CHAPTER XXXIII
The day of the Great Deed was one never to be forgotten by Cook's little bride. They had been married six months. Each hour had bound the girl's heart in closer and sweeter bonds. The love that kindled for the handsome blond the day of their first meeting had grown into the deathless passion of the woman for her mate.
He was restless Saturday night. Through the long hours she held her breath to catch his regular breathing. He did not sleep.
At last the terror of it gripped her. Her hand touched his brow and brushed the hair back from his forehead.
"What's the matter, John dear?"
"Restless."
"What is it?"
"Oh, nothing much. Just got to thinking about something and can't sleep.
That's all. Go to sleep now, like a good girl. I'm all right."
The little fingers sought his hand and gripped it.
"I'll try."
She rose at dawn. He had asked an early breakfast to make a long trip into the country.
At the table she watched him furtively. She had asked to go with him and he told her he couldn't take her. She wondered why. A great fear began to steal into her soul. It was the first time she had dared to look into the gulf. She would never ask his secret. He must tell her of his own free will. Her eyes searched his. And he turned away without an answer.
He fought for self-control when he kissed her goodbye. A mad desire swept his heart to take her in his arms, perhaps for the last time.
It would be a confession at the moment the blow was about to fall. He would betray the lives of his associates. He gripped himself and left her with a careless smile.
All day she brooded over the odd parting, the constraint, the silence, the sleepless night.
She went to the services of the revival and sought solace in the songs and prayers of the people. At night the minister preached a sermon that soothed her. A warm glow filled her heart. If God is love as the preacher said, he must know the secrets of his heart and life. He must watch over and bring her lover safely back to her arms.
She reached home at a quarter to ten and went to bed humming an old song
Cook had taught her. The tired body was ready for sleep. She did
not expect her husband to return that night. He had gone as far as
Chambersburg. He promised to come on Monday afternoon.
Through the early hours of the fatal night she slept as soundly as a child.
The firing at the Arsenal between three and four o'clock waked her. She sprang to her feet and looked out the window. The street lamps flickered fitfully in the drizzling rain. No one was passing. There were no shouts, no disturbances.
She wondered about the shots. A crowd of drunken fools were still hanging around the Galt House bar perhaps. She went back to bed and slept again.
It was eight o'clock before the crash of a volley from the Arsenal enclosure roused her. She leaped to her feet, rushed to the window and stood trembling as volley followed volley in a long rattle of rifle and shotgun and pistol.
A neighbor hurried past with a gun in his hand. She asked him what the fighting meant.
"Armed Abolitionists have invaded Virginia," he shouted.
Still it meant nothing to her personally. Her husband was not an Abolitionist. She had known him for more than a year. She had been with him day and night for six months in the sweet intimacy of home and love.
And then the hideous truth came crashing on her terror-stricken soul. Cook had been recognized by a neighbor as he drove Colonel Washington's wagon across the Maryland bridge at dawn. A committee of citizens came to cross-examine her.
She faced them with blanched cheeks.
"My husband, an Abolitionist!" she gasped.
"He's with those murderers and robbers."
She turned on the men like a young tigress.
"You're lying—I tell you!"
For an hour they tried to drag from her a confession of his plans. They left at last convinced that she knew nothing, that she suspected nothing of his real life. She had fought them bravely to the last. In her soul of souls she knew the hideous truth. She recalled the strange yearning with which he had looked at her as he left Sunday morning. She saw the bottom of the gulf at last.
With a cry of anguish and despair she sank to the floor in a faint.
She stirred with one thought tearing at her heart. Had they killed or captured him? She rose, dressed and joined the crowd that surged through the streets. The Rifle Works had been captured, Kagi was dead, the other two wounded, one fatally, the other a prisoner. No trace of her husband had been found. He had not reentered the town from the Maryland side.
She walked to the bridge and found it guarded by armed citizens. Tears of joy filled her eyes.
"He can't get back now!" she breathed.
She hurried to her room, fell on her knees and prayed:
"Oh, dear Lord Jesus, I've tried to be a good and faithful wife. My man has loved me tenderly and truly. Save him, oh, Lord! Don't let him come back now into this den of howling beasts. They'll tear him to pieces. And I can't endure it. I can't. I can't. Have pity, Lord. I'm just a poor, heart-broken wife!"
Through six days of terror and excitement, of surging crowds and marching soldiers, the shivering figure watched through her window—and silently prayed. A guard had been set at her house to catch her husband if he dared to return. She laughed softly.
He would not return! She had asked God not to let him. She was asking him now with every breath she breathed. God would not forget her. He would answer her prayers. She knew it. God is love.
She had begun to sleep again at night. Her man was safe in the mountains of Pennsylvania. The Governor of Virginia had set a price on his head. Men were scouring the hills hunting, as they hunt wild beasts, but God would save him. She had seen His shining face in prayer and He had promised.
And then the blow fell.
Far down the street she caught the roar of a mob. Its cries came faintly at first and then they grew to fierce oaths and brutal shouts.
A man stopped in front of her house and spoke to the guard.
"They've got him!"
"Who?"
"Cook!"
"The damned beast, the spy, the traitor!"
"Where are they takin' him?"
"To the jail at Charlestown."
She had no time to lose. She must see him. Bareheaded she rushed into the street and fought her way to his side. His hands were manacled but his fair head was held erect until he saw the white face of his bride. And then his eyes fell.
Would she, too, turn and curse him?
He asked himself the hideous question once and dared not lift his head. He felt her coming nearer. The guard halted. His eyes were blurred. He could see nothing.
He only felt two soft arms slip round his neck. His own moved instinctively to clasp her but the manacles held them. She kissed his lips before the staring crowd and murmured inarticulate sounds of love and tenderness. She smoothed his blond hair back from his forehead and crooned over him as a mother over a babe.
"My little wife—my poor little girlie—my baby!" he murmured. "Forgive me—I tried to save you from this. But I couldn't. Love would have it so. Now you can forget me!"
The arms tightened about his neck, and gave the answer lips could not frame.
When his trial came she moved to Charlestown to sit by his side in the prison dock, touch his manacled hands and look into his eyes.
The trial moved to its certain end with remorseless certainty. Cook's sister, the wife of Governor Willard, sat beside her doomed brother, and cheered the desolate heart of the girl he had married. Governor Willard gave the full weight of his position and his sterling manhood to his wife in her grief.
He had employed the best lawyer in his state to defend Cook—Daniel W. Vorhees, whose eloquence had given him the title of "The Tall Sycamore of the Wabash."
When the great advocate rose, his towering figure commanded a painful silence in the crowded court room. The people, who packed every inch of its space, hated the man who had lived among them for more than a year as a spy. But he had a wife, he had a sister. And in this solemn hour he should have his day in court. The crowd listened to Vorhees' speech with rapt attention.
His appeal was not based on the letter of the law. He took broader, higher grounds. He sketched the dark days of blood-cursed Kansas. He saw a handsome prodigal son, lured by the spirit of adventure, drawn into its vortex of blind passions. He pictured the sinister figure of the grim Puritan leader condemned to death. He told of the spell this evil mind had thrown over a sensitive boy's soul. He pleaded for mercy and forgiveness, for charity and divine love. He pictured the little Virginia girl at his side drawn into the tragedy by a deathless love. He sketched in words that burned into the souls of his hearers the love of his sister, a love big and tender and strong, a love that had followed him in the far frontiers with prayers, a love that encircled him in the darkness of deeds of violence against the forms of law and order. He pleaded for her and the distinguished Governor of a great state, not because of their high position in life but because they had hearts that could ache and break.
When he had finished his remarkable speech, strong men who hated Cook were sobbing. The room was bathed in tears. The stern visaged judge made no effort to hide his.
The court charged the jury to do impartial justice under the laws of the commonwealth.
There could be but one verdict. It was solemnly given by the foreman and the judge pronounced the sentence of death.
Two soft arms stole around the doomed man's neck, and then, before the court, crowd and God as witnesses, the little wife tenderly cried:
"My lover—my sweetheart—my husband—through evil report and through good report, through life, through death, through all eternity—I—love—you!"
Again strong men wept and turned from one another to hide the signs of their weakness.
The wife walked beside her doomed lover back to the jail. As they went through the narrow passage to his cell, the tall, rough-looking prison guard who accompanied them brushed close, caught her hand and pressed it.
His eyes met hers in a quick look that said more plainly than words:
"I must see you alone."
She waited outside the jail until he reappeared.
He approached her boldly and spoke as if he were delivering a casual message.
"Keep your courage, young woman. And don't you be surprised at anything I'm going to say to you. There's people lookin' at us now. I'm just tellin' you a message your husband's told me—you understand."
"Yes—yes—go on—I understand," she answered quickly.
"I'm from Kansas. I'm a friend of John Cook's. I come all the way here to help him. I joined these guards to get to him. I'm goin' to get him out of here if I can."
"Thank God—thank God," she murmured.
"Keep a stiff upper lip and get your hand on some money to follow us."
"I will."
Another guard approached.
"Leave me now. My name's Charles Lenhart. Don't try to talk to me again.
Just watch and wait."
She nodded, brushed the tears from her eyes and left quickly.
He was on the job without delay. Cook and Edwin Coppoc, condemned to die on the same day, occupied the same room in jail. They borrowed a knife from Lenhart as soon as he came on duty and "forgot" to return it. With this knife they worked at night for a week cutting a hole through the brick wall. Under their clothes in a corner they concealed the fragments of bricks.
When the opening had been completed, they cut teeth in the knife blade and made a small saw strong and keen enough to eat through a link in their shackles.
On the night fixed, Lenhart was on guard waiting in breathless suspense for the men to drop the few feet into the prison yard. A brick wall fifteen feet high could he scaled from his shoulders and the last man up could give him a lift.
Through the long, chill hours he paced his beat on the wall and waited to hear the crunching of the bodies slipping through the walls.
What had happened?
Something had gone wrong in the impulsive mind of the blue-eyed adventurer inside. The hole was open, the saw in his hand to cut the manacles, when he suddenly stopped.
"What's the matter?" Coppoc asked.
"We can't do this to-night."
"For God's sake, why?"
"My sister's in town with Governor Willard to tell me goodbye. They will put the blame of this on them. My sister might be imprisoned. The Governor would be in bad. I've caused them trouble enough—God knows—"
"When are they going?"
"To-morrow. We'll wait until to-morrow night—after they've gone."
"But Lenhart may not be on guard."
"That's so," Cook agreed. "Coppoc, you can go alone. You'd better do it."
"No."
"You'd better."
"I'm not made out of that sort of goods," the boy answered.
"You've got a good old Quaker mother out in Springdale praying for you.
It's your chance—go—I can't tonight."
Nothing could induce Coppoc to desert his comrade and leave him to certain death when his escape should be known.
They replaced the bricks, covered the debris and waited until the following night.
At eleven o'clock they cut the manacles and Coppoc crawled out first. He had barely touched the ground when Cook followed. They glanced about the yard and it was deserted. They strained their eyes to make out the figure of the guard who passed the brick wall. He was not in sight. It was a good omen. Lenhart had no doubt foreseen their escape and dropped to the street outside.
They saw that the timbers of the gallows on which they were to die had not all been fastened.
They secured two pieces of scantling and reached the top of the wall. Suddenly the dark figure of a guard moved toward them. Cook called the signal to Lenhart. But a loyal son of Virginia stood sentinel that night. The answer was a rifle shot. They started to leap and caught the flash of a bayonet below.
They walked back into the jail and surrendered to Captain Avis, their friendly keeper.
The little wife waited and watched in vain.