CHAPTER VI
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COLONEL EGBERT CRAWFORD AND BELL CRAWFORD--SOME SPECULATIONS ON THE SPY SYSTEM--JOSEPHINE HARRIS ON A RECONNOISSANCE, AND WHAT SHE SAW AND HEARD.
At any other time than the present, before proceeding with the relation of the events that transpired in the house on West 3-- Street after the arrival of Colonel Egbert Crawford and Miss Bell Crawford,--it might be both proper and politic to indulge in a disquisition on the meanness of peeping and the general iniquity of the spy system. At any other time--not now, when the country is deep in the horrors of a war that principally seems to have been a failure on our side because we have not "peeped" and "spied" enough.[2] The rebels have had the advantage of us from the beginning,--not only because they were fighting comparatively on their own ground and among a friendly population, but because they at once applied the spy system when they began, and nosed out all our secrets of army and cabinet, while we have neglected spying and scouting, and made every important military movement a plunge in the dark.
[Footnote 2: December 15th, 1862.]
Every military commander has blamed every other military commander for inefficiency in this respect, and when brought to the test he has showed that he himself had a _terra incognita_ to go over in making his first advance. Quite a number of well-known people who were present may remember a few words of conversation which took place on the Union Course at one of the contests there between Princess and Flora Temple (was it not?) in June, 1861. Schenck had just plunged a few regiments, huddled up in railroad cars, into the mouths of the rebel batteries at Vienna, as if he had been taking a contract to feed some great military monster with victims as quickly and in as compact a form as possible. The country was horrified over the slaughter, Ball's Bluff and Fredericksburgh not having yet offered up their holocausts to dwarf it by comparison. An officer of prominence under McDowell, then in command of the Potomac Army under Scott, had come home on a furlough and was present. Many inquiries were made of him by acquaintances, as to the progress and prospects of the war. Among other things, the Vienna blunder was called to his attention.
"Oh," said the officer--"that was one of the most stupid of blunders--all owing to the fact that the ground had not been properly reconnoitered beforehand! They seem to have had neither scouts nor spies, and what else than failure _could_ be the result?"
"True," said one of the bystanders. "And the Potomac army--that is going to advance pretty soon, as I hear--is _that_ all right in the respect you have named?"
"What? _McDowell's_ army?" said the officer, contemptuously. "When you catch _Irwin McDowell_ not knowing exactly what is ahead of him and around him, you will catch a weasel asleep!"
So all the bystanders believed, and were confident accordingly. Four weeks afterwards Irwin McDowell fought the battle of Manassas, the result of which showed the most utter ignorance of the opposing fortifications and forces in front, that had ever been recorded in any history![3]
[Footnote 3: December, 1862.]
So much for the confidence that _one_ entertains, of being able to avoid the blunders of the other! Not one of the predecessors of Scherazaide, it is probable, went to the marriage bed of the Sultan without believing that _she_ could fix the wavering love of the tyrant and avoid the fate threatened for the morrow! And yet some hundreds of fair white bosoms furnished a morning banquet to the fishes, before Scherazaide the Wise succeeded in entangling the Sultan in the meshes of her golden speech!
It may be a little difficult to guess what this has to do with the narration. Simply this--that one of the most amiable and fascinating of women played what might have been called "a mean trick" on the occasion, and there has seemed to exist some occasion for making her excuse before relating the iniquity. Having settled that during the War for the Union there has not been half enough of "spying," on the side of right,--and having before us not only the examples of John Champe and Nathan Hale, beloved of Washington, but of the two estimable young men not long emerged from under the area steps in 5-- Street, let us dismiss the contempt with which we have been wont to regard Paul Pry and Betty the housemaid, listening at key-holes, in our favorite dramas, and look mercifully upon the peccadilloes of Miss Josephine Harris.
Colonel Egbert Crawford, who entered the room of the invalid on that occasion, was a tall and rather fine-looking man, with the least dash of iron-gray in his hair and a decidedly soldierly bearing. He had dark eyes, a little too small and not always direct in their glance, but only close observers would have been able to make the latter discovery. Had he been wise, he would have worn something more than the full moustache and military side-whiskers, for the under lip and chin being close shaven the play of the muscles of the lip, and its shape, were visible. The lip was heavy and sullen, if not cruel; and any one who watched him closely enough (close as Josephine Harris had sometimes been watching him, say!) could see that the under lip had an almost constant twitching motion, and that the hands, when unoccupied, were always opening and shutting themselves much too often for a mind at ease. He was dressed in the full regulation blue uniform, with fatigue-cap, in spite of the heat of the weather, and with the eagle on shoulder and the red belts and gilt hook at waist suggesting the sword that was to come some time or other.
Miss Bell or Isabella Crawford, sister of Richard, who made her appearance with the Colonel after her more or less successful search for the peculiar shade of cerise ribbon,--demands a word of description, and only a word. She was of medium height, well formed and rather plump, with a pleasantly-moulded face and dark hair and eyes, undeniably handsome and ladylike, but with something weak and languid about the mouth, and indefinably creating the impression of a woman incapable of being quite content with affairs as they came, unless they came very pleasantly and fashionably, or of making any well-directed effort to improve them. She was faultlessly dressed and irreproachably gloved, and a close observer would have judged, after a minute inspection, that she would be better at home in the pleasant idleness of a ball or an opera-matinee than where she might be required either to do or to bear.
"A nice couple and belong together! Neither one of them good for anything!" had more than once been Joe Harris' irreverent comment, when looking at them as they entered or left carriage or ball room, a little earlier in her acquaintance and when she had not yet enjoyed so many opportunities for studying the peculiar character of Col. Egbert Crawford. Just now she would have had her doubts about sacrificing even the useless Bell to a man whom she herself began to dislike so much.
"How do you feel, brother?" asked the sister as she came in,--evidently more as a matter of duty than because she felt any peculiar interest in the answer.
"You look pale--your face is drawn--you seem to be in pain!" was the observation of the Colonel, before the invalid could answer, and taking the hand of the latter without seeming to notice the shudder with which his touch was met.
"Perhaps so--cousin--Egbert--yes--I do _not_ feel quite so well as I have done," muttered the invalid, who seemed all the while to be making a violent effort to command face and feeling. "There was music in the street, you know--I heard it and I suppose that it agitated me."
"Sorry! tut! tut! tut! You ought to be getting better by this time, I should think!" said the Colonel, laying his finger on the pulse of Richard and looking up at vacancy as a Doctor has the habit of doing when he performs that very imposing (imposing upon _whom_?) operation. What was there in his glance, that met the eye of Joe Harris, as he did so--and gave her so plain a confirmation of her worst suspicions? What power is it that lets in the daylight on our darkest wishes and worst motives, just at the moment when we flatter ourselves that we have them more carefully hidden away in darkness than ever before? Joe was still at the window, where she had been joined by Bell, the latter already half-forgetful of her sick brother and eager to show some astounding purchase she had just made at one of the dry-goods palaces.
"There--go away, girls; you bother poor Richard with your chatter!" said Colonel Egbert, affecting great cordiality and a little familiarity. (The fact was, as may have been noticed, that Bell had spoken only five words aloud and Joe not a word, since the two had entered.) "Richard is not so well, I am afraid. I will sit by him awhile and you may go away and gabble to your heart's content."
"Just as you like," answered Isabella, doubling up a half-unrolled little package and preparing to go. "I have some little things to look after up-stairs. Will you go with me, Joe? Of course you are not going away until after dinner?"
"Humph! I do not know that I am going away at all!" said the wild girl, her words very different from her thought at the moment. "You are such nice people, and Dick is such an interesting invalid, and who knows--well, I will not speculate any more about that, _in public_, just yet! Yes, Bell, go up-stairs and attend to your finery; I am going down into the basement to ask Norah for two slices of bread-and-butter and the wing of a cold chicken!"
And away through the noiseless glass door buzzed Josephine, on her way to the basement, followed by Isabella on her way to the inner penetralia of the second floor; while Col. Egbert Crawford shied his fatigue-cap at the desk and drew up his chair to the side of the sofa occupied by the invalid. Isabella really went up-stairs, and for the purpose designated. Shame for Joe Harris, it must be said that while she really descended to the basement and made an inroad on Norah's larder to the extent of the wing of cold chicken and _one_ slice of bread-and-butter, yet she thrust both the edibles into a piece of paper and into her pocket, at the imminent risk of greasing the latter convenient receptacle, and was back again on the parlor floor within the space of one and a half minutes by the little Geneva watch which she carried so bewitchingly at her belt. If mischief and sad earnest can both be blended in the expression of one face at one and the same time, they were so blended in hers at that moment. What was in the wind and who was to suffer?--for suffer somebody always did when Josey fairly started out on a campaign!
From the door leading to the basement, to that opening into the parlor from the hall, she probably stepped lighter than she had ever before done since playing blind-man's buff in early girlhood; and it is doubtful whether that parlor door had ever before opened and shut with so little noise, since the skilful hanger first oiled the plated hinges. From the door to the back part of the room she went on tip-toe--the fact cannot be denied,--little noise as her light shoes would have made on the heavy velvet. We all have something of the cat about us--man and the other animals; though the quality developes itself under different circumstances. Pussy treads even softer than usual, when after the coveted cream; that larger pussy, the tiger, steals lightly towards the ambushed hunter who is to furnish him the next delicious meal; and "Tarquin's ravishing strides" are undoubtedly a misnomer, for the Roman must have been something more or less than man if he did not tip-toe his sandals or cast them off altogether, when he stole towards the midnight bed of Lucrece.
The cream for which Pussy Harris--shame upon her for that same!--was just then making an adventurous foray,--was _a hearing of the conversation which might take place between Richard Crawford and his cousin_! That conversation she had determined to hear, at all hazards; for what, she scarcely knew herself, but with an undefinable impression that she must hear it--that (Jesuitically, and of course most horrible doctrine!) the end might justify the otherwise indefensible means--and that--that--in short, that she was going to do it, and this settled the matter as well as finished up the reason!
The piano stood on the left, passing down from the parlor door towards the rear of the room, and behind it was a small inlaid table covered with books, and a large easy chair designed for lazy reading. Any person in the chair would be within twelve inches of the glass doors and not over ten feet from the two men at the sofa in the little back room. Josephine distinctly heard, through the thin glass, the hum of their voices as she approached the table, but not many of the words were audible. Confound it!--she thought--her plan of sitting in the chair, pretending to read as a safeguard against possible detection, and overhearing by laying her head back against the door--this would never do. Time was pressing--finesse must give way to boldness; and in the sixteenth of a minute thereafter the sliding doors were softly parted by less than half an inch of space--too little to be readily noticed from the back room, which was the lighter of the two, and yet enough to see through if necessary, (but she did not intend to look,) and to _hear_ through, which was the matter of first consequence. And there she stood--an eaves-dropper of the first order--a flush of shame and of half-conscious guilt on cheek and brow, and a wild, startled look in her eyes, such as a hare might show when listening for the second bay of the hound--liable to be caught by some one entering the parlor from the hall, or by the Colonel taking a fancy to enter the room for any purpose--and yet chained there, with her ear within an inch of the opening, as if present happiness and eternal salvation had both depended upon her keeping that position!
Could anything be more shameful?--anything more despicable? Was ever a heroine so placed, even by English romancers or French dramatists? And was not the long dissertation at the beginning of this chapter, to prove the applicability of the spy system to war time, an absolute necessity?
What might have passed precedently, while she was looking after the chicken and the bread-and-butter, Josephine had no means of divining. At the time of her assuming her post of observation, Richard Crawford was still lying back upon the sofa, and looking up; as he had been half an hour before when she was herself conversing with him. If the spasms had not ceased altogether, they were at least conquered by the will and concealed from the eyes of the Colonel, as they had not been from hers. The young girl thought she could detect, too, upon the face of the invalid, a less hopeless look, and some evidence of more determined insight in the glance, than she had marked for a considerable period. Colonel Egbert Crawford was sitting with his chair drawn up reasonably close in front of his cousin, and conversing eagerly with him, yet with his face partially turned away most of the time, and not meeting his gaze directly as most honest and earnest men do the observation of those with whom they converse on important subjects. Perhaps that disposition of the Colonel's face gave both his seen and his unseen listeners better opportunities for close study of his expression than they might otherwise have enjoyed.
"I am sorry to say that things are _not_ as we both wish them to be, at West Falls," the young girl heard the Colonel say. "Of course I am not less anxious than yourself to have everything arranged and the property--"
"Ah, there is some _property_ involved, then! and at West Falls, of all the places in the world!" commented the uninvited listener, speaking to herself, and with her words very carefully kept between her teeth, as was becoming under such circumstances--always provided there could be anything "becoming" about the affair.
"Uncle John," the Colonel went on to say, "seems to have imbibed some kind of singular prejudice against your mode of life in the city, if not against you, and Mary--"
"Humph! there is a 'Mary'--a woman in the case, as well as the property," commented the listener. "Little while as I have been here, the thing already begins to grow interesting!"
"Well, Mary? what of her? Why does she answer my letters no more?" asked the invalid, calming his voice by an evidently strong effort and speaking as the Colonel paused for an instant. "Does she too begin to share so bitterly in the--in the--"
"In the prejudice? I am sorry to say--yes," the Colonel went on, "though I do not think that either of them could give a reason. I tried to probe the matter a little when there, but the old gentleman answered me so shortly that I had no excuse to go on; and Mary--"
"You did not say anything to _her_?" broke in the invalid, with the same evident suppression in his voice.
"Of course not!" was the answer. "You know me, Richard, I hope, and know that I would not have lost a chance of saying anything in your favor--"
"Trust _you_ for _that_!" was the mental comment of the listener. "Wouldn't _you_ glorify _him_! Wouldn't _you_ make him blue and gold, with gilt edges! I see you doing it!"
"--If I had any opportunity," concluded the Colonel.
"I should think not," said the invalid, his words so forced from between his teeth that his interlocutor, had he been less absorbed in his own calculations, must have noticed the difference from his usual manner.
"Richard Crawford, you are beginning to wake, for you know that man is lying--I see it by your eyes!" was the comment of the young girl, this time.
"I am going to West Falls again in a few days--that is, if we do not get orders for Washington," continued the Colonel; "and if I have your permission--as you are not likely to be well enough to go out even by that time--I shall speak to both on the subject, as it would be the world's pity if you should be thrown out of so fine a property and the possession of a girl who I believe once loved you, by false reports, or--"
"False reports? eh? who should have circulated false reports?" asked the invalid, his face firing for a moment and his voice temporarily under less command. But the momentary flush passed away, and it was only with the querulous voice and petulant manner of sickness that he concluded: "Eh, well, no matter; we will see about all that by-and-by, when I get well."
"That is right--I am glad to hear you speak so hopefully," said the Colonel. "All will be right, no doubt, when you _get well_." Did he or did he not lay a peculiar stress on the two words, as the old jokers used to do on a few others when they informed the boys that the statue of St. Paul, in the niche in the front of St. Paul's church, always came down and took a drink of water from the nearest pump, _when it heard the clock strike twelve_? If there was such an emphasis, did Richard Crawford hear and recognize it? That some one else in the immediate vicinity did, and duly commented upon it, is beyond a question.
"You must modulate your voice better than that, Colonel Egbert Crawford, before you go on the stage!" said the wild girl. "You think he is dying--you mean he shall die--I have an impression that I did not come here for nothing, after all!"
"And now," said the Colonel, rising, and taking out his watch, "I must leave you. We have a recruiting meeting at ---- Hall at six, and I must be there without fail. Oh," as if suddenly recollecting something comparatively unimportant, that had been overlooked in the pressure of more interesting matter--"I had nearly forgotten. Your bandage--is it all right? I hope the Doctor and Bell have not found out the secret, so as to laugh at what they would call our _superstition_. Shall I renew it? I believe I have some of the preparation in one or another of my pockets," feeling in one and then another, as if doubtful. "Ah, here it is," and he took out from one of his pockets which he had hurriedly gone over with his hands at least half a dozen of times, a small black box, four or five inches in length and perhaps two in width by an inch deep.
Were Josephine Harris' eyes playing fantastic tricks with her on that occasion; or did she see, as that little black box met the view, a momentary repetition of the suffering spasm which had crossed the face of Richard Crawford half an hour before, when she first suggested a conflict of interests between them? At all events the spasm, if such it was, passed away, and he merely answered, languidly:
"Yes, thank you, Egbert--yes, if you please."
At this stage of the proceedings, had Josephine Harris been a "real lady," or had she possessed any well-defined sense of "propriety," she would have left her post of observation on the instant. For though the Colonel was partially between her and the patient, she saw him open the little black box, take out a broad knife from his vest pocket, and then proceed to other operations very improper for a young lady to witness. She saw Richard Crawford unbutton his vest, a little assisted by the Colonel. What followed she could not see, very fortunately. All that she could make out, was that some sort of narrow white bandage seemed to have been removed from the breast or stomach of the invalid--that the Colonel took out a dark paste from the box with his knife, spread a portion of it on the opened bandage, then re-folded it and assisted in replacing it on the breast or stomach and re-arranging the disordered clothing. This done, and the box put back into his pocket, he took his cap and stooped down to shake hands with Richard; whereupon Josephine, knowing that his way out would be through the parlor, shoved the two doors together by a silent but very nervous movement, and managed to escape from the room as silently, before the Colonel's hand had yet been laid upon the glass door to open it.
There were half a dozen unoccupied rooms on the next floor, as she well knew, and up the stairs and into one of these she bounded, her cheeks still more aglow than they had been when she set out on her "reconnoissance," and her eyes still more wild and startled, while a strange tremor creeping at her heart told her that she had been witness to much more than could yet be shaped into words or embodied even in thought! Poor girl!--how her brain throbbed and how her heart beat like ten thousand little trip-hammers!--the usual and very proper penalty which we pay for an indiscretion!
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