CHAPTER x.x.x.

A GAME OF CHANCE.

It was the end of January, 1862, when Olympia and her mother found themselves in Washington for the second time in quest of the missing soldier. They took lodgings in the same quiet house, not far from Lafayette Square--Kate with them. Kate counted upon her father's aid, active or pa.s.sive; but when her messenger returned from Willard's with word that Mr. Boone had gone from the hotel several days before, she was numb with a dreadful foreboding. He was avoiding her deliberately. She drove at once to the hotel. The clerk summoned to her aid could only inform her that her father had given up his room and had left the hotel late at night. She could get no further clew. She telegraphed at once to Acredale and returned to the Spragues, not daring to breathe her apprehensions. Yes, her father was plainly keeping away from her. He meant to persist in his savage vengeance. What had he learned? Was Jack indeed dead, and was his good name the object of her father's hatred?

Whither should she turn? Why had she not thought of this--her fathers pa.s.sivity or even opposition? How could she reveal her terrors to the mother and sister? How make known to them the unworthy side of her father's character? If in the morning no telegram came from Acredale, it would be proof that her father was bent, implacably in his purpose to undo Jack, living or dead. When she reached the lodging, Olympia was dressed for the street.

"You are just in time. I have matured my plans. First, we must find out at the proper quarter the names of all the wounded brought here from Fort Monroe. Then we must trace the report in the _Herald_ down to its origin. Then we must visit every hospital in and near Washington to find out from actual sight of each man whether Jack or d.i.c.k, or any one we know, is in the city. As we go on, we shall learn a good deal which may modify this plan, or perhaps make the search less difficult."

Olympia said this with composure and a certain confidence in herself that struck Kate with admiration. She felt ashamed of herself. Here was Olympia, unconscious of Jack's real peril if living, the menace to his reputation if dead, planning as composedly as if it were an every-day thing to have a brother lost in the appalling mazes of war; and she had been weakly depending upon her father, Jack's most persevering enemy!

She recoiled from herself in a shiver of self-reproach as she said:

"Olympia, you have the good sense of a man in an emergency. I am ashamed of myself. I, who ought to do the thinking for you, am as helpless as a kitchen-maid set to playing lady in the parlor. I can at least help you; I can make my body follow you, if I haven't sense enough to suggest."

"Dear Kate, it isn't sense, or insight, or any fine quality of mind that is needed here. All I ask is, that you won't get dispirited, or, if you do, don't let mamma see you are. Poor mamma! She is as easily influenced as a baby. Jack is her darling, remember. All the world is a small affair to her compared with our poor boy. I fancy, if we were as much wrapped up in him as she is, we should make poor pioneers in the wilderness before us."

But Kate could stand no more of this. With a choking sob she turned and fled up the stairway, crying as she disappeared: "Wait--wait a moment; I must get my purse."

When she reappeared, the heavy mourning-veil was drawn down, and Olympia, with a rea.s.sured glance, opened the door.

"You must affect confidence, if you have it not--even gayety. I warn you not to be shocked at my conduct. I must keep up mamma's spirits, and to do it I must play indifference or confidence, and you must be careful to say nothing, to do nothing, to excite her suspicions."

Kate's cab had driven off, and the two girls walked through Lafayette Square into Pennsylvania Avenue to get another. The wide streets were filled, as of old, with skurrying orderlies, groups of lounging officers, and lumbering army wagons. But even the untrained eyes of Olympia soon took account of the better discipline, the more businesslike celerity of the men on duty as well as the flying couriers.

The White House was gay with hunting, and salutes from the distant forts were signalizing the news that had just come of Union successes at Mill Spring and Roanoke Island. The girls, procuring a hack, were driven to the provost-general's office. Here, after an interminable delay they were admitted to the presence of a complacent young c.o.xcomb in spotless regimentals, who, so soon as he saw Olympia's face and bearing, threw off the listlessness of routine, and, rising deferentially, asked her pleasure. She told her story simply, and asked his advice as to the course to be followed. When the extract from the _Herald_ was shown to him, he examined an enormous folio, and then rang a bell.

"It is more than likely that these names are wrong. This happens constantly. The operators are raw and some of them can barely read. The names are given hurriedly, and if not written plainly they make wretched work of them. The newspapers make many a fool famous, while neglecting many a hero who deserves fame, simply through the blundering or carelessness of the writers or operators. Here is an orderly who will take you to the surgeon-general. You will find in his books the names of all the wounded in hospital in the Eastern armies. But if your brother was wounded or brought in wounded at Fort Monroe, his name will be on the books of the Army of the Potomac or the Department of Eastern Virginia."

They were treated with the same deferential gallantry at the surgeon-general's office; the young doctors, indeed, became almost obtrusive in their eagerness to spare the young women the drudgery of scrutinizing the long lists of invalids. But, after two days' careful search, no names resembling Sprague or Perley could be found.

"I wonder who this can be?" Kate said, returning to an entry made a month before: "Jones, Warchester; Caribee Regiment."

"I know no one of that name," Olympia said, "but perhaps he might know something of Jack. Let us go to him. It will do no harm to find out who he is."

The surgeon's clerk readily gave them Jones's address, reminding them that the hospital was in Georgetown, and that they would be too late to obtain entrance to the patient that day. Next morning Mrs. Sprague was too ill to rise from her bed, and Olympia could not leave her alone.

Kate undertook the investigation into the Jones affair alone. When she reached the hospital there was some delay before she could see the personage intrusted with the admission of guests. She was shown into an office on the ground-floor and given a seat. As she sat, distraught and eager, she heard her own name in the next room, the door of which stood open:

"It's at Boone's risk. He would have him moved, and the surgeon-general gave him _carte blanche_ with the patient."

"Well, it will cost the man his life. I'll stake my diploma on that.

Why, the journey to Warchester alone is enough to down the most vigorous convalescent."

Kate trembled. What did this mean? What was she hearing?

Boone--Warchester? Whom had her father been taking from the hospital--Jack? Her heart gave a wild leap. Yes--Jack. Who else did her father know in the army? She arose trembling, fainting, but resolute.

She reached the open door, but tried for a moment in vain to ask:

"If you please, tell me, tell me--" But she could say no more. The occupants of the room, in undress uniform, turned upon her at first in hostile surprise, but, as she threw her veil farther back in alarm, the elder of the two said:

"Pray, madam, what is it; are you ill?"

"No; may I sit down, please? Thank you. I am come to, to--" What should she say? How expose the doubt of her father? How find out for certain who had been removed to Warchester--abducted was the word her agitated thoughts shaped. Oh, if Olympia, intrepid, self-possessed, were only with her!--but no, not Olympia; no one must ever know the unutterable crime she suspected her father of. She must be brave. She must be resolute. Oh, where were her arts now, when she most needed them? She tried to speak. A hoa.r.s.e gasping came in her throat and died there.

"Ah--ah--some water!--I--I am faint."

In an instant a goblet of cool water was at her lips. She drank slowly, deliberating all the time to recover her senses; the surgeons--both young men, mere lads--waiting respectfully, inferring much from the melancholy robes. The water cooled her head, and she began to be able to think coherently.

"I have the surgeon-general's permit to visit a patient in your fever ward--Jones, the name is. Can I see him?"

"Pray, let me see the permit, madam?" He glanced at it, looked significantly at his comrade, and said:

"This man was removed three days ago."

"Whereto?"

"Warchester."

"Ah!" Kate's veil, by an imperceptible gesture, fell over part of her face. A great trembling came upon her again. The young surgeons exchanged glances.

"Who--who--did--who asked for his removal?"

"A Mr. Boone, also of Warchester."

"Thank you--I am too late--I wanted to--to ask this Mr. Jones some questions concerning a dear friend in his regiment. But I can write, if you will kindly give me the address."

"I am very sorry--beyond Warchester we have no record here of his whereabouts. If he had been officially transferred to another government hospital, we should have all the facts. But the removal was a personal favor to Mr. Boone. He is well known both here and in Warchester, and you can have no difficulty in communicating with him."

"Ah, true; I had forgotten that."

"If we can be of any service to you, Miss Sprague," the young man said, handing Kate back the permit, made out in Olympia's name, which Kate had never thought of, "you can always reach us through the surgeon-general's office." He handed her a card with his own and his comrade's name in pencil.

Thanking the young man with as much self-possession as she could summon, Kate reached the carriage in a whirl of wild imaginings, more terrifying as she strove to reduce them to definite shape. Who was this Jones? Why remove him to Warchester? If it were not Jack, what interest could her father have in his removal? But. first, what could she say to Olympia?

She could say she did not know Jones, but Olympia would surely ask what questions she had put to him. What should she say? That he had been taken away from the hospital? She knew Olympia well enough to know that this vague story would only incite her to further inquiry. She would find out the father's handiwork in the affair, and she, too, would be set on the rack of suspicion.

When the carriage reached the door, Kate dared not enter. She dismissed the man and set out toward the green fields below the rounded slope of Meridian Hill. Here she could breathe freely. "I can think clearly now,"

she panted, with a gush of warm tears. If she could only remain calm, she could look Into the black abyss with the eye of reason, rather than terror. Calmness came soothingly as she walked, and she began at the beginning, weighing probabilities. All seemed dark and hopeless, until she came back to the record in the surgeon-general's office. Jones, sent from Hampton Hospital, December 13th. This was about the time Jack had reached the Union lines. He had left Richmond late in November. All Brodie's inquiries at Fort Monroe had been fruitless in finding the whereabouts of the fugitives that came through the lines at that time.

d.i.c.k had been one of them. If Jones were not Jack himself, he must have been one of the group that escaped with Jack. It all led back to the first frightful conjecture. Her father was abducting a witness who could divulge Jack's whereabouts, or he was secreting Jack until be could work him harm. The walk began to revive Kate's courage as well as her faculties. She must act with energy. The hardest part of the problem was to get clear of Olympia, for Kate at once made up her mind to quit Washington that very night for home. She must evade Olympia's inquiries as best she could, and make some excuse for journeying thither.

When she reached home, fortune had intervened to save her conscience from the falsehoods she feared she would have to employ. The landlady met her in the hallway with a white face.

"O Miss Boone, Mrs. Sprague is taken very bad. The doctor's with her now. I think it is typhoid fever."

Up-stairs misfortune gave her a further release. Olympia came into Kate's room, agitated and in tears.

"All, Kate, mamma is suffering pitiably. The doctor thinks it is typhoid, and he ordered me to remain away from her. You must leave the house. It won't do for all of us to be ill together. I may not be able to see you for days, until the crisis is past. But you must continue the search, and you must let me know, from day to day, what you learn. There are letters for you--I hear mamma. I will be back in a moment."

Kate fairly hated herself for the pa.s.sing thrill of relief over the timely illness that had intervened to expedite her mission. She glanced over the letters. There was one in her father's hand, postmarked Acredale. It contained no clew to his purposes, but she read tremblingly:

"My daughter: You are doing a foolish thing. The search you propose can lead to nothing. All that can be done has been done by his friends. They have found no trace of him. Women can not hope to succeed where so keen a man as Brodie has failed. I have every confidence that in good time the matter will be cleared up, but you must remember that the Government and its agents have all they can do to manage and keep track of the millions of soldiers in the field, and they can not be expected to take much interest in the fate of the wounded or dead. Always affectionately.

"Your Father."