During the fortnight or three weeks following the departure of Battery
G it became clear to everyone that the War was as good as over. It had
lasted already a whole year, but now the end was obviously at hand.
The Union Army had the Rebels cooped up in Yorktown—the identical
place where the British had been compelled to surrender at the close of
the Revolution—and it was impossible that they should get away. The
very coincidence of locality was enough in itself to convince the most
skeptical.
We read that Fitz John Porter had a balloon fastened by a rope, in
which he daily went up and took a look through his field-glasses at
the Rebels, all miserably huddled together in their trap, awaiting
their doom. Our soldiers wrote home now that final victory could only
be a matter of a few weeks, or months at the most. Some of them said
they would surely be home by haying time. Their letters no longer
dwelt upon battles, or the prospect of battles, but gossiped about
the jealousies and quarrels among our generals, who seemed to dislike
one another much more than they did the common enemy, and told us long
and quite incredible tales about the mud in Virginia. No soldier's
letter that spring was complete without a chapter on the mud. There
were stories about mules and their contraband drivers being bodily sunk
out of sight in these weltering seas of mire, and of new boots being
made for the officers to come up to their armpits, which we hardly
knew whether to believe or not. But about the fact that peace was
practically within view there could be no doubt.
Under the influence of this mood, Miss Parmalee's ambitious project for
a grand fair and festival in aid of the Field Hospital and Nurse Fund
naturally languished. If the War was coming to a close so soon, there
could be no use in going to so much worry and trouble, to say nothing
of the expense.
Miss Julia seemed to take this view of it herself. She ceased active
preparations for the fair, and printed in the Thessaly _Banner of
Liberty_ a beautiful poem over her own name entitled "The Dove-like
Dawn of White-winged Peace." She also got herself some new and
summery dresses, of gay tints and very fashionable form, and went to
be photographed in each. Her almost daily presence at the gallery
came, indeed, to be a leading topic of conversation in Octavius.
Some said that she was taking lessons of Marsena—learning to make
photographs—but others put a different construction on the matter and
winked as they did so.
As for Marsena, he moved about the streets these days with his head
among the stars, in a state of rapt and reverent exaltation. He had
never been what might be called a talker, but now it was as much as
the best of us could do to get any kind of word from him. He did
not seem to talk to Julia any more than to the general public, but
just luxuriated with a dumb solemnity of joy in her company, sitting
sometimes for hours beside her on the piazza of the Parmalee house, or
focusing her pretty image with silent delight on the ground glass of
his best camera day after day, or walking with her, arm in arm, to the
Episcopal church on Sundays. He had always been a Presbyterian before,
but now he bore himself in the prominent Parmalee pew at St. Mark's
with stately correctness, rising, kneeling, seating himself, just as
the others did, and helping Miss Julia hold her Prayer Book with an
air of having known the ritual from childhood.
No doubt a good many people felt that all this was rough on the absent
Dwight Ransom, and probably some of them talked openly about it; but
interest in this aspect of the case was swallowed up in the larger
attention now given to Marsena Pulford himself. It began to be reported
that he really came of an extraordinarily good family in New England,
and that an uncle of his had been in Congress. The legend that he had
means of his own did not take much root, but it was admitted that he
must now be simply coining money. Some went so far as to estimate his
annual profits as high as $1,500, which sounded to the average Octavian
like a dream. It was commonly understood that he had abandoned an
earlier intention to buy a house and lot of his own, and this clearly
seemed to show that he counted upon going presently to live in the
Parmalee mansion. People speculated with idle curiosity as to the
likelihood of this coming to pass before the War ended and Battery G
returned home.
Suddenly great and stirring news fell upon the startled North and set
Octavius thrilling with excitement, along with every other community
far and near. It was in the first week or so of May that the surprise
came; the Rebels, whom we had supposed to be securely locked up in
Yorktown, with no alternative save starvation or surrender, decided not
to remain there any longer, and accordingly marched comfortably off in
the direction of Richmond!
Quick upon the heels of this came tidings that the Union Army was in
pursuit, and that there had been savage fighting with the Confederate
rear-guard at Williamsburg. The papers said that the War, so far from
ending, must now be fought all over again. The marvellous story of the
Monitor and Merrimac sent our men folks into a frenzy of patriotic
fervor. Our women learned with sinking hearts that the new Corps which
included our Dearborn County regiments was to bear the brunt of the
conflict in this changed order of things. We were all off again in a
hysterical whirl of emotions—now pride, now horror, now bitter wrath
on top.
In the middle of all this the famous Field Hospital and Nurse Fund Fair
was held. The project had slumbered the while people thought peace so
near. It sprang up with renewed and vigorous life the moment the echo
of those guns at Williamsburg reached our ears. And of course at its
head was Julia Parmalee.
It would take a long time and a powerful ransacking of memory to
catalogue the remarkable things which this active young woman did
toward making that fair the success it undoubtedly was. Even more
notable were the things which she coaxed, argued, or shamed other folks
into doing for it. Years afterward there were old people who would tell
you that Octavius had never been quite the same place since.
For one thing, instead of the Fireman's Hall, with its dingy aspect and
somewhat rowdyish associations, the fair was held in the Court House,
and we all understood that Miss Julia had been able to secure this
favor on account of her late uncle, the Judge, when anyone else would
have been refused. It was under her tireless and ubiquitous supervision
that this solemn old interior now took on a gay and festal face. Under
the inspiration of her glance the members of the Fire Company and the
Alert Baseball Club vied with each other in borrowing flags and hanging
them from the most inaccessible and adventurous points. The rivalry
between the local Freemasons and Odd Fellows was utilized to build
temporary booths at the sides and down the centre—on a floor laid over
the benches by the Carpenters' Benevolent Association. The ladies'
organizations of the various churches, out of devotion to the Union
and jealousy of one another, did all the rest.
At the sides were the stalls for the sale of useful household articles,
and sedate and elderly matrons found themselves now dragged from the
mild obscurity of homes where they did their own work, and thrust
forward to preside over the sales in these booths, while thrifty,
not to say penurious, merchants came and stood around and regarded
with amazement the merchandise which they had been wheedled into
contributing gratis out of their own stores. The suggestion that they
should now buy it back again paralyzed their faculties, and imparted
a distinct restraint to the festivities at the sides of the big
court-room.
In the centre was a double row of booths for the sale of articles not
so strictly useful, and here the young people congregated. All the
girls of Octavius seemed to have been gathered here—the pretty ones
and the plain ones, the saucy ones and the shy, the maidens who were
"getting along" and the damsels not yet out of their teens. Stiff,
spreading crinolines brushed juvenile pantalettes, and the dark head of
long, shaving-like ringlets contrasted itself with the bold waterfall
of blonde hair. These girls did not know one another very well, save
by little groups formed around the nucleus of a church association,
and very few of them knew Miss Parmalee at all, except, of course, by
sight. But now, astonishing to relate, she recognized them by name as
old friends, shook hands warmly right and left, and blithely set them
all to work and at their ease. The idea of selling things to young
men abashed them by its weird and unmaidenly novelty. She showed them
how it should be done—bringing forward for the purpose a sheepishly
obstinate drug-store clerk, and publicly dragooning him into paying
eighty cents for a leather dog-collar, despite his protests that he had
no dog and hated the whole canine species, and could get such a strap
as that anywhere for fifteen cents—all amid the greatest merriment.
Her influence was so pervasive, indeed, that even the nicest girls soon
got into a state of giggling familiarity with comparative strangers,
which gave their elders concern, and which in some cases it took many
months to straighten out again. But for the time all was sparkling
gaiety. On the second and final evening, after the oyster supper, the
Philharmonics played and a choir of girls sang patriotic songs. Then
the gas was turned down and the stereopticon show began.
As the last concerted achievement of the firm of Pulford & Shull,
this magic-lantern performance is still remembered. The idea of it,
of course, was Julia's. She suggested it to Marsena, and he gladly
volunteered to make any number of positive plates from appropriate
pictures and portraits for the purpose. Then she pressed Newton Shull
into the service to get a stereopticon on hire, to rig up the platform
and canvas for it, and finally to consent to quit his post among the
Philharmonics when the music ceased, and to go off up into the gallery
to work the slides. He also, during Marsena's absence one day, made a
slide on his own account.
Mr. Shull had not taken very kindly to the idea when Miss Julia first
broached it to him.
"No, I don't know as I ever worked a stereopticon," he said, striving
to look with cold placidity into the winsome and beaming smile with
which she confronted him one day out in the reception-room. She had
never smiled at him before or pretended even to know his name. "I guess
you'd better hire a man up from Tecumseh to bring the machine and run
it himself."
"But you can do it so much better, my dear Mr. Shull!" she urged. "You
do everything so much better! Mr. Pulford often says that he never
knew such a handy man in all his life. It seems that there is literally
nothing that you can't do—except—perhaps—refuse a lady a great
personal favor."
Miss Julia put this last so delicately, and with such a pretty
little arch nod of the head and turn of the eyes, that Newton Shull
surrendered at discretion. He promised everything on the spot, and he
kept his word. In fact, he more than kept it.
The great evening came, as I have said, and when the lights were
turned down to extinction's verge those who were nearest the front
could distinguish the vacant chair which Mr. Shull had been occupying,
with his bass viol leaning against it. They whispered from one to
another that he had gone up in the gallery to work this new-fangled
contrivance. Then came a flashing broad disk of light on the screen
above the judges' bench, a spreading sibilant murmur of interest, and
the show began.
It was an oddly limited collection of pictures—mainly thin and feeble
copies of newspaper engravings, photographic portraits, and ideal heads
from the magazines. Winfield Scott followed in the wake of Kossuth, and
Garibaldi led the way for John C. Frémont and Lola Montez. There was
applause for the long, homely, familiar face of Lincoln, and a derisive
snicker for the likeness of Jeff Davis turned upside down. Then came
local heroes from the district round about—Gen. Boyce, Col. McIntyre,
and young Adjt. Heron, who had died so bravely at Ball's Bluff—mixed
with some landscapes and statuary, and a comic caricature or two. The
rapt assemblage murmured its recognitions, sighed its deeper emotions,
chuckled over the funny plates—deeming it all a most delightful
entertainment. From time to time there were long hitches, marked
by a curious spluttering noise above, and the abortive flashes of
meaningless light on the screen, and the explanation was passed about
in undertones that Mr. Shull was having difficulties with the machine.
It was after the longest of these delays that, all at once, an
extremely vivid picture was jerked suddenly upon the canvas, and,
after a few preliminary twitches, settled in place to stare us out of
countenance. There was no room for mistake. It was the portrait of
Miss Julia Parmalee standing proudly erect in statuesque posture, with
one hand resting on the back of a chair, and seated in this chair was
Lieut. Dwight Ransom, smiling amiably.
There was a moment's deadly hush, while we gazed at this unlooked-for
apparition. It seemed, upon examination, as if there was a certain
irony in the Lieutenant's grin. Someone in the darkness emitted an
abrupt snort of amusement, and a general titter arose, hung in the air
for an awkward instant, and then was drowned by a generous burst of
applause. While the people were still clapping their hands the picture
was withdrawn from the screen, and we heard Newton Shull call down from
his perch in the gallery:
"You kin turn up the lights now. They ain't no more to this."
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 able-bodied young patriot hesitate at such a time
as this?" she made answer, and pressed his arm.