University of Virginia Library

24. CHAPTER XXIV.
DRAPETOMANIA.

For the last hour I had ridden close to Brent.
I saw that it was almost up with him. He
swayed in his saddle. His eye was glazed and
dull. But he kept his look fixed on the little
group of Laramie Barracks, and let his horse
carry him.

I lifted up my heart in prayer that this noble
life might not be quenched. He must not die
now that he was enlarged and sanctified by truest
love.

At last we struck open country. Bill Armstrong's
sorrel took a cradling lope; we rode
through a camp of Sioux “tepees,” like so many
great white foolscaps; we turned the angle of a
great white wooden building, and halted. I
sprang from Fulano, Brent quietly drooped down
into my arms.

“Just in time,” said a cheerful, manly voice at
my ear.

“I hope so,” said I. “Is it Captain Ruby?”

“Yes. We 'll take him into my bed. Dr.
Pathie, here 's a patient for you.”

We carried Brent in. As we crossed the veranda,
I saw Miss Clitheroe's meeting with her
father. He received her almost peevishly.

We laid the wounded man in Ruby's hospital
bed. Evidently a fine fellow, Ruby; and, what
was to the point, fond of John Brent.

Dr. Pathie shook his head.

So surgeons are wont to do when they study
sick men. It is a tacit recognition of the dark
negative upon which they are to turn the glimmer
of their positive, — a recognition of the mystery
of being. They are to experiment upon life,
and their chief facts are certain vaguish theories
why some men die.

The surgeon shook his head. It was a movement
of sympathy for the man, as a man. Then
he proceeded to consider him as a machine,
which it was a surgeon's business to repair.
Ruby and I stood by anxiously, while the skilled
craftsman inspected. Was this insensible, but
still breathing creature, only panting away the
last puffs of his motive power? or was it capable
mechanism still?

“Critical case,” said Dr. Pathie, at last. He
had great, umbrageous eyebrows, and a gentle,
peremptory manner, as of one who had done
much merciful cruelty in his day. “Ugly wound.

Never saw a worse furrow. Conical ball. He
must have been almost at the muzzle of the
pistol. He ought not to have stirred for a
month. How he has borne such a journey with
that arm, I cannot conceive. Strong character,
eh? Passionate young fellow? Life means
something to him. Well, Nature nominates such
men to get into scrapes for other people; she
gets them wounded, and drains them of their
blood. Lying on their backs is good for them,
and so is feeling weak. They take in more emotion
than they can assimilate while they are wide
awake. They would go frenzied with overcrowded
brain, if they were not shut up into
themselves sometimes, by sickness or sorrow.
There 's not much to do for him. A very neat
hand has been at his bandages. Now, if he is a
man with a distinct and controlling purpose in
his life, — if he has words to say, or deeds, or
duties to do, and knows it, — he will hold by his
life; if not, not. Keep him quiet. And do not
let him see, or hear, or feel the presence of that
beautiful young woman. She is not his sister,
and she will have too much trouble herself to be
a tranquil nurse for him here.”

I left him with his patient, and went out to
care for our horses. Ruby, model host, had
saved me all trouble.

“I have given Miss Clitheroe my sole guest-chamber,”

he said. “She has a lady's-maid in
the brawny person of an Irish corporaless. What
a transcendent being she is! I don't wonder
Brent loves her, as I divined he did from what
Jake Shamberlain — shrewd fellow Jake — said
when he consigned the father to me.”

“I must have a talk with the old gentleman.
O, there he is with Armstrong.”

Armstrong was handing him the money-belt.
His eyes gleamed as he clutched it.

“Walk off with me a step,” said Ruby, “before
you speak to him.”

We strolled off through the Sioux encampment.
The warriors, tall fellows with lithe
forms, togaed in white blankets, were smoking
in a circle. Only the great chiefs were in toggery
of old uniforms, blossoming into brass buttons
wherever a button could bourgeon. And
only the great chiefs resembled frowzy scarecrows.
The women, melancholy, as the abused
women of barbarians always are, were slouching
about at slave work. All greeted Ruby as a
friend, with sonorous grunts.

Society, even of Sioux, dwelling under buffalo-hide
foolscaps, was humane after our journey.
The barracks of Laramie, lonely outpost on a
bleak plain, were fairly beautiful in their homelike
homeliness. Man without a roof is mere
chaos.

“Trouble in store, I fear,” said Captain Ruby,
“for Mr. Clitheroe and all who care for him.”

“He ought to be at peace at last.”

“He is not. Dr. Pathie says he is a case of
Drapetomania.”

“I have heard that outlandish word used to
express the tendency — diseased of course — that
negroes have to run away from their masters.”

“Mr. Clitheroe is wild to get away from his
proper master, namely, himself.”

“A desperate malady! At his age almost
fatal.”

“So Pathie says. When a man of Mr. Clitheroe's
age is not at peace within, he goes into
war with his circumstances. He cannot conquer
them, so he runs away. He has always before
him a shadow of a dream of what he might have
been, and that ghost drives him and chases him,
until it wears him out.”

“Yes; but it is not only the forlorn and disappointed
that this pitiable disease attacks. Very
rich and prosperous suffer, become drapetomaniacs,
sell houses and build new, change neighborhoods,
travel furiously, never able to escape
from that inevitable companion of a reproaching
self.”

“Mr. Clitheroe is chafing to be gone. I start
a train for the States to-morrow, — the last chance
to travel with escort this season, — a small topographical

party going back. He has been for the
last few days in a passion of impatience, almost
scolding me and your party, his daughter, and
circumstances, lest you should not arrive in time
for him to go.”

“To go where? What does he intend?”

“He is full of great schemes. I do not know,
of course, anything of him except what I have
picked up from his communicativeness; but you
would suppose him a duke from his talk. He
speaks of his old manor-house, — I should know
it by sight now, — and says he intends to repurchase
it and be a great man again. He is constantly
inviting me to share his new splendors.
Really, his pictures of life in England will quite
spoil me for another winter of cooling my heels
in this dismal place, with a scalp on my head
and a hundred Sioux looking at it hungrily.”

“He must be deranged by his troubles. I am
sure he has no basis for any hopes in England.
Sizzum stripped him. He has alienated his
friends at home. His daughter is his only friend
and guardian, except ourselves.”

“He sprang up when he saw you coming, and
was frantic with joy, — not for his daughter's
safety, but because he could start with the train
to-morrow. I suppose she is a tested traveller
by this time.”

“As thoroughly as any man on the plains.”

“She can go very comfortably in the train.
Two or three soldiers' wives go. Females, I believe;
at least their toggery alleges the softer sex,
whatever their looks and voices do.”

“The chance is clearly not to be lost. I do
not like to part with my fascinating comrade. It
was poetry to camp with such a woman. Travel
will seem stale henceforth. I wish we could
keep her, for Brent's sake.”

“Poor fellow! Pathie looks very doubtful.
You must tell me your story more fully after
supper.”

I found Mr. Clitheroe in a panic to be moving.
He thanked me in a grand manner for our services.
But he seemed willing to avoid me. He
could not forget the pang of his disenchantment
from Mormonism. I belonged to the dramatis
personæ of a period he would willingly banish.
He regarded me with a suspicious look, as if he
feared again that my coming would break up
new illusions as baseless as the old. He was full
of large, vague plans. England now; he must
be back in England again. His daughter must
be reinstated in her place. He treated her coldly
enough; but still all his thought seemed to be
ambition for her. The money Armstrong had
given him, too, seemed to increase his confidence
in the future. That was wealth for the moment.
Other would come.

Miss Clitheroe had yielded to fatigue. I did
not see her that night. In fact, after all the
wearing anxiety of our trip, I was glad to lie
down on a white buffalo-robe, with the Sybaritic
luxury of a pair of clean sheets, and show my
gratitude to Ruby by twelve hours' solid sleep.

A drum-beat awaked me next morning. It
was not reveille, it was not breakfast, it was not
guard mounting. I sprang up, and looked from
the window. How odd it seemed to peer from
a window, after the unwindowed wilderness!

The four white-hooded wagons of the little
homeward train were ready to start. The drum
was calling in the escort. The fifty soldiers of
Ruby's garrison were grouped about, lending a
hand to their luckier comrades, homeward bound.
Ruby was taking leave of his brother officers.
Armstrong stood a little apart with his horses.
A busy scene, and busier when some vixenish
pack-mule shook heels, and scattered the by-standers
into that figure known to packers as
the Blazing Star.

Aloof from the crowd, Mr. Clitheroe was striding
up and down beside the wagons, with the
eager, unobserving tramp of a man concerned
with nothing but a morbid purpose of his own.
He had bought of some discharged soldier a long
military surtout, blue-gray, with a cape. Wearing
this, he marched to and fro like a sentry.

His thin, gray hair and long, bifid beard gave
him a ghastly look; and then he trod his beat as
if it were a doom, — as if he were a sentinel
over his own last evasive hope.

“Drapetomania!” I thought, “and a hopeless
case.”

A knock at my door, and the brawny corporaless
summoned me to Miss Clitheroe.

“We are going,” she said. “Take me to
him!”

Did she love him?

I braved Dr. Pathie's displeasure, and led her
to the bedside of the lover.

Brent was still in a stupor. We were alone.

She stood looking at him a moment. He was
breathing, but unconscious; dead to the outer
world and her presence. She stood looking at
him, and seeming with her large, solemn eyes to
review those scenes of terror and of relief since
she had known him. Tears gathered in the
brave, quiet eyes.

Suddenly she stooped and kissed his forehead.
Then she passionately kissed his lips. She grew
to him as if she would interfuse anew that ichor
of love into his being.

She turned to me, all crimsoned, but self-possessed.

“I meant you should see me prove my love,”
she said. “I am proud of myself for it, — proud

of my heart that it can know and love this noblest
and tenderest nature. Tell him so. Tell
him it is not gratitude, but love. He will know
that I could not stay. My life belongs to my
father. Where he goes, I must go. What other
friend has he than me? I go with my father,
but here my heart remains. Tell him so. Please
let me write to you. You will not forget your
comrade. I owe more than life to you. Do let
me keep myself in your memory. I dread my
life before me. I will keep you informed of my
father's plans. And when this dearest one is
well again, if he remembers me, tell him I love
him, and that I parted from him — so.”

She bent again, and kissed him passionately, —
then departed, and her tears were on his cheek.