her request. It was the only wish he had ever denied her, and, somehow, her heart would come back to it with persistence and brood and wonder over his motive.
The nearer she drew, this morning, to the hospital door, the closer the wounded boy’s life and loved ones seemed to hers. She thought with anguish of the storm about to break between her father and the President – the one demanding the desolation of their land, wasted, harried, and unarmed! – the President firm in his policy of mercy, generosity, and healing.
Her father would not mince words. His scorpion tongue, set on fires of hell, might start a conflagration that would light the Nation with its glare. Would not his name be a terror for every man and woman born under Southern skies? The sickening feeling stole over her that he was wrong, and his policy cruel and unjust.
She had never before admired the President. It was fashionable to speak with contempt of him in Washington. He had little following in Congress. Nine tenths of the politicians hated or feared him, and she knew her father had been the soul of a conspiracy at the Capitol to prevent his second nomination and create a dictatorship, under which to carry out an iron policy of reconstruction in the South. And now she found herself heart and soul the champion of the President.
She was ashamed of her disloyalty, and felt a rush of impetuous anger against Ben and his people for thrusting themselves between her and her own. Yet how absurd to feel thus against the innocent victims of a great tragedy! She put the thought from her. Still she must part from them now before the brewing storm burst. It would be best for her and best for them. This pardon delivered would end their relations. She would send the papers by a messenger and not see them again. And then she thought with a throb of girlish pride of the hour to come in the future when Ben’s big brown eyes would be softened with a tear when he would learn that she had saved his life. They had concealed all from him as yet.
She was afraid to question too closely in her own heart the shadowy motive that lay back of her joy. She read again with a lingering smile the name “Ben Cameron” on the paper with its big red Seal of Life. She had laughed at boys who had made love to her, dreaming a wider, nobler life of heroic service. And she felt that she was fulfilling her ideal in the generous hand she had extended to these who were friendless. Were they not the children of her soul in that larger, finer world of which she had dreamed and sung? Why should she give them up now for brutal politics? Their sorrow had been hers, their joy should be hers, too. She would take the papers herself and then say good-bye.
She found the mother and sister beside the cot. Ben was sleeping with Margaret holding one of his hands. The mother was busy sewing for the wounded Confederate boys she had found scattered through the hospital.
At the sight of Elsie holding aloft the message of life she sprang to meet her with a cry of joy.
She clasped the girl to her breast, unable to speak. At last she released her and said with a sob:
“My child, through good report and through evil report my love will enfold you!”
Elsie stammered, looked away, and tried to hide her emotion. Margaret had knelt and bowed her head on Ben’s cot. She rose at length, threw her arms around Elsie in a resistless impulse, kissed her and whispered:
“My sweet sister!”
Elsie’s heart leaped at the words, as her eyes rested on the face of the sleeping soldier.
CHAPTER VI
The Assassination
Elsie called in the afternoon at the Camerons’ lodgings, radiant with pride, accompanied by her brother.
Captain Phil Stoneman, athletic, bronzed, a veteran of two years’ service, dressed in his full uniform, was the ideal soldier, and yet he had never loved war. He was bubbling over with quiet joy that the end had come and he could soon return to a rational life. Inheriting his mother’s temperament, he was generous, enterprising, quick, intelligent, modest, and ambitious. War had seemed to him a horrible tragedy from the first. He had early learned to respect a brave foe, and bitterness had long since melted out of his heart.
He had laughed at his father’s harsh ideas of Southern life gained as a politician, and, while loyal to him after a boy’s fashion, he took no stock in his Radical programme.
The father, colossal egotist that he was, heard Phil’s protests with mild amusement and quiet pride in his independence, for he loved this boy with deep tenderness.
Phil had been touched by the story of Ben’s narrow escape, and was anxious to show his mother and sister every courtesy possible in part atonement for the wrong he felt had been done them. He was timid with girls, and yet he wished to give Margaret a cordial greeting for Elsie’s sake. He was not prepared for the shock the first appearance of the Southern girl gave him.
When the stately figure swept through the door to greet him, her black eyes sparkling with welcome, her voice low and tender with genuine feeling, he caught his breath in surprise.
Elsie noted his confusion with amusement and said:
“I must go to the hospital for a little work. Now, Phil, I’ll meet you at the door at eight o’clock.”
“I’ll not forget,” he answered abstractedly, watching Margaret intently as she walked with Elsie to the door.
He saw that her dress was of coarse, unbleached cotton, dyed with the juice of walnut hulls and set with wooden hand-made buttons. The story these things told of war and want was eloquent, yet she wore them with unconscious dignity. She had not a pin or brooch or piece of jewellery. Everything about her was plain and smooth, graceful and gracious. Her face was large – the lovely oval type – and her luxuriant hair, parted in the middle, fell downward in two great waves. Tall, stately, handsome, her dark rare Southern beauty full of subtle languor and indolent grace, she was to Phil a revelation.
The coarse black dress that clung closely to her figure seemed alive when she moved, vital with her beauty. The musical cadences of her voice were vibrant with feeling, sweet, tender, and homelike. And the odour of the rose she wore pinned low on her breast he could swear was the perfume of her breath.
Lingering in her eyes and echoing in the tones of her voice, he caught the shadowy memory of tears for the loved and lost that gave a strange pathos and haunting charm to her youth.
She had returned quickly and was talking at ease with him.
“I’m not going to tell you, Captain Stoneman, that I hope to be a sister to you. You have already made yourself my brother in what you did for Ben.”
“Nothing, I assure you, Miss Cameron, that any soldier wouldn’t do for a brave foe.”
“Perhaps; but when the foe happens to be an only brother, my chum and playmate, brave and generous, whom I’ve worshipped as my beau-ideal man – why, you know I must thank you for taking him in your arms that day. May I, again?”
Phil felt the soft warm hand clasp his, while the black eyes sparkled and glowed their friendly message.
He murmured something incoherently, looked at Margaret as if in a spell, and forgot to let her hand go.
She laughed at last, and he blushed and dropped it as though it were a live coal.
“I was about to forget, Miss Cameron. I wish to take you to the theatre to-night, if you will go?”
“To the theatre?”
“Yes. It’s to be an
