Chapter XXX

During the siege of Vicksburg there was a hot combat one evening on the banks of the Big Black River between a scouting party under Brig. General Philip Leigh and a Rebel force which had mysteriously found cover in the woods at the Union rear. The fighting was at close range and, in part, hand to hand. The Confederates were put to flight, but not until many men on both sides had perished. Near the close of the fight General Leigh was pierced by a musket-ball and fell from his horse. The surgeon to whom he was carried by some of his loving comrades thought the wound was mortal, but an ambulance with a strong guard was dispatched with all haste to take him to one of the field hospitals in front of Vicksburg.

In gathering up the wounded late at night another officer in Union dress was found whom none could identify. He was removed with others to a field hospital next day, and when a train of wounded was sent North a little later to escape the dreadful heat, both he and General Leigh were taken to the great Union Hospital at Covington.

From some of the Rebels who were captured it was learned that the expedition had been sent to carry out a device, formed by its Commander, to abduct or murder General Grant. None of them could or would tell who the Commander of the Rebel force was, or who had sent it on its mission of treachery, but it was ascertained that many of the officers and men were clad in the uniform of Union Soldiers, and that the contingent was composed of some of the worst desperadoes in Bragg’s army.

When General Leigh began to feel well enough to pay any attention to his surroundings he was interested in the gossip of the attendants on the subject of the Rebel bushwhacker who had been picked up as one of the Union wounded and was one of the patients in Orchard Ward No. 7, where the General lay. The ward was a tent of the new hospital type, and contained six beds. By the time he was able to get up there were no other patients left in the ward except himself and the Confederate, and the latter had only begun to speak intelligibly within a few days. One day while the doctors were removing the bandages from the stranger’s head General Leigh went to the bedside and was nonplussed on finding that the man was none other than the Rev. Mr. Smiles. The blond hair and beard were long and unkempt, and the face bore marks of suffering, but there was no doubt of the man’s identity and General Leigh experienced much difficulty in suppressing the exclamation of surprise that rose to his lips. He reflected that here was a kind of retribution.

On the cot before him, with sightless eyes and life fast ebbing away, lay the betrayer of the innocent Hagar; and the Rebel bandit whose well- matured plan to murder the Union Commander at Vicksburg, he himself had frustrated by the narrowest chance and almost at the cost of his life. The case supplied him an interesting subject for speculation, and served to render his own captivity less irksome. It was in vain that Doctor Bruce advised him to make the journey by slow stages to his home near Cleveland, for he was determined to remain in the hospital until he should be able to return to the field of action.

A few days later Lamont began to show symptoms of improvement and became very talkative. At first he would only speak in French, and when General Leigh asked him in that tongue if he knew where he was, he said:—

“Yes, I am in New Orleans. I have struck the blow that saved our cause, and from this long sleep I shall soon wake to see the South triumphant. Won’t you take off this bandage, Doctor?”

“I am a fellow-invalid.” said the General, “but I heard the doctors say that the bandage must remain across your eyes for the present.”

“But I will have it off!” exclaimed Lamont. He seized the bandage with his bony fingers and tore it off. “What’s the matter? Is it night? Where’s the light? Where are you?” By this he had raised himself to a sitting posture and stretched forth his emaciated arms feeling out in every direction.

“I would advise you to be patient. We are in a Union hospital, and you are suffering from a wound on the head which temporarily affects your sight. There is no attendant here just now and you may injure yourself.”

“Am I blind?” demanded Lamont.

“Temporarily, yes; but if you will be quiet a moment I will call an attendant, from whom you may hear more definitely about your situation.”

As General Leigh went out Lamont brushed his hands across his eyes uneasily, and said to himself:

“Is it so bad as this! Am I deprived of that blessed sense without which the world is a blank and barren mystery? Oh, God! rather let me die than live like this in utter blackness. It is worse than anything I had ever conceived.”

As the days went by Lamont became very friendly and confidential toward his invisible companion, and the assurance given him by the doctors that he would almost certainly recover his sight with his restoration to health, made him so cheerful that he appeared to have regained a measure of the buoyancy and good nature which had characterized his impersonation of the Rev. Mr. Smiles. Philip found him a decidedly interesting study. Lamont guessed from his accent, that he was a native of the South, and Philip took care to state that he was from Louisiana leaving the confederate to infer that he had found a colleague as well as a compatriot in the Union Hospital. The intimacy grew apace, and one day Lamont gave a full account of the plot he was about to execute at Vicksburg when his force was surprised and overthrown.

One night when Lamont was fast asleep the General sat musing beside his pallet and fell into this vein of reflection: “Here is my opportunity to acquaint myself with the career of this libertine, and I shall practice whatever deceit I find necessary to draw him out. I feel a strange and fascinating curiosity to pry into the life of this man who has made himself so perfect a villain, and at any cost I must know the secret of his stay at Newberg when I unwittingly made him an invalid, and left him there to become Josephine’s patient and guest. This is a test within my grasp, and I have a right to make it—at the peril of weal or woe.”

He spent a miserably restless night, and next day after making a tour about the hospital grounds returned to the ward. Taking a chair quite near Lamont’s cot he said:

“Well, I have come back to hear something more about your adventures. I find it infernally dull here. I always was a bad one to endure confinement or pain, and am more than ever of opinion that a musket ball through the body is not a first-class nerve remedy if the patient happens to live.”

“You have at least one advantage over me. You can see what is going on about you, and if you should get a letter from your wife and sweetheart you wouldn’t have to ask the footman to read it for you.”

The General was aware that a negro had called with several messages, and listened attentively. Lamont went on:

“For my own part, I should be as meek as a dove and as patient as a lamb if I could only see the sweet-voiced angels whose presence here at times seems to perfume the air. Some of my most pleasant moments have been passed in a sick room where I was the interesting invalid, and Beauty danced attendance beside my bed. But, I am sorry to say that my susceptibility in the direction of the fair sex is about to cost me rather dear.”

“Yes? how so? Are you a faltering Benedict who is to receive his chastisement in kind?”

“Oh no—my wife is another Lucrece, but she has found me out and insists upon taking a ridiculously serious view of the matter.”

“What a pity it is that some women and often very good ones at that, will persist in regarding our peccadillos as venal.”

“Perhaps my wife has better cause than most of them to complain, for my last conquest, which happened at the North while I was executing a special commission, created an uncomfortable scandal in which my real name, and so on, figured somewhat too prominently. I was travelling, of course, under a nom de guerre: you may have heard of the case, some months back, at Cleveland, Ohio? The Northern papers were full of it, and it was circulated all over the South as the elopement of a Confederate spy with an old Yankee parson’s daughter.”

“Yes,” said Philip, with affected urbanity, “Yes, I have heard of it—an interesting episode, I should say.”

“Very—and that adventure was interwoven from its beginning almost to the end with another hardly less absorbing.”

“Is it possible?” As General Leigh said this he experienced a sensation of deadly sickness. A sudden chill seized him for an instant, then left him with his teeth almost chattering, and his hands and feet as cold as ice.

Before Lamont could resume his talk the negro, Colt, came in, bearing a letter and a small parcel which he took to the invalid. General Leigh got up with the intention of withdrawing, but Lamont hearing his movement, said:—“Stay, my friend. Colt only brings a curtain lecture in cold ink, which I am going to ask you to read for me. This gentleman here, Colt, is a scholar and man of the world who is perfectly congenial to me. He is going to help me to set things right, if I need any help. Now, what message from my fair lady to-day? Any hope of reconciliation? The doctor said yesterday that there would be no objection to her coming to see me now, and the children also; but if she will not come herself she might, at least send them. What did she say in answer to my submissive greeting?” General Leigh said he would be back presently, and went outside.

“Madam is in a sad state of despondency, sir, and sent no message to-day except that she would permit one of the children to visit you if you thought it perfectly safe. But she says that the odors about a hospital are very unhealthy, and that she is afraid that either of the children might receive a dangerous shock from seeing you stretched upon this pallet in your present distress.”

“Pshaw! a child would know nothing of my condition, it would be satisfied when told that I am lying down with a headache. But did you tell her all the details of my last enterprise, how I labored and planned to ruin the Yankee armies in Mississippi, and how I have suffered since my fall—all of which I have done and endured as an atonement for my sins to her? Are you sure you made it all clear?”

“I am, sir,” replied Colt, ”and she was greatly moved by it. But, as I told you yesterday, the torn letter in your handwriting which Mrs. Green brought to her after the ghost-like visit of that young woman, who declared that you had ruined her, did more to embitter her against you than everything else combined. It was a misfortune that madam ever went to that house. But she took the matter into her own hands sir, and I was unable to prevent it.” Colt, who was a tall and fine looking man with a very slight tincture of Caucasian blood in his veins, quietly wiped away a tear.

“Well, never mind, Colt. Hurry back and tell your mistress that my only hope is that she will forgive me. I shall make no arguments against the genuineness of letters or other evidence that is intended to ruin me, but you can bear in mind that for aught she knows, these things are forgeries—”

“I am sorry, sir, very sorry, but she has compared this letter with several of those she received from you at about the same time, and found the writing identical. But, not satisfied with her own judgment she called at a leading bank with the two specimens of your hand-writing, and submitted them to an expert who declared that both were undoubtedly written by the same hand, and apparently at the same sitting. I must, therefore, tell you frankly, sir, that there is much more hope that she will pardon you than that she will believe you innocent.”

“Well then, tell her that I cast myself unconditionally at her feet where I shall remain and perish unless she stretches forth her hand to raise me up. The doctors agree that I shall recover my sight when they are able to remove a clot of blood which temporarily encumbers the nerves at the base of the brain. Hence I shall not be a wretched blind- man who cannot find his road away from home, but a good, old-fashioned, bourgeois husband who will henceforth seek for beauty only in his wife’s boudoir. Yes, Colt, I shall turn over a new leaf, and do my best to regain her esteem and respect, which I have so justly forfeited. Hurry back and tell her all this, and bring at least one of my darlings as soon as you can. I guess by that poor devil’s moaning that the doctors are in the next tent, so they will call here in a moment. Assure Mrs. Lamont of my humble submission and my abject penitence—(to a religious woman like her, you can’t say too much about penitence, you know, Colt,) and tell her that I am in a frenzy to see the babies. You ought to get back here with them in an hour, for the hospital smells are most offensive to those from the outside, towards evening.”

“It will take about an hour and a half but I shall not lose a moment. In this small parcel is the Johnny-cake you wished Dinah to send you. She said it was made in the home style.”

“Thank good old Dinah for me,” said Lamont, taking the packet in his hand, “and now be off; remember, you can not make it too forcible that I am dying to see the children, for there is nothing that is so gratifying to a good mother as proofs of the father’s affection for her children, and mine, you know, is genuine and sincere.”

A doctor now entered the tent and sat down at Lamont’s bedside. Colt hurried away, having left the parcel that contained a piece of Johnny- cake from old Dinah, on the table.

“Good day, Doctor,” said Lamont, after the surgeon had greeted him. “I want you to inform me if there is anything in the medical code which renders this contraband?” He had torn the paper from the square chunk of johnny-cake, and held it towards the doctor.

“Not that I am aware of,” he replied.

“Then I may eat it?”

“Yes, provided you do not take too much at a time.”

“Thanks, doctor, thanks. I only wish we could get up a little miracle by which to prescribe a two pound loaf of similar quality to each hungry “Johnny” on the Southern side of Mason and Dixon’s line!”

The doctor remained with him about half an hour, talking quietly, and observing his case, which the physicians considered an extremely interesting one. After he went out and the attendant had put things to rights about the ward, General Leigh came in.

Lamont was even more loquacious than before. “What do you think I have here?” he asked holding up the loaf of johnny-cake.

“Something from home, I presume.”

“Yes, and its delicious aroma calls up pleasant memories of days when the South was happy—when, in place of the sulphur fumes of battle, we had the air perfumed with the breath of sweet flowers and of lovely women;—when, instead of the shrieks and groans of wounded and dying men, we heard only laughter and song.”

Soon drifting away from these poetic memories he began again about his exploits, and told how he had been victimized by designing women.

“That is the only way to put it,” said he, “for they claim that we are irresistible, and we must set up a counter claim. Mine is that they are irresistible.”

“Perfectly valid, I should say—perfectly so. And it is clear that your conquests among the fair have been many and terrible.”

“Many—and—blissful to them—terrible to me—now that I am found out. I shall want your help. It needs a scholar to induce a woman to see these matters in their proper light. If I hadn’t been raised a priest I should enlist the good offices of one of that trade; but they have a pious habit of pressing negotiations somewhat too far on their own account, so that I prefer a scholar—”

“In spite of your eventful life it is clear that you have yet had time for observations somewhat critical.”

“Well, yes,” continued Lamont. “By nature I was a moralist. But early in life I bumped my head against destiny in such a way as to make me see stars, and there has been an “im” before my morality ever since. My friend, whether you be young or old, beware yourself and let your sons and daughters beware of any man or set of men whose positions depend, not upon their character or their good works, but upon their talent for cringing, their taste for hypocrisy, and, especially, their devilish love of intrigue. The favors of women in these days to their ante- nuptial lovers are admittedly most generous, but those they accord to their priests extend to the full period of their halcyon days.”

“This is no parable;” observed Philip. “Come, come, a case in point. You say that you were raised as one of these holy men?”

“Yes, and for that reason, I shall have nothing more explicit to say in this connection.”

“But what about ‘the favors of women to ante-nuptial lovers?’”

“Of that presently. But I want to tell you now that I have taken soundings on the moral question. A short sentence solves the riddle. There are three institutions in this country which are absolutely controlled by women, namely: Fashion, Expense, and Morals. Concerning the first and second, I may write a book later in life, but of the last here is the verdict: Women foster immorality in a variety of ways,—by their own wantonness; by defective training of their children; by their toleration and admiration of the most abandoned libertines, and by giving themselves up to vicious lives. I speak as an expert, and as one who should have been a moralist but for the accident to which I have alluded. For as my favorite Armstrong sang:—

“Virtue——
Is sense and spirit with humanity;
‘Tis sometimes angry, and its frown confounds;
‘Tis even vindictive, but in vengeance just.
Knaves fain would laugh at it; some great ones dare;
But at his heart the most undaunted son
Of Fortune dreads its name and awful charms.”

“Every woman is the architect of her own morality, and no man can add a particle of material to the structure without her permission. You are not one of the common herd who will laugh at hearing morals discussed by a worldling, for you can thoroughly appreciate the saw, that ‘it takes a thief to catch a thief.’ No man can size up the frailties of woman like a holy priest, as none other grows so fat upon them.”

“While admitting the general truth of your remarks, I submit that you seem to speak with something resembling the rancor of an apostate whenever you pronounce the name of ‘priest.’ I confess that for personal reasons there is associated with the thing more than the name, in my mind, something loathsome and accursed: but I am curious to know why it acts as so serious an irritant to one who is Sir Placidity with regard to most other subjects. The Republic offers a free field for all men to ply their trade, you know, and I have no doubt the Confederacy will do likewise, when it is established.”

“It is the women in the case that irritate me. Every honest man must have a woman, and no man could get more than one at a time if women were what they should be. But the priest being denied the one which is his just due becomes a brute by taking such viands as are offered along the shady paths of his dark life, and daily trespassing on others’ moors. Being outwardly the custodian of morals, he is secretly the victim of the seductive aberrations of his patients. The Middle Age barbarism, of which he is the logical product, is being perpetuated here inside high walls and castles with labyrinths of secret passages where sealed lips and broken hearts keep forever the hideous mysteries which are blacker than those of the grave. You might laugh as I have often done, could you but hear a model abolitionist orator prate about giving the thick- skinned African his freedom, while thousands of tender victims of his own blood are sent to the ghostly prisons which frown on every eminence in the land by the mandates of a foreign despot. And for what? My friend, time is long and the gods never peach upon the serpent ways of men. It takes a Garibaldi to lay them bare, and nations should learn the lesson taught by the spectacle. These poor fools who are immolated with so much holy pomp are the worst of all slaves, held in bondage to give a fiendish lie a pestilent life. The dumb foreign minions who toil here and grow sleek under the Latin lash of the prince of tyrants, are by him deprived of rights and liberties which are theirs by virtue of our laws; and (O! sweet Consistency!), while the North looks on and smiles at this iniquity, it cuts our throats for keeping the blacks in chains!”

“You are becoming interesting,” said General Leigh, surprised at the warmth of this man, whom he thought a strange mixture of talent and perversity, upon so eccentric a theme. “You have certainly struck the true channel in this case when you reduce it to a question of the right of a foreign power to corporeal control over our citizens.”

“Exactly. If I attain to a post of influence in the Confederacy, as I no doubt shall, I shall champion a law to forbid wherever our power extends, the imposition of monastic vows or monastic life upon either men or women. It should be done for the same reason and in the same spirit as that which moved the English Government in India to abolish the infamous suttee and the horrid Car of Juggernaut; and as that which moves the North to legislate against Mormon polygamy. For men and women will do anything, no matter how monstrous, under the pressure of priestly dictation and the insidious monitions of superstition. They want protection from themselves, from their ignorance and stupidity as well as from robbers and assassins. Let theologies flourish so long as they may, but in the name of decency let us prune them of their exotic Dark Age fungi if they are to exist within the reach of our laws.”

Lamont continued talking for some time on this subject, and finally said:—

“But, I must return to my own little story.”

“Yes, to the ‘parallel adventure.’”

“I had gone to Ohio to bring back a traitor—the son of old Captain Leigh who was recently killed on one of the Bayous. The youngster had settled down, and married a woman whom I had known well as a girl. She was to be educated in a convent and I was a novitiate not far off. She was beautiful. I told her that I was going to stay in the world for her sake, or else she must leave it for mine. Well, I don’t know which was the most tempted, but we both fell—” As Lamont continued in his calm narrative style, General Leigh looked as if he had been struck dumb, and sat staring at him with eyes glaring like those of an infuriated animal. “It was only a little bit of a sin, but the poor girl, poor Josephine, was inconsolable, and disappeared the same day entirely out of my sight. I never met her again until I went to Leigh’s house one evening prior to having him forwarded to the South. In the melee I was knocked down and badly hurt, and dwelt there with her as her patient for a month. Strange, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, very.” replied the general. Though racked by a miserable feeling of dread, he was determined to hear this tale to the bitter end.

“After I had been there a few days, I began to fancy that she had recognized me, though I had changed so much that it was absurd for me to suppose such a thing. Her distant and abstracted manner was entrancing. She was like the moon, shedding her soft and gentle radiance all around, but keeping herself clean out of reach. I was never more impressed with a woman’s superiority, but I determined to put her to the test. There was no opportunity for this experiment until later, for my bonny little Hagar was constantly there, and seemed to copy the other’s dignified graciousness while all the time loving me to distraction. At length an occasion presented itself the very evening before I left Ohio and took Hagar to Canada. I never entered upon a conquest with more spirit and determination. Going to the house quite early in the evening, I soon ascertained that she was entirely alone, and took precautions to prevent an interruption. She never looked so well. She was really superb. I am an expert in these things, you know, and “superb” is not too strong a term. Had she been some Spanish donna dressed to receive her lover she could not have been more bewitchingly sweet to look upon.”

“It must have been a vivid picture to so impress a man of your experience.”

“Yes, it was—it was a vivid picture. I happened to have with me a splendid diamond ring which I had given her at Vicksburg where our last meeting had taken place, and which she had abandoned to one of my friends after she had ‘stooped to folly.’ This I determined to offer her again, but she refused it, and parried every effort I could make to gain her sympathy. The night was wearing out, and I was compelled to retreat in a state of inglorious disgust.”

“Why did she not kill you?” asked Philip, with a look which indicated the struggle that was taking place within him.

“She would have done so, but there was no weapon at hand more formidable than her bodkin. She assailed me with that, and, of course, I was more importunate than ever. That is what I call my negative adventure—there’s not another exactly like it in my catalogue.”

“A man would be a brute to wrong a woman like that.”

“Oh; all is fair in love and war, you know,” replied Lamont.

“Treachery at all times and under all circumstances is unfair; and I hold that a deserter who delivers his comrades up to slaughter, is a milder type of villain than a man who has the heart to ruin and abandon the woman he pretends to love.”

“And yet, would you believe it, her husband, who was a brave and gallant fellow (and is still if he’s above ground) treated her like a drab? But for all that I believe he loved her, and I know that she worships him. There’s not a truer or more beautiful woman living, but it seems that a suspicion or positive knowledge of her ante-nuptial sin has damned her in his sight. We have all heard of such cases, of course; but, as a rule, the interested parties come to grief after a day or two, or exist together in life-long misery. Here is a case in which the man should forget and be happy; perhaps he might if he only knew the truth; and I have thought since my discovery that I would sometime write an anonymous letter to Leigh to tell him what a jewel he is trampling under foot. But now that I have such a troublesome kettle of fish at home, I am afraid I shall not be able to do much in the role of domestic pacificator.”

As Lamont went on in this strain General Leigh was suffering the most poignant agony of spirit. Every feeling of hatred or vengeance he had experienced towards his stricken foe, was passing away, and he thought now only of oblivion for himself. In that dense mist of confusion and shame which seemed to envelope him, his life presented neither charm nor hope, and the one attractive possibility ahead was to court death on the nearest battle-field. Summoning a few brief words of apology he turned away and walked outside the tent.

Towards evening the negro, Colt, returned with a message that his mistress was overcome by her husband’s contrition and the sufferings he was enduring for the sacred cause of the South, and had determined, if she could get permission, to visit the hospital the following day with her children.

At dusk General Leigh went in. A candle was burning on the table near Lamont’s cot and the wounded man was rolling about restlessly. The General resumed his former place and said after making a common-place remark about the threatening weather of the evening:—

“What became of the old parson’s daughter after you left her?”

“I don’t know. She probably took the common road, the only one that is, ordinarily, open to women who “stoop to folly,” and “find too late that men betray.” But life’s too short to speculate on the fate of these dainty atoms in the great cosmic laboratory. Poor little thing! She might, quite possibly, have met with a worse fate, for she had suitors two, when I found her,—one a farmer’s bumpkin of the neighborhood, the other a mendicant Mormon elder. These were my rivals. But the girl was an honest little creature, and I admit that I had to play an unfair game.”

General Leigh was silent.

“But now, my friend,” continued Lamont, “You must help me. In spite of the rather eccentric route I have pursued through life, I feel a lingering tenderness for my faithful wife, and something akin to adoration for her children. For a year I have not seen them, and Colt brings me word that she will come here to-morrow to lay her dear hand on my miserable head and forgive all my sins. The hope of this meeting thrills me with a transport of joy.... I wish the wind wouldn’t howl like that—has it put out the light?”

“No,” replied General Leigh, “the attendants have made all secure. The draft we feel here comes through the cracks in the floor and is not likely to affect the light much.”

“But the rain is coming through; I hear it dropping.”

“The first heavy shower in one of these sudden storms will send a spray through the best of canvas; but, when once wet, a tent like this is as good as iron for a steady down-pour.”

“Do you think it will soon pass over?” asked Lamont nervously, as a rattling thunder-clap seemed to linger just above the tent roof.

“Oh, yes: these squalls never last long, I believe.”

“If you were never deprived of your sight, you cannot imagine how horrible it is to lie here helplessly and have the lightning flash through your very brain. There must be little the matter with my eyes, for before each roar of the thunder this place lights up with the glare of a furnace. You will not leave me till the storm subsides?”

“No. I shall not go outside again to-night, and am in no hurry to retire.”

As if oppressed by a presentiment of evil, Lamont found it impossible to pursue the subject of conversation he had begun, and kept reverting to the changing aspects of the storm. At one moment the rain came down in sheets, and, as it lulled, flash on flash of lightning seemed to annihilate material things and take entire possession of the world. The thunder came nearer, making the very air tremble, while the writhing wind, now with a strange moan, now with an exulting rush, was like a fierce ally of the storm, having power to walk the earth and smite its cowering creatures.

Both men had been silent for some time, hushed by the din of the elements that made the loudest human voice like the whisper of an infant, when one of the tent-ropes on the windward side, snapped, and the frail structure swayed ominously.

“What’s that?” cried Lamont.

“A rope has broken. I must call a guard, for another gust like that will blow the tent down.”

The gale seemed to answer with increased fury, and scarcely had General Leigh got outside when the roofpole broke and the tent collapsed.

Such was the havoc caused by the storm in the hospital encampment that the day and night forces of guards and attendants were all occupied, and it was some time before General Leigh found help.

It seemed an age to the blind patient in Orchard Ward No. 7, as he lay there pinioned to his cot by the weight of drenching canvas. When finally removed it was seen that he was suffering from acute nervous shock, and that his condition was serious. He could not speak, but when his wife and children came in the afternoon he made a sign that he knew them, and at sunset his name was added to the long list on the Register of the dead.