Читать книгу Secret Service - Brady Cyrus Townsend - Страница 6

The Captain stared after her departing figure; he listened to her footfalls on the stair, and then came to an instant resolution. He would take advantage of her opportune withdrawal. He turned back to the table, seized his hat, and started for the door, only to come face to face with another charming young woman, who stood breathless before him to his great and ill-concealed annoyance. Yet the newcomer was pretty enough and young enough and sweet enough to give any man pause for the sheer pleasure of looking at her, to say nothing of speaking to her.

The resources of an ancient wardrobe, that looked as though it had belonged to her great-grandmother, had been called upon for a costume which was quaint and old-fashioned and altogether lovely. She was evidently much younger than Edith Varney, perhaps just sixteen, Wilfred’s age. With outstretched arms she barred the door completely, and Thorne, of course, came to an abrupt stop.

“Oh, good-evening,” she panted, as soon as she found speech; she had run without stopping from her house across the street.

“Good-evening, Miss Mitford,” he answered, stepping to one side to let her pass, but through calculation or chance she kept her position at the door.

“How lucky this is!” she continued. “You are the very person I wanted to see. Let’s sit down and then I’ll tell you all about it. Goodness me, I am all out of breath just running over from our house.”

Thorne did not accept her invitation, but stood looking at her. An idea came to him.

“Miss Mitford,” he said at last, stepping toward her, “will you do something for me?”

“Of course I will.”

“Thank you very much, indeed. Just tell Miss Varney when she comes down – just say good-night for me and tell her that I’ve gone.”

“I wouldn’t do such a thing for the wide, wide world,” returned Caroline Mitford in pretended astonishment.

“Why not?”

“It would be a wicked, dreadful story, because you wouldn’t be gone.”

“I am sorry you look at it that way,” said Thorne, “because I am going. Good-night, Miss Mitford.”

But before he could leave the room, the girl, who was as light on her feet as a fairy, caught him by the arm.

“No – you don’t seem to understand. I’ve got something to say to you.”

“Yes, I know,” said Thorne; “but some other time.”

“No, now.”

Of course, he could have freed himself by the use of a little force, but such a thing was not to be thought of. Everything conspired to keep him when his duty called him away, he thought quickly.

“There isn’t any other time,” said Caroline, “it is to-night. We are going to have a Starvation party.”

“Good Heavens!” exclaimed Thorne; “another!”

“Yes, we are.”

“I can’t see how it concerns me.”

“It is going to be over at our house, and we expect you in half an hour.”

“I shouldn’t think you would want to play at this time.”

“We are not going to play. We are going to make bandages and sandbags and – ”

“You won’t need me.”

“Yes, you can tell us the best way to – ”

“Thank you, Miss Mitford, I can’t come. I have my orders and I am leaving to-night.”

“Now, that won’t do at all,” said the girl, pouting. “You went to Mamie Jones’ party; I don’t see why you should treat me like this.”

“Mamie Jones!” said Thorne. “Why, that was last Thursday, and now I have got orders, I tell you, and – ”

But Caroline was not to be put off.

“Now, there’s no use talking about it,” she said vehemently.

“Yes, I see that.”

“Didn’t you promise to obey orders when I gave them? Well, these are orders.”

“Another set,” laughed Thorne.

“I don’t know anything about any others. These are mine.”

“Well, but this time – ”

“This time is just the same as all the other times, only worse; besides I told her you would be there.”

“What’s that?”

“I say she expects you, that’s all.”

“Who expects me?”

“Why, Edith, of course; who do you suppose I was talking about all this time?”

“Oh, she expects me to – ”

“Why, of course, she does. You are to take her over. You needn’t stay if you don’t want to. Now I will go and tell her you are waiting.”

“Oh, very well,” said Thorne, smiling; “if she expects me to take her over I will do so, of course, but I can’t stay a moment.”

“Well,” said Caroline, “I thought you would come to your senses some time or another. See here, Mr. Captain, was she ’most ready?”

“Well, how do I know.”

“What dress did she have on?”

“Dress?”

“Oh, you men! Why, she’s only got two.”

“Yes; well, very likely, this was one of them, Miss Mitford.”

“No matter, I am going upstairs to see, anyway. Captain Thorne, you can wait out there on the veranda or, perhaps, it would be pleasanter if you were to smoke a cigar out in the summerhouse at the side of the garden. It is lovely there in the moonlight, and – ”

“I know, but if I wait right here – ”

“Those are my orders. It’s cooler outside, you know, anyway, and – ”

“Pardon me, Miss Mitford, orders never have to be explained, you know,” interrupted the Captain, smiling at the charming girl.

“That’s right; I take back the explanation,” she said, as Thorne stepped toward the window; “and, Captain,” cried the girl.

“Yes?”

“Be sure and smoke.”

Thorne laughed, as he lighted his cigar and stepped out onto the porch, and thence into the darkness of the garden path.

“Oh,” said Caroline to herself, “he is splendid. If Wilfred were only like that!” she pouted. “But then – our engagement’s broken off anyway, so what’s the difference. If he were like that – I’d – No! – I don’t think I’d – ”

Her soliloquy was broken by the entrance of Mrs. Varney, who came slowly down the room.

“Why, Caroline dear! What are you talking about, all to yourself?”

“Oh – just – I was just saying, you know – that – why, I don’t know what I was – Do you think it is going to rain?” she returned in great confusion.

“Dear me, child; I haven’t thought about it. Why, what have you got on? Is that a new dress, and in Richmond?”

“A new dress? Well, I should think so. These are my great-grandmother’s mother’s wedding clothes. Aren’t they lovely? Just in the nick of time, too. I was on my very last rags, or, rather, they were on me, and I didn’t know what to do. Mother gave me a key and told me to open an old horsehair trunk in the attic, and these were in it.” She seized the corners of her dress and pirouetted a step or two forward to show it off, and then dropped the older woman an elaborate, old-fashioned courtesy. “I ran over to show them to Edith,” she resumed. “Where is she? I want her to come over to my house.”

“Upstairs, I think. I am afraid she can’t come. I have just come from her room,” Mrs. Varney continued as Caroline started to interrupt, “and she means to stay here.”

“I will see about that,” said Caroline, running out of the room.

Mrs. Varney turned and sat down at her desk to write a letter which evidently, from her sighs, was not an easy task. In a short time the girl was back again. Mrs. Varney looked up from writing and smiled at her.

“You see it was no use, Caroline,” she began.

“No use,” laughed the girl; “well, you will see. I didn’t try to persuade her or argue with her. I just told her that Captain Thorne was waiting for her in the summerhouse. Yes,” she continued, as Mrs. Varney looked her astonishment; “he is still here, and he said he would take her over. You just watch which dress she has on when she comes down. Now I will go out there and tell him she’ll be down in a minute. I have more trouble getting people fixed so that they can come to my party than it would take to run a blockade into Savannah every fifteen minutes.”

Mrs. Varney looked at her departing figure pleasantly for a moment, and then, with a deep sigh, resumed her writing, but she evidently was not to conclude her letter without further interruption, for she had scarcely begun again when Wilfred came into the room with a bundle very loosely done up in heavy brown paper. As his mother glanced toward him he made a violent effort to conceal it under his coat.

“What have you got there, Wilfred?” she asked incuriously.

“That? Oh, nothing; it is only – say, mother, have you written that letter yet?”

“No, my dear, I have been too busy. I have been trying to write it, though, since I came down, but I have had one interruption after another. I think I will go into your father’s office and do it there.” She gathered up her paper and turned to leave the room. “It is a hard letter for me to write, you know,” she added as she went away.

Wilfred, evidently much relieved at his mother’s departure, took the package from under his coat, put it on the table, and began to undo it. He took from it a pair of very soiled, dilapidated, grey uniform trousers. He had just lifted them up when he heard Caroline’s step on the porch, and the next moment she came into the room through the long French window. Wilfred stood petrified with astonishment at the sudden and unexpected appearance of his young beloved, but soon recovered himself and began rolling the package together again, hastily and awkwardly, while Caroline watched him from the window. She coldly scrutinised his confusion while he made his ungainly roll, and, as he moved toward the door, she broke the silence.

“Ah, good-evening, Mr. Varney,” she said coolly.

“Good-evening,” he said, his voice as cold as her own.

They both of them had started for the hall door and in another second they would have met.

“Excuse me,” said Caroline, “I’m in a hurry.”

“That’s plain enough. Another party, I suppose, and dancing.”

“What of it? What’s the matter with dancing, I’d like to know.”

“Nothing is the matter with dancing if you want to, but I must say that it is a pretty way of going on, with the cannon roaring not six miles away.”

“Well, what do you want us to do? Cry about it! I have cried my eyes out already; that would do a heap of good now, wouldn’t it?”

“Oh, I haven’t time to talk about such petty details. I have some important matters to attend to,” he returned loftily.

“It was you that started it,” said the girl.

Wilfred turned suddenly, his manner at once losing its badly assumed lightness.

“Oh, you needn’t try to fool me,” he reproached her; “I know well enough how you have been carrying on since our engagement was broken off. Half a dozen officers proposing to you – a dozen for all I know.”

“What difference does it make?” she retorted pertly. “I haven’t got to marry them all, have I?”

“Well, it isn’t very nice to go on like that,” said Wilfred with an air into which he in vain sought to infuse a detached, judicial, and indifferent appearance. “Proposals by the wholesale!”

“Goodness me!” exclaimed Caroline, “what’s the use of talking about it to me. They’re the ones that propose, I don’t. How can I help it?”

“Oh,” said Wilfred loftily, “you can help it all right. You helped it with me.”

“Well,” she answered, with a queer look at him, “that was different.”

“And ever since you threw me over – ” he began.

“I didn’t throw you over, you just went over,” she interrupted.

“I went over because you walked off with Major Sillsby that night we were at Drury’s Bluff,” said the boy, “and you encouraged him to propose. You admit it,” he said, as the girl nodded her head.

“Of course I did. I didn’t want him hanging around forever, did I? That’s the only way to finish them off. What do you want me to do – string a placard around my neck, saying, ‘No proposals received here. Apply at the office’? Would that make you feel any better? Well,” she continued, as the boy shrugged his shoulders, “if it doesn’t make any difference to you what I do, it doesn’t even make as much as that to me.”

“Oh, it doesn’t? I think it does, though. You looked as if you enjoyed it pretty well while the Third Virginia was in the city.”

“I should think I did,” said Caroline ecstatically. “I just love every one of them. They are going to fight for us and die for us, and I love them.”

“Why don’t you accept one of them before he dies, then, and have done with it? I suppose it will be one of those smart young fellows with a cavalry uniform.”

“It will be some kind of a uniform, I can tell you that. It won’t be any one that stays in Richmond.”

“Now I see what it was,” said Wilfred, looking at her gloomily. “I had to stay in Richmond, and – ”

The boy choked up and would not finish.

“Well,” said Caroline, “that made a heap of difference. Why, I was the only girl on Franklin Street that didn’t have a – some one she was engaged to – at the front. Just think what it was to be out of it like that! You have no idea how I suffered; besides, it is our duty to help all we can. There aren’t many things a girl can do, but Colonel Woolbridge – he’s one of Morgan’s new men, you know – said that the boys fight twice as well when they have a – sweetheart at home. I couldn’t waste an engagement on – ”

“And is that why you let them all propose to you?” rejoined the youth bitterly.

“Certainly; it didn’t hurt me, and it pleased them. Most of ’em will never come back to try it again, and it is our duty to help all we can.”

“And you really want to help all you can, do you?” asked Wilfred desperately. “Well, if I were to join the army would you help me – that way?”

This was a direct question. It was the argumentum ad feminam with a vengeance. Caroline hesitated. A swift blush overspread her cheek, but she was game to the core.

“Why, of course I would, if there was anything I – could do,” she answered.

“Well, there is something you can do.” He unrolled his package and seized the trousers by the waistband and dangled them before her eyes. “Cut those off,” he said; “they are twice too long. All you have to do is to cut them here and sew up the ends, so that they don’t ravel out.”

Caroline stared at him in great bewilderment. She had expected something quite different.

“Why, they are uniform trousers,” she said finally. “You are going to join the army?” She clapped her hands gleefully. “Give them to me.”

“Hush! don’t talk so loud, for Heaven’s sake,” said Wilfred. “I’ve got a jacket here, too.” He drew out of the parcel a small army jacket, a private soldier’s coat. “It’s nearly a fit. It came from the hospital. Johnny Seldon wore it, but he won’t want it any more, you know, and he was just about my size, only his legs were longer. Well,” he continued, as the girl continued to look at him strangely, “I thought you said you wanted to help me.”

“I certainly do.”

“What are you waiting for, then?” asked Wilfred.

The girl took the trousers and dropped on her knees before him.

“Stand still,” she said, as she measured the trousers from the waistband to the floor.

“This is about the place, isn’t it?”

“Yes, just there.”

“Wait,” she continued, “until I mark it with a pin.”

Wilfred stood quietly until the proper length had been ascertained, and then he assisted Caroline to her feet.

“Do you see any scissors about?” she asked in a businesslike way.

“I don’t believe there are any in the drawing-room, but I can get some from the women sewing over there. Wait a moment.”

“No, don’t,” said the girl; “they would want to know what you wanted with them, and then you would have to tell them.”

“Yes,” said the boy; “and I want to keep this a secret between us.”

“When are you going to wear them?”

“As soon as you get them ready.”

“But your mother – ”

“She knows it. She is going to write to father to-night. She said she would send it by a special messenger, so we ought to get an answer by to-morrow.”

“But if he says no?”

“I am going anyway.”

“Oh, Wilfred, I am so glad. Why, it makes another thing of it,” cried the girl. “When I said that about staying in Richmond, I didn’t know – Oh, I do want to help all I can.”

“You do? Well, then, for Heaven’s sake, be quick about it and cut off those trousers. So long as I get them in the morning,” said Wilfred, “I guess it will be in plenty of time.”

“When did you say your mother was going to write?”

“To-night.”

“Of course, she doesn’t want you to go, and she’ll tell your father not to let you. Yes,” she continued sagely, as Wilfred looked up, horror-stricken at the idea; “that’s the way mothers always do.”

“What can I do, then?” he asked her.

“Why don’t you write to him yourself, and then you can tell him just what you like.”

“That’s a fine idea. I’ll tell him that I can’t stay here, and that I’m going to enlist whether he says so or not. That’ll make him say yes, won’t it?”

“Why, of course; there’ll be nothing else for him to say.”

“Say, you are a pretty good girl,” said Wilfred, catching her hand impulsively. “I’ll go upstairs and write it now. You finish these as soon as you can. You can ask those women for some scissors, and when they are ready leave them in this closet, but don’t let any one see you doing it, whatever happens.”

“No, I won’t,” said Caroline, as Wilfred hurried off.

She went over to the room where the women were sewing, and borrowed a pair of scissors; then she came back and started to cut off the trousers where they were marked. The cloth was old and worn, but it was, nevertheless, stiff and hard, and her scissors were dull. Men spent their time in sharpening other things than women’s tools during those days in Richmond, and her slender fingers made hard work of the amputations. Beside, she was prone to stop and think and dream of her soldier boy while engaged in this congenial work. She had not finished the alteration, therefore, when she heard a step in the hall. She caught up the trousers, striving to conceal them, entirely forgetful of the jacket which lay on the table.

“Oh,” said Mrs. Varney, as she came into the room; “you haven’t gone yet?”

“No,” faltered the girl; “we don’t assemble for a little while, and – ”

“Don’t assemble?”

“I mean for the party. It doesn’t begin for half an hour yet, and – ”

“Oh; then you have plenty of time.”

“Yes,” said Caroline. “But I will have to go now, sure enough.” She turned away and, as she did so, her scissors fell clattering to the floor.

“You dropped your scissors, my dear,” said Mrs. Varney.

“I thought I heard something fall,” she faltered in growing confusion.

She came back for her scissors, and, in her agitation and nervousness, she dropped one of the pieces of trouser leg on the floor.

“What are you making, Caroline?” asked Mrs. Varney, looking curiously at the little huddled-up soiled piece of grey on the carpet, while Caroline made a desperate grab at it.

“Oh, just altering an old – dress, Mrs. Varney. That’s all.”

Mrs. Varney looked at her through her glasses. As she did so, Caroline’s agitated movement caused the other trouser leg, with its half-severed end hanging from it, to dangle over her arm.

“And what is that?” asked Mrs. Varney.

“Oh – that’s – er – one of the sleeves,” answered Caroline desperately, hurrying out in great confusion.

Mrs. Varney laughed softly to herself. As she did so, her glance fell upon the little heap of grey on the table. She picked it up and opened it. It was a grey jacket, a soldier’s jacket. It looked as if it might be about Wilfred’s size. There was a bullet hole in the breast, and there was a dull brown stain around the opening. Mrs. Varney kissed the worn coat. She saw it all now.

“For Wilfred,” she whispered. “He has probably got it from some dead soldier at the hospital, and Caroline’s dress that she was altering – ”

She clasped the jacket tightly to her breast, looked up, and smiled and prayed through her tears.