_ CHAPTER LIII. TRY AGAIN
One afternoon in the month of February, 1862, a locomotive engine and a single weather-beaten passenger-coach, moving southward at a very moderate speed through the middle of Kentucky, stopped in response to a handkerchief signal at the southern end of a deep, rocky valley, and, in a patch of gray, snow-flecked woods, took on board Mary Richling, dressed in deep mourning, and her little Alice. The three or four passengers already in the coach saw no sign of human life through the closed panes save the roof of one small cabin that sent up its slender thread of blue smoke at one corner of a little badly cleared field a quarter of a mile away on a huge hill-side. As the scant train crawled off again into a deep, ice-hung defile, it passed the silent figure of a man in butternut homespun, spattered with dry mud, standing close beside the track on a heap of cross-tie cinders and fire-bent railroad iron, a gray goat-beard under his chin, and a quilted homespun hat on his head. From beneath the limp brim of this covering, as the train moved by him, a tender, silly smile beamed upward toward one hastily raised window, whence the smile of Mary and the grave, unemotional gaze of the child met it for a moment before the train swung round a curve in the narrow way, and quickened speed on down grade.
The conductor came and collected her fare. He smelt of tobacco above the smell of the coach in general.
"Do you charge anything for the little girl?"
The purse in which the inquirer's finger and thumb tarried was limber and flat.
"No, ma'am."
It was not the customary official negative; a tawdry benevolence of face went with it, as if to say he did not charge because he would not; and when Mary returned a faint beam of appreciation he went out upon the rear platform and wiped the plenteous dust from his shoulders and cap. Then he returned to his seat at the stove and renewed his conversation with a lieutenant in hard-used blue, who said "the rebel lines ought never to have been allowed to fall back to Nashville," and who knew "how Grant could have taken Fort Donelson a week ago if he had had any sense."
There were but few persons, as we have said, in the car. A rough man in one corner had a little captive, a tiny, dappled fawn, tied by a short, rough bit of rope to the foot of the car-seat. When the conductor by and by lifted the little Alice up from the cushion, where she sat with her bootees straight in front of her at its edge, and carried her, speechless and drawn together like a kitten, and stood her beside the captive orphan, she simply turned about and pattered back to her mother's side.
"I don't believe she even saw it," said the conductor, standing again by Mary.
"Yes, she did," replied Mary, smiling upon the child's head as she smoothed its golden curls; "she'll talk about it to-morrow."
The conductor lingered a moment, wanting to put his own hand there, but did not venture, perhaps because of the person sitting on the next seat behind, who looked at him rather steadily until he began to move away.
This was a man of slender, commanding figure and advanced years. Beside him, next the window, sat a decidedly aristocratic woman, evidently his wife. She, too, was of fine stature, and so, without leaning forward from the back of her seat, or unfolding her arms, she could make kind eyes to Alice, as the child with growing frequency stole glances, at first over her own little shoulder, and later over her mother's, facing backward and kneeling on the cushion. At length a cooky passed between them in dead silence, and the child turned and gazed mutely in her mother's face, with the cooky just in sight.
"It can't hurt her," said the lady, in a sweet voice, to Mary, leaning forward with her hands in her lap. By the time the sun began to set in a cool, golden haze across some wide stretches of rolling fallow, a conversation had sprung up, and the child was in the lady's lap, her little hand against the silken bosom, playing with a costly watch.
The talk began about the care of Alice, passed to the diet, and then to the government, of children, all in a light way, a similarity of convictions pleasing the two ladies more and more as they found it run further and further. Both talked, but the strange lady sustained the conversation, although it was plainly both a pastime and a comfort to Mary. Whenever it threatened to flag the handsome stranger persisted in reviving it.
Her husband only listened and smiled, and with one finger made every now and then a soft, slow pass at Alice, who each time shrank as slowly and softly back into his wife's fine arm. Presently, however, Mary raised her eyebrows a little and smiled, to see her sitting quietly in the gentleman's lap; and as she turned away and rested her elbow on the window-sill and her cheek on her hand in a manner that betrayed weariness, and looked out upon the ever-turning landscape, he murmured to his wife, "I haven't a doubt in my mind," and nodded significantly at the preoccupied little shape in his arms. His manner with the child was imperceptibly adroit, and very soon her prattle began to be heard. Mary was just turning to offer a gentle check to this rising volubility, when up jumped the little one to a standing posture on the gentleman's knee, and, all unsolicited and with silent clapping of hands, plumped out her full name:--
"Alice Sevier Witchlin'!"
The husband threw a quick glance toward his wife; but she avoided it and called Mary's attention to the sunset as seen through the opposite windows. Mary looked and responded with expressions of admiration, but was visibly disquieted, and the next moment called her child to her.
"My little girl mustn't talk so loud and fast in the cars," she said, with tender pleasantness, standing her upon the seat and brushing back the stray golden waves from the baby's temples, and the brown ones, so like them, from her own. She turned a look of amused apology to the gentleman, and added, "She gets almost boisterous sometimes," then gave her regard once more to her offspring, seating the little one beside her as in the beginning, and answering her musical small questions with composing yeas and nays.
"I suppose," she said, after a pause and a look out through the window,--"I suppose we ought soon to be reaching M---- station, now, should we not?"
"What, in Tennessee? Oh! no," replied the gentleman. "In ordinary times we should; but at this slow rate we cannot nearly do it. We're on a road, you see, that was destroyed by the retreating army and made over by the Union forces. Besides, there are three trains of troops ahead of us, that must stop and unload between here and there, and keep you waiting, there's no telling how long."
"Then I'll get there in the night!" exclaimed Mary.
"Yes, probably after midnight."
"Oh, I shouldn't have _thought_ of coming before to-morrow if I had known that!" In the extremity of her dismay she rose half from her seat and looked around with alarm.
"Have you no friends expecting to receive you there?" asked the lady.
"Not a soul! And the conductor says there's no lodging-place nearer than three miles"--
"And that's gone now," said the gentleman.
"You'll have to get out at the same station with us," said the lady, her manner kindness itself and at the same time absolute.
"I think you have claims on us, anyhow, that we'd like to pay."
"Oh! impossible," said Mary. "You're certainly mistaking me."
"I think you have," insisted the lady; "that is, if your name is Richling."
Mary blushed.
"I don't think you know my husband," she said; "he lives a long way from here."
"In New Orleans?" asked the gentleman.
"Yes, sir," said Mary, boldly. She couldn't fear such good faces.
"His first name is John, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir. Do you really know John, sir?" The lines of pleasure and distress mingled strangely in Mary's face. The gentleman smiled. He tapped little Alice's head with the tips of his fingers.
"I used to hold him on my knee when he was no bigger than this little image of him here."
The tears leaped into Mary's eyes.
"Mr. Thornton," she whispered, huskily, and could say no more.
"You must come home with us," said the lady, touching her tenderly on the shoulder. "It's a wonder of good fortune that we've met. Mr. Thornton has something to say to you,--a matter of business. He's the family's lawyer, you know."
"I must get to my husband without delay," said Mary.
"Get to your husband?" asked the lawyer, in astonishment.
"Yes, sir."
"Through the lines?"
"Yes, sir."
"I told him so," said the lady.
"I don't know how to credit it," said he. "Why, my child, I don't think you can possibly know what you are attempting. Your friends ought never to have allowed you to conceive such a thing. You must let us dissuade you. It will not be taking too much liberty, will it? Has your husband never told you what good friends we were?"
Mary nodded and tried to speak.
"Often," said Mrs. Thornton to her husband, interpreting the half-articulated reply.
They sat and talked in low tones, under the dismal lamp of the railroad coach, for two or three hours. Mr. Thornton came around and took the seat in front of Mary, and sat with one leg under him, facing back toward her. Mrs. Thornton sat beside her, and Alice slumbered on the seat behind, vacated by the lawyer and his wife.
"You needn't tell me John's story," said the gentleman; "I know it. What I didn't know before, I got from a man with whom I corresponded in New Orleans."
"Dr. Sevier?"
"No, a man who got it from the Doctor."
So they had Mary tell her own story.
"I thought I should start just as soon as my mother's health would permit. John wouldn't have me start before that, and, after all, I don't see how I could have done it--rightly. But by the time she was well--or partly well--every one was in the greatest anxiety and doubt everywhere. You know how it was."
"Yes," said Mrs. Thornton.
"And everybody thinking everything would soon be settled," continued Mary.
"Yes," said the sympathetic lady, and her husband touched her quietly, meaning for her not to interrupt.
"We didn't think the Union _could_ be broken so easily," pursued Mary. "And then all at once it was unsafe and improper to travel alone. Still I went to New York, to take steamer around by sea. But the last steamer had sailed, and I had to go back home; for--the fact is,"--she smiled,--"my money was all gone. It was September before I could raise enough to start again; but one morning I got a letter from New Orleans, telling me that John was very ill, and enclosing money for me to travel with."
She went on to tell the story of her efforts to get a pass on the bank of the Ohio river, and how she had gone home once more, knowing she was watched, not daring for a long time to stir abroad, and feeding on the frequent hope that New Orleans was soon to be taken by one or another of the many naval expeditions that from time to time were, or were said to be, sailing.
"And then suddenly--my mother died."
Mrs. Thornton gave a deep sigh.
"And then," said Mary, with a sudden brightening, but in a low voice, "I determined to make one last effort. I sold everything in the world I had and took Alice and started. I've come very slowly, a little way at a time, feeling along, for I was resolved not to be turned back. I've been weeks getting this far, and the lines keep moving south ahead of me. But I haven't been turned back," she went on to say, with a smile, "and everybody, white and black, everywhere, has been just as kind as kind can be." Tears stopped her again.
"Well, never mind, Mrs. Richling," said Mrs. Thornton; then turned to her husband, and asked, "May I tell her?"
"Yes."
"Well, Mrs. Richling,--but do you wish to be called Mrs. Richling?"
"Yes," said Mary, and "Certainly," said Mr. Thornton.
"Well, Mrs. Richling, Mr. Thornton has some money for your husband. Not a great deal, but still--some. The younger of the two sisters died a few weeks ago. She was married, but she was rich in her own right. She left almost everything to her sister; but Mr. Thornton persuaded her to leave some money--well, two thousand--'tisn't much, but it's something, you know--to--ah to Mr. Richling. Husband has it now at home and will give it to you,--at the breakfast-table to-morrow morning; can't you, dear?"
"Yes."
"Yes, and we'll not try to persuade you to give up your idea of going to New Orleans. I know we couldn't do it. We'll watch our chance,--eh, husband?--and put you through the lines; and not only that, but give you letters to--why, dear," said the lady, turning to her partner in good works, "you can give Mrs. Richling a letter to Governor Blank; and another to General Um-hm, can't you? and--yes, and one to Judge Youknow. Oh, they will take you anywhere! But first you'll stop with us till you get well rested--a week or two, or as much longer as you will."
Mary pressed the speaker's hand.
"I can't stay."
"Oh, you know you needn't have the least fear of seeing any of John's relatives. They don't live in this part of the State at all; and, even if they did, husband has no business with them just now, and being a Union man, you know"--
"I want to see my husband," said Mary, not waiting to hear what Union sympathies had to do with the matter.
"Yes," said the lady, in a suddenly subdued tone. "Well, we'll get you through just as quickly as we can." And soon they all began to put on wraps and gather their luggage. Mary went with them to their home, laid her tired head beside her child's in sleep, and late next morning rose to hear that Fort Donelson was taken, and the Southern forces were falling back. A day or two later came word that Columbus, on the Mississippi, had been evacuated. It was idle for a woman to try just then to perform the task she had set for herself. The Federal lines!
"Why, my dear child, they're trying to find the Confederate lines and strike them. You can't lose anything--you may gain much--by remaining quiet here awhile. The Mississippi, I don't doubt, will soon be open from end to end."
A fortnight seemed scarcely more than a day when it was past, and presently two of them had gone. One day comes Mr. Thornton, saying:--
"My dear child, I cannot tell you how I have the news, but you may depend upon its correctness. New Orleans is to be attacked by the most powerful naval expedition that ever sailed under the United States flag. If the place is not in our hands by the first of April I will put you through both lines, if I have to go with you myself." When Mary made no answer, he added, "Your delays have all been unavoidable, my child!"
"Oh, I don't know; I don't know!" exclaimed Mary, with sudden distraction; "it seems to me I _must_ be to blame, or I'd have been through long ago. I ought to have _run through_ the lines. I ought to have 'run the blockade.'"
"My child," said the lawyer, "you're mad."
"You'll see," replied Mary, almost in soliloquy. _