sounds of a camp; for the farmhouse in whose shed we were thrown was the head-quarters _pro tem_. of the Federal General who commanded the Divisions that had cost the Killer's handful of Horse so fearfully dear. We were prisoners, and escape was impossible. All arms of course had been removed from us; most, like myself, were too disabled by wounds to have been able to avail ourselves of escape had it been possible; and the guard was doubled both in and out the shed; there was nothing before any of us but the certainty of imprisonment in all its horrors in some far-off fortress or obscure jail. There was the possible chance that, since certain officers on whom the Northerners set great store had lately fallen into Southern hands, an exchange might be effected; yet, on the other side, graver apprehensions still existed, since we knew that the General into whose camp we had been brought had proclaimed his deliberate purpose of shooting the three next Secessionist officers who fell into his power, in requital for three of his own officers who had been shot, or were said to have been shot, by a Southern raider. We knew very well that, the threat made, it would be executed; and each of us, as the sun sank gradually down through the hot skies that were purple and stormy after the burning day, knew, too, that it might never rise again to greet our sight. None of us would have heeded whether a ball would hit or miss us in the open, in a fair fight, in a man-to-man struggle; but the boldest and most careless amidst us felt it very bitter to die like dogs, to die as prisoners.

Even Deadly Dash, coolest, most hardened, most devil-may-care of soldiers and of sinners, sat with his gaze fastened on the slowly sinking light in the west with the shadow of a great pain upon his face, while every now and then his glance wandered to Stuart Lane, and a quick, irrepressible shudder shook him whenever it did so. The Virginian never moved; no sign of any sort escaped him; but the passionate misery that looked out of his eyes I never saw equalled, except, perhaps, in the eyes of a stag that I once shot in Wallachia, and that looked up with just such a look before it died. He was thinking, no doubt, of the woman he loved--wooed amidst danger, won amidst calamity, scarcely possessed ere lost for ever;--thinking of her proud beauty, of her bridal caress, that would never again touch his lips, of her fair life that would perish with the destruction of his.

Exhaustion from the loss of blood made everything pass dreamily, and yet with extraordinary clearness, before me, I felt in a wakening dream, and had no sense whatever of actual existence, and yet the whole scene was so intensely vital and vivid to me, that it seemed burned into my very brain itself. It was like the phantasmagoria of delirium, utterly impalpable, but yet intensely real. I had no power to act or resist, but I seemed to have ten times redoubled power to see and hear and feel; I was aware of all that passed, with a hundredfold more susceptibility to it than I ever felt in health. I remember a total impossibility that came on me to decide whether I was dreaming or was actually awake. Twilight fell, night came; there was a change of sentries, and a light, set up in a bottle, shed a flickering, feeble, yellow gleam over the interior of the shed, on the dark Rembrandt faces of the Southerners and on the steel of the guards' bayonets. And I recollect that the Killer, who sat by the tossed straw on which they had flung me, laughed the old, low, sweet, half-insolent laugh that I had known so well in early days. "_Il faut souffrir pour etre beau!_ We are picturesque, at any rate, quite Salvatoresque! Little Dickey would make a good thing of us if he could paint us now. He is alive, I suppose?"

I answered him I believe in the affirmative; but the name of that little Bohemian of the Brush, who had used to be our butt and _protege_ in England, added a haze the more to my senses. By this time I had difficulty to hold together the thread of how, and when, and why I had thus met again the face that looked out on me so strangely familiarly in the dull, sickly trembling of the feeble light of this black, noisome shed in the heart of Federal Divisions.

Through that haze I heard the challenge of the sentries; I saw a soldier prod with his bayonet a young lad who had fainted from haemorrhage, and whom he swore at for shamming. I was conscious of the entrance of a group of officers, whom I knew afterwards to be the Northern General and his staff, who came to look at their captives. I knew, but only dreamily still, that these men were the holders of our fate, and would decide on it then and there. I felt a listless indifference, utter and opium-like, as to what became of me, and I remember that Stuart Lane, and Dash himself, rose together, and stood looking with a serene and haughty disdain down on the conquerors who held their lives in the balance--without a trace of pain upon their faces now. I remember how like they looked to stags that turn at bay; like the stags, outnumbered, hunted down, with the blood of open wounds and the dust of the long chase on them; but, like the deer, too, uncowed, and game to the finish.

Very soon their doom was given. Seven were to be sent back with a flag of truce to be exchanged for the seven Federal officers they wanted out of the Southerners' hands, ten were to be transmitted to the prisons of the North,--three were to be shot at day-dawn in the reprisal before named. The chances of life and of death were to be drawn for by lottery, and at once.

Not a sound escaped the Virginians, and not a muscle of their English Leader's face moved: the prisoners, to a man, heard impassively, with a grave and silent dignity, that they were to throw the die in hazard, with death for the croupier and life for the stake.

The General and his staff waited to amuse themselves with personally watching the turns of this new _Rouge et Noir_; gambling in lives was a little refreshing change that sultry, dreary, dun-colored night, camped amongst burnt-out farms and wasted corn-lands.

Slips of paper, with "exchange," "death," and "imprisonment" written on them in the numbers needed, were made ready, rolled up, and tossed into an empty canteen; each man was required to come forward and draw, I alone excepted because I was an officer of the British Army. I remember passionately arguing that they had no right to exempt me, since I had been in the fray, and had killed three men on my own hook, and would have killed thirty more had I had the chance; but I was perhaps incoherent in the fever that was fast seizing all my limbs from the rack of undressed wounds; at any rate, the Northerners took no heed, save to force me into silence, and the drawing began. As long as I live I shall see that night in remembrance with hideous distinctness: the low blackened shed with its foetid odors from the cattle lately foddered there; the yellow light flaring dully here and there; the glisten of the cruel rifles; the heaps of straw and hay soaked with clotted blood; the group of Union Officers standing near the doorway; and the war-worn indomitable faces of the Southerners, with the fairer head and slighter form of their English chief standing out slightly in front of all.

The Conscription of Death commenced; a Federal private took the paper from each man as he drew it, and read the word of destiny aloud. Not one amongst them faltered or paused one moment; each went,--even those most exhausted, most in agony,--with a calm and steady step, as they would have marched up to take the Flag of the Stars and Bars from Lee or Longstreet. Not one waited a second's breath before he plunged his hand into the fatal lottery.

Deadly Dash was the first called: there was not one shadow of anxiety upon his face; it was calm without effort, careless without bravado, simply, entirely indifferent. They took his paper and read the words of safety and of life--"Exchange." Then, for one instant, a glory of hope flashed like the sun into his eyes--to die the next; die utterly.

Three followed him, and they all drew the fiat for detention; the fifth called was Stuart Lane.

Let him have suffered as he would, he gave no sign of it now; he approached with his firm, bold cavalry step, and his head haughtily lifted; the proud, fiery, dauntless Cavalier of ideal and of romance. Without a tremor in his wrist he drew his paper out and gave it.

One word alone fell distinct on the silence like the hiss of a shot through the night--"_Death!_"

He bowed his head slightly as if in assent, and stepped backward--still without a sign.

His English chief gave him one look,--it was that of merciless exultation, of brutal joy, of dark, Cain-like, murderous hate; but it passed, passed quickly: Dash's head sank on his chest, and on his face there was the shadow, I think, of a terrible struggle--the shadow, I know, of a great remorse. He strove with his longing greed for this man's destruction; he knew that he thirsted _to see him die_.

The Virginian stood erect and silent: a single night and the strong and gallant life, the ardent passions, the chivalrous courage to do and dare, and the love that was in its first fond hours would all be quenched in him as though they had never been; but he was a soldier, and he gave no sign that his death-warrant was not as dear to him as his bridal-night had been. Even his conquerors cast one glance of admiration on him; it was only his leader who felt for him no pang of reverence and pity.

The lottery continued; the hazard was played out; life and death were scattered at reckless chance amidst the twenty who were the playthings of that awful gaming; all had been done in perfect silence on the part of the condemned; not one seemed to think or to feel for himself, and in those who were sent out to their grave not a grudge lingered against their comrades of happier fortune. Deadly Dash, whose fate was release, alone stood with his head sunk, thoughtful and weary.

The three condemned to execution were remanded to separate and solitary confinement, treated already as felons for that one short night which alone remained to them. As his guards removed him, Stuart Lane paused slightly, and signed to his chief to approach him; he held out his hand to Dash, and his voice was very low, though it came to my ear where they stood beside me: "We were rivals once, but we may be friends _now_. As you have loved her, be pitiful to her when you tell her of my death,--God knows it may be hers! As you have loved her, feel what it is to die without one last look on her face!"

Then, and then only, his bronze cheek grew white as a woman's, and his whole frame shook with one great silent sob; his guard forced him on, and his listener had made him no promise, no farewell; neither had he taken his hand. He had heard in silence, with a dark and evil gloom alone upon him.

The Federal General sharply summoned him from his musing, as the chief of those to be exchanged on the morrow under a white flag of parley; there were matters to be stated to and to be arranged with him.

"I will only see you alone, General," he answered curtly.

The Northerner stared startled, and casting a glance over the redoubtable leader of horse, whose gray feather had become known and dreaded, thought of possible assassination. Deadly Dash laughed his old light, ironic, contemptuous laugh.

"A wounded unarmed man can scarcely kill you! Have as many of your staff about you as you please, but let none of my Virginians be present at our interview."

The Northerners thought he intended to desert to them, or betray some movement of importance, and assented; and he went out with them from the cattle-shed into the hot, stormy night, and the Southerners who were condemned to death and detention looked after him with a long, wistful, dog-like look. They had been with him in so many spirit-stirring days and nights of peril, and they knew that never would they meet again. He had not given one of them a word of adieu; he had killed too many to be touched by his soldiers' loss. Who could expect pity from Deadly Dash?

An hour passed; I was removed under a guard to a somewhat better lodging in the granary, where a surgeon hastily dressed my wounds, and left me on a rough pallet with a jug of water at my side, and the sentinel for my only watcher, bidding me "sleep." Sleep! I could not have slept for my ransom. Though life had hardened me, and made me sometimes, as I fear, callous enough, I could not forget those who were to die when the sun rose; specially, I could not forget that gallant Virginian to whom life was so precious, yet who gave himself with so calm a fortitude to his fate. The rivalry, I thought, must be deep and cruel, to make the man from whom he had won what they both loved turn from him in hatred, even in such extremity as his. On the brink of a comrade's grave, feud might surely have been forgotten?

All that had just passed was reeling deliriously through my brain, and I was panting in the sheer irritation and exhaustion of gunshot wounds, when through the gloom Dash entered the granary, closely guarded, but allowed to be with me on account of our common country. Never was I more thankful to see a familiar face from home than to see his through the long watches of that burning, heavy, interminable night. He refused to rest; he sat by me, tending me as gently as a woman, though he was suffering acutely himself from the injuries received in the course of the day; he watched me unweariedly, though often and often his gaze and his thoughts wandered far from me, as he looked out through the open granary door, past the form of the sentinel, out to the starry solemn skies, the deep woods, and the dark silent land over which the stars were brooding, large and clear.

Was he thinking of the Virginian whose life would die out for ever, with the fading of those stars, or of the woman whom he had lost, whose love was the doomed soldier's, and would never be his own, though the grave closed over his rival with the morrow's sun? Dreamily, half unconsciously, in the excitement of fever, I asked him of her of whom I knew nothing:

"Did you love that woman so well?"

His eyes were still fixed on the distant darkening skies, and he answered quietly, as though rather to his own thoughts than my words,--"Yes: I love her--as I never loved in that old life in England; as we never love but once, I think."

"And she?"

"And she--has but one thought in the world--_him_."

His voice, as he answered, now grated with dull, dragging misery over the words.

"Had she so much beauty that she touched you like this?"

He smiled slightly, a faint, mournful smile, unutterably sad.

"Yes; she is very lovely, but her beauty is the least rare charm. She is a woman for whom a man would live his greatest, and if he cannot live for her--may--die."

The utterance was very slow, and seemed to lie on me like a hand on my lips compelling me to silence; he had forgotten all, except his memory of her, and where he sat with his eyes fixed outward on the drifting clouds that floated across the stars, I saw his lips quiver once, and I heard him murmur half aloud: "My darling! My darling! You will know how I loved you _then_----"

And the silence was never broken between us, but he sat motionless thus all the hours through, looking out at the deep still woods, and the serene and lustrous skies, till the first beams of the sun shone over the hills in the east, and I shuddered, where I lay, at its light;--for I knew it was the signal of death.

Then he arose, and bent towards me, and the kindly eyes of old looked down on mine.

"Dear old fellow, the General expects me at dawn. I must leave you just now; say good-bye."

His hand closed on mine, he looked on me one moment longer, a little lingeringly, a little wistfully, then he turned and went out with his guard; went out into the young day that was just breaking on the world.

I watched his shadow as it faded, and I saw that the sun had risen wholly; and I thought of those who were to die with the morning light.

All was very calm for a while; then the beat of a drum rolled through the quiet of the dawn, and the measured tramp of armed men sounded audibly; my heart stood still, my lips felt parched,--I knew the errand of that column marching so slowly across the parched turf. A little while longer yet, and I heard the sharp ring of the ramrods being withdrawn, and the dull echo of the charge being rammed down: with a single leap, as though the bullets were through me, I sprang, weak as I was, from my wretched pallet, and staggered to the open doorway, leaning there against the entrance powerless and spell-bound. I saw the file of soldiers loading; I saw the empty coffin-shells; I saw three men standing bound, their forms distinct against the clear, bright haze of morning, and the fresh foliage of the woods. Two of them were Virginians, but the third was not Stuart Lane With a great cry I sprang forward, but the guards seized my arms and held me, helpless as a woman, in their gripe. He whom we had called Deadly Dash heard, and looked up and smiled. His face was tranquil and full of light, as though the pure peace of the day shone there.

The gripe of the sentinels held me as if in fetters of iron; the world seemed to rock and reel under me, a sea of blood seemed eddying before my eyes; the young day was dawning, and murder was done in its early hours, and I was held there to look on,--its witness, yet powerless to arrest it! I heard the formula--so hideous then!--"Make ready!"--"Present!"--"Fire!" I saw the long line of steel tubes belch out their smoke and flame. I heard the sullen echo of the report roll down from the mountains above. When the mist cleared away, the three figures stood no longer clear against the sunlight; they had fallen.

With the mad violence of desperation I wrenched myself from my guards, and staggered to him where he lay; he was not quite dead yet; the balls had passed through his lungs, but he breathed still; his eyes were unclosed, and the gleam of a last farewell came in them. He smiled slightly, faintly once more.

"She will know how I loved her now. Tell her I died for her," he said softly, while his gaze looked upwards to the golden sun-rays rising in the east.

And with these words life passed away, the smile still lingering gently on his lips;--and I knew no more, for I fell like a man stunned down by him where he was stretched beside the grave that they had hewn for him ere he was yet dead.

* * * * *

I knew when I saw him there, as well as I knew by detail long after, that he had offered his life for Stuart Lane's, and that it had been accepted; the Virginian, ignorant of the sacrifice made for him, had been sent to the Southern lines during the night, told by the Northerners that he was pardoned on his parole to return in his stead a distinguished Federal officer lately captured by him. He knew nothing, dreamt nothing, of the exchange by which his life was given back to the woman who loved him, when his English Leader died in his place as the sun rose over the fresh summer world, never again to rise for those whose death-shot rang sullen and shrill through its silence.

So Deadly Dash died, and his grave is nameless and unknown there under the shadow of the great Virginian forests. He was outlawed, condemned, exiled, and the world would see no good in him; sins were on him heavily, and vices lay darkly at his door; but when I think of that grave in the South where the grass grows so rankly now, and only the wild deer pauses, I doubt if there was not that in him which may well shame the best amongst us. We never knew him justly till he perished there.

* * * * *

And my friend who told me this said no more, but took up his _brule-gueule_ regretfully. The story is given as he gave it, and the States could whisper from the depths of their silent woods many tales of sacrifice as generous, of fortitude as great. That when he had related it he was something ashamed of having felt it so much, is true; and you must refer the unusual weakness, as he did, to the fact that he told it on the off-day of the Derby, after having put a cracker on Wild Charley. A sufficient apology for any number of frailties!

THE GENERAL'S MATCH-MAKING.

OR,

COACHES AND COUSINSHIP.

Where the devil shall I go this Long? Paris is too hot; the inside of my adorable Chateau des Fleurs would give one a lively idea of the feelings of eels in a frying-pan. Rome's only fit to melt down puffy cardinals, as jocks set themselves before the kitchen fire preparatory to the Spring Meetings. In Switzerland there's nothing fit to eat. Spain might be the ticket--the Andalusians are a good-looking lot, but they haven't a notion of beer. Scotland I daren't enter, because I know I should get married under their rascally laws. I'd go to the Bads, but the V. P.'s fillies say they mean to do 'em this summer, and I won't risk meeting them if I know it; the baits they set to catch the unsuspecting are quite frightful. Where the devil _shall_ I go?

So spoke Sydenham Morton, whilom Captain of Eton, now, in due course, having passed up to Kings, discussing ham-pie and audit, devils and coffee, while the June sun streamed through the large oriel windows.

"_To_ the devil, I fear, if you only find your proper fraternity," said a man, coming in. Oak was never sported by Sydie, except when he was rattling certain little squares of ivory in boxes lined with green felt.

"Ah, Mr. Keane, is that you? Come in."

The permission was needless, insomuch as Keane was already in and down on a rocking-chair.

"One o'clock, and only just begun your breakfast! I have finished more than half my day's work."

"I dare say," answered Sydie; "but one shining light like you, monseigneur, is enough for a college. Why should I exert myself? I swore I hadn't four marks a year, and I've my fellowship for telling the furbelow. We all go in for the dolce here except you, and you're such a patent machine for turning out Q. E. D.s by the dozen, that you can no more help working than the bed-maker can help taking my tea and saying the cat did it, and 'May she never be forgiven if she ever so much as looked at that there blessed lock.' I say, find a Q. E. D. for me, to the most vexatious problem, where I'm to go this Long?"

"Go a quiet reading tour; mark out a regular plan, and travel somewhere rugged and lonely, with not a crinoline, or a trout-stream, or a pack of hounds within a hundred miles; the middle of Stonehenge, for example, or with the lighthouse men out at the Smalls or Eddystone. You'd do wonders when you came back, Sydie."

Sydie shook his head and puffed gravely at his pipe.