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 coming 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 stereopticon 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 of 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 any how. 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 battle-field, 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,
disheveled 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
men 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 pretense 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.