Chapter 22

BENEATH THE SKIN

John Vaughan saw the blow fall on McClellan's magnificent headquarters in deep amazement. The idol of the army was ordered to turn over his command to General Burnside and the impossible had happened.

Instead of the brilliant _coup d'état_ which he and the entire staff had predicted, the fallen leader obeyed and took an affectionate leave of his men.

McClellan knew, what his staff could not understand, that for the moment the President was master of the situation. He still held the unbounded confidence of his officers, but the rank and file of his soldiers had become his wondering critics. They believed they had crushed Lee's army at Antietam and yet they lay idle until the skillful Southern Commander had crossed the Potomac, made good his retreat, and once more insulted them by riding around their entire lines. The volunteer American soldier was a good fighter and a good critic of the men who led him. He had his own ideas about how an army should be fought and maneuvered. As the idol of fighting men, McClellan had ceased to threaten the supremacy of the civil law. There was no attempt at the long looked for _coup d'état_. It was too late. No one knew this more clearly than McClellan himself.

But his fall was the bitterness of death to the staff who adored him and the generals who believed in him. Burnside, knowing the condition of practical anarchy he must face, declined the command. The President forced him to accept. He took it reluctantly with grim forebodings of failure.

John received his long leave of absence from his Chief and left for Washington the night before the formal farewell. His rage against the bungler who ruled the Nation with autocratic power was fierce and implacable.

His resentment against the woman he loved was scarcely less bitter. It was her triumph, too. She believed in the divine inspiration of the man who sat in the chair of Washington and Jefferson. Great God, could madness reach sublimer folly! She had written him a letter of good wishes and all but asked for a reconciliation before the battle. Love had fought with pride through a night and pride had won. He hadn't answered the letter.

He avoided his newspaper friends and plunged into a round of dissipation. Beneath the grim tragedy of blood in Washington flowed the ever widening and deepening torrent of sensual revelry--of wine and women, song and dance, gambling and intrigue.

The flash of something cruel in his eye which Betty Winter had seen and feared from the first burned now with a steady blaze. For six days and nights he played in Joe Hall's place a desperate game, drinking, drinking always, and winning. Hour after hour he sat at the roulette table, his chin sunk on his breast, his reddened eyes gleaming beneath his heavy black brows, silent, surly, unapproachable.

A reporter from the _Republican_ recognized him and extended his hand:

"Hello, Vaughan!"

John stared at him coldly and resumed his play without a word. At the end of six days he had won more than two thousand dollars from the house, put it in his pocket, and, deaf to the blandishments of smooth, gentlemanly proprietor, pushed his way out into the Avenue.

It was but four o'clock in the afternoon and he was only half drunk. He wandered aimlessly down the street and crossed in the direction of hell's half-acre below the Baltimore depot. His uniform was wrinkled, his boots had not been blacked for a week, his linen was dirty, his hair rumpled, his handsome black moustache stained with drink, but he was hilariously conscious that he had two thousand dollars of Joe Hall's ill-gotten money in his pocket. There was a devil-may-care swing to his walk and a look in his eye that no decent woman would care to see twice.

He ran squarely into Betty Winter in the crowd emerging from the depot. The little bag she was carrying fell from her hands, with a cry of startled anguish:

"John--my God!"

He made no effort to pick up the fallen bag or in any way return the greeting. He merely paused and stared--deliberately stood and stared as if stupefied by the apparition. In fact, he was so startled by her sudden appearance that for a moment he felt the terror of a drunkard's first hallucination. The thought was momentary. He knew better. He was not drunk. The girl was there all right--the real thing--living, beautiful flesh and blood. For one second's anguish the love of her strangled him. The desire to take her in his arms was all but resistless in its fierce madness. He bit his lips and scowled in her face.

"John--John--dearest," she gasped.

The scowl darkened and he spoke with insulting deliberation: "You have made a mistake. I haven't the honor of your acquaintance."

Before Betty could recover from the horror of his answer he had brushed rudely past her and disappeared in the crowd. She picked up her bag in a stupor of dumb rage and started home. She was too weak for the walk she had hoped to take. She called a hack and scarcely had the strength to climb into the high, old-fashioned seat.

Never in all her life had blind anger so possessed her soul and body. In a moment of tenderness she had offered to forgive and forget. It was all over now. The brute was not worth a tear of regret. She would show him!

Two weeks later John Vaughan stared into the ebony face of a negro who had attached himself to his fortune somewhere in the revelry of the night before. Washington was swarming with these foolish black children who had come in thousands. They had no money and it had not occurred to them that they would need any. Their food and clothes had always been provided and they took no thought for the morrow.

John had forgotten the fact that he had taken the negro in his hack for two hours and finally adopted him as his own.

He sat up, pressed his hand over his aching head and stared into the grinning face:

"And what are you doing here, you imp of the devil?"

Julius laughed and rolled his eyes:

"I'se yo' man. Don't you min' takin' me up in de hack wid you las' night?"

"What's your name?"

"Julius Cæsar, sah."

"Then it's all right! You're the man I'm looking for. You're the man this country's looking for. You're a born fighter----"

"Na, sah, I'se er cook!"

"Sh! Say not so--we're going back to war!"

"All right, sah, I'se gwine wid you."

"I warn you, Julius Cæsar, don't do it unless you're in for a fight! I'm going back to fight--to fight to kill. No more red tape and gold braid for me. I'm going now into the jaws of hell. I'm going into the ranks as a private."

"Don't make no difference ter me, sah, whar yer go. I'se gwine wid yer. I kin look atter yer shoes an' cook yer sumfin' good ter eat."

"I warn you, Julius! When they find your torn and mangled body on the field of Death, don't you sit up and blame me!"

"Don't yer worry, sah. Dey ain't gwine fin' me dar, an' ef dey do, dey ain't gwine ter be nuttin' tore er mangled 'bout me, I see ter dat, sah!"

Three weeks later Burnside's army received a stalwart recruit. Few questions were asked. The ranks were melting.