"take care of her money," which made Ellen, when he was gone, remove it
from her basket and carry it in a roll in her hand. There was a dull
oil-lamp flickering in one end of the car, men's faces peering at her
from every dusky corner, the friendly Captain's nodding a grave good-bye
from the door,--and then, with a shrill cry, the train shot off into the
night. It must be a lonesome, foreboding moment to any timid woman
starting alone at night on a long journey, with the possible death
waiting for her in every throb of the engine or coupling of the cars: so
it was no wonder that the poor "natural," rushing thus into a world that
opened suddenly wider and darker before her, "Joe," her one clear point,
going back, back, out of sight, and withal a childish, unspeakable
terror at the shrieking, fire-belching engine, should have cowered down
on her seat, afraid to move or speak. So the night passed. "I was afraid
to cry," said Ellen.
An hour or two after midnight the train reached Columbus; the depot
dingy and dark; one or two far-off lamps bringing the only light out of
the foggy night.
"The cars stopped with a great cry, and the people all rushed out. It
seemed to me a minute and they were all gone. Nobody was left but me;
when I got up and went to the car-door, they looked just like shadows
going into the darkness, and beyond that there was a world of black
houses. You've seen Columbus, Sir?"
"No."
"Then it would frighten you,"--in her slow, grave way. "I suppose there
are not so many people in all the world beside." (It was Ellen's only
experience of a city.) "So I was there alone at the depot, waiting for
Joe. I was so sure he would come. There was a crowd of men, with whips,
calling out, and plucking at my shawl. I was very afraid, so I crept off
into a dark corner and sat down on a box with my carpet-bag and basket.
The men drove off with their carriages, but there were half a dozen
others under a shed quarrelling. I sat there an hour, thinking surely
Joe would be along. Then the clock struck two: I got up and went to the
men under the shed. I said to them, 'Do you know Joseph Carrol?'
"The men raised up from where they were lying, and stared at me. I'm
afraid, Sir, they had been drinking. So I said it again. They laughed
and began to make jokes about me, I cried a little,--I couldn't help it,
Sir. I knew the Lord Jesus was near me, but I couldn't help it. One of
the men, whose clothes were the raggedest and whose face was very red,
said,--
"'Boys, I guess you're mistaken. Who are you, my girl?'
"I told them I was Joseph Carrol's sister, and how it was I had come to
find him.
"'You'll have to help me, Sir,' I said to the red-faced man; 'for I have
a trouble in my head often, and it seems as if it was a-coming soon.'
"Some of the men laughed again, but the man I had spoken to got up and
buttoned his coat. He had to lean against the fence, he was so unsteady.
"'You stop that jeering, Jim Flynn,' he says, swearing. 'Can't you see
what the girl is? Where's your money, Ellen?'
"Then it was I found my money was gone. I remembered putting it on the
seat beside me before we changed cars at Urbanna. So I told him. He
looked at me steady.
"'I believe you,' he says. 'Come along. The Twenty-Fourth Ohio is out in
Camp Chase,--four miles out. You come to an hotel to-night and go out to
Joe in the morning.'
"So he took me up to a big house, and said to a man there that I was a
decent girl, and gave him money to pay for my bed and breakfast, and bid
me good-night."
Early in the morning Ellen dressed herself neatly, "to please Joe," and
started out to the camp, carrying her basket, asking her way as she
went. The girl had wrought herself up now to such a certainty of seeing
him that a disappointment was sure to be a new and different shock from
any that had gone before. I suppose, too, the novel sight of the tents,
the crowds of armed men, excited her feeble mind beyond its powers. She
came to the gate and asked the sentry to tell Joseph Carrol of the
Twenty-Fourth Ohio that his sister had come.
"It would need a long call to do that, my girl," said the man. "The
Twenty-Fourth went off to active service yesterday."
"To where?"
"Virginia."
About a mile from the camp live two childless old people who then were
keepers of the toll-gate on the road into town. I am ashamed to say that
I have forgotten their name, it being a common one; but I remember what
their lives were, and I am sure that they who carry the record of every
man's hours to add to the Great Reckoning must find in their hackneyed
name a meaning even to them of great truth and a rare charity. The old
lady told me afterwards of her finding Ellen sitting on the roadside
near her well, her mind quite gone, yet very gentle and grave even in
her madness. They took her home to the toll-gate house, and kept her for
two or three days, in which they learned her story.
"My husband," she said, "telegraphed to the Colonel of the regiment and
found it was delayed at Bellaire; but as Ellen's health was in so
critical a state, they thought it best to say nothing about her to her
brother, and I was resolved that she should not go on. We offered (what
we had never done before to any one) to adopt her, and treat her as our
own child. People coming in and seeing the awkward country-body would
wonder why we set such a sudden store by her, but in a little while
they'd see as we did. I think her pure soul showed right through her
homely face. Then she trusted people as free as a child; so everybody
was kind to her. But I used to think there was but two people real to
her in the world,--the 'Lord Jesus,' and 'Joe.'"
When Ellen was herself again, however, she insisted upon going on, and
fell into so restless and wild a state that the gate-keeper and his wife
were forced to yield. Her carpet-bag was repacked with all the additions
which the old lady's motherly ingenuity could suggest, her pocket-book
well filled, and then, having found her a companion to Bellaire, the
Colonel was again telegraphed to, and Ellen herself was the bearer of
letters from the Governor of Ohio and her new friends, in the hope of
obtaining a furlough for Carrol. With a prudent after-thought, too, the
gate-keeper's wife wrote Ellen's name and her own address upon a card
which she fastened to the faithful little basket, in case of any
accident; and then, with many anxious looks and blessings, Ellen again
started on her journey.
At Zanesville, her companion, finding some unexpected business which
would detain him in that place, left her to pursue her journey alone. It
is but a few hours' ride from Columbus to Bellaire (the terminus of the
Central Ohio Railroad); but at Lewis's Mills this day a collision or
some other accident occurred, by which the train was delayed until late
that night: no other harm was done, except to give time for poor Ellen's
chance again to fail her. Joe's regiment crossed the Ohio that night and
went into Virginia.
Bellaire and Benwood, the opposite point on the other side of the river,
are small railroad stations, which one or two iron-mills have rendered
foul with ashes and smoke. The crossing of the river at that time was by
a ferry, rendered purposely tedious by the managers of the Baltimore and
Ohio Road, to force their passengers to the lower junction at
Parkersburg. I mention this to account for the detention which ensued.
When the train stopped at Bellaire, Ellen followed the crowd off the
platform into a tavern consisting of a barn-like eating-room and a few
starved little garret rooms over it. She stopped at the door
uncertainly, while the passengers crowded about the eating-stands at the
far end of the room. A fat, oily landlord came up with a hat driven down
over his brows.
"Cross the river to-night, Ma'am? Slow work! slow work! Not get this
train over till morning. Better take a bite."
Ellen managed to interpose her brother's name and that of the regiment.
"Twenty-Fourth Ohio? Gone over to-day and this evening. Government has
the roads and ferries now, and that keeps passengers back. Troops must
be transported, you know,"--and then stopped suddenly, seeing Ellen's
face.
"Where did you say he had gone?"
"Over," with a jerk of his thumb across the river,--"into Virginia. You
are ill, young woman! I'll call Susan."
Virginia, the country of the man-hunters! A low moon lighted up the
broad river and the hills beyond; they were mountains to Ellen,
threatening and fierce. She looked at them steadily.
"All the stories I had heard of that country came up quick to me," she
said, afterwards. "I thought it was death for me or Joe to venture
there. Then he was gone! But I had a great courage, somehow, there at
Bellaire. It came to me sudden. I said to the man it did not matter. I
would have gone with Joe, and I could follow him. He spoke to me a
minute or two, and then he went for 'Susan,' who was his wife. She was a
sharp-faced woman, and she scolded her servants all the time; but she
was very kind to me. When I told her about Joe, she brought me some tea,
and made me lie down until it would be time to cross the ferry, which
was not until near morning. She would take no money from me. She said,
Sue Myers was no skin-flint to take money from the likes of me.
Afterwards she said, if I found Joe and he did well, he could pay her
some time again: these soldiers made money easy, lounging round camp. I
was angry at that," Ellen said, reddening; "but she would not take the
money from me. She told me not to be disappointed, if the regiment had
left Benwood and gone out the Baltimore Road. She knew they were to camp
at Piedmont, and to follow them up, for they had but a day's start of
me. It was quite clear day before our turn came to cross the ferry, and
then we had to wait for hours on the other side. When I came out of the
ferry-house, I put my foot on the grass, and I thought, 'This is
Virginia!' It was as if I had stepped on some place where a murder had
been done. I was as silly as a half-witted person," blushing
apologetically. "I have had great kindness done to me in Virginia since
then."
Though Ellen said no more of this, as she was talking to Virginians, we
readily understood the real terror which had seized her, added to the
gnawing anxiety to see her brother. Caspar Hauser was not more ignorant
of the actual world than this girl, brought up as she had been in such
utter seclusion. The last few days had shattered whatever fancies she
had formed about life, and given her nothing tangible in their stead.
Even Coldwater and Joe, and "them that lay up on the hill," were
beginning to be like dreams, cold and far-off. It was just a wild
whirling through space, night-storms, strange faces crowding about her
from place to place; undefined sights, sounds that terrified her, and a
long-drawn sickening hope to find Joe through all. No more warm rooms
and comfortable evenings beside the fire with mother, no more suppers
made ready for the boys, and jokes and laughing when they came home;
there was no more a house to call home, no mother nor boys, only
something cold and clammy under the muddy ground yonder.
"Ours had been a damp house on the lake-shore," Ellen said, "and we kept
a fire always. Winter or summer, I always had seen a warm fire in the
grate; but the morning I left Coldwater they put it out; and in all my
travel, when I'd think of home, I'd go back to the thought of that
grate, with a few wet ashes scattered over the hearth, and nobody to
sweep them up, and the cold sun shining down the chimney on them. When
I'd think of that, I'd say, 'It's all over!' It began to seem to me as
if there was no more Ellen and no more Joe."
She had come, too, into the border region, where the war was breaking
ground, with all its dull, gross reality of horrors, to which the
farther South and North were strangers; the broken talk in the cars was
even more terrifying to her, because half understood,--of quiet farmers
murdered in cold blood, of pillaging and outrage, of anticipated
insurrections among the slaves, and vengeance for their wrongs.
"I thought of the Lord Jesus and Joe, but they did not seem to be alive
here," she said. "I would peep into my basket and look at the Testament
and the spoons and Joe's collars, and that made things seem real to me."
(Ellen's basket, by the way, was but another example of the singular
habit which we find in persons of unsound intellect, the clinging to
some one inanimate object as if it formed a tangible link to hold time
and place together.)
When the train stopped at Littleton, the conductor, an old, gray-headed
man, came up to Ellen as she sat alone.
"Simeon Myers told me your story," he said, gravely. "He crossed the
river to tell me. I'll take the matter in hand myself; I telegraphed
before leaving Benwood, in advance. The Twenty-Fourth Ohio, they say
there, have gone on to camp at Piedmont; but the movements of the troops
are so uncertain, we will wait until the answer comes to my despatch at
the next station. You go to sleep, Ellen."
"Yes, Sir," numbly.
She sat with her hand over her eyes, until the name of the next station
was called, then rose, and remained standing. The old conductor came in.
"Sit down," he said, gently. "Why, you shiver, and are as cold as if
your blood was frozen!"
"My brother, Sir?"
"Tut! tut! Yes! Good news this time, Ellen. The Twenty-Fourth is at
Fetterman,--has stopped there, I don't know why,--and"--pulling out his
watch, but speaking slowly, and controlling her with his eye--"in two
hours we will be there."
At this time (June, 1861) Government, striking at the Rebellion wildly,
as a blind man learning to fence, was throwing bodies of raw,
undisciplined troops into the Border States, wherever there was
foothold, to their certain destruction, though with an ulterior good
effect, as it proved. Camps of these men were stationed along the road
as Ellen passed,--broad-backed and brawny-limbed Iowans and Indianians,
clothed in every variety of militia military gear, riding saddleless
horses, with a rope often for a bridle, sleeping on the ground with
neither tents nor blankets. Near one of these straggling encampments the
long train stopped, with a trumpet-like shriek from the engine. "Here's
Fetterman, and here's Joe, Ellen," said the conductor, his old face in
almost as bright a glow as hers, as he hustled her off on the platform.
"It was just a few low houses, not so large as Coldwater, and soldiers
everywhere, on the hills and in the fields and strolling along the road;
and it was a clear, blue summer's day, and--oh, it did seem as the
soldiers and the town and the sky were glad because I had got there at
last, and were saying, 'Joe! Joe!'"
She went into the nearest house, a wide, wooden building, where two
women sat shelling peas. Ellen propounded her usual question. The oldest
woman took off her spectacles, and looked at her keenly.
"The Twenty-Fourth Ohio? How far did you say you had come? Michigan?
Forgive me, (Jinny, bring a chair,) if I looked at you curiously; but I
really fancied the people out yonder were savages."
Ellen laughed nervously.
"And you are Virginian? Yes! But my brother"--
The old lady's scrutiny grew graver.
"We are Virginians, in every sense of the word. So I know but little of
the movements of the troops. But Captain Williams, the commandant of the
post, occupies two of our rooms, and his wife is a gentle little body.
Jinny, call Mrs. Williams."
So Jinny, a shy, kindly-faced little girl, disappeared, and speedily
returned with the officer's wife (who had a dainty baby in her arms) and
a glass of currant wine, which she pressed on Ellen. Mrs. Williams heard
Ellen's story in silence, looking significantly at her hostess when it
was finished.
"Yes, yes; of course you'll see Joe. Hold the baby, please, Jinny. Now
let me take off your bonnet. But you won't mind, if there's a little
delay,--a very little. I am not sure, but I am afraid. We'll send for
Captain Williams; and know at once. But some detached companies went on
to Grafton for special orders this morning, and I thought part of the
Twenty-Fourth was with them. There! there! lie down a bit on my bed, or
stay here with Mrs. Ford. Very well; it will all be right; only keep up
heart."
So chattering, the little woman and the old one fussed about Ellen,
soothing, patting her, administering tea, comfort, and hope, all in a
breath, as women do to the healing of soul and body,--while Jinny, baby
in arms, made off and brought in a moustached young man, with a
pleasant, cheerful face, not unlike his wife's.
"It is an unfortunate piece of work," he said. "Yes, the detachment
included that company to which Carrol belonged. They are at Grafton now;
and I cannot send a message, for official despatches will be going over
the lines until night. In the morning, though, it shall be the first
word to go. I know the colonel of that regiment, and I do not doubt we
will have Joe here on furlough to-morrow."
"They were very careful of me," said Ellen. "Mrs. Ford made me sleep in
her spare room; and Mrs. Williams brought me in my supper herself, and
sat by me with baby all the evening. I couldn't believe they were all
Virginians, and fighting against each other too. The next morning was
clear and sunny. Jinny came in, and opened the window, and said, 'Isn't
such a clear day a good omen?' But I hadn't courage to laugh with her, I
was so tired; I had to lie still on a settee there was there. Captain
Williams came in, and said,--
"'By nine o'clock we will have an answer to my message, Ellen.'
"I said then, 'When it comes, if it is "No," will you just say, "No,
Ellen," and no more,--not one word more, please?'
"He said, 'I understand,' and went out.
"I heard him tell them not to disturb me; so I lay quite still, with my
hands over my eyes. He kept pacing up and down as if he was anxious;
then I heard a man's step coming towards him. I knew he brought the
message. Captain Williams came towards the door; his wife was there
waiting. I heard him speak to her, and then he said, 'You do it, Mary.'
So she came in, and kissed me, and she said, 'He is gone, Ellen,'--no
more but that. I knew then I never should see my brother again. Mrs.
Williams cried, but I did not. She told me, after a while, that he had
gone by another road to the Kanawha Salines, where they were fighting
that day. 'You _cannot_ go,' she said. 'It is a wilderness of hills and
swamps. You must stay with us; help me with baby, and presently Joe will
be back.'
"I did not say anything. I lay there, and covered my face. She thought I
was asleep presently, so rose softly and went away. I lay quiet all day.
I could not speak nor move. They brought me some wine, and talked to me,
but I did not understand. I knew I must go on, go on!"--with the wild
look again in her eyes. "They would not disturb me, but let me lie still
all night there. Early in the morning, before day, I got up softly,
softly, I was so afraid they would hear me, and made a light. I wanted
to bid Joe farewell before I started."
"Where were you going, Ellen?"
"On, you know,"--with that grave, secretive look of the insane. "I _had_
to go. So I made a light. I wanted to write a letter to my brother, but
my head was so tired I could not; then I took my little Testament, and I
marked the fourteenth chapter of St. John. He knew that I liked that
best, and I thought that would be my letter. I wrote alongside of the
printing, 'Good bye, Joe.' Then I fastened it up, and directed it to
Joseph Carrol, Kanawha Salines."
"That was a wide direction, Ellen."
"Was it, Sir?" indifferently. "So Joe has it now. I think all his life
he'll look at that, and say, 'That was Sis's last word.' I went gently
out of the door, and I put my book in the post-office, and then I went
away."
She began, it appears, to retrace her way on the railroad-track on foot,
leaving her money and clothes at Mrs. Ford's, but carrying the little
basket carefully. The Williamses, thinking she had followed Joe,
searched for her in the direction of Grafton, and so failed to find her.
There are no villages between Fetterman and Fairmount,--only scattered
farm-houses, and but few of those,--the line of the railroad running
between solitary stretches of moorland, and in gloomy defiles of the
mountains. Ellen followed the road, a white, glaring, dusty line, all
day. Nothing broke the dreary silence but the whirr of some unseen bird
through the forests, or the hollow thud, thud of a woodpecker on a
far-off tree. Once or twice, too, a locomotive with a train of cars
rushed past her with a fierce yell. She slept that night by the roadside
with a fallen tree for a pillow, and the next morning began again her
plodding journey.
I come now to the saddest part of the poor girl's story, gathered from
her own indistinct remembrances. I mean to pass briefly over it. On the
latter part of this day's travel, Ellen had passed several of the
encampments which lined the road, but had escaped notice by making a
detour through the woods. A mile or two east of Fairmount, however,
coming near one, she went up to the first low shed; for the men had
thrown up temporary huts, part wood, part mud.
"It was a woman who was there," she said, in apology; "and I was not
very strong. I had eaten nothing but berries since the morning before."
The woman was a sutler. She listened to Ellen's explanations, incoherent
enough probably, and then, bursting into a loud laugh, called to some of
the soldiers lounging near by.
"Here's a likely tale," she said. "I half suspect this is the Rebel spy
that's been hanging round these two weeks, and kept Allan dodging you.
See to her, boys, while I weigh out this sugar."
The regiment was made up of the offals of a large city; the men, both
brutal and idle, eager for excitement; this sutler, the only woman in
camp. The evening was coming on. Ellen was alone in the half-drunken,
shouting crowd.
--Not alone. He was near who was real and actual to her always. When I
think of Christ as the All-Wise and All-Merciful in this our present
day, I like to remember Him as going step by step with this half-crazed
child in her long and solitary journey. When I hear how her danger was
warded back, how every rough face turned at last towards her with a
strange kindness, and tenderness, I see again the Hand that wrote upon
the dust of the Temple, and clearer than in the storm or battle which I
know He guides I see again the face of Him who took little children in
His arms and blessed them.
When the sutler went down to the end of the field she found Big Jake,
the bully of the regiment, holding the girl by the shoulder, her clothes
covered with mud with which the men had pelted her. She had given one or
two low cries of terror, and stood shivering weakly, her eye alone
steady, holding the man at bay, as she might a brute. She held out her
hands when she saw the woman. "I am no spy," she cried, shrilly.
"We'll soon test that," growled the camp-follower.
"Here, you Jake, unhand the girl! Yonder's Captain C---- looking this
way. If she turns out as I say, it'll be a lucky stroke of work for you
an' me."
Jake flung her back with a curse, and the woman led her to her shed. She
searched Ellen. I saw the girl, when she told it, turn ashy white with
terrible shame and anger. She was one of the womanliest women I ever
knew.
"I would have killed her then," she said gravely.