Part 99 (1/2)
Five minutes afterward, I knew that any thing but apathy possessed him.
All at once he rose in his chair, and his eyes were fixed upon me with a glance so piercing and melancholy, that they dwell still in my memory, and will always dwell there.
”I said we were playing a comedy here in Richmond, colonel,” he said, in tones so deep and solemn that they made me start; ”I am playing my part with the rest; I play it in public, and even in private, as before you to-night. I sit here, indolently smoking and uttering my jests and plat.i.tudes, and, at the moment that I am speaking, my heart is breaking! I am a Virginian--I love this soil more than all the rest of the world--not a foot but is dear and sacred, and a vulgar horde are about to trample it under foot, and enslave its people. Every pulse of my being throbs with agony at the thought! I can not sleep. I have lost all taste for food. One thought alone haunts me--that the land of Was.h.i.+ngton, Jefferson, Mason, Henry, and Randolph, is to become the helpless prey of the sc.u.m of Europe and the North! My family has lived here for more than two hundred years. I have been, and am to-day, proud beyond words, of my birthright! I am a Virginian! a Virginian of Virginians! I have for forty years had no thought but the honor of Virginia. I have fought for her, and her only, in the senate and cabinet of the old government at Was.h.i.+ngton. I have dedicated all my powers to her--shrunk from nothing in my path--given my days and nights for years, and was willing to pour out my blood for Virginia; and now she is about to be trampled upon, her great statues hurled down, her escutcheon blotted, her altars overturned! And I, who have had no thought but her honor and glory, am to be driven, at the end of a long career, to a foreign land! I am to crouch yonder in Canada, with my bursting brow in my two hands--and every newspaper is to tell me 'the negro and the bayonet rule Virginia!' Can you wonder, then, that I am gloomy--that despair lies under all this jesting? _You_ are happy. You go yonder, where a bullet may end you. Would to G.o.d that I had entered the army, old as I am, and that at least I could hope for a death of honor, in arms for Virginia!”
VII.
SECRET SERVICE.
The statesman leaned back in his great chair, and was silent. At the same moment a tap was heard at the door; it opened noiselessly, and Nighthawk glided into the apartment.
Under his cloak I saw the gray uniform of a Confederate soldier; in his hand he carried a letter.
Nighthawk saluted Mr. X----- and myself with benignant respect. His quick eye, however, had caught the gloomy and agitated expression of the statesman's countenance, and he was silent.
”Well,” said Mr. X-----, raising his head, with a deep sigh. Then pa.s.sing his hand over his face, he seemed to brush away all emotion.
When he again looked up, his face was as calm and unmoved as at the commencement of our interview.
”You see I begin a new scene in this comedy,” he said to me in a low tone.
And turning to Nighthawk, he said:--
”Well, you followed that agreeable person?”
”Yes, sir,” said Nighthawk, with great respect.
”She turned out to be the character you supposed? Speak before Colonel Surry.”
Nighthawk bowed.
”I never had any doubt of her character, sir,” he said. ”You will remember that she called on you a week ago, announcing that she was a spy, who had lately visited the Federal lines and Was.h.i.+ngton. You described her to me, and informed me that you had given her another appointment for to-night; when I a.s.sured you that I knew her; she was an enemy, who had come as a spy upon _us_; and you directed me to be here to-night, and follow her, after your interview.”
”Well,” said Mr. X-----, quietly, ”you followed her!”
”Yes, sir. On leaving you, after making her pretended report of affairs in Was.h.i.+ngton, she got into her carriage, and the driver started rapidly, going up Capitol and Grace streets. I followed on foot, and had to run--but I am used to that, sir. The carriage stopped at a house in the upper part of the city--a Mr. Blocque's; the lady got out, telling the driver to wait, and went into the house, where she staid for about half an hour. She then came out--I was in the shadow of a tree, not ten yards from the spot, and as she got into the carriage, I could see that she held in her hand a letter. As the driver closed the door, she said, 'Take me to the flag-of-truce bureau, on Ninth Street, next door to the war office.' The driver mounted his box, and set off--and crossing the street, I commenced running to get a-head. In this I succeeded, and reached the bureau five minutes before the carriage.
”Well, sir, I hastened up stairs, and went into the bureau, where three or four clerks were examining the letters left to be sent by the flag-of-truce boat to-morrow. They were laughing and jesting as they read aloud the odd letters from the Libby and other prisons--some of which, I a.s.sure you, were very amusing, sir--when the lady's footsteps were heard upon the stairs, and she came in, smiling.
”I had turned my back, having given some excuse for my presence to one of the clerks, who is an acquaintance. Thus the lady, who knows me, could not see my face; but I could, by looking out of the corners of my eyes, see _her_. She came in, in her rich gray cloak, smiling on the clerks, and handing an open letter to one of them, said:--”'Will you oblige me by sending that to my sister in New York, by the flag-of-truce boat, to-morrow, sir?'
”'If there is nothing contraband in it, madam,' said the clerk.
”'Oh!' she replied, with a laugh, 'it is only on family matters. My sister is a Southerner, and so am I, sir. You can read the letter; it is not very dangerous!'
”And she smiled so sweetly that the clerk was almost ashamed to read the letter. He, however, glanced his eye over it, and evidently found nothing wrong in it. While he was doing so, the lady walked toward the mail-bags in which the clerks had been placing such letters as they found un.o.bjectionable, the others being marked, 'Condemned,' and thrown into a basket. As she pa.s.sed near one of the bags, I saw the lady, whom I was closely watching, flirt her cloak, as though by accident, across the mouth of one of the mail-bags, and at the same instant her hand stole down and dropped a letter into the bag. As she did so, the clerk, who had finished reading _the other letter_, bowed, and said:---