The Purchase Price; Or, The Cause of Compromise. Emerson Hough
Читать онлайн книгу.
been easy for any man who had seen her, with her long-lashed dark eyes, her clear cheek just touched with color, her heavy dark hair impossible to conceal even under its engulfing bonnet, her wholly exquisite and adequate figure equally unbanished even by the trying costume of the day. She stood erect, easy, young, strong, fit to live; and that nature had given her confidence in herself was evidenced now in the carriage of head and body as she walked to and fro, pausing to turn now and then, impatient, uneasy, like some caged creature, as lithe, as beautiful, as dangerous and as puzzling in the matter of future conduct. Even as he removed his cap, Carlisle turned to her, a man's admiration in his eyes, a gentleman's trouble also there.
[Illustration: Carlisle turned, a man's admiration in his eyes]
"My dear Countess St. Auban," said he, more formally, "I wish that you might never use that word with me again—jailer! I am only doing my duty as a soldier. The army has offered to it all sorts of unpleasant tasks. They selected me as agent for your disappearance because I am an army officer. I had no option, I must obey. In my profession there is not enough fighting, and too much civilian work, police work, constable work, detective work. There are fools often for officers, and over them politicians who are worse fools, sometimes. Well, then, why blame a simple fellow like me for doing what is given him to do? I have not liked the duty, no matter how much I have enjoyed the experience. Now, with puzzles ended and difficulties beginning, you threaten to make my unhappy lot still harder!"
"Why did you bring me here?"
"That I do not know. I could not answer you even did I know."
"And why did I come?" she mused, half to herself.
"Nor can I say that. Needs must when the devil drives; and His Majesty surely was on the box and using his whip-hand, two days ago, back in Washington. Your own sense of fairness will admit as much as that."
She threw back her head like a restless horse, blooded, mettlesome, and resumed her pacing up and down, her hands now clasped behind her back.
"When I left the carriage with my maid Jeanne, there," she resumed at length; "when I passed through that dark train shed at midnight, I felt that something was wrong. When the door of the railway coach was opened I felt that conviction grow. When you met me—the first time I ever saw you, sir—I felt my heart turn cold."
"Madam!"
"And when the door of the coach closed on myself and my maid—when we rolled on away from the city, in spite of all I could do or say—, why, then, sir, you were my jailer. Have matters changed since then?"
"Madam, from the first you were splendid! You showed pure courage. 'I am a prisoner!' you cried at first—not more than that. But you said it like a lady, a noblewoman. I admired you then because you faced me—whom you had never seen before—with no more fear than had I been a private and you my commanding officer."
"Fear wins nothing."
"Precisely. Then let us not fear what the future may have for us. I have no directions beyond this point—Pittsburg. I was to take boat here, that was all. I was to convey you out into the West, somewhere, anywhere, no one was to know where. And someway, anyway, my instructions were, I was to lose you—to lose you. Madam, in plain point of fact. And now, at the very time I am indiscreet enough to tell you this much, you make my cheerful task the more difficult by saying that you must be regarded only as a prisoner of war!"
Serene, smiling, enigmatic, she faced him with no fear whatever showing in her dark eyes. The clear light of the bright autumn morning had no terrors for youth and health like hers. She put back a truant curl from her forehead where it had sought egress to the world, and looked him full in the face now, drawing a deep breath which caused the round of her bosom to lift the lace at her throat. Then, woman-like, she did the unlocked for, and laughed at him, a low, full ripple of wholesome laughter, which evoked again a wave of color to his sensitive face. Josephine St. Auban was a prisoner—a prisoner of state, in fact, and such by orders not understood by herself, although, as she knew very well, a prisoner without due process of law. Save for this tearful maid who stood yonder, she was alone, friendless. Her escape, her safety even, lay in her own hands. Yet, even now, learning for the first time this much definitely regarding the mysterious journey into which she had been entrapped—even now, a prisoner held fast in some stern and mysterious grasp whose reason and whose nature she could not know—she laughed, when she should have wept!
"My instructions were to take you out beyond this point," went on Carlisle; "and then I was to lose you, as I have said. I have had no definite instructions as to how that should be done, my dear Countess." His eyes twinkled as he stiffened to his full height and almost met the level of her own glance.
"The agent who conveyed my orders to me—he comes from Kentucky, you see—said to me that while I could not bow-string you, it would be quite proper to put you in a sack and throw you overboard. 'Only,' said he to me, 'be careful that this sack be tightly tied; and be sure to drop her only where the water is deepest. And for God's sake, my dear young man,' he said to me, 'be sure that you do not drop her anywhere along the coast of my own state of Kentucky; for if you do, she will untie the sack and swim ashore into my constituency, where I have trouble enough without the Countess St. Auban, active abolitionist, to increase it. Trouble '—said he to me—'thy name is Josephine St. Auban!'
"My dear lady, to that last, I agree. But, there you have my orders. You are, as may be seen, close to the throne, so far as we have thrones in this country."
"Then I am safe until we get below the Kentucky shore?" she queried calmly.
"I beg you not to feel disturbed—" he began.
"Will you set me down at Louisville?"
"Madam, I can not."
"You have not been hampered with extraordinary orders. You have just said, the carte blanche is in your hands."
"I have no stricter orders at any time than those I take from my own conscience, Madam. I must act for your own good as well as for that of others."
Her lip curled now. "Then not even this country is free! Even here there are secret tribunals. Even here there are hired bravos."
"Ah, Madam, please, not that! I beg of you—"
"Excellently kind of you all, to care so tenderly for me—and yourselves! I, only a woman, living openly, with ill will for none, paying ray own way, violating no law of the land—"
"Your words are very bitter, Madam."
"The more bitter because they are true. You will release me then at Cairo, below?"
"I can not promise, Madam. You would be back in Washington by the first boats and trains."
"So, the plot runs yet further? Perhaps you do not stop this side the outer ways of the Mississippi? Say, St. Louis, New Orleans?"
"Perhaps even beyond those points," he rejoined grimly. "I make no promises, since you yourself make none."
"What are your plans, out there, beyond?"
"You ask it frankly, and with equal frankness I say I do not know. Indeed, I am not fully advised in all this matter. It was imperative to get you out of Washington, and if so, it is equally imperative to keep you out of Washington. At least for a time I am obliged to construe my carte blanche in that way, my dear lady. And as I say, my conscience is my strictest officer."
"Yes," she said, studying his face calmly with her steady dark eyes.
It was a face sensitive, although bony and lined; stern, though its owner still was young. She noticed the reddish hair and beard, the florid skin, the blue eye set deep—a fighting eye, yet that of a visionary.
"You are a fanatic," she said.
"That is true. You, yourself, are of my own kind. You would kill me without tremor, if you had orders, and I—"
"You would do as much!"
"You are of my kind, Madam. Yes; we both take orders from our own souls. And that