In another minute we were sitting once again in the broad glare of

the gaslight, blinking confusedly at one another, and with a dazed

consciousness that something rather embarrassing had happened. The

boldest of us began to steal glances across to where Miss Parmalee and

Marsena sat, just in front of the steps to the bench.

What Miss Julia felt was beyond guessing, but there she was, at any

rate, bending over and talking vivaciously, all smiles and collected

nerves, to a lady two seats removed. But Marsena displayed no such

presence of mind. He sat bolt upright, with an extraordinarily white

face and a drooping jaw, staring fixedly at the empty canvas on the

wall before him. Such absolute astonishment was never depicted on human

visage before.

Perhaps from native inability to mind his own business, perhaps with a

kindly view of saving an anxious situation, the Baptist minister rose

now to his feet, coughed loudly to secure attention, and began some

florid remarks about the success of the fair, the especial beauty of the

lantern exhibition they had just witnessed, and the felicitous way

in which it had terminated with a portrait of the beautiful and

distinguished young lady to whose genius and unwearying efforts they

were all so deeply indebted. In these times of national travail and

distress, he said, there was a peculiar satisfaction in seeing her

portrait accompanied by that of one of the courageous and noble young

men who had sprung to the defence of their country. The poet had

averred, he continued, that none but the brave deserved the fair, and so

on, and so on.

Miss Julia listened to it all with her head on one side and a modestly

deprecatory half-smile on her face. At its finish she rose, turned to

face everybody, made a pert, laughing little bow, and sat down again,

apparently all happiness. But it was noted that Marsena did not take his

pained and fascinated gaze from that mocking white screen on the wall

straight in front.

*****

They walked in silence that evening to almost the gate of the Parmalee

mansion. Julia had taken his arm, as usual; but Marsena could not but

feel that the touch was different. It was in the nature of a relief to

him that for once she did not talk. His heart was too sore, his brain

too bewildered, for the task of even a one-sided conversation, such as

theirs was wont to be. Then all at once the silence grew terrible to

him--a weight to be lifted at all hazards on the instant.

“Shull must have made that last slide himself,” he blurted out. “I never

dreamt of its being made.”

“I thought it came out very well indeed,” remarked Miss Parmalee,

“especially his uniform. You could quite see the eagles on the buttons.

You must thank Mr. Shull for me.”

“I’ll speak to him in the morning about it,” said Marsena, with gloomy

emphasis. He sighed, bit his lip, fixed an intent gaze upon the big

dark bulk of the Parmalee house looming before them, and spoke again.

“There’s something that I want to say to _you_, though, that won’t

keep till morning.” A tiny movement of the hand on his arm was the only

response. “I see now,” Marsena went on, “that I ain’t been making any

real headway with you at all. I thought--well--I don’t know as I

know just what I did think--but I guess now that it was a mistake.”

Yes--there was a distinct flutter of the little gloved hand. It put a

wild thought into Marsena’s head.

“Would you,” he began boldly--“I never spoke of it before--but would

you--that is, if I was to enlist and go to the war--would that make any

difference?--you know what I mean.”

She looked up at him with magnetic sweetness in her dusky, shadowed

glance. “How can any ablebodied young patriot hesitate at such a time as

this?” she made answer, and pressed his arm.

V

It was in this same May, not more than a week after the momentous

episode of the Field Hospital and Nurse Fund Fair, that Marsena Pulford

went off to the war.

There was no ostentation about his departure. He had indeed been gone

for a day or two before it became known in Octavius that his absence

from town meant that he had enlisted down at Tecumseh. We learned that

he had started as a common private, but everybody made sure that a man

of his distinguished appearance and deportment would speedily get a

commission. Everybody, too, had a theory of some sort as to the motives

for this sudden and strange behavior of his. These theories agreed

in linking Miss Parmalee with the affair, but there were hopeless

divergencies as to the exact part she played in it. One party held that

Marsena had been driven to seek death on the tented field by despair

at having been given the “mitten.” Others insisted that he had not been

given the “mitten” at all, but had gone because her well-known martial

ardor made the sacrifice of her betrothed necessary to her peace of

mind. A minority took the view which Homer Sage promulgated from his

tilted-back chair on the stoop of the Excelsior Hotel.

“They ain’t nothin’ settled betwixt ’em,” this student of human nature

declared. “She jest dared him to go, and he went. And if you only give

her time, she’ll have the whole male unmarried population of Octavius,

between the ages of sixteen and sixty, down there wallerin’ around in

the Virginny swamps, feedin’ the muskeeters and makin’ a bid for glory.”

But in a few days there came the terribly exciting news of Seven

Pines and Fair Oaks--that first great combat of the revived war in the

East--and we ceased to bother our heads about the photographer and his

love. The enlisting fever sprang up again, and our young men began

to make their way by dozens and scores to the recruiting office at

Tecumseh. There were more farewells, more tears and prayers, not to

mention several funerals of soldiers killed at Hanover Court House,

where that Fifth Corps, which contained most of our volunteers, had its

first spring smell of blood. And soon thereafter burst upon us the awful

sustained carnage of the Seven Days’ fighting, which drove out of

our minds even the recollection that Miss Julia Parmalee herself had

volunteered for active service in the Sanitary Commission, and gone

South to take up her work.

And so July 3d came, bringing with it the bare tidings of that closing

desperate battle of the week at Malvern Hill, and the movement of what

was left of the Army of the Potomac to a safe resting place on the James

River. We were beginning to get the details of local interest by the

slow single wire from Thessaly, and sickening enough they were. The

village streets were filled with silent, horror-stricken crowds. The

whole community seemed to have but a single face, repeated upon the

mental vision at every step--a terrible face with distended, empty eyes,

riven brows, and an open drawn mouth like the old Greek mask of tragedy.

“I swan! I don’t know whether to keep open to-morrow or not,” said Mr.

Newton Shull, for perhaps the twentieth time, as he wandered once again

from the reception-room into the little workshop behind. “In some ways

it’s kind of agin my principles to work on Independence Day--but, then

again, if I thought there was likely to be a good many farmers comin’

into town--”

“They’ll be plenty of ’em cornin’ in,” said the boy, over his

shoulder, “but they’ll steer clear of here.”

“I’m ’fraid so,” sighed Mr. Shull. He advanced a listless step or two

and gazed with dejected apathy at the newspaper map tacked to the wall,

on which the boy was making red and blue crosses with a colored pencil.

“I don’t see much good o’ that,” he said. “Still, of course, if it eases

your mind any--”

“That’s where the fightin’ finished,” observed the boy, pointing to a

big mark on the map. “That’s Malvern Hill there, and here--down where

the river takes the big bend--that’s Harrison’s Landing, where the

army’s movin’ to. See them seven rings? Them are the battles, one each

day, as our men forced their way down through the Chickahominy swamps,

beginnin’ up in the corner with Beaver Dam Creek. If the map was a

little higher it ’ud show the Pamunkey, where they started from. My

uncle says that the whole mistake was in ever abandoning the Pamunkey.”

“Pa-monkey or Ma-monkey,” said Newton Shull, gloomily, “it wouldn’t be

no comfort to me to see it, even on a map. It’s jest taken and busted me

and my business here clean as a whistle. We ain’t paid expenses two

days in a week sence Marseny went. Here I’ve got now so ’t I kin take a

plain, everyday sort o’ picture jest about as well as he did--a little

streakid sometimes, perhaps, and more or less pinholes--but still pretty

middlin’ fair on an average, and then, darn my buttons if they don’t

all stop comin’. It positively don’t seem to me as if there was a single

human bein’ in Dearborn County that ’ud have his picture took as a

gift. All they want now is to have enlargements thrown up from little

likenesses of their men folks that have been killed, and them I don’t

know how to do no more’n a babe unborn.”

“You knew well enough how to make that stere-opticon slide,” remarked

the boy with severity.

“Yes,” mused Mr. Shull, “that darned thing--that made a peck o’ trouble,

didn’t it? I dunno what on earth possessed me; I kind o’ seemed to git

the notion o’ doin’ it into my head all to once ’t, and somehow I never

dreamt of its rilin’ Marseny so; you couldn’t tell that a man ’ud be

so blamed touchy as all that, could you?--and I dunno, like as not he’d

’a’ enlisted anyhow. But I do wish he’d showed me how to make them

pesky enlargements afore he went. If I’d only seen him do one, even

once, I could ’a’ picked the thing up, but I never did. It’s just my

luck!”

“Say,” said the boy, looking up with a sudden thought, “do you know what

my mother heard yesterday? It’s all over the place that before Marseny

left he went to Squire Schermerhorn’s and made his will, and left

everything he’s got to the Parmalee girl, in case he gits killed. So, if

anything happens she’d be your partner, wouldn’t she?”

Newton Shull stared with surprise. “Well, now, that beats creation,” he

said, after a little. “Somehow you know that never occurred to me, and

yet, of course, that ’ud be jest his style.”

“Yes, sir,” repeated the other, “they say he’s left her every identical

thing.”

“It’s allus that way in this world,” reflected Mr. Shull, sadly. “Them

that don’t need it one solitary atom, they’re eternally gettin’ every

mortal thing left to ’em. Why, that girl’s so rich already she don’t

know what to do with her money. If I was her, I bet a cooky I wouldn’t

go pikin’ off to the battlefield, doin’ nursin’ and tyin’ on bandages,

and fannin’ men while they were gittin’ their legs cut off. No, sirree;

I’d let the Sanitary Commission scuffle along without me, I can tell

you! A hoss and buggy and a fust-class two-dollar-a-day hotel, and goin’

to the theatre jest when I took the notion--that’d be good enough for

me.”

“I suppose the sign then ’ud be ‘Shull & Parmalee,’ wouldn’t it?”

queried the boy.

“Well, now, I ain’t so sure about that,” said Mr. Shull, thoughtfully.

“It might be that, bein’ a woman, her name ’ud come first, out o’

politeness. But then, of course, most prob’ly she’d want to sell out

instid, and then I’d make the valuation, and she could give me time. Or

she might want to stay in, only on the quiet, you know--what they call a

silent partner.”

“Nobody’d ever call her a silent partner,” observed the boy. “She

couldn’t keep still if she tried.”

“I wouldn’t care how much she talked,” said Mr. Shull, “if she only put

enough more money into the business. I didn’t take much to her, somehow,

along at fust, but the more I’ve seen of her the more I like the cut of

her jib. She’s got ‘go’ in her, that gal has; she jest figures out what

she wants, and then she sails in and gits it. It don’t matter who the

man is, she jest takes and winds him round her little finger. Why,

Marseny, here, he wasn’t no more than so much putty in her hands. I lost

all patience with him. You wouldn’t catch me being run by a woman that

way.”

“So far’s I could see,” suggested the other, “she seemed to git pretty

much all she wanted out of you, too. You were dancin’ round, helpin’ her

at the fair there, like a hen on a hot griddle.”

“It was all on his account,” put in the partner, with emphasis. “Jest to

please him; he seemed so much sot on her bein’ humored in everything. I

did feel kind o’ foolish about it at the time--I never somehow believed

much in doin’ work for nothin’--but maybe it was all for the best. If

what they say about his makin’ a will is true, why it won’t do me no

harm to be on good terms with her--in case--in case--”

Mr. Shull was standing at the window, and his idle gaze had been vaguely

taking in the general; prospect of the street below the while he spoke.

At this moment he discovered that some one on the opposite sidewalk was

making vehement gestures to attract his attention. He lifted the sash

and put his head out to listen, but the message came across loud enough

for even the boy inside to hear.

“You’d better hurry round to the telegraph office!” this hoarse,

anonymous voice cried. “Malvern Hill list is a-comin’ in--and they say

your pardner’s been shot--shot bad, too!”

Newton Shull drew in his head and stood for some moments staring

blankly at the map on the wall. “Well, I swan!” he began, with confused

hesitation, “I dunno--it seems to me--well, yes, I guess prob’ly the

best thing ’ll be for her to put more money into the business--yes,

that’s the plan--and we kin hire an operator up from Tecumseh.”

But there was no one to pass an opinion on his project. The boy had

snatched his hat, and could be heard even now dashing his way furiously

down the outer stairs.

*****

The summer dusk had begun to gather before Octavius heard all that was

to be learned of the frightful calamity which had befallen its absent

sons. The local roll of death and disaster from Gaines’s Mill earlier in

the week had seemed incredibly awful. This new budget of horrors from

Malvern was far worse.

“Wa’n’t the rest of the North doin’ anything at all?” a wild-eyed,

dishevelled old farmer cried out in a shaking, half-frenzied shriek

from the press of the crowd round the telegraph office. “Do they

think Dearborn County’s got to suppress this whole damned rebellion

single-handed?”

It seemed to the dazed and horrified throng as if some such idea must

be in the minds of the rest of the Union. Surely no other little

community--or big community, either--could have had such a hideous blow

dealt to it as this under which Octavius reeled. The list of the week

for the county, including Gaines’s Mill, showed one hundred and eight

dead outright, and very nearly five hundred more wounded in battle. It

was too shocking for comprehension.

As evening drew on, men gathered the nerve to say to one another that

there was something very glorious in the way the two regiments had been

thrust into the front, and had shown themselves heroically fit for that

grim honor. They tried, too, to extract solace from the news that

the regiments in question had been mentioned by name in the general

despatches as having distinguished themselves and their county above all

the rest--but it was an empty and heart-sickened pretence at best, and

when, about dark, the women folks, who had waited in vain for them to

come home to supper, began to appear on the skirts of the crowd, it was

given up altogether. In after years Octavius got so that it could cheer

those sinister names of Gaines’s Mill and Malvern Hill, and swell with

pride at the memories they evoked. But that evening no one cheered. It

was too terrible.

There was, indeed, a single partial exception to this rule. The regular

service of news had ceased--in those days, before the duplex invention,

the single wire had most melancholy limitations--but the throng still

lingered; and when, in the failing light, the postmaster was seen to

step up again on the chair by the door with a bit of paper in his hand,

a solemn hush ran over the assemblage.

“It is a private telegram sent to me personally,” he explained, in the

loud clear tones of one who had earned his office by years of stump

speaking; “but it is intended for you all, I should presume.”

The silent crowd pushed nearer, and listened with strained attention as

this despatch was read:

Headquarters Sanitary Commission,

Harrison’s Landing, Va., Wednesday Morning.

_To Postmaster Octavius, N. Y.:_

_No words can describe magnificent record soldiers of Dearborn County,

especially Starbuck, made past week. I bless fate which identified my

poor services with such superb heroism. After second sleepless night,

Col. Starbuck now reposing peacefully; doctor says crisis past; he

surely recover, though process be slow. You will learn with pride he

been brevetted Brigadier, fact which it was my privilege to announce

to him last evening. He feebly thanked me, murmuring, “Tell them at

home.”_

_Julia Parmalee._

In the silence which ensued the postmaster held the paper up and

scanned it narrowly by the waning light. “There is something else,” he

said--“Oh, yes, I see; ‘Franked despatch Sanitary Commission.’ That’s

all.”

Another figure was seen suddenly clambering upon the chair, with an arm

around the postmaster for support. It was the teller of the bank. He

waved his free arm excitedly, as he faced the crowd, and cried:

“Our women are as brave as our men! Three cheers for Miss Julia

Parmalee! Hip-hip!”

The loyal teller’s first “Hurrah!” fell upon the air quite by itself.

Perhaps a dozen voices helped him half-heartedly with the second. The

third died off again miserably, and he stepped down off the chair amid a

general consciousness of failure.

“Who the hell is Starbuck?” was to be heard in whispered interrogatory

passed along through the throng. Hardly anybody could answer. Boyce we

knew, and McIntyre, and many others, but Star-buck was a mystery. Then

it was explained that it must be the son of old Alanson Starbuck, of

Juno Mills, who had gone away to Philadelphia seven or eight years

before. He had not enlisted with any Dearborn County regiment, but held

a staff appointment of some kind, presumably in a Pennsylvania command.

We were quite unable to work up any emotion over him.

In fact, the more we thought it over, the more we were disposed to

resent this planting of Starbuck upon us, in the very van of Dearborn

County’s heroes. His father was a rich old curmudgeon, whom no one

liked. The son was nothing to us whatever.

As at last, in the deepening twilight, the people reluctantly began

moving toward home, such conversation as they had the heart for seemed

to be exclusively centred upon Miss Parmalee, and this queer despatch

of hers. Slow-paced, strolling groups wended their way along the main

street, and then up this side thoroughfare and that, passing in every

block some dark and close-shuttered house of mourning, and instinctively

sinking still lower their muffled tones as they passed, and carrying

in their breasts, heaven only knows what torturing loads of anguish and

stricken despair--but finding a certain relief in dwelling, instead,

upon this lighter topic.

One of these groups--an elderly lady in black attire and two younger

women of sober mien--walked apart from the others and exchanged no words

at all until, turning a corner, their way led them past the Parmalee

house. The looming bulk of the old mansion and the fragrant spaciousness

of the garden about it seemed to attract the attention of Mrs. Ransom

and her daughters. They halted as by a common impulse, and fastened a

hostile gaze upon the shadowy outlines of the house and its surrounding

foliage.

“If Dwight dies of his wound,” the mother said, in a voice all chilled

to calmness, “his murderess will live in there.”

“I always hated her!” said one of the daughters, with a shudder.

“But he isn’t going to die, mamma,” put in the other. “You mustn’t think

of such a thing! You know how healthy he always has been, and this is

only his shoulder. For my part, we may think ourselves very fortunate.

Remember how many have been killed or mortally wounded. It seems as if

half the people we know are in mourning. We get off very lightly with

Dwight only wounded. Did you happen to hear the details about Mr.

Pulford?--you know, the photographer--some one was saying that he was

mortally wounded.”

“She sent him to his death, then, too,” said the elder Miss Ransom,

raising her clenched hand against the black shadow of the house.

“I don’t care about that man,” broke in the mother, icily. “Nobody knows

anything of him, or where he came from. People ran after him because he

was good-looking, but he never seemed to me to know enough to come in

when it rained. If she made a fool of him, it was his own lookout. But

Dwight--my Dwight--!”

The mother’s mannered voice broke into a gasp, and she bent her head

helplessly. The daughters went to her side, and the group passed on into

the darkness.

VI

It was a dark, soft, summer night in Virginia, that of the 1st of July.

After the tropical heat of the day, the air was being mercifully

cooled, here on the hilltop, by a gentle breeze, laden with just a moist

suggestion of the mist rising from the river flats and marshes down

below. It was not Mother Nature’s fault that this zephyr stirring along

the parched brow of the hill did not bear with it, too, the scents of

fruits and flowers, of new-mown hay and the yellow grain in shock, and

minister soothingly to rest and pleasant dreams.

Instead, this breeze, moving mildly in the darkness, was one vile,

embodied stench of sulphur and blood, and pestilential abominations. Go

where you would, there was no escaping this insufferable burden of foul

smells. If they were a horror on the hilltop, they were worse below.

It was one of the occasions on which Man had expended all his powers to

prove his superiority to Nature. The elements in their wildest and

most savage mood could never have wrought such butchery as this. The

vine-wrapped fences, stretching down from the plateau toward the meadow

lands below, were buttressed by piles of dead men, some in butternut,

some in blue. Clumps of stiffened bodies curled supine at the base of

every stump on the fringe of the woodland to the right and among the

tumbled sheaves of grain to the left. Out in the open, the broad,

sloping hillside and the valley bottom lay literally hidden under ridge

upon ridge of smashed and riddled human forms, and the heaped débris of

human battle. The clouds hung thick and close above, as if to keep the

stars from beholding this repellent sample of earth’s titanic beast,

Man, at his worst. An Egyptian blackness was over it all.

At intervals a lightning flash from the crest of the outermost knoll

tore this evil pall of darkness asunder, and then, with a roar and a

scream, a spluttering line of vivid flame would arch its sinister way

across the sky. A thousand little dots of light moved and zigzagged

ceaselessly on the wide expanse of obscurity underneath this crest, and

when the bursts of wrathful fireworks came from overhead it could be

seen that these were lanterns being borne about in and out among the

winrows of maimed and slain. Above all, through all, without even an

instant’s lull, there arose a terrible babel of chorused groans

and prayers and howls and curses. This noise could be heard for

miles--almost as far as the boom of the howitzers above could carry--and

at a distance sounded like the moaning of a storm through a great

pine-forest. Near at hand, it sounded like nothing else this side of

hell.

An hour or so after nightfall the battery on the crest of the knoll

stopped firing. The wails and shrieks from the slope below went on all

through the night, and the lanterns of the search parties burned till

the morning sunlight put them out.

Up on the top of the hill--a broad expanse of rolling plateaus--the

scene wore a different aspect. At widely separated points bonfires and

glittering lights showed where some general of the victorious army held

his headquarters in a farm-house; and unless one pried too curiously

about these parts, there were few enough evidences on the summit of the

day’s barbaric doings.

The chief of these houses--a stately and ancient structure, built

in colonial days of brick proudly brought from Europe--had begun the

forenoon of the battle as the headquarters of the Fifth Corps. Then the

General and his staff had reduced their needs to a couple of rooms, to

leave space for wounded men. Then they had moved out altogether, to let

the whole house be used as a hospital. Then as the backwash of calamity

from the line of conflict swelled in size and volume, the stables and

barns had been turned over to the medical staff. Later, as the savage

evening fight went on, tons of new hay had been brought out and

strewn in sheltered places under the open sky to serve as beds for

the sufferers. Before night fell, even these impromptu hospitals were

overtaxed, and rows of stricken soldiers lay on the bare ground.

The day of intelligent and efficient hospital service had not yet

dawned for our army. The breakdown of what service we had had, under the

frightful stress of the battles culminating in this blood-soaked Malvern

Hill, is a matter of history, and it can be viewed the more calmly

now as the collapse of itself brought about an improved condition

of affairs. But at the time it was a woful thing, with a lax and

conflicting organization, insufficient material, a ridiculous lack of

nurses, a mere handful of really competent surgeons and, most of all,

a great crowd of volunteer medical students and ignorant practitioners,

who flocked southward for the mere excitement and practice of sawing,

cutting, slashing right and left. So it was that army surgery lent new

terrors to death on the battle-field in the year 1862.

The sky overhead was just beginning to show the ashen touch of twilight,

when two men lying stretched on the hay in a corner of the smaller

barnyard chanced to turn on their hard couch and to recognize each

other. It was a slow and almost scowling recognition, and at first bore

no fruit of words.

One was in the dress of a lieutenant of artillery, muddy and begrimed

with smoke, and having its right shoulder torn or cut open from collar

to elbow. The man himself had now such a waving, tangled growth of

chestnut beard and so grimly blackened a face, that it would have been

hard to place him as our easy-going, smiling Dwight Ransom.

The new movement had not brought ease, and now, after a few grunts of

pain and impatience, he got himself laboriously up in a sitting posture,

dragged a knapsack within reach up to support his back, and looked at

his companion again.

“I heard that you were down here somewhere,” he remarked, at last. “My

sister wrote me.”

Marsena Pulford stared up at him, made a little nodding motion of the

head, and turned his glance again into the sky straight above. He also

was a spectacle of dry mud and dust, and was bearded to the eyes.

“Where are you hit?” asked Dwight, after a pause.

For answer, Marsena slowly, and with an effort, put a hand to his

breast--to the left, below the heart. “Here, somewhere,” he said, in a

low, drylipped murmur. He did not look at Dwight again, but presently

asked, “Could you fix me--settin’ up--too?”

“I guess so,” responded Dwight. With the help of his unhurt arm he

clambered to his feet and began moving dizzily about among the row of

wounded men to his left. These groaned or snarled at him as he passed

over them, but to this he paid no attention whatever. He returned from

the end of the line, bringing two knapsacks and the battered frame of

a drum, in which some one had been trying to carry water, and with some

difficulty arranged these in a satisfactory heap. Then he knelt, pushed

his arm under Marsena’s shoulders, and lifted him up and backward to the

support. Both men grimaced and winced under the smart of the effort, and

for some minutes sat in silence, with closed eyes.

When they opened them finally it was with a sudden start at the sound

of a woman’s voice. Their ears had for long hours been inured to a

ceaseless din of other noises--an ear-splitting confusion of cannon

and musketry roar from the field less than an eighth of a mile away,

of yelping shells overhead, and of screams and hoarse shouts all about

them. Yet their senses caught this strange note of a woman’s voice as if

it had fallen upon the hush of midnight.

They looked up, and beheld Miss Julia Parmalee!

Upon such a background of heated squalor, dirt, and murderous disorder,

it did not seem surprising to them that this lady should present a

picture of cool, fresh neatness. She wore a snow-white nurse’s cap, and

broad, spotless bands of white linen were crossed over the shoulders of

her pale dove-colored dress. Her dark face, dusky pink at the cheeks,

glowed with a proud excitement. Her big brown eyes swept along the row

of recumbent figures at her feet with the glance of a born conqueror.

“This is not a fit place for him,” she said. “It is absurd to bring a

gentleman--an officer of the headquarters staff--out to such a place as

this!”

Then the two volunteers from Octavius saw that behind her were four

men, bearing a laden stretcher, and that at her side was a regimental

hospital steward, who also looked speculatively along the rows of

sufferers.

“It’s the best thing we can do, anyway,” he replied, not over-politely;

“and for that matter, there’s hardly room here.”

“Oh, there’d be no trouble about that,” retorted Miss Julia, calmly. “We

could move any of these people here. The General told me I was always

to do just what I thought best. I am sure that if I could see him now he

would insist at once that Colonel Starbuck should have a bed to himself,

inside the house.”

“I’ll bet he wouldn’t!” said the hospital steward, with emphasis.

“Perhaps you don’t realize,” put in Miss Julia, coldly, “that Colonel

Starbuck is a staff officer--and a friend of mine.”

“I don’t care if he was on all the staffs there are,” said the hospital

steward, “he’s got to take his chance with the rest. And it don’t matter

about his being a friend, either; we ain’t playing favorites much just

now. I don’t see no room here, Miss. You’ll have to take him out in the

open lot there.”

“Oh, never!” protested Miss Julia, vehemently. “It’s disgraceful! Why,

the place is under fire there. I saw them running away from a shell

there only a minute ago. No, if we can’t do anything better, we’ll have

one of these men moved.”

“Well, do something pretty quick!” growled one of the men supporting the

stretcher.

Miss Parmalee had looked two or three times in an absent-minded way at

the two men on the ground nearest her--obviously without recognizing

either of them. There was a definite purpose in the glance she now

bent upon Dwight Ransom--a glance framed in the resourceful smile he

remembered so well.

“You seem to be able to sit up, my man,” she said, ingratiatingly, to

him; “would you be so very kind as to let me have that place for Colonel

Star-buck, here--he is on the headquarters staff--and I am sure we

should be so very much obliged. You will easily get a nice place

somewhere else for yourself. Oh, thank you so much! It is so good of

you!”

Suppressing a groan at the pain the movement involved, and without

a word, Dwight lifted himself slowly to his feet, and stepped aside,

waving a hand toward the hay and knapsack in token of their surrender.

Then Miss Julia helped lift from the litter the object of her anxiety.

Colonel Starbuck was of a slender, genteel figure, and had the top

of his head swathed heavily in bandages. He wore long, curly, brown

side-whiskers, and his chin had been shaved that very morning. This was

enough in itself to indicate that he belonged to the headquarters staff,

but the fact was proclaimed afresh by everything else about him--his

speckless uniform, his spick-and-span gauntlets, his carefully polished

boots, the glittering newness of his shoulder-straps, sword scabbard,

buttons, and spurs. It was clear that, whatever else had happened, his

line of communication with the headquarters baggage train had never been

interrupted.

“It is so kind of you!” Miss Parmalee murmured again, when the staff

officer had been helped off the stretcher, and in a dazed and languid

way had settled himself down into the place vacated for him. “Would

you”--she whispered, looking up now, and noting that the hospital

steward and the litter-men had gone away--“would you mind stepping

over to the house, or to one of the tents beyond--you’ll find him

somewhere--and asking Dr. Willoughby to come at once? Tell him it is for

Colonel Starbuck of the headquarters staff, and you’d better mention my

name--Miss Parmalee of the Sanitary Commission. You won’t forget the

name--Parmalee?”

“I don’t fancy I shall forget it,” said Dwight, gravely. “I’ve got a

better memory than some.”

Miss Julia caught the tone of voice on the instant, and looked up again

from where she knelt beside the Colonel, with a swift smile.

“Why, it’s Mr. Ransom, I do believe!” she exclaimed. “I should never

have known you with your beard. It’s so good of you to take this

trouble--you always were so obliging! Any one will tell you where Dr.

Willoughby is. He’s the surgeon of the Eighteenth, you know. I’m sure

he’ll come at once--to please me--and time is so precious, you know!”

Without further words, Dwight moved off slowly and unsteadily toward the

house.

Miss Parmalee, seating herself so that some of her mouse-tinted

draperies almost touched the face of Dwight’s companion, unhooked a fan

from her girdle and began softly fanning Colonel Starbuck. “The doctor

won’t be long,” she said, in low, cooing tones, after a little; “do you

feel easier now?”

“I am rather dizzy still, and a little faint,” replied the Colonel,

languorously. “That fanning is so delicious though, that I’m really very

happy. At least I would be if I weren’t nervous about you. You have

been through such tremendous exertions all day--out in the sun, amid all

these horrid sights and this infernal roar--without a parasol, too. Are

you quite sure it has not been too much for you?”

“You are always so thoughtful of others, dear Colonel Starbuck,”

murmured Miss Julia, reducing the fanning to a gentle, measured

movement, and fixing her lustrous eyes pensively upon the clouds above

the horizon. “You never think of yourself!”

“Only to think how happy my fate is, to be rescued and nursed by an

angel,” sighed the Colonel.

A smile of gentle deprecation played upon Miss Julia’s red lips, and

imparted to her eyes the expression they would wear if they had been

gazing upon a tenderly entrancing vision in the sky. Then, all at once;

she gave a little start of aroused attention, looked puzzled, and after

a moment’s pause bent her head over close to the Colonel’s.

“The man behind me has taken tight hold of my dress,” she whispered,

hurriedly. “I don’t want to turn around, but can you see him? He isn’t

having a fit or anything, is he?”

Colonel Starbuck lifted himself a trifle, and looked across. “No,” he

whispered in return, “he appears to be asleep. Probably he is dreaming.

He is a corporal--some infantry regiment. They do manage to get so--what

shall I say--so unwashed! Shall I move his hand for you?”

Miss Julia shook her head, with an arch little half smile.

“No, poor man,” she murmured. “It gives me almost a sense of the

romantic. Perhaps he is dreaming of home--of some one dear to him.

Corporals do have their romances, you know, as well as--”

“As well as colonels,” the staff officer playfully finished the sentence

for her. “Well, I congratulate him, if his is a thousandth part as

joyful as mine.”

“Oh, then, you have one!” pursued Miss Parma-lee, allowing her eyes

to sparkle for an instant before they were coyly raised again to the

clouds. Darkness was gathering there rapidly.

“Why pretend that you don’t understand?” pleaded Colonel Starbuck--and

there seemed to be no answer forthcoming. The fan moved even more

sedately now, with a tender flutter at the end of each downward sweep.

Presently the preoccupation of the couple--one might not call it silence

in such an unbroken uproar as rose around them and smashed through the

air above--was interrupted by the appearance of a young, sharp-faced

man, who marched straight across the yard toward them and, halting,

spoke hurriedly.

“I was asked specially to come here for a moment,” he said, “but it can

only be a minute. We’re just over our heads in work. What is it?”

Miss Parmalee looked at the young man with a favorless eye. He was

unshaven, dishevelled, brusque of manner and speech. He was bareheaded,

and his unimportant figure was almost hidden beneath a huge, revoltingly

stained apron.

“I asked for my friend, Dr. Willoughby,” she said. “But if he could

not come, I must insist upon immediate attention for Colonel Starbuck

here--an officer of the headquarters staff.”

While she spoke the young surgeon had thrown himself on one knee,

adroitly though roughly lifted the Colonel’s bandages, run an inquiring

finger over his skull, and plumped the linen back again. He sprang to

his feet with an impatient grunt. “Paltry scalp wound,” he snorted.

Then, turning on his heel, he almost knocked against Dwight Ransom, who

had come slowly up behind him. “You had no business to drag me off for

foolishness of this sort,” he said, in vexed tones. “Here are thousands

of men waiting their turn who really need help, and I’ve been working

twenty hours a day for a week, and couldn’t keep up with the work if

every day had two hundred hours. It’s ridiculous!”

Dwight shrugged his unhurt shoulder. “I didn’t ask you for myself,”

he replied. “I’m quite willing to wait my turn--but the lady here--she

asked me to bring help--”

“It can’t be that this gentleman understands,” put in Miss Julia, “that

his assistance was desired for an officer of the headquarters staff.”

“Madame,” said the young surgeon, “with your permission, damn the

headquarters staff!” and, turning abruptly, he strode off.

“I will go and see the General myself,” exclaimed Miss Parmalee,

flushing with wrath. “I will see whether he will permit the Sanitary

Commission to be affronted in this outrageous--”

She stopped short. Her indignant effort to rise to her feet had been

checked by a hand on the ground, which held firmly in its grasp a

fold of her skirt. She turned, pulled the cloth from the clutch of

the tightened fingers, looked at the hand as it sprawled limply on the

grass, and gave a little, shuddering, half-hysterical laugh. “Mercy me!”

was what she said.

“You know who it is, don’t you?” asked Dwight Ransom.

The meaning in his voice struck Miss Julia, and she bent a careful

scrutiny through the dusk upon the face of the man stretched out beside

her. His head had slipped sidewise on the knapsack, and his bearded

chin was unnaturally sunk into his collar. Through the grime on his

face could be discerned an unearthly pallor. His wide-opened eyes seemed

staring fixedly, reproachfully, at the hand which had lost its hold upon

Miss Julia’s dress.

“It does seem as if I’d seen the face before somewhere,” she remarked,

“but I don’t appear to place it. It is getting so dark, too. No, I can’t

imagine. Who is it?”

She had risen to her feet and was peering down at the dead man, her

pretty brows knitted in perplexity.

“He recognized you!” said Dwight, with significant gravity. “It’s

Marsena Pulford.”

“Oh, poor man!” exclaimed Julia. “If he’d only spoken to me I would

gladly have fanned him, too. But I was so anxious about the Colonel

here that I never took a fair look at him. I dare say I shouldn’t have

recognized him, even then. Beards do change one so, don’t they!”

Then she turned to Colonel Starbuck and made answer to the inquiry of

his lifted eyebrows.

“The unfortunate man,” she explained, “was our village photographer. I

sat to him for my picture several times. I think I have one of them over

at the Commission tent now.”

“I’ll go this minute and seize it!” the gallant Colonel vowed, getting

to his feet.

“Take care! We unprotected females have a man trap there!” Julia warned

him; but fear did not deter the staff officer from taking her arm and

leaning on it as they walked away in the twilight. Then the night fell,

and Dwight buried Marsena.

THE WAR WIDOW

I

Although we had been one man short all day, and there was a plain

threat of rain in the hot air, everybody left the hay-field long before

sundown. It was too much to ask of human nature to stay off in the

remote meadows when such remarkable things were happening down around

the house.

Marcellus Jones and I were in the pasture, watching the dog get the

cows together for the homeward march. He did it so well and, withal, so

willingly, that there was no call for us to trouble ourselves in keeping

up with him. We waited instead at the open bars until the hay-wagon had

passed through, rocking so heavily in the ancient pitch-hole, as it did

so, that the driver was nearly thrown off his perch on the top of

the high load. Then we put up the bars, and fell in close behind the

haymakers. A rich cloud of dust, far ahead on the road, suggested that

the dog was doing his work even too willingly, but for the once we

feared no rebuke. Almost anything might be condoned that day.

Five grown-up men walked abreast down the highway, in the shadow of the

towering wagon mow, clad much alike in battered straw hats, gray

woollen shirts open at the neck, and rough old trousers bulging over the

swollen, creased ankles of thick boots. One had a scythe on his arm; two

others bore forks over their shoulders. By request, Hi Tuckerman allowed

me to carry his sickle.

Although my present visit to the farm had been of only a few days’

duration--and those days of strenuous activity darkened by a terrible

grief--I had come to be very friendly with Mr. Tuckerman. He took a good

deal more notice of me than the others did; and, when chance and leisure

afforded, addressed the bulk of his remarks to me. This favoritism,

though it fascinated me, was not without its embarrassing side. Hi

Tuckerman had taken part in the battle of Gaines’s Mill two years

before, and had been shot straight through the tongue. One could still

see the deep scar on each of his cheeks, a sunken and hairless pit in

among his sandy beard. His heroism in the war and his good qualities as

a citizen had earned for him the esteem of his neighbors, and they saw

to it that he never wanted for work. But their present respect for

him stopped short of the pretence that they enjoyed hearing him

talk. Whenever he attempted conversation, people moved away, or

began boisterous dialogues with one another to drown him out. Being

a sensitive man, he had come to prefer silence to these rebuffs

among those he knew. But he still had a try at the occasional polite

stranger--and I suppose it was in this capacity that I won his heart.

Though I never of my own initiative understood a word he said, Marcellus

sometimes interpreted a sentence or so for me, and I listened to all the

rest with a fraudulently wise face. To give only a solitary illustration

of the tax thus levied on our friendship, I may mention that when Hi

Tuckerman said “_Aak!-ah-aak!-uh_,” he meant “Rappahannock,” and he did

this rather better than a good many words.

“Rappahannock,” alas! was a word we heard often enough in those days,

along with Chickahom-iny and Rapidan, and that odd Chattahoochee, the

sound of which raised always in my boyish mind the notion that the

geography-makers must have achieved it in their baby-talk period. These

strange Southern river names and many more were as familiar to the ears

of these four other untravelled Dearborn County farmers as the noise

of their own shallow Nedahma rattling over its pebbles in the valley

yonder. Only when their slow fancy fitted substance to these names they

saw in mind’s eye dark, sinister, swampy currents, deep and silent, and

discolored with human blood.

Two of these men who strode along behind the wagon were young

half-uncles of mine, Myron and Warren Turnbull, stout, thick-shouldered,

honest fellows not much out of their teens, who worked hard, said

little, and were always lumped together in speech, by their family, the

hired help, and the neighbors, as “the boys.” They asserted themselves

so rarely, and took everything as it came with such docility, that I

myself, being in my eleventh year, thought of them as very young indeed.

Next them walked a man, hired just for the haying, named Philleo, and

then, scuffling along over the uneven humps and hollows on the outer

edge of the road, came Si Hummaston, with the empty ginger-beer pail

knocking against his knees.

As Tuckerman’s “Hi” stood for Hiram, so I assume the other’s “Si” meant

Silas, or possibly Cyrus. I dare say no one, not even his mother, had

ever called him by his full name. I know that my companion, Marcellus

Jones, who wouldn’t be thirteen until after Thanksgiving, habitually

addressed him as Si, and almost daily I resolved that I would do so

myself. He was a man of more than fifty, I should think, tall, lean, and

what Marcellus called “bible-backed.” He had a short iron-gray beard

and long hair. Whenever there was any very hard or steady work going,

he generally gave out and went to sit in the shade, holding a hand flat

over his heart, and shaking his head dolefully. This kept a good many

from hiring him, and even in haying time, when everybody on two legs is

of some use, I fancy he would often have been left out if it hadn’t been

for my grandparents. They respected him on account of his piety and his

moral character, and always had him down when extra work began. He was

said to be the only hired man in the township who could not be goaded

in some way into swearing. He looked at one slowly, with the mild

expression of a heifer calf.

We had come to the crown of the hill, and the wagon started down the

steeper incline, with a great groaning of the brake. The men, by some

tacit understanding, halted and overlooked the scene.

The big old stone farm-house--part of which is said to date almost

to the Revolutionary times--was just below us, so near, indeed, that

Marcellus said he had once skipped a scaling-stone from where we stood

to its roof. The dense, big-leafed foliage of a sap-bush, sheltered in

the basin which dipped from our feet, pretty well hid this roof now from

view. Farther on, heavy patches of a paler, brighter green marked the

orchard, and framed one side of a cluster of barns and stables, at the

end of which three or four belated cows were loitering by the trough.

It was so still that we could hear the clatter of the stanchions as the

rest of the herd sought their places inside the milking-barn.

The men, though, had no eyes for all this, but bent their gaze fixedly

on the road, down at the bottom. For a long way this thoroughfare was

bordered by a row of tall poplars, which, as we were placed, receded

from the vision in so straight a line that they seemed one high, fat

tree. Beyond these one saw only a line of richer green, where the

vine-wrapped rail-fences cleft their way between the ripening fields.

“I’d ’a’ took my oath it was them,” said Philleo. “I can spot them

grays as fur’s I can see ’em. They turned by the school-house there,

or I’ll eat it, school-ma’am ’n’ all. And the buggy was fol-lerin’ ’em,

too.”

“Yes, I thought it was them,” said Myron, shading his eyes with his

brown hand.

“But they ought to got past the poplars by this time, then,” remarked

Warren.

“Why, they’ll be drivin’ as slow as molasses in January,” put in Si

Hummaston. “When you come to think of it, it _is_ pretty nigh the same

as a regular funeral. You mark my words, your father’ll have walked them

grays every step of the road. I s’pose he’ll drive himself--he wouldn’t

trust bringin’ Alvy home to nobody else, would he? I know I wouldn’t, if

the Lord had given _me_ such a son; but then he didn’t!”

“No, He didn’t!” commented the first speaker, in an unnaturally loud

tone of voice, to break in upon the chance that Hi Tuckerman was

going to try to talk. But Hi only stretched out his arm, pointing the

forefinger toward the poplars.

Sure enough, something was in motion down at the base of the shadows

on the road. Then it crept forward, out in the sunlight, and separated

itself into two vehicles. A farm wagon came first, drawn by a team of

gray horses. Close after it came a buggy, with its black top raised.

Both advanced so slowly that they seemed scarcely to be moving at all.

“Well, I swan!” exclaimed Si Hummaston, after a minute, “it’s Dana

Pillsbury drivin’ the wagon after all! Well--I dunno--yes, I guess

that’s prob’bly what I’d ’a’ done too, if I’d b’n your father. Yes, it

does look more correct, his follerin’ on behind, like that. I s’pose

that’s Alvy’s widder in the buggy there with him.”

“Yes, that’s Serena--it looks like her little girl with her,” said

Myron, gravely.

“I s’pose we might’s well be movin’ along down,” observed his brother,

and at that we all started.

We walked more slowly now, matching our gait to the snail-like progress

of those coming toward us. As we drew near to the gate, the three hired

men instinctively fell behind the brothers, and in that position the

group halted on the grass, facing the driveway where it left the main

road. Not a word was uttered by any one. When at last the wagon came up,

Myron and Warren took off their hats, and the others followed suit, all

holding them poised at the level of their shoulders.

Dana Pillsbury, carrying himself rigidly upright on the box-seat,

drove past us with eyes fixed straight ahead, and a face as coldly

expressionless as that of a wooden Indian. The wagon was covered all

over with rubber blankets, so that whatever it bore was hidden. Only

a few paces behind came the buggy, and my grandfather, old Arphaxed

Turnbull, went by in his turn with the same averted, faraway gaze,

and the same resolutely stolid countenance. He held the restive young

carriage horse down to a decorous walk, a single firm hand on the tight

reins, without so much as looking at it. The strong yellow light of the

declining sun poured full upon his long gray beard, his shaven upper

lip, his dark-skinned, lean, domineering face--and made me think of some

hard and gloomy old prophet seeing a vision, in the back part of the Old

Testament. If that woman beside him, swathed in heavy black raiment, and

holding a child up against her arm, was my Aunt Serena, I should never

have guessed it.

We put on our hats again, and walked up the driveway with measured step

behind the carriage till it stopped at the side-piazza stoop. The wagon

had passed on toward the big new red barn--and crossing its course I

saw my Aunt Em, bareheaded and with her sleeves rolled up, going to the

cow-barn with a milking-pail in her hand. She was walking quickly, as if

in a great hurry.

“There’s your Ma,” I whispered to Marcellus, assuming that he would

share my surprise at her rushing off like this, instead of waiting to

say “How-d’-do” to Serena. He only nodded knowingly, and said nothing.

No one else said much of anything. Myron and Warren shook hands in stiff

solemnity with the veiled and craped sister-in-law, when their father

had helped her and her daughter from the buggy, and one of them remarked

in a constrained way that the hot spell seemed to keep up right along.

The newcomers ascended the steps to the open door, and the woman and the

child went inside. Old Arphaxed turned on the threshold, and seemed to

behold us for the first time.

“After you’ve put out the horse,” he said, “I want the most of yeh to

come up to the new barn. Si Hummaston and Marcellus can do the milkin’.”

“I kind o’ rinched my wrist this forenoon,” put in Si, with a note of

entreaty in his voice. He wanted sorely to be one of the party at the

red barn.

“Mebbe milkin’ ’ll be good for it,” said Arphaxed, curtly. “You and

Marcellus do what I say, and keep Sidney with you.” With this he, too,

went into the house.

II

It wasn’t an easy matter for even a member of the family like myself

to keep clearly and untangled in his head all the relationships which

existed under this patriarchal Turnbull roof.

Old Arphaxed had been married twice. His first wife was the mother of

two children, who grew up, and the older of these was my father, Wilbur

Turnbull. He never liked farm-life, and left home early, not without

some hard feeling, which neither father nor son ever quite forgot. My

father made a certain success of it as a business man in Albany until,

in the thirties, his health broke down. He died when I was seven and,

although he left some property, my mother was forced to supplement this

help by herself going to work as forewoman in a large store. She was

too busy to have much time for visiting, and I don’t think there was

any great love lost between her and the people on the farm; but it was

a good healthy place for me to be sent to when the summer vacation came,

and withal inexpensive, and so the first of July each year generally

found me out at the homestead, where, indeed, nobody pretended to be

heatedly fond of me, but where I was still treated well and enjoyed

myself. This year it was understood that my mother was coming out to

bring me home later on.

The other child of that first marriage was a girl who was spoken of in

youth as Emmeline, but whom I knew now as Aunt Em. She was a silent,

tough-fibred, hard-working creature, not at all goodlooking, but

relentlessly neat, and the best cook I ever knew. Even when the house

was filled with extra hired men, no one ever thought of getting in any

female help, so tireless and so resourceful was Em. She did all the

housework there was to do, from cellar to garret, was continually

lending a hand in the men’s chores, made more butter than the household

could eat up, managed a large kitchen-garden, and still had a good

deal of spare time, which she spent in sitting out in the piazza in a

starched pink calico gown, knitting the while she watched who went up

and down the road. When you knew her, you understood how it was that the

original Turnbulls had come into that part of the country just after the

Revolution, and in a few years chopped down all the forests, dug up all

the stumps, drained the swale-lands, and turned the entire place from a

wilderness into a flourishing and fertile home for civilized people. I

used to feel, when I looked at her, that she would have been quite equal

to doing the whole thing herself.

All at once, when she was something over thirty, Em had up and married a

mowing-machine agent named Abel Jones, whom no one knew anything about,

and who, indeed, had only been in the neighborhood for a week or so. The

family was struck dumb with amazement. The idea of Em’s dallying with

the notion of matrimony had never crossed anybody’s mind. As a girl she

had never had any patience with husking-bees or dances or sleigh-ride

parties. No young man had ever seen her home from anywhere, or had had

the remotest encouragement to hang around the house. She had never been

pretty--so my mother told me--and as she got along in years grew dumpy

and thick in figure, with a plain, fat face, a rather scowling brow, and

an abrupt, ungracious manner. She had no conversational gifts

whatever, and, through years of increasing taciturnity and confirmed

unsociability, built up in everybody’s mind the conviction that, if

there could be a man so wild and unsettled in intellect as to suggest a

tender thought to Em, he would get his ears cuffed off his head for his

pains.

Judge, then, how like a thunderbolt the episode of the mowing-machine

agent fell upon the family. To bewildered astonishment there soon enough

succeeded rage. This Jones was a curly-headed man, with a crinkly black

beard like those of Joseph’s brethren in the Bible picture. He had

no home and no property, and didn’t seem to amount to much even as a

salesman of other people’s goods. His machine was quite the worst then

in the market, and it could not be learned that he had sold a single one

in the county. But he had married Em, and it was calmly proposed that he

should henceforth regard the farm as his home. After this point had been

sullenly conceded, it turned out that Jones was a widower, and had a

boy nine or ten years old, named Marcellus, who was in a sort of orphan

asylum in Vermont. There were more angry scenes between father and

daughter, and a good deal more bad blood, before it was finally agreed

that the boy also should come and live on the farm.

All this had happened in 1860 or 1861. Jones had somewhat improved on

acquaintance. He knew about lightning-rods, and had been able to fit out

all the farm buildings with them at cost price. He had turned a little

money now and again in trades with hop-poles, butter-firkins, shingles,

and the like, and he was very ingenious in mending and fixing up odds

and ends. He made shelves and painted the woodwork, and put a tar roof

on the summer kitchen. Even Martha, the second Mrs. Turnbull, came

finally to admit that he was handy about a house.

This Martha became the head of the household while Em was still a little

girl. She was a heavy woman, mentally as well as bodily, rather prone to

a peevish view of things, and greatly given to pride in herself and her

position, but honest, charitable in her way, and not unkindly at heart.

On the whole she was a good stepmother, and Em probably got on quite as

well with her as she would have done with her own mother--even in the

matter of the mowing-machine agent.

To Martha three sons were born. The two younger ones, Myron and Warren,

have already been seen. The eldest boy, Alva, was the pride of the

family, and, for that matter, of the whole section.

Alva was the first Turnbull to go to college. From his smallest boyhood

it had been manifest that he had great things before him, so handsome

and clever and winning a lad was he. Through each of his schooling years

he was the honor man of his class, and he finished in a blaze of glory

by taking the Clark Prize, and practically everything else within reach

in the way of academic distinctions. He studied law at Octavius, in the

office of Judge Schermerhorn, and in a little time was not only that

distinguished man’s partner, but distinctly the more important figure

in the firm. At the age of twenty-five he was sent to the Assembly. The

next year they made him District Attorney, and it was quite understood

that it rested with him whether he should be sent to Congress later on,

or be presented by the Dearborn County bar for the next vacancy on the

Supreme Court bench.

At this point in his brilliant career he married Miss Serena Wadsworth,

of Wadsworth’s Falls. The wedding was one of the most imposing social

events the county had known, so it was said, since the visit of

Lafayette. The Wadsworths were an older family, even, than the

Fairchilds, and infinitely more fastidious and refined. The daughters

of the household, indeed, carried their refinement to such a pitch that

they lived an almost solitary life, and grew to the parlous verge of

old-maidhood simply because there was nobody good enough to marry them.

Alva Turnbull was, however, up to the standard. It could not be said,

of course, that his home surroundings quite matched those of his bride;

but, on the other hand, she was nearly two years his senior, and this

was held to make matters about even.

In a year or so came the war, and nowhere in the North did patriotic

excitement run higher than in this old abolition stronghold of upper

Dearborn. Public meetings were held, and nearly a whole regiment was

raised in Octavius and the surrounding towns alone. Alva Turnbull made

the most stirring and important speech at the first big gathering, and

sent a thrill through the whole country-side by claiming the privilege

of heading the list of volunteers. He was made a captain by general

acclaim, and went off with his company in time to get chased from the

field of Bull Run. When he came home on a furlough in 1863 he was a

major, and later on he rose to be lieutenant-colonel. We understood

vaguely that he might have climbed vastly higher in promotion but for

the fact that he was too moral and conscientious to get on very well

with his immediate superior, General Boyce, of Thessaly, who was

notoriously a drinking man.

It was glory enough to have him at the farm, on that visit of his, even

as a major. His old parents literally abased themselves at his feet,

quite tremulous in their awed pride at his greatness. It made it almost

too much to have Serena there also, this fair, thin-faced, prim-spoken

daughter of the Wadsworths, and actually to call her by her first name.

It was haying time, I remember, but the hired men that year did not

eat their meals with the family, and there was even a question whether

Marcellus and I were socially advanced enough to come to the table,

where Serena and her husband were feeding themselves in state with a

novel kind of silver implement called a four-tined fork. If Em hadn’t

put her foot down, out to the kitchen we should both have gone, I fancy.

As it was, we sat decorously at the far end of the table, and asked with

great politeness to have things passed to us, which by standing up we

could have reached as well as not. It was slow, but it made us feel

immensely respectable, almost as if we had been born Wadsworths

ourselves.

We agreed that Serena was “stuck up,” and Mar-cellus reported Aunt Em

as feeling that her bringing along with her a nursemaid to be waited on

hand and foot, just to take care of a baby, was an imposition bordering

upon the intolerable. He said that that was the sort of thing the

English did until George Washington rose and drove them out. But we both

felt that Alva was splendid.

He was a fine creature physically--taller even than old Arphaxed, with

huge square shoulders and a mighty frame. I could recall him as without

whiskers, but now he had a waving lustrous brown beard, the longest

and biggest I ever saw. He didn’t pay much attention to us boys, it was

true; but he was affable when we came in his way, and he gave Myron and

Warren each a dollar bill when they went to Octavius to see the Fourth

of July doings. In the evening some of the more important neighbors

would drop in, and then Alva would talk about the war, and patriotism,

and saving the Union, till it was like listening to Congress itself. He

had a rich, big voice which filled the whole room, so that the hired men

could hear every word out in the kitchen; but it was even more affecting

to see him walking with his father down under the poplars, with his

hands making orator’s gestures as he spoke, and old Arphaxed looking at

him and listening with shining eyes.

Well, then, he and his wife went away to visit her folks, and then we

heard he had left to join his regiment. From time to time he wrote

to his father--letters full of high and loyal sentiments, which were

printed next week in the Octavius _Transcript_, and the week after in

the Thessaly _Banner of Liberty_. Whenever any of us thought about the

war--and who thought much of anything else?--it was always with Alva as

the predominant figure in every picture.

Sometimes the arrival of a letter for Aunt Em, or a chance remark about

a broken chair or a clock hopelessly out of kilter, would recall for

the moment the fact that Abel Jones was also at the seat of war. He had

enlisted on that very night when Alva headed the roll of honor, and

he marched away in Alva’s company. Somehow he got no promotion, but

remained in the ranks. Not even the members of the family were shown the

letters Aunt Em received, much less the printers of the newspapers. They

were indeed poor misspelled scrawls, about which no one displayed any

interest or questioned Aunt Em. Even Marcellus rarely spoke of his

father, and seemed to share to the full the family’s concentration of

thought upon Alva.

Thus matters stood when spring began to play at being summer in the year

of ‘64. The birds came and the trees burst forth into green, the sun

grew hotter and the days longer, the strawberries hidden under the big

leaves in our yard started into shape, where the blossoms had been,

quite in the ordinary, annual way, with us up North. But down where

that dread thing they called “The War” was going on, this coming of warm

weather meant more awful massacre, more tortured hearts, and desolated

homes, than ever before. I can’t be at all sure how much later reading

and associations have helped out and patched up what seem to be my

boyish recollections of this period; but it is, at all events, much

clearer in my mind than are the occurrences of the week before last.

We heard a good deal about how deep the mud was in Virginia that spring.

All the photographs and tin-types of officers which found their way

to relatives at home, now, showed them in boots that came up to their

thighs. Everybody understood that as soon as this mud dried up a little,

there was to be most terrific doings. The two great lines of armies

lay scowling at each other, still on that blood-soaked fighting ground

between Washington and Richmond where they were three years before.

Only now things were to go differently. A new general was at the head

of affairs, and he was going in, with jaws set and nerves of steel, to

smash, kill, burn, annihilate, sparing nothing, looking not to right or

left, till the red road had been hewed through to Richmond. In the first

week of May this thing began--a push forward all along the line--and the

North, with scared eyes and fluttering heart, held its breath.

My chief personal recollection of these historic forty days is that one

morning I was awakened early by a noise in my bedroom, and saw my

mother looking over the contents of the big chest of drawers which stood

against the wall. She was getting out some black articles of apparel.

When she discovered that I was awake, she told me in a low voice that my

Uncle Alva had been killed. Then a few weeks later my school closed, and

I was packed off to the farm for the vacation. It will be better to tell

what had happened as I learned it there from Marcellus and the others.

Along about the middle of May, the weekly paper came up from Octavius,

and old Arphaxed Turnbull, as was his wont, read it over out on the

piazza before supper. Presently he called his wife to him, and showed

her something in it. Martha went out into the kitchen, where Aunt Em was

getting the meal ready, and told her, as gently as she could, that there

was very bad news for her; in fact, her husband, Abel Jones, had been

killed in the first day’s battle in the Wilderness, something like a

week before. Aunt Em said she didn’t believe it, and Martha brought in

the paper and pointed out the fatal line to her. It was not quite clear

whether this convinced Aunt Em or not. She finished getting supper, and

sat silently through the meal, afterwards, but she went upstairs to her

room before family prayers. The next day she was about as usual, doing

the work and saying nothing. Marcellus told me that to the best of his

belief no one had said anything to her on the subject. The old people

were a shade more ceremonious in their manner toward her, and “the boys”

and the hired men were on the lookout to bring in water for her from the

well, and to spare her as much as possible in the routine of chores, but

no one talked about Jones. Aunt Em did not put on mourning. She made

a black necktie for Marcellus to wear to church, but stayed away from

meeting herself.

A little more than a fortnight afterwards, Myron was walking down the

road from the meadows one afternoon, when he saw a man on horseback

coming up from the poplars, galloping like mad in a cloud of dust.

The two met at the gate. The man was one of the hired helps of the

Wadsworths, and he had ridden as hard as he could pelt from the Falls,

fifteen miles away, with a message, which now he gave Myron to read.

Both man and beast dripped sweat, and trembled with fatigued excitement.

The youngster eyed them, and then gazed meditatively at the sealed

envelope in his hand.

“I s’pose you know what’s inside?” he asked, looking up at last.

The man in the saddle nodded, with a tell-tale look on his face, and

breathing heavily.

Myron handed the letter back, and pushed the gate open. “You’d better go

up and give it to father yourself,” he said. “I ain’t got the heart to

face him--jest now, at any rate.”

Marcellus was fishing that afternoon, over in the creek which ran

through the woods. Just as at last he was making up his mind that it

must be about time to go after the cows, he saw Myron sitting on a

log beside the forest path, whittling mechanically, and staring at the

foliage before him, in an obvious brown study. Marcellus went up to him,

and had to speak twice before Myron turned his head and looked up.

“Oh! it’s you, eh, Bubb?” he remarked dreamily, and began gazing once

more into the thicket.

“What’s the matter?” asked the puzzled boy.

“I guess Alvy’s dead,” replied Myron. To the lad’s comments and

questions he made small answer. “No,” he said at last, “I don’t feel

much like goin’ home jest now. Lea’ me alone here; I’ll prob’ly turn up

later on.” And Marcellus went alone to the pasture, and thence, at the

tail of his bovine procession, home.

When he arrived he regretted not having remained with Myron in the

woods. It was like coming into something which was prison, hospital, and

tomb in one. The household was paralyzed with horror and fright. Martha

had gone to bed, or rather had been put there by Em, and all through

the night, when he woke up, he heard her broken and hysterical voice

in moans and screams. The men had hitched up the grays, and Arphaxed

Turnbull was getting into the buggy to drive to Octavius for news when

the boy came up. He looked twenty years older than he had at noon--all

at once turned into a chalkfaced, trembling, infirm old man--and could

hardly see to put his foot on the carriage-step. His son Warren had

offered to go with him, and had been rebuffed almost with fierceness.

Warren and the others silently bowed their heads before this mood;

instinct told them that nothing but Arphaxed’s show of temper held him

from collapse--from falling at their feet and grovelling on the grass

with cries and sobs of anguish, perhaps even dying in a fit. After he

had driven off they forbore to talk to one another, but went about a

chalkfaced, trembling, infirm old man--and could hardly see to put his

foot on the carriage-step. His son Warren had offered to go with him,

and had been rebuffed almost with fierceness. Warren and the others

silently bowed their heads before this mood; instinct told them that

nothing but Arphaxed’s show of temper held him from collapse--from

falling at their feet and grovelling on the grass with cries and sobs of

anguish, perhaps even dying in a fit. After he had driven off they

forbore to talk to one another, but went about noiselessly with drooping

chins and knotted brows.

“It jest took the tuck out of everything,” said Marcellus, relating

these tragic events to me. There was not much else to tell. Martha had

had what they call brain fever, and had emerged from this some weeks

afterward a pallid and dim-eyed ghost of her former self, sitting for

hours together in her rocking-chair in the unused parlor, her hands idly

in her lap, her poor thoughts glued ceaselessly to that vague, far-off

Virginia which folks told about as hot and sunny, but which her mind’s

eye saw under the gloom of an endless and dreadful night. Arphaxed had

gone South, still defiantly alone, to bring back the body of his boy.

An acquaintance wrote to them of his being down sick in Washington,

prostrated by the heat and strange water; but even from his sick-bed he

had sent on orders to an undertaking firm out at the front, along with a

hundred dollars, their price in advance for embalming. Then, recovering,

he had himself pushed down to headquarters, or as near them as civilians

might approach, only to learn that he had passed the precious freight on

the way. He posted back again, besieging the railroad officials at every

point with inquiries, scolding, arguing, beseeching in turn, until at

last he overtook his quest at Juno Mills Junction, only a score of miles

from home.

Then only he wrote, telling people his plans. He came first to Octavius,

where a funeral service was held in the forenoon, with military honors,

the Wadsworths as the principal mourners, and a memorable turnout of

distinguished citizens. The town-hall was draped with mourning, and

so was Alva’s pew in the Episcopal Church, which he had deserted his

ancestral Methodism to join after his marriage. Old Arphaxed listened

to the novel burial service of his son’s communion, and watched the

clergyman in his curious white and black vestments, with sombre pride.

He himself needed and desired only a plain and homely religion, but

it was fitting that his boy should have organ music and flowers and a

ritual.

Dana Pillsbury had arrived in town early in the morning with the grays,

and a neighbor’s boy had brought in the buggy. Immediately after dinner

Arphaxed had gathered up Alva’s widow and little daughter, and started

the funeral cortège upon its final homeward stage.

And so I saw them arrive on that July afternoon.

III

For so good and patient a man, Si Hummaston bore himself rather

vehemently during the milking. It was hotter in the barn than it was

outside in the sun, and the stifling air swarmed with flies, which

seemed to follow Si perversely from stall to stall and settle on his

cow. One beast put her hoof square in his pail, and another refused

altogether to “give down,” while the rest kept up a tireless slapping

and swishing of their tails very hard to bear, even if one had the help

of profanity. Marcellus and I listened carefully to hear him at last

provoked to an oath, but the worst thing he uttered, even when the cow

stepped in the milk, was “Dum your buttons!” which Marcellus said

might conceivably be investigated by a church committee, but was hardly

out-and-out swearing.

I remember Si’s groans and objurgations, his querulous “Hyst there, will

ye!” his hypocritical “So-boss! So-boss!” his despondent “They never

will give down for me!” because presently there was crossed upon this

woof of peevish impatience the web of a curious conversation.

Si had been so slow in his headway against flapping tails and restive

hoofs that, before he had got up to the end of the row, Aunt Em had

finished her side. She brought over her stool and pail, and seated

herself at the next cow to Hummaston’s. For a little, one heard only the

resonant din of the stout streams against the tin; then, as the bottom

was covered, there came the ploughing plash of milk on milk, and Si

could hear himself talk.

“S’pose you know S’reny’s come, ’long with your father,” he remarked,

ingratiatingly.

“I saw ’em drive in,” replied Em.

“_Whoa! Hyst there! Hole still, can’t ye?_ I didn’t know if you

quite made out who she was, you was scootin’ ’long so fast. They

ain’t--_Whoa there!_--they ain’t nothin’ the matter ’twixt you and

her, is they?”

“I don’t know as there is,” said Em, curtly. “The world’s big enough for

both of us--we ain’t no call to bunk into each other.”

“No, of course--_Now you stop it!_--but it looked kind o’ curious to

me, your pikin’ off like that, without waitin’ to say ‘How-d’-do?’ Of

course, I never had no relation by marriage that was stuck-up at all, or

looked down on me--_Stiddy there now!_--but I guess I can reelize pretty

much how you feel about it. I’m a good deal of a hand at that. It’s

what they call imagination. It’s a gift, you know, like good looks, or

preachin’, or the knack o’ makin’ money. But you can’t help what you’re

born with, can you? I’d been a heap better off if my gift’d be’n in

some other direction; but, as I tell ’em, it ain’t my fault. And my

imagination--_Hi, there! git over, will ye?_--it’s downright cur’ous

sometimes, how it works. Now I could tell, you see, that you ‘n’ S’reny

didn’t pull together. I s’pose she never writ a line to you, when your

husband was killed?”

“Why should she?” demanded Em. “We never did correspond. What’d be the

sense of beginning then? She minds her affairs, ’n’ I mind mine. Who

wanted her to write?”

“Oh, of course not,” said Si lightly. “Prob’ly you’ll get along better

together, though, now that you’ll see more of one another. I s’pose

S’reny’s figurin’ on stayin’ here right along now, her ’n’ her little

girl. Well, it’ll be nice for the old folks to have somebody they’re

fond of. They jest worshipped the ground Alvy walked on--and I s’pose

they won’t be anything in this wide world too good for that little girl

of his. Le’s see, she must be comin’ on three now, ain’t she?”

“I don’t know anything about her!” snapped Aunt Em with emphasis.

“Of course, it’s natural the old folks should feel so--she bein’ Alvy’s

child. I hain’t noticed anything special, but does it--_Well, I swan!

Hyst there!_--does it seem to you that they’re as good to Marcellus,

quite, as they used to be? I don’t hear ’em sayin’ nothin’ about his

goin’ to school next winter.”

Aunt Em said nothing, too, but milked doggedly on. Si told her about the

thickness and profusion of Serena’s mourning, guardedly hinting at the

injustice done him by not allowing him to go to the red barn with the

others, speculated on the likelihood of the Wadsworths’ contributing to

their daughter’s support, and generally exhibited his interest in the

family through a monologue which finished only with the milking; but

Aunt Em made no response whatever.

When the last pails had been emptied into the big cans at the

door--Marcellus and I had let the cows out one by one into the yard, as

their individual share in the milking ended--Si and Em saw old Arphaxed

wending his way across from the house to the red barn. He appeared

more bent than ever, but he walked with a slowness which seemed born of

reluctance even more than of infirmity.

“Well, now,” mused Si, aloud, “Brother Turnbull an’ me’s be’n friends

for a good long spell. I don’t believe he’d be mad if I cut over now to

the red barn too, seein’ the milkin’s all out of the way. Of course I

don’t want to do what ain’t right--what d’you think now, Em, honest?

Think it ’ud rile him?”

“I don’t know anything about it!” my aunt replied, with increased vigor

of emphasis. “But for the land sake go somewhere! Don’t hang around

botherin’ me. I got enough else to think of besides your everlasting

cackle.”

Thus rebuffed, Si meandered sadly into the cow-yard, shaking his head as

he came. Seeing us seated on an upturned plough, over by the fence, from

which point we had a perfect view of the red barn, he sauntered toward

us, and, halting at our side, looked to see if there was room enough for

him to sit also. But Marcellus, in quite a casual way, remarked, “Oh!

wheeled the milk over to the house, already, Si?” and at this

the doleful man lounged off again in new despondency, got out the

wheelbarrow, and, with ostentatious groans of travail hoisted a can upon

it and started off.

“He’s takin’ advantage of Arphaxed’s being so worked up to play ‘ole

soldier’ on him,” said Mar-cellus. “All of us have to stir him up the

whole time to keep him from takin’ root somewhere. I told him this

afternoon ’t if there had to be any settin’ around under the bushes an’

cryin’, the fam’ly ’ud do it.”

We talked in hushed tones as we sat there watching the shut doors of the

red barn, in boyish conjecture about what was going on behind them. I

recall much of this talk with curious distinctness, but candidly it

jars now upon my maturer nerves. The individual man looks back upon

his boyhood with much the same amused amazement that the race feels in

contemplating the memorials of its own cave-dwelling or bronze period.

What strange savages we were! In those days Marcellus and I used to find

our very highest delight in getting off on Thursdays, and going over to

Dave Bushnell’s slaughter-house, to witness with stony hearts, and from

as close a coign of vantage as might be, the slaying of some score of

barnyard animals--the very thought of which now revolts our grown-up

minds. In the same way we sat there on the plough, and criticised

old Arphaxed’s meanness in excluding us from the red barn, where the

men-folks were coming in final contact with the “pride of the family.”

Some of the cows wandering toward us began to “moo” with impatience for

the pasture, but Mar-cellus said there was no hurry.