"Your memory is better than your manners," she replied, and though I tried hard to keep my temper, her words stung me to the quick.
"I a.s.sure you I had not the least desire to disturb you. I came in here with the hope, though not the expectation, of finding a lad who came here last night."
"He is not here," she a.s.serted, "and if he were, he has no desire to see you. He told me something of his encounter with you, and if that is the way you treat a young lad, I wonder how you would have treated an unprotected woman."
I would not trust myself to speak to her. I made her a low obeisance and retired from the room; but I was not to escape so easily. She pursued her advantage; she followed me out into the hall. "Is it true that the young man compelled you to accompany him to this house last night?"
"If he told you so, madam, it is true," I replied.
"After threatening to give you a strapping?" she asked. Her mood was almost exultant, though she had been gloomy enough when I first disturbed her.
"If he says so, madam."
"He didn"t say so, but I believe he slapped your face, for it is still red."
"Perhaps he did, madam."
"I am no madam, I"ll let you know; why do you call me so?"
"It is simply a term of respect, ma"am. Our young people are taught to be respectful to ladies."
"You may be sure that the young man would have remained to see you, but I was afraid you"d run away and leave your friend." Women can be very childish sometimes, and this was pure childishness.
"Why, I had no idea that he bore me any ill-will," I remarked. "He trotted along by my side in perfect good-humor when I was fetching him home. If he has any grudge against me, I do not think the fault is mine. Say to him that I apologize most humbly for any offence I may have given him." Jane Ryder was now sure that I did not connect her with the lad--was sure that I had not pierced her disguise, and she became at once very much friendlier. Her relief was apparent in voice and gesture.
"The truth is," she went on, "the young man is very fond of you, much to my surprise. It is a strange fancy," she mused; "there is no accounting for it. I believe you could prevail on him to leave his friends and go with you to the South; that is why I am keeping him away from you."
"I have had few friends," I said, "and if you could add the young man to the list and place him above all the rest, I should be happy. But as for persuading him to desert his principles, I should never think of it; and I should think ill of him if he could be persuaded."
"He really thinks that you are one of the finest men he ever met,"
pursued Jane Ryder. "He says that a young woman would be as safe from insult with you as she would be with her mother."
"And why not?" I inquired. "I thank your friend for his good opinion of me; but it is no great compliment to me to say that I should protect a woman with my life, if need be. Back yonder there are gathered three or four thousand men, and out of that four thousand you will not find ten who would not do the same and think it nothing to boast of."
"I wouldn"t trust them," she declared.
"Would you trust me?" I asked. The words were out of my mouth before I could recall them. They meant more than she would think or than she would care for them to mean.
"I certainly would," she said, clenching her hands in a strange little gesture.
"I thank you for saying that much," I declared. "The time may come--not soon, perhaps--when I shall have to ask you to trust me."
"Soon or late," she replied, "my answer will be the same."
I never was more shaken with the excitement of temptation than at that moment. She must have known it; they say women are quick at reading the thoughts of a man, but, instead of drawing away from me, she drew nearer. In another instant I should have seized her in my arms, the pale and lonely creature, but just then the sound of footsteps came along the hall, and I heard the happy laughter of Katherine Bledsoe. I had raised my arms, but now I lowered them and she had seized my hand.
"Good-by!" she said, and as soon as she could tear her hand from mine she was gone--gone by another door, and Harry and her companion came plump upon me standing in the hallway, gazing at the door through which Jane Ryder had disappeared. Then I turned and gazed at them, first at one and then at the other.
"What have you done with her?" inquired Kate, with just a shade of solicitude in her voice. "Oh, I hope you haven"t hurt her," she cried.
"She has the tenderest heart in the world."
"Hurt her? Hurt her?" It was all that I could say, and then all of a sudden I came to myself and stood there laughing very foolishly. "She ran away," I explained. "I don"t know why. I am sure I didn"t want her to go!"
Whereupon Kate fell to laughing, and kept it up until the tears came into her eyes. "Oh, men are such simpletons!" she exclaimed; "I don"t know what I should do for amus.e.m.e.nt if I didn"t see the lords of creation once in a great while."
We bade good-by to the household--though Jane Ryder was nowhere to be found--and went to our horses, which we had left in charge of Whistling Jim. That worthy was in quite a flutter. He had heard strange noises, and he was almost sure that he had caught a glimpse of more than one man in the darkness. We paid little enough attention to what he said, for we knew that the ladies were safe so far as the Confederates were concerned, and Jack Bledsoe would answer for their safety with the Federals.
Nevertheless, there was no one to answer for our safety, and we had no more than mounted our horses before we discovered that we were surrounded. We heard the tramp of cavalry on all sides. A quiet voice in the darkness made itself heard: "Don"t shoot unless they resist!"
"Ride them down!" exclaimed Harry. My horse ran full into another horse, and he and his rider went down just as I used my pistol. Some one with an oath whacked me over the head with a sabre, my horse stumbled in the darkness, and down I went into chaos. I thought I heard someone singing, and then it seemed as if there was a free concert in progress, while I lay helpless in a great gully out of which I could not climb.
VIII
Making a great effort to climb from the gully into which I had fallen, my foot slipped, and I fell again, and continued to fall till I knew no more. When I came to life again I was not in a gully at all, but stretched out on a bed, with my boots on, and this fact fretted me to such an extent that I threw back the covering and rose to a sitting posture. My head was throbbing somewhat wildly, and I soon found that the cause of the pain was a towel that had been too tightly bound around my forehead. The towel changed into a bandage under my fingers, and I found that I could not compa.s.s the intricacies of the fastenings.
I remembered that I had disposed safely of the papers I had found in the chair-arm. One was a pa.s.sport signed by one of the biggest men in the country, authorizing Francis Leroy to pa.s.s in and out of the Union lines at any time, day or night, and the other--there were but two--was some useless information with respect to the movements of the Federal forces between Murfreesborough and Memphis.
As I came more and more to my senses, I knew that these papers had been the cause of my undoing; I could see in it, as plain as day, the hand of Jane Ryder, and I was truly sorry. I thought I had been around the world and back again, and I should have been very wise, but the bandage and Jane Ryder were too much for me. How did she know that I had secured the papers? And why did she permit the soldiers to attack me. I was feeling very foolish and childish.
Then I observed that a large man was sitting in front of the small fireplace, and his long legs were stretched completely across the hearth. His head was thrown back, his mouth was open, and he was sound asleep. There was half a handful of some kind of medicine in a saucer on the table, and I judged that the man would be better off for a dose of it. I suppose it was common table salt, but, whatever it was, the notion remained with me that it would be a help to the man. It was a fantastic notion, but it persisted, and finally I lifted the saucer, emptied the medicine in my palm, and transferred it to the open mouth of the man. It failed to arouse him; he merely closed his jaws on the dose and slept on.
I enjoyed the man"s discomfiture before it occurred; I knew what a terrible splutter there would be when the stuff began to melt and run down his windpipe. I should have laughed aloud, but the bandage was hurting me terribly. With a vague hope of getting some relief from pain, I opened the door as softly as I could, went out and closed it behind me. Another door was open directly in front of me, and through this I went. In the room a woman was sitting at a window, her head in her hands. She looked up when she heard the slight noise I made, and I was surprised to find myself face to face with Jane Ryder. Her eyes were red and swollen with weeping, and her hands were all of a tremble.
"Will you please, ma"am, take this off?" I said, pointing to the bandage.
She placed her finger on her lip. "Sh-sh!" she whispered, and then, whipping around me, closed the door with no more noise than the wing of a night-bird might make. "In there, and don"t move on your life."
She pointed to a closet, but I shook my head.
"Not if I can help myself," I said. "I have just come out of a deep, deep ditch, and I want to hear the splutter." I was whispering, too, such was the woman"s influence. She looked at me in amazement; she tried to understand me; but she must have thought me out of my head, for her lips were twitching pitifully and her hands trembling. "It"s the man in the next room," I whispered with a grin. "I put a handful of medicine in his mouth. Wait! you"ll hear him directly."
"Oh, I am so sorry for you," she cried, wringing her hands. "I am as sorry for you as I am for myself."
"Then please take this bandage off and have my horse brought round."
"I can"t! I can"t! You"re wounded. Go in the closet there."
"I"ll go where you go, and I"ll stay where you stay," I said; and I must have been talking too loud, for she placed her hand on my lips--and what should I do but hold it there and kiss it, the poor little trembling hand!
And then there came from the next room the famous splutter for which I had been waiting. The soldier made a noise as if he were drowning. He gasped and coughed, and tried to catch his breath; he strangled and lost it, and, when he caught it again, made a sound as if he had a violent case of the whooping-cough. And all this time I was laughing silently, and I came near strangling myself.
Jane Ryder was far from laughter. She was as cool as a cuc.u.mber. With one quick movement, and with surprising strength, she had shoved me into the closet. Then she flung the door wide open. As she did so the guard cried out at the top of his voice that the prisoner had escaped.
And if ever a man was berated it was that big soldier who had fallen asleep at the post of duty. "You drunken wretch!" she cried; "I knew how it would be; I knew it!" He tried to make an explanation, but she would not hear it. "Oh, I"ll make you pay for this! Go--go and find him, and if you fail take your cut-throats away from here and never let me see them again. Report to my brother, and tell him how you carried out your orders. You were to take them all without a struggle, but you took only one, and you bring him here more dead than alive. He is wandering about in the woods now, out of his head."
"But he shot one of my men. Haven"t you any feeling for the man that"ll be cold and stiff by sun-up?"