The Story of a Conscience
I
Captain Parrol Hartroy stood at the advanced post
of his picket-guard, talking in low tones with the sentinel. This
post was on a turnpike which bisected the captain’s camp, a
half-mile in rear, though the camp was not in sight from that
point. The officer was apparently giving the soldier certain
instructions—was perhaps merely inquiring if all were quiet in
front. As the two stood talking a man approached them from the
direction of the camp, carelessly whistling, and was promptly
halted by the soldier. He was evidently a civilian—a tall person,
coarsely clad in the home-made stuff of yellow gray, called
“butternut,” which was men’s only wear in the latter days of the
Confederacy. On his head was a slouch felt hat, once white, from
beneath which hung masses of uneven hair, seemingly unacquainted
with either scissors or comb. The man’s face was rather striking; a
broad forehead, high nose, and thin cheeks, the mouth invisible in
the full dark beard, which seemed as neglected as the hair. The
eyes were large and had that steadiness and fixity of attention
which so frequently mark a considering intelligence and a will not
easily turned from its purpose—so say those physiognomists who have
that kind of eyes. On the whole, this was a man whom one would be
likely to observe and be observed by. He carried a walking-stick
freshly cut from the forest and his ailing cowskin boots were white
with dust.
“Show your pass,” said the Federal soldier, a
trifle more imperiously perhaps than he would have thought
necessary if he had not been under the eye of his commander, who
with folded arms looked on from the roadside.
“ ’Lowed you’d rec’lect me, Gineral,” said the
wayfarer tranquilly, while producing the paper from the pocket of
his coat. There was something in his tone—perhaps a faint
suggestion of irony—which made his elevation of his obstructor to
exalted rank less agreeable to that worthy warrior than promotion
is commonly found to be. “You-all have to be purty pertickler, I
reckon,” he added, in a more conciliatory tone, as if in
half-apology for being halted.
Having read the pass, with his rifle resting on the
ground, the soldier handed the document back without a word,
shouldered his weapon, and returned to his commander. The civilian
passed on in the middle of the road, and when he had penetrated the
circumjacent Confederacy a few yards resumed his whistling and was
soon out of sight beyond an angle in the road, which at that point
entered a thin forest. Suddenly the officer undid his arms from his
breast, drew a revolver from his belt and sprang forward at a run
in the same direction, leaving his sentinel in gaping astonishment
at his post. After making to the various visible forms of nature a
solemn promise to be damned, that gentleman resumed the air of
stolidity which is supposed to be appropriate to a state of alert
military attention.
II
Captain Hartroy held an independent command. His
force consisted of a company of infantry, a squadron of cavalry,
and a section of artillery, detached from the army to which they
belonged, to defend an important defile in the Cumberland
Mountains29 in Tennessee. It was a field officer’s
command held by a line officer promoted from the ranks, where he
had quietly served until “discovered.” His post was one of
exceptional peril; its defense entailed a heavy responsibility and
he had wisely been given corresponding discretionary powers, all
the more necessary because of his distance from the main army, the
precarious nature of his communications and the lawless character
of the enemy’s irregular troops infesting that region. He had
strongly fortified his little camp, which embraced a village of a
half-dozen dwellings and a country store, and had collected a
considerable quantity of supplies. To a few resident civilians of
known loyalty, with whom it was desirable to trade, and of whose
services in various ways he sometimes availed himself, he had given
written passes admitting them within his lines. It is easy to
understand that an abuse of this privilege in the interest of the
enemy might entail serious consequences. Captain Hartroy had made
an order to the effect that any one so abusing it would be
summarily shot.
While the sentinel had been examining the
civilian’s pass the captain had eyed the latter narrowly. He
thought his appearance familiar and had at first no doubt of having
given him the pass which had satisfied the sentinel. It was not
until the man had got out of sight and hearing that his identity
was disclosed by a revealing light from memory. With soldierly
promptness of decision the officer had acted on the
revelation.
III
To any but a singularly self-possessed man the
apparition of an officer of the military forces, formidably clad,
bearing in one hand a sheathed sword and in the other a cocked
revolver, and rushing in furious pursuit, is no doubt disquieting
to a high degree; upon the man to whom the pursuit was in this
instance directed it appeared to have no other effect than somewhat
to intensify his tranquillity. He might easily enough have escaped
into the forest to the right or the left, but chose another course
of action—turned and quietly faced the captain, saying as he came
up: “I reckon ye must have something to say to me, which ye
disremembered. What mout it be, neighbor?”
But the “neighbor” did not answer, being engaged in
the unneighborly act of covering him with a cocked pistol.
“Surrender,” said the captain as calmly as a slight
breathlessness from exertion would permit, “or you die.”
There was no menace in the manner of this demand;
that was all in the matter and in the means of enforcing it. There
was, too, something not altogether reassuring in the cold gray eyes
that glanced along the barrel of the weapon. For a moment the two
men stood looking at each other in silence; then the civilian, with
no appearance of fear—with as great apparent unconcern as when
complying with the less austere demand of the sentinel—slowly
pulled from his pocket the paper which had satisfied that humble
functionary and held it out, saying:
“I reckon this ’ere parss from Mister Hartroy
is——”
“The pass is a forgery,” the officer said,
interrupting. “I am Captain Hartroy—and you are Dramer
Brune.”
It would have required a sharp eye to observe the
slight pallor of the civilian’s face at these words, and the only
other manifestation attesting their significance was a voluntary
relaxation of the thumb and fingers holding the dishonored paper,
which, falling to the road, unheeded, was rolled by a gentle wind
and then lay still, with a coating of dust, as in humiliation for
the lie that it bore. A moment later the civilian, still looking
unmoved into the barrel of the pistol, said:
“Yes, I am Dramer Brune, a Confederate spy, and
your prisoner. I have on my person, as you will soon discover, a
plan of your fort and its armament, a statement of the distribution
of your men and their number, a map of the approaches, showing the
positions of all your outposts. My life is fairly yours, but if you
wish it taken in a more formal way than by your own hand, and if
you are willing to spare me the indignity of marching into camp at
the muzzle of your pistol, I promise you that I will neither
resist, escape, nor remonstrate, but will submit to whatever
penalty may be imposed.”
The officer lowered his pistol, uncocked it, and
thrust it into its place in his belt. Brune advanced a step,
extending his right hand.
“It is the hand of a traitor and a spy,” said the
officer coldly, and did not take it. The other bowed.
“Come,” said the captain, “let us go to camp; you
shall not die until to-morrow morning.”
He turned his back upon his prisoner, and these two
enigmatical men retraced their steps and soon passed the sentinel,
who expressed his general sense of things by a needless and
exaggerated salute to his commander.
IV
Early on the morning after these events the two
men, captor and captive, sat in the tent of the former. A table was
between them on which lay, among a number of letters, official and
private, which the captain had written during the night, the
incriminating papers found upon the spy. That gentleman had slept
through the night in an adjoining tent, unguarded. Both, having
breakfasted, were now smoking.
“Mr. Brune,” said Captain Hartroy, “you probably do
not understand why I recognized you in your disguise, nor how I was
aware of your name.”
“I have not sought to learn, Captain,” the prisoner
said with quiet dignity.
“Nevertheless I should like you to know—if the
story will not offend. You will perceive that my knowledge of you
goes back to the autumn of 1861. At that time you were a private in
an Ohio regiment—a brave and trusted soldier. To the surprise and
grief of your officers and comrades you deserted and went over to
the enemy. Soon afterward you were captured in a skirmish,
recognized, tried by court-martial and sentenced to be shot.
Awaiting the execution of the sentence you were confined,
unfettered, in a freight car standing on a side track of a
railway.”
“At Grafton, Virginia,” said Brune, pushing the
ashes from his cigar with the little finger of the hand holding it,
and without looking up.
“At Grafton, Virginia,” the captain repeated. “One
dark and stormy night a soldier who had just returned from a long,
fatiguing march was put on guard over you. He sat on a cracker box
inside the car, near the door, his rifle loaded and the bayonet
fixed. You sat in a corner and his orders were to kill you if you
attempted to rise.”
“But if I asked to rise he might call the
corporal of the guard.”
“Yes. As the long silent hours wore away the
soldier yielded to the demands of nature: he himself incurred the
death penalty by sleeping at his post of duty.”
“You did.”
“What! you recognize me? you have known me all
along?”
The captain had risen and was walking the floor of
his tent, visibly excited. His face was flushed, the gray eyes had
lost the cold, pitiless look which they had shown when Brune had
seen them over the pistol barrel; they had softened
wonderfully.
“I knew you,” said the spy, with his customary
tranquillity, “the moment you faced me, demanding my surrender. In
the circumstances it would have been hardly becoming in me to
recall these matters. I am perhaps a traitor, certainly a spy; but
I should not wish to seem a suppliant.”
The captain had paused in his walk and was facing
his prisoner. There was a singular huskiness in his voice as he
spoke again.
“Mr. Brune, whatever your conscience may permit you
to be, you saved my life at what you must have believed the cost of
your own. Until I saw you yesterday when halted by my sentinel I
believed you dead—thought that you had suffered the fate which
through my own crime you might easily have escaped. You had only to
step from the car and leave me to take your place before the
firing-squad. You had a divine compassion. You pitied my fatigue.
You let me sleep, watched over me, and as the time drew near for
the relief-guard to come and detect me in my crime, you gently
waked me. Ah, Brune, Brune, that was well done—that was
great—that——”
The captain’s voice failed him; the tears were
running down his face and sparkled upon his beard and his breast.
Resuming his seat at the table, he buried his face in his arms and
sobbed. All else was silence.
Suddenly the clear warble of a bugle was heard
sounding the “assembly.” The captain started and raised his wet
face from his arms; it had turned ghastly pale. Outside, in the
sunlight, were heard the stir of the men falling into line; the
voices of the sergeants calling the roll; the tapping of the
drummers as they braced their drums. The captain spoke again:
“I ought to have confessed my fault in order to
relate the story of your magnanimity; it might have procured you a
pardon. A hundred times I resolved to do so, but shame prevented.
Besides, your sentence was just and righteous. Well, Heaven forgive
me! I said nothing, and my regiment was soon afterward ordered to
Tennessee and I never heard about you.”
“It was all right, sir,” said Brune, without
visible emotion; “I escaped and returned to my colors—the
Confederate colors. I should like to add that before deserting from
the Federal service I had earnestly asked a discharge, on the
ground of altered convictions. I was answered by punishment.”
“Ah, but if I had suffered the penalty of my
crime—if you had not generously given me the life that I accepted
without gratitude you would not be again in the shadow and
imminence of death.”
The prisoner started slightly and a look of anxiety
came into his face. One would have said, too, that he was
surprised. At that moment a lieutenant, the adjutant, appeared at
the opening of the tent and saluted. “Captain,” he said, “the
battalion is formed.”
Captain Hartroy had recovered his composure. He
turned to the officer and said: “Lieutenant, go to Captain Graham
and say that I direct him to assume command of the battalion and
parade it outside the parapet. This gentleman is a deserter and a
spy; he is to be shot to death in the presence of the troops. He
will accompany you, unbound and unguarded.”
While the adjutant waited at the door the two men
inside the tent rose and exchanged ceremonious bows, Brune
immediately retiring.
Half an hour later an old negro cook, the only
person left in camp except the commander, was so startled by the
sound of a volley of musketry that he dropped the kettle that he
was lifting from a fire. But for his consternation and the hissing
which the contents of the kettle made among the embers, he might
also have heard, nearer at hand, the single pistol shot with which
Captain Hartroy renounced the life which in conscience he could no
longer keep.
In compliance with the terms of a note that he left
for the officer who succeeded him in command, he was buried, like
the deserter and spy, without military honors; and in the solemn
shadow of the mountain which knows no more of war the two sleep
well in long-forgotten graves.