Every loyal American who went abroad during the first years of our great
war felt bound to make himself some excuse for turning his back on his
country in the hour of her trouble. But when Owen Elmore sailed, no one
else seemed to think that he needed excuse. All his friends said it was
the best thing for him to do; that he could have leisure and quiet over
there, and would be able to go on with his work.
At the risk of giving a farcical effect to my narrative, I am obliged to
confess that the work of which Elmore's friends spoke was a projected
history of Venice. So many literary Americans have projected such a work
that it may now fairly be regarded as a national enterprise. Elmore was
too obscure to have been announced in the usual way by the newspapers as
having this design; but it was well known in his town that he was
collecting materials when his professorship in the small inland college
with which he was connected lapsed through the enlistment of nearly all
the students. The president became colonel of the college regiment; and
in parting with Elmore, while their boys waited on the campus without,
he had said, "Now, Elmore, you must go on with your history of Venice.
Go to Venice and collect your materials on the spot. We're coming
through this all right. Mr. Seward puts it at sixty days, but I'll give
them six months to lay down their arms, and we shall want you back at
the end of the year. Don't you have any compunctions about going. I know
how you feel; but it is perfectly right for you to keep out of it.
Good-by." They wrung each other's hands for the last time,--the
president fell at Fort Donelson; but now Elmore followed him to the
door, and when he appeared there one of the boyish captains shouted,
"Three cheers for Professor Elmore!" and the president called for the
tiger, and led it, whirling his cap round his head.
Elmore went back to his study, sick at heart. It grieved and vexed him
that even these had not thought that he should go to the war, and that
his inward struggle on that point had been idle so far as others were
concerned. He had been quite earnest in the matter; he had once almost
volunteered as a private soldier: he had consulted his doctor, who
sternly discouraged him. He would have been truly glad of any accident
that forced him into the ranks; but, as he used afterward to say, it was
not his idea of soldiership to enlist for the hospital. At the distance
of five hundred miles from the scene of hostilities, it was absurd to
enter the Home Guard; and, after all, there were, even at first, some
selfish people who went into the army, and some unselfish people who
kept out of it. Elmore's bronchitis was a disorder which active service
would undoubtedly have aggravated; as it was, he made a last effort to
be of use to our Government as a bearer of dispatches. Failing such an
appointment, he submitted to expatriation as he best could; and in Italy
he fought for our cause against the English, whom he found everywhere
all but in arms against us.
He sailed, in fine, with a very fair conscience. "I should be perfectly
at ease," he said to his wife, as the steamer dropped smoothly down to
Sandy Hook, "if I were sure that I was not glad to be getting away."
"You are _not_ glad," she answered.
"I don't know, I don't know," he said, with the weak persistence of a
man willing that his wife should persuade him against his convictions;
"I wish that I felt certain of it."
"You are too sick to go to the war; nobody expected you to go."
"I know that, and I can't say that I like it. As for being too sick,
perhaps it's the part of a man to go if he dies on the way to the field.
It would encourage the others," he added, smiling faintly.
She ignored the tint from Voltaire in replying: "Nonsense! It would do
no good at all. At any rate, it's too late now."
"Yes, it's too late now."
The sea-sickness which shortly followed formed a diversion from his
accusing thoughts. Each day of the voyage removed them further, and with
the preoccupations of his first days in Europe, his travel to Italy, and
his preparations for a long sojourn in Venice, they had softened to a
pensive sense of self-sacrifice, which took a warmer or a cooler tinge
according as the news from home was good or bad.