_ CHAPTER LII. A PASS THROUGH THE LINES
About the middle of September following the date of the foregoing incident, there occurred in a farmhouse head-quarters on the Indiana shore of the Ohio river the following conversation:--
"You say you wish me to give you a pass through the lines, ma'am. Why do you wish to go through?"
"I want to join my husband in New Orleans."
"Why, ma'am, you'd much better let New Orleans come through the lines. We shall have possession of it, most likely, within a month." The speaker smiled very pleasantly, for very pleasant and sweet was the young face before him, despite its lines of mental distress, and very soft and melodious the voice that proceeded from it.
"Do you think so?" replied the applicant, with an unhopeful smile. "My friends have been keeping me at home for months on that idea, but the fact seems as far off now as ever. I should go straight through without stopping, if I had a pass."
"Ho!" exclaimed the man, softly, with pitying amusement. "Certainly, I understand you would try to do so. But, my dear madam, you would find yourself very much mistaken. Suppose, now, we should let you through our lines. You'd be between two fires. You'd still have to get into the rebel lines. You don't know what you're undertaking."
She smiled wistfully.
"I'm undertaking to get to my husband."
"Yes, yes," said the officer, pulling his handkerchief from between two brass buttons of his double-breasted coat and wiping his brow. She did not notice that he made this motion purely as a cover for the searching glance which he suddenly gave her from head to foot. "Yes," he continued, "but you don't know what it is, ma'am. After you get through the _other_ lines, what are you going to do _then_? There's a perfect reign of terror over there. I wouldn't let a lady relative of mine take such risks for thousands of dollars. I don't think your husband ought to thank me for giving you a pass. You say he's a Union man; why don't he come to you?"
Tears leaped into the applicant's eyes.
"He's become too sick to travel," she said.
"Lately?"
"Yes, sir."
"I thought you said you hadn't heard from him for months." The officer looked at her with narrowed eyes.
"I said I hadn't had a letter from him." The speaker blushed to find her veracity on trial. She bit her lip, and added, with perceptible tremor: "I got one lately from his physician."
"How did you get it?"
"What, sir?"
"Now, madam, you know what I asked you, don't you?"
"Yes, sir."
"Yes. Well, I'd like you to answer."
"I found it, three mornings ago, under the front door of the house where I live with my mother and my little girl."
"Who put it there?"
"I do not know."
The officer looked her steadily in the eyes. They were blue. His own dropped.
"You ought to have brought that letter with you, ma'am," he said, looking up again; "don't you see how valuable it would be to you?"
"I did bring it," she replied, with alacrity, rummaged a moment in a skirt-pocket, and brought it out. The officer received it and read the superscription audibly.
"'Mrs. John H----.' Are you Mrs. John H----?"
"That is not the envelope it was in," she replied. "It was not directed at all. I put it into that envelope merely to preserve it. That's the envelope of a different letter,--a letter from my mother."
"Are you Mrs. John H----?" asked her questioner again. She had turned partly aside and was looking across the apartment and out through a window. He spoke once more. "Is this your name?"
"What, sir?"
He smiled cynically.
"Please don't do that again, madam."
She blushed down into the collar of her dress.
"That is my name, sir."
The man put the missive to his nose, snuffed it softly, and looked amused, yet displeased.
"Mrs. H----, did you notice just a faint smell of--garlic--about this--?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, I have no less than three or four others with the very same odor." He smiled on. "And so, no doubt, we are both of the same private opinion that the bearer of this letter was--who, Mrs. H----?"
Mrs. H---- frequently by turns raised her eyes honestly to her questioner's and dropped them to where, in her lap, the fingers of one hand fumbled with a lone wedding-ring on the other, while she said:--
"Do you think, sir, if you were in my place you would like to give the name of the person you thought had risked his life to bring you word that your husband--your wife--was very ill, and needed your presence? Would you like to do it?"
The officer looked severe.
"Don't you know perfectly well that wasn't his principal errand inside our lines?"
"No."
"No!" echoed the man; "and you don't know perfectly well, I suppose, that he's been shot at along this line times enough to have turned his hair white? Or that he crossed the river for the third time last night, loaded down with musket-caps for the rebels?"
"No."
"But you must admit you know a certain person, wherever he may be, or whatever he may be doing, named Raphael Ristofalo?"
"I do not."
The officer smiled again.
"Yes, I see. That is to say, you don't _admit_ it. And you don't deny it."
The reply came more slowly:--
"I do not."
"Well, now, Mrs. H----, I've given you a pretty long audience. I'll tell you what I'll do. But do you please tell me, first, you affirm on your word of honor that your name is really Mrs. H----; that you are no spy, and have had no voluntary communication with any, and that you are a true and sincere Union woman."
"I affirm it all."
"Well, then, come in to-morrow at this hour, and if I am going to give you a pass at all I'll give it to you then. Here, here's your letter."
As she received the missive she lifted her eyes, suffused, but full of hope, to his, and said:--
"God grant you the heart to do it, sir, and bless you."
The man laughed. Her eyes fell, she blushed, and, saying not a word, turned toward the door and had reached the threshold when the officer called, with a certain ringing energy:--
"Mrs. Richling!"
She wheeled as if he had struck her, and answered:--
"What, sir!" Then, turning as red as a rose, she said, "O sir, that was cruel!" covered her face with her hands, and sobbed aloud. It was only as she was in the midst of these last words that she recognized in the officer before her the sharper-visaged of those two men who had stood by her in Broadway.
"Step back here, Mrs. Richling."
She came.
"Well, madam! I should like to know what we are coming to, when a lady like you--a palpable, undoubted lady--can stoop to such deceptions!"
"Sir," said Mary, looking at him steadfastly and then shaking her head in solemn asseveration, "all that I have said to you is the truth."
"Then will you explain how it is that you go by one name in one part of the country, and by another in another part?"
"No," she said. It was very hard to speak. The twitching of her mouth would hardly let her form a word. "No--no--I can't--tell you."
"Very well, ma'am. If you don't start back to Milwaukee by the next train, and stay there, I shall"--
"Oh, don't say that, sir! I must go to my husband! Indeed, sir, it's nothing but a foolish mistake, made years ago, that's never harmed any one but us. I'll take all the blame of it if you'll only give me a pass!"
The officer motioned her to be silent.
"You'll have to do as I tell you, ma'am. If not, I shall know it; you will be arrested, and I shall give you a sort of pass that you'd be a long time asking for." He looked at the face mutely confronting him and felt himself relenting. "I dare say this does sound very cruel to you, ma'am; but remember, this is a cruel war. I don't judge you. If I did, and could harden my heart as I ought to, I'd have you arrested now. But, I say, you'd better take my advice. Good-morning! _No, ma'am, I can't hear you!_ So, now, that's enough! Good-morning, madam!" _