VII: June 1, 1864

VII

JUNE 1, 1864

I

EDEN REACHED WILLIAMSBURG TOWARDS THE END OF MAY, after an uneventful journey from Richmond by the Turnpike which crossed Bottom’s Bridge.

Sheridan had got down to the James and was at Haxall’s Landing conferring with Butler, whose army lay south of the river. Grant was still at Spotsylvania. She passed between the Federal armies on roads empty of soldiers.

She went alone in Louise’s carriage with a pass from the Richmond Provost-Marshal in her bag, and old Daniel to drive, and she also carried the old pass with which she had left Williamsburg after the Seven Days’ Battle almost two years ago. She had never made a journey alone before, but it went without saying that no one could be spared from Franklin Street to go with her. Eden felt very guilty as it was, for on the face of it she was deserting her post on a sudden, passionate desire to see Gran, and Louise had put it down to exhaustion and homesickness and agreed that it was time Eden had a rest and a change. Mrs. Willis had forbidden her to explain, even to Louise, the real purpose of the journey. Perhaps later, if she went again, she would have to let Louise know. But the fewer who knew, the better, always, as long as possible.

The humiliation of seeming to have cracked under strain instead of standing up to it as the rest of them had was for Eden much harder to bear than the risk she ran. In order that she need not halt overnight on the way, it had been arranged from Richmond that the Williamsburg carriage, driven by Pharaoh, should meet her half way at the change station for the stage-coach, so that she could make the journey in one long day. Daniel would have to wait there, with his equipage at the mercy of stray raids by the Yankee cavalry, until her return. It was not a very satisfactory programme, but it was the best that could be done in war-time, and Eden’s urgency over-rode Louise’s misgivings.

Now that she was on the way home again, it seemed impossible that so much time had elapsed since she last saw Gran and Sue. She dreaded the evidence she would meet of those two intervening years. Gran never changed, but Sue’s letters sounded much more mature. Myrta would be fourteen now, and Barry was away at the Institute, and Felicity—there would be, pervasively, the knowledge that Felicity was gone forever. They would want to know about her last illness, and about Dabney, who was only just beginning to be out of danger. They would ask about Fauquier, who had fought his gun gallantly at Yellow Tavern; and about Sedgwick, now courier to Fitz Lee; and Ransom, whose hair had got quite grey; and Lafe, under almost daily fire in the fortifications south of Richmond…. They would ask about Cabot too….

Drowsy with the heat as the carriage rolled on across the swampy Chickahominy land—Daniel had to cherish his horses because they were underfed, like every other creature in Richmond these days—Eden had made up her mind not to tell the truth about Cabot. She would have to say that she had not seen him since he left Libby Prison and did not know where he was. She would say that if he had sent her messages by the underground they had been lost on the way. Perhaps Gran need never know about that dreadful last interview in Elizabeth Van Lew’s parlour—about the butternut suit. When the war ended, if it ever did, they would all expect her to marry him, of course, and then some explanation would have to be found. But not the truth, even then. Her own pride demanded that no one in Williamsburg should ever know that Cabot Murray was a Yankee spy.

Even so, the difficult moment was upon her before she was prepared for it. She arrived after they had finished supper, and Pharaoh brought her a tray to Gran’s room, where they all sat together trying in a bewildered way to catch up. There was a sort of guilty gladness in her homecoming. Sorrow and anxiety lay heavy on their hearts, but it was still exciting to see each other again after so long, and there was much news that was not tragic to exchange.

Coming back to Gran, she thought, was like taking sanctuary. Gran had been through a war too, Gran knew how bad it could be, and yet Gran had lived through it and here she was, tranquil and safe, proving that one did live through such things, proving that nightmares like Richmond could end, proving that some happy, useful lives did survive wars in spite of

everything. It was odd to find oneself clinging to Gran’s frail presence as to a life-raft, looking to Gran for strength and toughness to endure, instead of the gentler things she had always stood for until now. But there was no getting round it, Gran was tough. Gran had survived. It was up to her grandchildren now to demonstrate that they could live through a war too and preserve their sense of proportion and their sense of humour and their sanity and faith. Gran had shown them all how.

Pharaoh placed the tray on a little table near the window with many a flourish, for much thought had gone into preparing Eden’s first meal at home. Fried chicken, new potatoes and peas in cream, greens cooked with hog-jowl, hot corn bread—and strawberries. Eden, who had stinted herself so long to make the Richmond meals go round, saw that her plate held enough to feed two of them in Franklin Street.

“Are you sure you can really spare all this?” she asked doubtfully as she began to eat.

“We’re going to feed you up while we’ve got you here,” Sue said.

“You’re thin as a rail. Food isn’t so hard to get here, because we all have gardens.”

“Chart made a garden,” Eden told them. “With only little black Jock to help her, he’s twelve now. You’d be surprised at how Chart has come on, she—”

Myrta’s voice, shrill with surprise, broke in.

“Eden, what have you done with your lovely ring? You didn’t go and lose it!”

What little colour there was in Eden’s face left it. She sat helplessly, fork in hand, looking down at her plate. Not even Gran was equal to breaking the silence.

“I sold it,” Eden said at last.

“Oh, Eden! Have you told him?” Myrta demanded.

“No.”

“He’ll never forgive you! I wouldn’t! Not even if you were starving!”

“I sold it to buy medicines. The blockade has made them very expensive, and hard to get. After Dabney—was wounded, I couldn’t bear it.

I gave up the ring so that Dabney, and other people’s brothers, could be more comfortable.”

Myrta was silenced, but quite uncomprehending. Unless you had been in that house in Franklin Street the day Dabney’s leg was amputated, you couldn’t comprehend. It was much better that Myrta didn’t, Eden knew, stifling her own sense of injustice. This was only the beginning, she realized, of the things she would have to bear in silence.

“Cabot will get you another ring,” said Gran. How well she knew him, Eden thought. But there was one thing she didn’t know. Her voice went on quietly, changing the subject so that Eden could eat her meal in peace. “His sister Melicent has been writing delightful letters to Sue, and they’ve got to be great friends. We look forward to having her come down for a visit as soon as the war is over.”

“She was in Washington with Cabot, remember?” Sue took it up eagerly.

“They could hear the guns at Chantilly quite distinctly. I think it shows great character that Melicent refused to panic like a lot of people, don’t you? Cabot let her stay and sing at a big reception. Honestly, Dee, she worships that man!”

“You’d think she’d be jealous of Eden,” Myrta remarked. “I wonder if she is!”

“Myrta, that’s nonsense!” Sue said firmly. “Sisters aren’t jealous, it’s not the same thing at all!”

“I would be,” Myrta insisted “I shall hate the woman Barry marries, you see if I don’t, because Barry is my favourite brother. I wish he would come home and show us his uniform!”

Eden knew that Gran was watching her. Gran read one’s mind with ease.

It was going to be difficult to fool Gran, especially when one was so tired and shaky and couldn’t think fast.

It was like a dream to go to bed that night in the room she had always shared with Sue. Before Sue had blown out the lamp Eden was asleep, drowned in exhaustion, her mind and body blotted out in the deep oblivion her sense of security and relief from strain had wrought. But she woke with a start at dawn, automatically, jerked back by the habit of responsibility for the helpless men in her care, who were dependent on her for their breakfast and their baths and their clean dressings—

She lay still in the greying room, while her eyes went lovingly from one familiar object to another, and her ragged nerves took comfort from the warmth of her sister’s body in the bed beside her and the sweet way Sue

always slept, so silently, her face half buried in the pillow, her crisp curls tumbled and gleaming. Eden gave thanks that Sue had not come to Richmond and needn’t know how things were there. Gran knew, and she herself knew—Felicity had known. But not Sue, not their darling. She turned and laid one arm across Sue, drawing her close with a protective surge of affection, and Sue roused childishly to smile and nestle. “Lovely to have you home,” she murmured, and slept again.

Still holding her, shedding a few weak, watery tears, Eden tried to see ahead. There would be only a few days of this, she knew, and she must make the most of it. Her instructions from Mrs. Willis had been quite simple. She was to come to Williamsburg for a visit, and after a few days a message would arrive for her telling her when to start back. She knew where to go then. At Barhamsville beyond the last Federal pickets outside Williamsburg, she was to take a right-hand turn, leading down to the York River, instead of keeping straight on for New Kent Courthouse. From it she must turn right again, till she came to a small brick house with a landing on the river. They would be watching for her here. She must have the money ready. Then with the precious little bags securely fastened inside her hoop she must make all possible speed for Richmond. So far as they knew, the house was not being watched. But if anyone questioned her, she was to say that the coachman must have dozed off on the box and taken the wrong turning. It was not more than a few miles out of her way to Richmond, but Pharaoh, who would be driving her the first half of the way, would have to know something of her purpose. She was glad it was Pharaoh and not Daniel, in a way, because he was younger and brighter and therefore more to be trusted not to give things away….

When she woke again, Sue had slipped out of bed and dressed noiselessly and gone downstairs. The clock said nearly noon.

They spent the rest of the day going over the dresses Eden had left behind, to see which ones could be made use of now. She was required to admire the shining lengths of blue velvet sent by Cabot at Christmas-time, and so superfluous in summer. Louise and Sally had each given her a list of things they wanted brought back.

Two days passed—happy, busy, peaceful days, when she was never alone with Gran for more than a few minutes—no time for questions. If only she could get away before Gran said, “And when did you last hear

from Cabot?” She knew it looked odd that she said so little about him, but her mind only fumbled at the problem and put it off. Rest and good food were doing much to restore her shattered system. But she was still not able to cope with Gran about Cabot.

On the third day Pharaoh came in with an envelope in his hand and Eden’s heart turned over, in case it was the summons from the house on the York River landing. But Pharaoh carried the letter to Gran, who said with pleasure as she opened it—“From Louise!”

They could tell at once by her face as she read that it was bad news.

Eden dropped her sewing and went on her knees beside Gran’s chair.

“What is it?” she whispered, trying to read Gran’s face instead of the letter. “Gran, who is it now? N-not Father?

“It’s Barry.”

“But he’s at the Institute!”

“The cadets have been in a battle.”

“The cadets! But they’re all under eighteen! Gran, was he—?”

“Killed.”

Sue made a little gasping sound and hid her face in her hands. Myrta began to cry rather loudly. Gran leaned towards Eden with the letter, and together they read, dry-eyed, what Louise had written.

“The cadet corps was ordered out against Sigel’s Yankees in the Valley a week or so ago. The intention was of course to hold them in reserve unless absolutely necessary, but they wound up in the very middle of the front line and made a thrilling bayonet charge against artillery and musketry fire. Because they were young and ardent they outstripped the battle-wise veterans on either side of them and for several minutes held their formation alone till the Sixty-second came up.

Barry was killed beside the captured caisson where the Institute banner was flying.

“I dread to think of Ransom and am at my wits’ end to know how to help him bear the news, which came just after Eden had left Richmond. I have not seen him yet, but presumably he will get a brief furlough soon, as the army moves closer to Richmond. Barry is buried on the field.

Poor Ransom, to lose both his wife and his youngest boy! I think Eden should be here, if possible, when he comes….”

Still tearless, Eden laid her face against Gran’s sleeve, and in silence, while Myrta blubbered and Sue tried to hush her, her own cheeks shining with tears, Gran and Eden sat hand in hand, absorbing the fact that Barry, at seventeen, was dead on a battlefield. They had somehow been caught quite unprepared. They had braced themselves for almost anything but that. They had nursed Sedgwick through his wound, they had accepted Dabney’s mutilation, and they were accustomed to sharp anxiety about Ransom, Lafe, and finally Fauquier. But except for Myrta, Barry was the baby.

For Gran it brought its own particular wrench, because in Barry, more than in any of the others, she had seen Julian again—the same long chin and generous mouth, the same sober, self-contained ways, the same confiding, radiant smile. She had had a peculiar secret joy in Barry. And now he was gone.

“Your father will need you,” she said gently to Eden. “You must go back to Richmond now.”

“Yes, Gran.”

“It’s a pity, because you need a good rest here. But perhaps you had better start tomorrow.”

“I c-can’t go tomorrow.” She could not go till the summons came. “I haven’t seen to all those things for Aunt Louise,” she hurried on, conscious of her grandmother’s surprise at such seeming heartlessness towards Ransom. “It will take Sue and me another day or two to get them gathered up and packed.”

But when that time was up and still no message had come, she was pressed for more excuses, and Gran began to look at her rather oddly. It was not her intention to tell even Gran about her proposed detour at Barhamsville. Mrs. Willis, whose visits along the rivers had begun, she feared, to create suspicion, had emphasized the need of absolute secrecy, and they badly needed a new carrier with an open record. Eden had never realized before how next to impossible it was to keep things from Gran.

At the end of the week Sue also had begun to notice that she made no move to return to Richmond, where she was undoubtedly needed, and Eden suffered acutely all the pangs of a malingerer. She had no way to communicate with Mrs. Willis at the St. Charles, of course. She could only wait. If she went back now, before the summons came, the journey would be wasted, the pass would be wasted, and the money was practically useless

in Richmond where there were no drugs to buy. She had to stay in Williamsburg till they were ready for her at the brick house on the landing.

The Federal adjutant at the College was willing that she should return to Richmond now, but would he stay that way as the armies moved southward? Sheridan had gone back across the Pamunkey to rejoin Grant, who was coming down from Spotsylvania, they said, and a sharp action had been fought at Hanover on the twenty-fifth. The roads between the James and the Pamunkey were still open. But for how long? And what about Daniel, waiting at the stage station?

She was not surprised when Gran cornered her one evening in Sue’s absence.

“I dare say it’s none of my business,” Gran said calmly, “but what are you up to, Eden?”

“Well I—wasn’t supposed to tell anyone.”

“I thought there was something. Is Cabot coming here?”

“Oh, no, it’s—nothing like that!”

“I couldn’t think of any other reason for your sticking so tight here. And I could tell there was something on your mind.”

“Then you didn’t think—I’m glad you didn’t think I was just afraid to go back to Richmond.”

“Nonsense. No Day is afraid of anything. I thought perhaps Cabot was contriving to get down here and marry you.”

“No, I—haven’t heard from him. It’s something quite different. I told you I had sold the ring in order to buy medicines. Well, there aren’t any medicines in Richmond at any price, after a big battle. I have to—take them in myself.”

“You mean run the blockade?”

“Well, it’s already been run, as far as the shore. All I have to do is to take the drugs through the lines to Richmond.”

“That’s all, is it?”

“And so you see, I can’t go till they send for me.”

“I see. Where do you get the medicines?”

“I’d better not say. It means a short detour on my way back, and I’ll have to trust Uncle Pharaoh with that. I have the money with me. They make up little bags lined with oiled silk to be fastened inside your hoop. Quinine-morphine—calomel—that’s what I’m getting. I found out about it from a

woman at the hospital, but she’s run out of excuses to travel and thinks the Maryland route she sometimes takes is being watched. My living down here is very helpful, I can always say I’ve been sent for—that you aren’t well, or something like that. I thought perhaps—it would be better if you didn’t know—”

Gran was silent, knitting. Eden watched her a minute, wondering if it had been wise to tell, because Gran might worry now, she might think the risk was too great, she might say that Ransom would never allow it—

“It’s not much of a risk, really,” Eden added hastily. “I’m no heroine, Gran. I didn’t see a single uniform of any kind from the time I left the last Richmond picket behind till I got to the first one outside the town here. You won’t have to be anxious about me, what are you thinking, honey?”

“I was thinking what a thing it is to be young,” said Gran enviously, above her knitting. “I was thinking how I’d love to go to Richmond.”

“Gran!”

“They’d never think of searching me on the way. Besides, I’d know how to handle ’em.”

“I don’t expect to be searched myself. And you can’t come to Richmond, that’s flat, the conditions there won’t do for you.”

“Don’t talk as though I was a useless old woman, Dee.”

“Darling Gran, you Ye not a bit useless and you get younger every day!

But you’ve got to have proper food and rest, and there’s no such tiling in Richmond. The guns go all day now, on two sides of us. There might even be a bombardment.”

“I’ve been under fire before now,” Gran said wistfully.

“Yes, I know you have. You’ve had your war, and this one is ours. You must let us fight it for you.”

“I’ve had my war, maybe. But I wish I was good for one more.”

There was a long silence, filled with the companionable click of knitting needles.

“You haven’t heard from Cabot, then,” said Gran, for she was not satisfied about that part of it yet.

“No. N-not directly. Not since he left Libby Prison.” Eden held her breath now that the lie was out.

“You don’t doubt him, do you?”

“No.”

“You’d better not. It wants more than a war to turn Cabot from his purpose.”

“I—it seems so far away and long ago,” Eden said faintly. “As though it had happened to some other girl.”

“It will all come back to you,” Gran assured her drily.

The message was brought on the last day of May. Start early tomorrow, it said, without a signature.

II

It all went just as Mrs. Willis said it would. All but one thing.

Pharaoh turned right at Barhamsville and right again into an overgrown, sandy lane where two young girls were loitering, their hands full of wild flowers. They stood still as the carriage approached, and Pharaoh pulled up.

“It’s a warm day,” one of the girls said with a smile.

And Eden, instructed by Mrs. Willis, replied, “It’s warmer in Richmond.”

“You’ll find something cool to drink at the house,” said the girl, and Eden answered:

“Won’t you ride the rest of the way with me?”

The two girls got into the carriage with their bouquets and Pharaoh drove on. There were no more passwords and they chatted innocently of the flowers they held and what would best quench Eden’s thirst. Soon the little brick house came in sight, with the broad river lying below it.

She was received by a gentle-faced woman in deep mourning, and her white-haired husband, who appeared to be a clergyman. No time was wasted. He opened a cupboard hidden in the wainscot and took out half a dozen small bags and stood weighing them casually in his hands while Eden laid out the money.

“You understand that we have to pay for it as it comes to us,” he explained diffidently. “Sometimes they bring more than we can afford. It’s hard to see them take it away again, but there’s no credit in this business.”

A servant brought in a sweating pitcher of grape juice cool from the spring-house, and the girls poured it out into frail old glass. At the woman’s request, Eden untied her hoop at the waist and let it drop round her feet. She stepped out of it and while she sipped the grape juice her hostess began to

fasten the little bags by their draw-strings to one of the hoop rings half way down.

“There’s one thing more,” said the clergyman, the last bag still in his hand. “In this one, marked Number Two Quinine, there is an urgent message—”

“I promised not to carry messages,” said Eden quickly, and flushed under his look of surprise which was tinged, she thought, with contempt.

“There is no one else to carry it,” he said coldly. “Reinforcements for Grant have gone up the river to White House—we think they came from Butler’s army across the James. We delayed a day in order that you might take this report as well.”

“I—couldn’t I take an oral message?”

“We have details and figures, written in cypher on jeweller’s tissue tucked inside this bag of quinine. All you have to do is take it to the Provost-Marshal immediately, before you deliver the medicines.”

He handed the last bag to his wife and Eden watched in silence while it, too, was fastened to her hoop. Then the woman rose and spread the hoop on the floor. Eden stepped into it and lifted her skirts a little while the woman tied the tape again around her waist inside them, shook down her dress and revolved while it was arranged with deft, motherly hands. That was all.

They were waiting for her to go.

“Keep to the Turnpike to Bottom’s Bridge,” the clergyman said kindly as he saw her into the carriage. “The Yankees are all along the Pamunkey now, coming south.”

When they were only a few miles west of Barhamsville a Negro boy on horseback crowded past them on the road at a gallop. Eden saw that his animal was a good one and that it was marked with the U.S. brand of the Federal Army. Pharaoh cursed him for the bad manners which raised the dust in their faces.

Daniel was waiting at the stage inn where they had left him, and Eden ate her basket-lunch in Louise’s carriage while the horses were put to it and the change over of her luggage was made; then they said goodbye to Pharaoh, who would return to Williamsburg the next day.

In the late afternoon as they approached Bottom’s Bridge and the railroad which ran from Richmond to White House they heard a growing rumble of guns somewhere ahead. At the crossroads above the Bridge they

were suddenly confronted by a line of mounted blue-clad pickets thrown across the road, and Daniel gave an instinctive jerk on the reins.

“Drive straight up to them,” Eden told him calmly, while the blood sang in her ears. “Don’t look surprised or frightened. I have the passes. It’s nothing.”

Daniel’s conscience at least was clear, as Pharaoh’s would not have been. When the noses of his team practically touched the picket’s horse which had been wheeled across the road, the carriage stopped grudgingly and a spruce corporal edged his mount in close to the step on the near side.

“Where are you bound for, ma’am?”

“Richmond. Here are my papers.”

“Guess you’ll have to show ’em at headquarters, ma’am.”

“But I—I have been on a family visit. I want to reach Richmond tonight.”

“Sorry to delay you, ma’am, but I got orders to bring everybody in today. Take the right-hand road, Rastus. Close up, boys.”

With the corporal riding beside the carriage and two more mounted men following it, Daniel drove on, at an angle to Bottom’s Bridge and Richmond, towards where the firing came from.

Eden sat paralysed and speechless, cold with fright under the broiling afternoon sun, wondering if headquarters meant a search which would deprive her of the precious bags. That was what she thought of first—not the possible consequences to herself, but the terror that now the medicines would never reach Richmond. Then after a moment she remembered the message. Had they chosen the best hiding-place for it, she wondered—she had heard of a woman once who carried messages rolled inside her hair, and they had been found there—perhaps in one’s shoe—doubtless the first place to look for them—inside one’s bodice, next the skin, not even a Yankee would dare—it was too late now…

They crossed the railroad well above the Bridge and drove on westward towards Gold Harbour. It seemed to her that the guns grew louder as they went, but she told herself that it was the wind, though not a leaf stirred. At last they came in sight of the trim white tents of the Federal camp, with the cook fires smoking cosily and the once familiar striped flag on its pole in front of the adjutant’s tent and the cavalry lines in the foreground. As the carriage passed through she noticed a great bustle of saddling up, and a

trumpeter who waited, his instrument on his hip, turned to eye her with interest.

The carriage was halted by the corporal outside a large tent with its flaps raised all round to a non-existent breeze. In plain view in its shelter several blue-clad men worked at bare pine tables full of papers and maps. The corporal dismounted and lowered the carriage step and crooked a gallant elbow to assist Eden to alight. There was a purposeful activity throughout the camp which belied the leisurely look of the desk soldiers in the tent. The ground underneath her feet shuddered now and then to the boom of artillery somewhere westward, and a smoky haze was settling.

The corporal escorted her into the big open tent and up to a table where a large, well-fed-looking man with a major’s shoulder-straps sat reading a little book bound in leather with gilt edges. He laid it aside with apparent reluctance and looked up at them over his spectacles as the corporal saluted smartly.

“Carriage on the Williamsburg Turnpike, sir,” said the corporal.

The major took off his spectacles. His prominent, pale blue eyes rested shrewdly on Eden. He did not smile and he did not rise.

“Your name, please?” he suggested.

In hostile silence Eden laid her papers before him on the littered table.

Her chin was very high. The major put on his spectacles again and scanned the documents at his leisure.

“On your way back to Richmond from Williamsburg, eh,” he said with a sort of ominous satisfaction. “Why did you not take the shortest road?”

“I did.”

“Through Barhamsville.”

“Yes, sir.”

“But you made a right-hand turn at Barhamsville, didn’t you?”

“Oh—that. I’m afraid my coachman dozed off—and I wasn’t noticing.

The first thing I knew the river was in front of me.”

“So what did you do then?”

“I called to him that we must be wrong and he turned round.”

“At once?”

“Y-yes, sir.”

“You didn’t stop to enter the house called Bishop’s Landing?”

“Oh, well, I—there were two girls picking flowers just where we stopped to turn round, and they invited me to have something cool to drink.

I was very thirsty so I accepted.”

“Then you did enter the house.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you stayed how long?”

“Just to drink a glass of grape juice.”

“Whom did you see while you were at the house?”

“An old gentleman and his wife. They were both very kind.”

“I’ve no doubt. But they did ask you, did they not, to carry a message to Richmond?”

“No, sir.”

His shaggy eyebrows expressed disbelief. He swung his spectacles by their gold bows in his pudgy hands while his pale eyes bored into her. In the silence, the cannon boomed. The hot air of the tent was heavy with an acrid odour which was not from the horse lines nor the latrines nor the wood fires near the cook tents. She was aware of a young man at a table near by who wrote busily without looking up, and she suspected that he was taking down the conversation as it came.

“It will save a good deal of trouble and unpleasantness all round,” said the major with calculated malice, “if you will surrender the contraband goods you went to Bishop’s Landing to procure—without further delay.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Eden through lips which had gone quite stiff.

“Likewise the message,” he added, watching her. “If you persist in this useless pretence of innocence I shall of course have to order a search, both of your carriage and its driver, and of yourself. It makes rather a mess of a carriage, slitting up the cushions and all that sort of thing. And as for yourself, I regret to say that there is no woman available to—spare your feelings.”

“I—” she began, while a wave of helpless colour flamed up to her hair.

“I—”

“I suggest first of all that if you will be good enough to drop off your hoop—” His eyes ran impersonally down her body. “Sometimes there is no need to proceed further.”

“I won’t,” Eden said resolutely. “You can’t force me to do any such thing!”

The major spoke wearily over his shoulder to the young man who wrote.

“Appleby,” said the major, and the young man laid down his pen and rose, his face a polite blank, and came towards her.

“No— wait! ” She backed away from him, both hands out to ward him off, and Appleby paused patiently, without expression.

“Kindly don’t waste my time, madam,” said the major sharply. “If you prefer to do whatever is necessary unassisted, be so good as to do it quickly.”

The feeling of trapped desperation which had petrified her ever since entering the tent underwent a sudden transformation. She wasn’t afraid of him, this fat man with the unfriendly eyes. She hated him too much for fear, hated all he stood for in this well-dressed, well-fed army with its insolence of unlimited resources and efficient personnel. Because of him, there would be no rest to-night for men with wounds like Dabney’s, the typhoid patients must burn up and die, the men with blood-poisoning must rot with their eyes open. And every minute there were more of them, every time one of those guns went off there were more men to suffer for the mercy which was hidden in those little bags tied to her hoop. Eden saw red.

“Very well, I am carrying contraband!” she said defiantly. “And it will now be your great pleasure to confiscate it and send me off to one of your filthy jails! I took that risk to myself when I asked to go to Bishop’s Landing—because after what I’ve seen of this war it didn’t matter what might happen to me if I got caught, so long as there was a single hope of my getting through just once, or maybe twice, before you could stop me!

Well, you have stopped me, damn you, and you can hang me, but it won’t stop other women from trying the same thing, and other women will succeed!”

Her voice had risen hysterically without once losing its soft Virginia cadence, her green eyes swam with tears as she faced the surprised major across the untidy pine table. Outside the tent, which gave no privacy to the scene, her words were audible to a dozen soldiers pursuing their lawful occasions about the camp, and some of them grinned shamefacedly and caught each other’s eyes, and some cursed quietly and tried not to hear.

Her voice reached the ears, also, of Cabot Murray, coming from the horse lines leading his favourite mount saddled and bridled for action. He paused almost on one foot, cocking his head in the effort to sort out the unknown woman’s voice from the boom of cannon and the clank of accoutrement and the careless, casual noise of the busy camp. His eyes met those of a nearby sentry who grinned apologetically and shook his head.

“They caught him a red-headed gal this time, and she sure is givin’ the Old Man a lambastin’!” he said.

Cabot threw his reins at a passing soldier and approached the tent door, which was more or less blocked by the broad back of the corporal. Eden had not paused for breath.

“You call it contraband! Morphine at three hundred dollars an ounce, and we’re forbidden to buy it or carry it to the men who are dying for lack of it! I found the money to pay for it, and I found out where to get it and every dose of it is needed ten times over, but you will have the satisfaction of taking it away from me—that’s not war, that’s callous murder of sick and helpless men, yes, and women too, because even women fall ill in Richmond, did you ever think of that? I saw my mother die for want of the medicines that might have saved her, but you wouldn’t care about that, maybe you never had a mother! Maybe your army has its share of horrible wounds, but do your hospitals have to tie a man down and cut off his leg without chloroform because there’s no such thing in the city? And have you heard the sort of sound he makes while they do it? And has it been done to your own brother, as it was done to mine? I was there and I heard! That’s why I went to Bishop’s Landing, and that’s why if you do try to take away from me the little bit of morphine I’ve managed to scrape together you’ll have to do it by brute force, and it will take six men the size of that one, because I’ll scream the place down and fight you all every way I know!”

She was not crying now, though tears hung on her lashes. She was breathless and chalky-faced, and her chin was up, and her fingers curled like claws, and the major was actually looking nonplussed. Cabot slipped past the corporal into the tent and saluted gravely.

“I beg your pardon, sir, but I thought I recognized the voice. This lady happens to be my fiancée. Eden, darling—” He reached her in two strides, and took her into a masterful embrace, “Kiss me,” she heard him whisper,

and gave him her lips with a most convincing willingness, while her arms went tight around his neck.

“This is highly irregular, Captain Murray,” said the major, recovering quickly, and Cabot faced him with Eden still in the protective circle of his arm.

“I realize that, sir. I had no idea she was in the camp. May I ask—”

“Smuggling!” snapped the major. “She visited that Bishop’s Landing house this morning and we were notified in time to intercept her at Bottom’s Bridge. She admits she is carrying drugs.”

“Oh, Cabot, I told you we had to have them!” she cried piteously. “This is what the money was for! Ask him to let me go! Ask him to let me keep the medicines, just this once!”

“I suppose, sir, that it would be quite impossible for you to overlook—”

Cabot began warily.

“On the contrary, I am impressed by the—force of Miss Day’s argument,” said the major with the shadow of a smile. “If she will surrender the packages for inspection, I will undertake to see that a certain leniency is observed. I presume you carry the stuff in the usual way,” he added to Eden.

“If, as I suggested some time ago, you will be so good as to drop off your hoop—”

But now she remembered the message again. Her eyes caught Cabot’s easy, confident gaze.

“It—it’s only six little bags,” she pleaded. “They’re all tied up—”

“Let him see them,” Cabot said quietly. “That’s all. Just a formality.”

“No, I—”

“I’m sorry to seem harsh, Miss Day, but this comes at rather a busy time for us,” the major remarked crisply. “Either you will surrender the goods at once or I shall require Captain Murray to take them from you.”

“Could we—m-may I see Captain Murray alone?”

“No, you may not. Come, come, Miss Day, it’s simple enough to give up your hoop!”

“But—I—”

“Hurry up, Eden,” said Cabot, humouring modesty. “We won’t look—

will we!” And he covered the eyes of the corporal behind him with one hand and his own with the other.

Trembling, she met the inexorable gaze of the major. With a quick, despairing movement she flicked up her skirts at the sides, pulled at the tape, and the hoop weighted with the six little bags slid to the ground. Cabot stooped for it and handed it to Appleby, who began to detach the bags one by one and lay them on the table in front of the major.

The guns were loud in the silence, seeming nearer all the time, louder now than she had ever heard them in Richmond—or was it the pounding blood in her own ears? Then quite unmistakably there came the whine of a descending shell, which exploded with a loud crrrump in the direction of the horse lines somewhere beyond the tent. The corporal winced visibly and even Cabot blinked, but the wooden-faced Appleby gave no sign of having heard it.

The major only scowled. He was untying the mouth of each bag as it came and looking inside it and tying it up again. Just as he began on the third one another shell whined over and went crrrrump near where the first had landed.

“That’s crazy firing if I ever heard it,” he said testily. “They’re over-shooting our lines like hell. Can’t hear yourself think, and it’s not doing them any good! Sometimes I wonder what Artillery uses for brains, half the time they—”

It was the third bag which contained the cypher message written on jeweller’s tissue.

The major drew it out and unfolded it slowly. Cabot turned to look at Eden with something like awe. Her face was perfectly white, her eyes rested blankly on the major’s fat hands.

“This appears to be the message we’re looking for,” said the major unemotionally. “Cyphered, of course. Would you be good enough to render it into English for me, Miss Day?”

Eden opened her mouth, but no sound came. Cabot spoke instead.

“It looks to me as though some one had imposed on her, sir. So far as she knew, she was carrying only drugs. I’m sure she had no idea a message was included.” His hooded glance signalled her to concur.

“No, I—never saw it before,” she said faintly.

“Are you prepared to swear to that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Some day somebody is going to lose his temper and make an example out of one of these intrepid women who are willing to risk all for their country,” said the major, and his voice had a rasp in it. “Some day a woman is going to hang for a trick like this! Personally, I think the time has come!”

“Oh, please, sir—” Eden stumbled forward, leaning with both hands on the edge of the table. “You must believe me, I never meant to trick you!

Before I left Richmond it was understood that I would not carry messages.

All I wanted was the medicines, and that is the truth, so help me God, I did not undertake to act as a spy—”

The major raised his head from contemplation of the cypher, speared her with a glance.

“Will you take your Bible oath that you had no knowledge of this message before I came upon it just now?” he demanded solemnly, and held out to her the little leather-bound volume which he had laid aside when she arrived.

Eden stared at it, cornered. If he had accepted her own wording she could have sworn. The oath he required of her was perjury. Her hand came out—hovered above the book—

“Your right hand, if you please,” rasped the major.

She glanced at Cabot. And from his quick, waiting eyes the signal flashed—perjury or no perjury, swear. Swear, and go free, perhaps with the drugs as well.

While she hesitated the silver notes of trumpets resounded through the camp, and there was a renewed bustle outside the tent, and the men at the other tables weighted their papers and left, ducking under the raised flaps at the side, so that only Appleby remained—a confusion of running feet, a few words shouted, a laughing reply, and the guns again, nearer, louder…. A moment more she stood above the book, then covered her face with a little moan, swayed dizzily, felt Cabot’s arm hard around her waist, and succumbed to blackness shot with flame.

“Well, what can you expect, you scared the living daylights out of her, sir!” said Cabot, and laid her tenderly on the ground. “Did you have to say that about hanging?”

The major seemed contrite. He sent Appleby for a cup of water, dismissed the corporal, and knelt beside Eden where she lay. Cabot had untied her bonnet and laid it aside and was fanning her with his cap.

“You and your Bible!” Cabot complained, glaring at his superior officer.

“Her word was enough!”

“It wasn’t a Bible,” said the major disgustedly. “It was a book of Tennyson’s poems. I thought she’d see that and act accordingly and save everybody’s face. Now that young jackass Appleby will have to know I’ve let her off against regulations!”

Cabot cocked an eyebrow at him.

“I never knew you were fond of Tennyson, sir,” he remarked interestedly.

“I see no reason for you to be surprised,” snapped the major. “I find it very soothing in a racket like this. How far does he have to go for that water?”

“Right here, sir,” said Appleby, slopping it in his haste.

The major damped a corner of his blue bandana in the cup and applied it to Eden’s temples. She opened her eyes and Cabot raised her against his shoulder.

“It’s all right,” he said gently, as another shell whined in and landed.

“It’s all right, sweetheart, you’ll be in Richmond to-night.”

An orderly appeared at the tent-flap and saluted.

“Beg pardon, sir—Captain Murray is wanted, sir. We’re standing to horse, ready to go in.”

“Kiss me for luck,” said Cabot, and took it without waiting, and gave her into the major’s arms. “Look after her, sir—and thank you!”

As the major helped her to her feet she heard the rattle of bit and sabre, felt the ground quiver to the beat of hooves glimpsed beyond the tent-flap, the flutter of guidons and dazzle of polished accoutrement as the troop went by towards the guns. They stood together at the tent door and watched the last of them out of sight behind a belt of trees above which black smoke hung low. The whine of the incoming shells was more frequent, and the descending sun hung low and red.

“If I don’t get you out of here,” said the major crossly, “you may get killed by your own lunatic gunners. Appleby—give me the record on this case.” He took the closely written pages and tore them across and across again. “Of course you realize that this whole thing is highly irregular and can’t happen twice,” he said to Eden as he did so. “Appleby—kindly return Miss Day’s hoop and bonnet.” Eden took them with a word of thanks and

stood holding them and watching while the major sat down at the table, put on his spectacles, and wrote briefly on an official-looking strip of paper.

This he held out to her, peering over his gold rims. “Here is a pass to put you back on the Richmond road,” he said dourly. “I hope you understand that you are on parole. Now, get out of here and don’t ever let me catch you again.”

“Th-thank you, sir.” A moment she looked at him. Then with a swift snatch she gathered up three of the little bags from the top of the table and dropped them into her bonnet. When her hand darted down for the last three he slapped his own hand down hard on the bit of tissue paper which lay beside them, and she smiled, backing away from him towards the door.

“That’s not mine,” she said. “It never was. God bless you, sir.” She curtsied and was gone, bareheaded, carrying her hoop and bonnet.

The major sat a long minute, staring down at the cypher message which remained on his table—and which without much doubt meant that they knew Butler had sent men to Cold Harbour. But did they know how many, and whether cavalry or infantry, or both—and who had written the message…. He sighed wearily.

“Appleby.”

“Sir?”

“Take this thing to the fellow who knows how to read ’em. And on the way you must contrive to forget how we got it.”

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