"Mamma is quite right. While you are with us no harm can come to
Vincent; for, if he should be taken prisoner, we can threaten the Yankee
Government to put you to torture unless he is well treated," Rosa
interrupted, reassuringly.
"We should be far more aid and comfort to Vincent if we were in the North than we could be here. If he were taken prisoner and wounded, we could return him the kindness we have received here. In any event, we could lessen the hardships of prison life."
"Oh, you would have to minister to a mind diseased, if such a fate should befall me!" Vincent cried, sentimentally; with a glance into Olympia's eyes, which met his at the moment. Both blushed; and Olympia, to relieve the embarrassment, said, decisively:
"Mamma is right. Jack must have his family on the ground, to watch over his interests. I am sure there is some underhand work responsible for this long delay in his case, for I saw by The Whig, last week, that exchanges of prisoners had been made; I think that—" But, suddenly remembering the presence of Kate and Wesley, she did not finish the thought, which implied a belief in the intervention of the elder Boone—to Jack's detriment. In the end—when the two mothers talked the matter over—Mrs. Sprague carried the point. She convinced Mrs. Atterbury that there was danger to Jack in a longer stay of his family in the Confederate lines. Vague reports had already reached them from Acredale of the suspicious hostility in which the Democrats were held after Bull Run. The Northern papers, which came through the lines quite regularly, left no doubt that Democratic leanings were universally interpreted in the North as evidences of rebel sympathy, if not partisanship. Such a charge, as things stood, would be fatal to Jack; and the mother's duty was plain. She had friends in Washington, once powerful, who could stand between her son and calumny—perhaps more serious danger—when she was present in person to explain his conduct. If she could not at once secure his exchange, she could save him from compromise in the present inflammable and capricious state of the public mind. Understanding this, and the enmity of Boone, Mrs. Atterbury not only made no further objection, but acknowledged the urgent necessity of the mother's presence in the North. The idle life of Rosedale had grown unbearably irksome to Merry, too.
"I feel as if I were a rebel," she confided to Mrs. Sprague in the evening talks, when the piano sounded and the young people were making the hours pass in gayety. "It's a sin for us to laugh and be contented here, when our friends are bearing the burdens of war. I shall be ashamed to show my face in Acredale. Oh, I wish I could carry a musket!"
"You might carry a canteen, my dear. I believe the regiments take out vivandières—there would be an outlet for your warlike emotions," Mrs. Sprague said, with the purpose of cheering the unhappy spinster.
"Ah, no; I must not give encouragement to that dreadful Richard. But we shall go now, thank Heaven, and it will comfort my sisters to have the boy back on Northern soil, even if he persists in being a soldier."
She had a long talk with Jack on the subject. That tempest-tossed knight convinced her that it would only incite the boy to more unruliness to persist in his quitting the army, or to urge him northward now, before an exchange was properly arranged. Indeed, he was a prisoner—taken in battle—though his name did not appear on the lists. So Vincent's sudden going was welcomed as a stroke of good fortune. The Atterburys, understanding the natural feelings of the family, made only perfunctory opposition. Olympia and Kate were to remain until their brothers' fates were decided. Vincent, who had been for weeks wildly impatient to return to the field, was divided in mind now—by joy and despair. He had put off and put off a last appeal to Olympia. He had not had an opportunity, or rather had too much opportunity—and had, from day to day, deferred the longed-for yet dreaded decision. When ready to speak, prudence whispered that it would be better to leave the question open until it should come up of itself. She would learn every day to know him better in his own home, where all the artificialities of life are stripped from a man, by the concurrent abrasions of family love and domestic devoirs. She would see that, however unworthy of her love he might have seemed in the old boyish days at Acredale, now he could be a man when manliness was demanded; that he could be patient, reticent, humble in the trials her caprice or coquetry put upon him. She had, it seemed to him, deepened and broadened the current of his love during these blissful weeks of waiting. Her very reserve, under the new conditions surrounding her, had made more luminous the beauty of her heart and mind. She was no longer the airy, capricious Olympia of his college days. The pensive gravity of misfortune and premature responsibility had ennobled and made more tangible the traits that had won him in her Northern home. She had not avoided him during these weeks of purifying probation, as he feared she would. Of late—Jack's state being secure—she had revived much of the old vivacity, and deepened the thrall that held him.
But now the merry-making season which had opened before them was at an end. The madrigals that welled up in his soft heart must sing themselves in the silence of the night, in the camp yonder, with no ears to comprehend, no heart to melt to them. He should probably not get a chance to see her again during the conflict. How long? Perhaps a year—for it would take two campaigns, as the rebel leaders reckoned, to convince the North that the Confederacy was unconquerable! And what might not happen during those momentous months? Perhaps Jack's death?—and then they would be divided as by fire—or, if the conflict resulted victoriously for the South, as he knew it must, he foresaw that the soldier of the conquering army would not be received as a wooer in the family of the defeated. He knew her so well! She would, in the very pride of outraged patriotism, give her love to one of the defeated, rather than add to the triumphs of the hated South. She had strong convictions on the war. She hated slavery, and she could not be made to see that the South was warring for liberty, not to sustain slavery. These thoughts ran through Vincent's troubled mind as his mother directed the preparations for the fête of the President.
Kate, Jack, and Dick were pressed into the service of decorating the apartments. Olympia left the room with her mother to advise and assist in making ready for the journey North; and Vincent, aiding his mother with a sadly divided mind, kept furtive watch on the hallway. She held him hours in suspense, he thought, almost wrathfully, of deliberate purpose; for she must have read in his eyes that he wanted to talk with her. The artless Dick finally gave him a chance.