THE SCOURGE OF WAR
"Virginia," said Mrs. Colfax, the next morning on coming downstairs, "I
am going back to Bellegarde today. I really cannot put up with such a
person as Comyn had here to tea last night."
"Very well, Aunt Lillian. At what time shall I order the carriage?"
The lady was surprised. It is safe to say that she had never accurately
gauged the force which Virginia's respect for her elders, and affection
for her aunt through Clarence, held in check. Only a moment since Mrs.
Colfax had beheld her niece. Now there had arisen in front of her a tall
person of authority, before whom she deferred instinctively. It was not
what Virginia said, for she would not stoop to tirade. Mrs. Colfax sank
into a chair, seeing only the blurred lines of a newspaper the girl had
thrust into her hand.
"What--what is it?" she gasped. "I cannot read."
"There has been a battle at Wilson's Creek," said Virginia, in an
emotionless voice. "General Lyon is killed, for which I suppose we should
be thankful. More than seven hundred of the wounded are on their way
here. They are bringing them one hundred and twenty miles, from
Springfield to Rollo, in rough army wagons, with scarcely anything to eat
or drink."
"And--Clarence?"
"His name is not there."
"Thank God!" exclaimed Mrs. Colfax. "Are the Yankees beaten?"
"Yes," said Virginia, coldly. "At what time shall I order the carriage to
take you to Bellegarde?"
Mrs. Colfax leaned forward and caught the hem of her niece's gown. "Oh,
let me stay," she cried, "let me stay. Clarence may be with them."
Virginia looked down at her without pity.
"As you please, Aunt Lillian," she answered. "You know that you may
always stay here. I only beg of you one thing, that when you have
anything to complain of, you will bring it to me, and not mention it
before Pa. He has enough to worry him."
"Oh, Jinny," sobbed the lady, in tears again, "how can you be so cruel at
such a time, when my nerves are all in pieces?"
But she did not lift her voice at dinner, which was very poor indeed for
Colonel Carvel's house. All day long Virginia, assisted by Uncle Ben and
Aunt Easter, toiled in the stifling kitchen, preparing dainties which she
had long denied herself. At evening she went to the station at Fourteenth
Street with her father, and stood amongst the people, pressed back by the
soldiers, until the trains came in. Alas, the heavy basket which the
Colonel carried on his arm was brought home again. The first hundred to
arrive, ten hours in a hot car without food or water, were laid groaning
on the bottom of great furniture vans, and carted to the new House of
Refuge Hospital, two miles to the south of the city.
The next day many good women went there, Rebel and Union alike, to have
their hearts wrung. The new and cheap building standing in the hot sun
reeked with white wash and paint. The miserable men lay on the hard
floor, still in the matted clothes they had worn in battle. Those were
the first days of the war, when the wages of our passions first came to
appal us. Many of the wounds had not been tended since they were dressed
on the field weeks before.
Mrs. Colfax went too, with the Colonel and her niece, although she
declared repeatedly that she could not go through with such an ordeal.
She spoke the truth, for Mr. Carvel had to assist her to the
waiting-room. Then he went back to the improvised wards to find Virginia
busy over a gaunt Arkansan of Price's army, whose pitiful, fever-glazed
eyes were following her every motion. His frontiersman's clothes, stained
with blackened blood, hung limp over his wasted body. At Virginia's
bidding the Colonel ran downstairs for a bucket of fresh water, and she
washed the caked dust from his face and hands. It was Mr. Brinsmade who
got the surgeon to dress the man's wound, and to prescribe some of the
broth from Virginia's basket. For the first time since the war began
something of happiness entered her breast.
It was Mr. Brinsmade who was everywhere that day, answering the questions
of distracted mothers and fathers and sisters who thronged the place;
consulting with the surgeons; helping the few who knew how to work in
placing mattresses under the worst cases; or again he might have been
seen seated on the bare floor with a pad on his knee, taking down the
names of dear ones in distant states,--that he might spend his night
writing to them.
They put a mattress under the Arkansan. Virginia did not leave him until
he had fallen asleep, and a smile of peace was come upon his sunken face.
Dismayed at the fearful sights about her, awed by the groans that rose on
every side, she was choosing her way swiftly down the room to join her
father and aunt in the carriage below.
The panic of flight had seized her. She felt that another little while in
this heated, horrible place would drive her mad. She was almost at the
door when she came suddenly upon a sight that made her pause.
An elderly lady in widow's black was kneeling beside a man groaning in
mortal agony, fanning away the flies already gathering about his face. He
wore the uniform of a Union sergeant,--dusty and splotched and torn. A
small Testament was clasped convulsively in the fingers of his right
band. The left sleeve was empty. Virginia lingered, whelmed in pity,
thrilled by a wonderful womanliness of her who knelt there. Her face the
girl had not even seen, for it was bent over the man. The sweetness of
her voice held Virginia as in a spell, and the sergeant stopped groaning
that he might listen:
"You have a wife?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"And a child?"
The answer came so painfully.
"A boy, ma'am--born the week--before I came--away."
"I shall write to your wife," said the lady, so gently that Virginia
could scarce hear, "and tell her that you are cared for. Where does she
live?"
He gave the address faintly--some little town in Minnesota. Then he
added, "God bless you, lady."
Just then the chief surgeon came and stood over them. The lady turned her
face up to him, and tears sparkled in her eyes. Virginia felt them wet in
her own. Her worship was not given to many. Nobility, character,
efficiency,-all were written on that face. Nobility spoke in the large
features, in the generous mouth, in the calm, gray eyes. Virginia had
seen her often before, but not until now was the woman revealed to her.
"Doctor, could this man's life be saved if I took him to my home?"
The surgeon got down beside her and took the man's pulse. The eyes
closed. For a while the doctor knelt there, shaking his head. "He has
fainted," he said.
"Do you think he can be saved?" asked the lady again. The surgeon
smiled,--such a smile as a good man gives after eighteen hours of
amputating, of bandaging, of advising,--work which requires a firm hand,
a clear eye and brain, and a good heart.
"My dear Mrs. Brice," he said, "I shall be glad to get you permission to
take him, but we must first make him worth the taking. Another hour would
have been too late." He glanced hurriedly about the busy room, and then
added, "We must have one more to help us."
Just then some one touched Virginia's arm. It was her father.
"I am afraid we must go, dear," he said, "your aunt is getting
impatient."
"Won't you please go without me, Pa?" she asked. "Perhaps I can be of
some use."
The Colonel cast a wondering glance at the limp uniform, and went away.
The surgeon, who knew the Carvel family, gave Virginia a look of
astonishment. It was Mrs. Brice's searching gaze that brought the color
to the girl's, face.
"Thank you, my dear," she said simply.
As soon as he could get his sister-in-law off to Locust Street in the
carriage, Colonel Carvel came back. For two reeking hours he stood
against the newly plastered wall. Even he was surprised at the fortitude
and skill Virginia showed from the very first, when she had deftly cut
away the stiffened blue cloth, and helped to take off the rough bandages.
At length the fearful operation was finished, and the weary surgeon,
gathering up his box, expressed with all the energy left to him, his
thanks to the two ladies.
Virginia stood up, faint and dizzy. The work of her hands had sustained
her while it lasted, but now the ordeal was come. She went down the
stairs on her father's arm, and out into the air. All at once she knew
that Mrs. Brice was beside her, and had taken her by the hand.
"My dear?" she was saying, "God will reward you for this act. You have
taught many of us to-day a lesson we should have learned in our Bibles."
Virginia trembled with many emotions, but she answered nothing. The mere
presence of this woman had a strange effect upon the girl,--she was
filled with a longing unutterable. It was not because Margaret Brice was
the mother of him whose life had been so strangely blended with hers
--whom she saw in her dreams. And yet now some of Stephen's traits seemed
to come to her understanding, as by a revelation. Virginia had labored
through the heat of the day by Margaret Brice's side doing His work,
which levels all feuds and makes all women sisters. One brief second had
been needful for the spell.
The Colonel bowed with that courtesy and respect which distinguished him,
and Mrs. Brice left them to go back into the room of torment, and watch
by the sergeant's pallet. Virginia's eyes followed her up the stairs, and
then she and her father walked slowly to the carriage. With her foot on
the step Virginia paused.
"Pa," she said, "do you think it would be possible to get them to let us
take that Arkansan into our house?"
"Why, honey, I'll ask Brinsmade if you like," said the Colonel. "Here he
comes now, and Anne."
It was Virginia who put the question to him.
"My dear," replied that gentleman, patting her, "I would do anything in
the world for you. I'll see General Fremont this very afternoon.
Virginia," he added, soberly, "it is such acts as yours to-day that give
us courage to live in these times."
Anne kissed her friend.
"Oh, Jinny, I saw what you were doing for one of our men. What am I
saying?" she cried. "They are your men, too. This horrible war cannot
last. It cannot last. It was well that Virginia did not see the smile on
the face of the commanding general when Mr. Brinsmade at length got to
him with her request. This was before the days when the wounded arrived
by the thousands, when the zeal of the Southern ladies threatened to
throw out of gear the workings of a great system. But the General, had
had his eye on Mr. Carvel from the first. Therefore he smiled.
"Colonel Carvel," said Mr. Brinsmade, with dignity, "is a gentleman. When
he gives his word, it is sacred, sir."
"Even to an enemy," the General put in, "By George, Brinsmade, unless I
knew you, I should think that you were half rebel yourself. Well, well,
he may have his Arkansan."
Mr. Brinsmade, when he conveyed the news to the Carvel house, did not say
that he had wasted a precious afternoon in the attempt to interview his
Excellency, the Commander in-chief. It was like obtaining an audience
with the Sultan or the Czar. Citizens who had been prominent in affairs
for twenty years, philanthropists and patriotic-spirited men like Mr.
Brinsmade, the mayor, and all the ex-mayors mopped their brows in one of
the general's anterooms of the big mansion, and wrangled with beardless
youths in bright uniforms who were part of the chain. The General might
have been a Richelieu, a Marlborough. His European notions of uniformed
inaccessibility he carried out to the letter. He was a royal personage,
seldom seen, who went abroad in the midst of a glittering guard. It did
not seem to weigh with his Excellency that these simple and democratic
gentlemen would not put up with this sort of thing. That they who had
saved the city to the Union were more or less in communication with a
simple and democratic President; that in all their lives they had never
been in the habit of sitting idly for two hours to mop their brows.
On the other hand, once you got beyond the gold lace and the etiquette,
you discovered a good man and a patriot. It was far from being the
General's fault that Mr. Hopper and others made money in mules and
worthless army blankets. Such things always have been, and always will be
unavoidable when this great country of ours rises from the deep sleep of
security into which her sons have lulled her, to demand her sword. We
shall never be able to realize that the maintenance of a standing army of
comfortable size will save millions in the end. So much for Democracy
when it becomes a catchword.
The General was a good man, had he done nothing else than encourage the
Western Sanitary Commission, that glorious army of drilled men and women
who gave up all to relieve the suffering which the war was causing. Would
that a novel--a great novel--might be written setting forth with truth
its doings. The hero of it could be Calvin Brinsmade, and a nobler hero
than he was never under a man's hand. For the glory of generals fades
beside his glory.
It was Mr. Brinsmade's carriage that brought Mrs. Brice home from her
trying day in the hospital. Stephen, just returned from drill at Verandah
hall, met her at the door. She would not listen to his entreaties to
rest, but in the evening, as usual, took her sewing to the porch behind
the house, where there was a little breeze.
"Such a singular thing happened to-day, Stephen," she said. "It was while
we were trying to save the life of a poor sergeant who had lost his arm.
I hope we shall be allowed to have him here. He is suffering horribly."
"What happened, mother?" he asked.
"It was soon after I had come upon this poor fellow," she said. "I saw
the--the flies around him. And as I got down beside him to fan them away
I had such a queer sensation. I knew that some one was standing behind
me, looking at me. Then Dr. Allerdyce came, and I asked him about the
man, and he said there was a chance of saving him if we could only get
help. Then some one spoke up,--such a sweet voice. It was that Miss
Carvel my dear, with whom you had such a strange experience when you
bought Hester, and to whose party you once went. Do you remember that
they offered us their house in Glencoe when the Judge was so ill?"
"Yes," said Stephen.
"She is a wonderful creature," his mother continued. "Such personality,
such life! And wasn't it a remarkable offer for a Southern woman to make?
They feel so bitterly, and--and I do not blame them." The good lady put
down on her lap the night-shirt she was making. "I saw how it happened.
The girl was carried away by her pity. And, my dear, her capability
astonished me. One might have thought that she had always been a nurse.
The experience was a dreadful one for me--what must it have been for her.
After the operation was over, I followed her downstairs to where she was
standing with her father in front of the building, waiting for their
carriage. I felt that I must say something to her, for in all my life I
have never seen a nobler thing done. When I saw her there, I scarcely
knew what to say. Words seemed so inadequate. It was then three o'clock,
and she had been working steadily in that place since morning. I am sure
she could not have borne it much longer. Sheer courage carried her
through it, I know, for her hand trembled so when I took it, and she was
very pale. She usually has color, I believe. Her father, the Colonel, was
with her, and he bowed to me with such politeness. He had stood against
the wall all the while we had worked, and he brought a mattress for us. I
have heard that his house is watched, and that they have him under
suspicion for communicating with the Confederate leaders." Mrs. Brice
sighed. He seems such a fine character. I hope they will not get into any
trouble."
"I hope not, mother," said Stephen.
It was two mornings later that Judge Whipple and Stephen drove to the
Iron Mountain depot, where they found a German company of Home Guards
drawn up. On the long wooden platform under the sheds Stephen caught
sight of Herr Korner and Herr Hauptmann amid a group of their countrymen.
Little Korner came forward to clasp his hands. The tears ran on his
cheeks, and he could not speak for emotion. Judge Whipple, grim and
silent, stood apart. But he uncovered his head with the others when the
train rolled in. Reverently they entered a car where the pine boxes were
piled one on another, and they bore out the earthly remains of Captain
Carl Richter.
Far from the land of his birth, among those same oaks on Bloody Hill
where brave Lyon fell, he had gladly given up his life for the new
country and the new cause he had made his own.
That afternoon in the cemetery, as the smoke of the last salute to a hero
hung in the flickering light and drifted upward through the great trees,
as the still air was yet quivering with the notes of the bugle-call which
is the soldiers requiem, a tall figure, gaunt and bent, stepped out from
behind the blue line of the troops. It was that of Judge Whipple. He
carried in his hand a wreath of white roses--the first of many to be laid
on Richter's grave.
Poor Richter! How sad his life had been! And yet he had not filled it
with sadness. For many a month, and many a year, Stephen could not look
upon his empty place without a pang. He missed the cheery songs and the
earnest presence even more than he had thought. Carl Richter,--as his
father before him,--had lived for others. Both had sacrificed their
bodies for a cause. One of them might be pictured as he trudged with
Father Jahn from door to door through the Rhine country, or shouldering
at sixteen a heavy musket in the Landwehr's ranks to drive the tyrant
Napoleon from the beloved Fatherland Later, aged before his time, his
wife dead of misery, decrepit and prison-worn in the service of a
thankless country, his hopes lived again in Carl, the swordsman of Jena.
Then came the pitiful Revolution, the sundering of all ties, the elder
man left to drag out his few weary days before a shattered altar. In Carl
a new aspiration had sprung up, a new patriotism stirred. His, too, had
been the sacrifice. Happy in death, for he had helped perpetuate that
great Union which should be for all time the refuge of the oppressed.