"After."
He gradually glided away from me, and for some time marched at the other
side of the column.
I had noticed that he was walking without his jacket. The guards were
accosting the officers in their neighborhood, and had taken his among
other vestments. Most of the party of sad victims were well peeled ere
their melancholy was an hour older. A rough boor turned to me and
demanded my gauntlets. A basilisk fire shone through his eyes, and the
breath which he blew through the grating of his teeth, over his thin,
livid lips, and into my face, was freighted heavily with the fumes of
whiskey. When I made bold to refuse him, he was dumbfoundered in
astonishment, and was pleased to compress his jaws.
"You d----d Yankee!" he screamed, profanely, red with the inspiration
of his anger, "if you don't give me your gauntlets, I'll tear your hands
from your body."
There was enough energy in his action to have guarantied even a more
vehement manoeuvre; and as he made his threat, he raised his arm above
me. But I had it in my mind to see myself through the affair in the
course that I had chosen; and having noticed our mild officer a few
paces in the rear of us, mounted upon his horse, and placidly sitting
with his hand upon the pommel, I turned to him at once.
"If you will do me the favor, Sir," I said, with some gravity of manner,
"I would like you to accept my gauntlets,--a new pair from the box, that
has only seen this day's work."
"They've had an unlucky birthday," he said, not inaptly, and rather
courteously, as he took them.
"Yes, my gloves heretofore have all been spoiled by the sabre," I
replied, keeping step with his charger. "I don't know but that you have
to thank a drunken guard for the pair, Sir; since he threatened to kill
me, if I kept them on my hands."
He gave a hasty look for his orderly.
"Point out the man, if you can, Sir," he said to me, and beckoned a
trooper to his side.
"I am obliged to you for your interference," I answered. "The man
marches third on the left there, and has his piece slung behind him. I
hope that some day, Sir, I may do you a favor."
A sense of humor, for which I must be grateful, considering the sombre
dejection of my marching mates, filled my breast as I thanked him for
putting one under guard for attempting (drunk) what he himself so
soberly accomplished,--the capture of my buckskins. He kept the
gauntlets very willingly, and ordered a sergeant to accompany me. But
there was generosity and magnificence in his action; the acquisition,
per duress, of others' property was a daily habit with him,--and to have
a sergeant for a guard was a considerable favor.
It was my desire to cultivate the Sergeant thus cast within my reach,
who otherwise might be a marplot, and who had good of some sort in him,
I judged from his appearance; although, as with his kind, it was
evidently very barren winter in his purse, and his summer clothes were
apparently too open. His butternut jacket, a poor tweed with a cotton
filling, was clasped about his throat with a shred of twine, flying away
thence loosely, showing a dirty cotton shirt beneath, and the rough edge
of the waistband of his pantaloons. The material of which these last
were made was a very impressible jean, and marked the number of his
journeys, could one but decipher them, in stains and intricate creases.
He had the same face of lifeless suet, and the yellow hair, that I have
noticed as very prevalent in the Rebel armies,--but withal an elasticity
of carriage that seemed too honest for the cause, an almost openness of
countenance, a cast of features tending towards amiability, which imbued
me with a trembling hope. I had designs upon the Sergeant, and intended
opening upon him with rhetoric, after, perhaps, some amicable
skirmishing. His detail to guard my person was a compliment to me which
only the initiated--those who have made the same journey--can
appreciate. The young provost-officer with the sleeve-knots desired to
offer me a delicate attention in return for my hand-furniture, and,
perhaps, to impress me in some sort with his sense of right, even though
he was of so wrong-headed a company. What a dainty, dew-sipping bunch of
violets would be to conscious beauty,--what a quaint volume of old
matter, dust-breeding and crumbling, would be to the blinking
scholar,--what refined gold, or gold ore, or gold stamped in the mint,
would be to a Wall-Street broker,--was this sergeant to myself. He was
the gift of a royal potentate who stood not upon little matters. There
was no calculation in the largess. I was to have the entire sergeant as
all my own. We fell a rod behind the officer, and trudged evenly along.
Although big with an evil design, I did not intend to address my
companion at once. The monotony of my walk, as I had at present nought
else to think of, I allowed to engage a number of my thoughts. I
hazarded conjectures upon many idle points, as my narrative will show. I
fell to watching my feet, and to placing them, as far as practicable, in
the footmarks of him who marched before me, instituting a sort of
comparison between our soles, finding his smaller than mine, as, behind
his back, I ventured upon his measure, watched the ruts in the road,
made the wagons in advance of us, and wondered if those behind us had
axle-trees as wide to an inch,--as they would have, if made by the same
contractor;--in which case, I mused, it is just possible the coming
train may move in this same rut. It seemed, then, a comfortable sort of
place. I saw the clouds of dust that had been provoked rising in anger
and rolling away sullenly many a day that weary summer, and that almost
buried the wretched company in which we journeyed, hover heavily above
the road-side, and choke the pretty weeds blooming there, by way of a
mean revenge upon its human tormentors. Thereupon I envied the blue
things, not their incubus, but their insignificance: for neither
artillery, nor camp wagon, nor passing prisoner was aught to them. I
wondered what each man here would say, if each man could tell his
thoughts. Primarily, I was convinced, each captive would declare himself
sick at heart: that is the only expression which will convey the sinking
feeling. Once I heard a bird sing gayly a clear-throated song from a
clump of trees; at which my heart grew sick also, to render me as
miserable as the rest.
My mind reverted to the Adjutant T----, of the manner of whose capture I
knew nothing, and whom I had left that morning in camp, as the regiment
set out for the fight. I doubted not but that he would be with me in a
moment, to throw another mild projectile, a half-sentence, at me. I had
myself a catechism of one question with which to greet him. As some
little parley might be necessary between us, which could not go on
without the consent of our guardian, I concluded that then was the time
to throw a sop to my sergeant, I turned coolly upon him.
"We are marching rather briskly, are we not, Sergeant?" I said,
endeavoring to insinuate the independence of unconcern in my bearing.
"Wal,--right smart," he replied.
"I cannot tell by your uniform," I continued, with a half-smile, for the
fellow was all beggar's rags and patches, "whether you are in the
cavalry or not; but a pair of spurs, at any rate, may not come amiss to
you,--and I can have no use for mine for some time yet. They don't allow
us, I believe, to kick one another in Libby?"
I took my long spurs from my boots, like fringe from my heart-strings,
(of which the officer had directed my sergeant to allow no one to
deprive me,--the boots, not the heart-strings, they being inaccessible:
I would, possibly, not lose those till I arrived in Richmond,) and
handed them over to him.
"I'm of the Thirteenth Virginia Infantry," he said, "but do right smart
duty on horseback" (he liked the steel). "I'm detailed to the provost
marshal. They do treat a fellow rather hard down there."
I augured ever so much good from the Sergeant's "do," upon which there
was an emphasis.
"Were you ever a prisoner, Sergeant?" I asked, always careful to bestow
his title.
"Once," he said, laconically.
"Well! it's all one in the end," I said, carelessly turning from him, to
show that I had no desire for the conversation, if he did not relish it.
"You have a chance now to give me the devil of a time, in revenge for
your treatment among my friends. 'T is an ill wind that blows nobody
good."
My sang-froid had the savor of a good pickle. It was a very peculiar
turn to give the affair, I must own; but I saw that the Sergeant was
struck by it. Possibly, that one was my best stroke of the day. I have,
at any rate, ever since deemed it so.
I walked along as before, speculating, not lightly, upon the dejected
beings about me, who marched, spectre-fashion, in the dust, like the
unhappy (would-be) crew on the shores of the Styx, trying to appease
Charon. They never would be at rest till he ferried them over to the
shades of the world of death,--or (what to them seemed impossible) till
they were remanded back to life among the loved ones of their race. I
remember particularly one trifle of this momentous march, that
threatened towards night to gnaw into my very brain-tissues. Soldiers,
it is known, are not over-careful in their dress, when in daily action
in the field, nor have they time to grow fastidious during the fighting
summer months. They then, perforce, disregard tapes with a loftier
indifference to appearances than that which distinguishes the noble
cynic of the world. But officers generally use tapes about their ankles
(perhaps to keep some garment in place immediately upon the stocking);
and I have known them myself, for prudence' sake, to tie them in hard
knots. A poor limping lieutenant, a little to the left, and some ten
feet in advance of me, had not adopted this precaution, and now,
consequently, more as a punishment to me than to him, one of his nursery
ties had come undone, and was trailing after his foot in shadow-like
persistency. I had here a world of torture in a nutshell. When,
unluckily, my eyes fastened upon this appendage, I could not keep them
from it. It fascinated me with more than the juggler's success upon the
serpent. I fell to conjecturing how long the affair might be,--if four
inches or five; and pondered the allowance to be made in the calculation
by reason of the man's distance; merging this view of the matter in
another, as I watched his heel touch the ground, and noted the time
which elapsed between that and the jumping forward of the foot, with the
string, ever faithful, behind it. I conjectured how much dust the tape
took up at each step, and wondered, if, in a long march, merely by
accretion thereof, the end of it would not be a sort of dirt-coil,
perhaps a tenth of an inch in diameter,--soaring higher, too, in my
delirium of nervousness, till I could imagine the incalculable increase
in size which would be insured, should the lieutenant step into a
puddle, and get the thing all wet: he would wear a sand rope for
ankle-fetter, upon entering Richmond.
But the most provoking of all the phases to which my humor was reduced,
and which my dilapidated body had to submit to, by means of this tape,
was the almost irresistible desire to spring lightly forward, and to
catch the thing beneath my toe. It invoked me to all sorts of gymnastic
efforts. The impulse racked my breast, and set up an argument against
every reason in favor of a jog-trotting march for the balance of the
daylight. I surveyed the poor lieutenant from head to foot, and pictured
to myself his surprise, should he find himself hitched to the ground. He
would turn, I thought, with open, questioning eyes, and perhaps look
flushed by the accident. He might only hop a step farther on, and trust
to my not again overreaching him. He might, impelled by the influence
that tormented me, fall behind me. I had an unwavering conviction that
that tape would never be removed,--and that, consequently, in some way,
the lieutenant, who played guide to it, would be my haunting demon all
the weary hours of my march.
Soon after I had conferred my tart speech upon the Sergeant, and had so
sealed my failure to gain his grace in behalf of my friend and myself,
the Adjutant was at my side. A hale, hearty, well-made man, unperturbed
usually, he was now almost another person than himself. I thought I knew
what causes produced the pallor on his face and the quiver about the
loose-hanging under-lip. The good fellow had had in his jacket (before
it was stolen) the leave-of-absence which was to have carried him home
to be married, and he was to have availed himself of it in a week.
Perhaps the thought of his lady gave him the woebegone expression. All
sorts of sweet dreams, that had illumined his life for months, and
filled up the wide chinks of camp monotony, were now quite bitterly
ended,--capped by the reality worse than the dream which is called
nightmare. His smiling eyes were hooded only a little sooner than were
those milder ones at home, no doubt under traced eyebrows and with far
finer lashes. The marriage, perforce, was put off. The view of home was
put off. Perhaps the Adjutant's solemn quietus, like an extinguisher of
the light of his and his sweetheart's hopes, would drop upon him in
loathsome Libby, and cancel the leave forever. This, being the weightier
thought, was evidently bearing upon his mind.
I had resolved, in a business way, upon two points,--perchance brought
to my decision through some such tender passage as the above: first,
that, as we could not escape from the lines together, he must take the
earlier, because, as in mortgages, the better risk; and second, that if
he did not answer in a satisfactory manner the one question that I had
kept for some time uppermost in my brain to propound to him, he must
pocket my North Star.
"Have you a compass?" I muttered, as he edged by me.
"No," he replied.
My second resolution, then, was, that he should carry my compass.
"I've been robbed of everything," he said.
"Take--my--compass--quick!" I returned, and pressed it into his hand.
He was not as good an astronomer as I. He looked a hurried remonstrance
at me; but was obliged to hide it at once, and could not, I knew, waste
any eloquence now. Although, moreover, he was a lover, Nature had never
endowed him with the art of speaking through the eye. There were
stronger reasons in favor of his escape than of mine,--worldly, if not
spiritual,--and he suffered from a dangerous nervousness, in dwelling
upon the magnitude of the issue before him, which was not in my way.
"It is now five," I said; "at seven, if in such woods as this, you must
watch your chance and double."
"Which way?" he asked.
"Travel north-northeast, seven miles," I whispered.