The great city had gone wild. Not a month before many of Pop's boys had
ridiculed the lads of a rival school who had employed a drill-master
from the Ninth Regiment and met two evenings a week. But Shorty, after
vainly trying to start a rival company among his own mates, had gone
over and enlisted in the ranks at Mulholland's. As a drum-boy he was not
allowed to handle a musket and "fall in" with the famous regiment to
which he was attached. Indeed, he would have had to stand on a
step-ladder to load "according to tactics" the long, glistening musket
with which the troops were at that time armed. Mulholland's boys had
hired a lot of old-fashioned cadet musquetoons, heavy and cumbrous, but
they were marvellous weapons in the eyes of the lads. Officers on duty
at Governor's Island were frequent visitors at the Primes' at Fourteenth
Street, and Shorty could not but hear of the preparations at the
arsenal, the effort to send reinforcements and provisions to Major
Anderson at Fort Sumter. All the world knew at this time how the "Star
of the West" was fired on and forced to put back to sea, but still not
one man in five would admit there should be war, and, in the great
Democratic community, hundreds and hundreds of people and not a few
papers almost openly took sides with the South. Two lads at Pop's
actually came to school wearing the colors of South Carolina in their
waistcoats, and in the First Latin the Ballous, whose father had
embarked his capital in steamships trading with Charleston and Savannah,
and Seymour, whose relatives were nearly all Southern, and the Graysons,
who were Northerners by birth, but had many kindred in Virginia and
Alabama, were all openly "secesh" in their talk. And still lessons went
on, and the boys even had time to talk of Snipe and wish him back, and
of Hoover and wish him in Jericho. Long ere this, now that there were
two absent and Briggs had not a friend or a believer left in the school,
all the First Latin had swung round into the conviction that poor Snipe
was the victim of circumstances and conspiracy, and that Hoover was the
cause of all his woes. The story of the hundred-dollar stealing had
begun to be accepted as a fact, though Pop and his assistants could
never be got to admit it. The further fact that Hoover and those
notorious scamps, the Hulkers, had not been seen in New York since the
Christmas holidays had set afloat a story that they had been discovered
to be connected in many a piece of rascality. Everything missing at
school for over a year was now attributed to Hoover. He had been able,
said the boys, to dispose of his plunder through those Hulker fellows,
who, despite the money lavished on them by their foolish mother, had
debts in many a bar-, billiard-, and pool-room, and were known to have
pawned valuable jewelry from time to time. She was with them somewhere
in the South, and the gloomy old house in Twenty-first Street was cared
for by the servants, who were glad enough to have their young masters
away and suspicion attaching to themselves at last removed. But still
that watch of Joy's and certain valuables of Aunt Lawrence's remained
unaccounted for. Still the police were baffled. Still there came no news
as to Snipe's whereabouts, and his mother, deeply distressed, had gone
home to Rhinebeck and had to be content with receiving once a month a
few lines saying her boy was well, working, and would return to her one
of these days when he had earned enough to make him independent. Those
letters bore only the date, which often differed by three days from that
of the post-mark, but the post-mark helped them not at all. One letter
was posted in New York, another in Boston, a third in Philadelphia. It
was evident that Snipe was determined to give his step-father no further
chance to find him. Once he wrote to Shorty, upbraiding him gently for
being instrumental in putting "old Park" on his track, but that was all.
Shorty felt it keenly, but with that poor mother and the Doctor and his
home people all importuning him and telling him what was his duty, the
boy had weakened and given the clue, with the result that they had
gained nothing and he had lost his friend. There was little comfort in
the assertions of the one whom he referred to as his "Sunday-school
aunt," that he ought to be thankful to be rid of so undutiful and
undesirable a companion. Shorty, to use the vernacular of the day,
"couldn't see it," and fell from grace for saying so. But now the
thrilling days of suspense were on the nation, and, while everybody who
knew the South knew well the South meant fight, the baa lambs of the
pulpit and the braying leaders of the press kept on preaching about the
ties of brotherly love, the right of the people to assemble peaceably
("even when under arms"), and the wrong of interference or intimidation,
so "Let the erring sisters go in peace." As late as the 8th of April,
one night when the boys were drilling in the big gymnasium on the upper
floor of Mulholland's school, and quite a number of people were looking
on, a venerable patron of the school stepped forward during the rest and
proceeded to address them.
"Cease all this waste of time, boys. Put away your cruel weapons.
Abandon this senseless strutting and marching. War is a relic of the
dark ages,--of barbarism. The world has grown wise with years, and of
the enlightened nations of the earth America stands foremost. Trust to
the broad views of our statesmen and the good sense of the people. They
will ever stand between us and the horrors of a civil war."
There was much applause among certain mothers and sisters sitting along
among the spectators, but Mulholland and the boys did not join. It was
significant of what the drill sergeant thought that the moment the
handclapping subsided he commanded attention and then "Fix bayonet!"
Within the week that followed, the broad views of many a Southern
statesman were manifest in the shotted guns trained on Sumter. The good
sense of the people, so far from "standing between us and the horrors of
civil war," boiled over in a genuine Anglo-Saxon exuberance of battle
fervor. The news that the stars and stripes were lowered in Charleston
Harbor sent them to the peak of every staff throughout the North, and
men, women, and children swarmed upon the streets, decked with the
badges of red, white, and blue. All Gotham had caught the war fever. The
President's call for the services of the State militia to defend the
capital until the volunteers could be enrolled sent the Sixth
Massachusetts through the city the very next morning, the famous New
York Seventh following by special train late the following day, and the
Eighth Massachusetts marched down Fifth Avenue the same evening the
Seventh went away. The best blood and brawn of the metropolis and of the
Bay State were the first to respond. The Sixty-ninth, Seventy-first,
and Seventy-ninth, Irish, American, and Scotch regiments of the great
city, followed within the week, the jaunty Frenchmen of the Fifty-fifth,
the Grays of the Eighth, the Blues of the Twelfth were promptly under
arms. Every able-bodied man of the tribe of Prime was in uniform and
away to the front before the month of May was ushered in, and Shorty,
with breaking heart, had shut himself in his room and sobbed himself
sick because he was forbidden to even think of going. He listened to the
thrilling strains of the Seventh's splendid band until the last sound of
their favorite "Skyrockets" was drowned in the hoarse cheers of the
crowds that saw them off. He went to school as ordered and got "flunked"
in every lesson. He sat on the mourners' bench in utter misery and
despond all through the week that followed the going of the city troops,
after having deliberately absented himself from every session during
which a regiment happened to be marching away, and in all the two weeks
that followed the coming of the news from Sumter only once had there
come into his life a moment of joy and comfort, and that was the day
following the departure of the Seventy-first (red-jacketed drum corps
and all,--all except poor Shorty), when, as the First Latin bustled out
into the street at recess, and Shorty, last of all, came drearily down
with his hands in his pockets, ordered out, in fact, by Mr. Beach, he
was greeted on the sidewalk by a jeering laugh and Briggs's taunting,
sneering words. "Hullo, drummer! So you thought you'd better stay home
where there wasn't going to be any show of fighting, did you?" and
Briggs might have known what would happen. Just as before, in a sudden
whirl of fury, the youngster flew at him, landed both fists on the
freckled "mug" before Briggs could either dodge or guard; bore him
backward in the full force of the instant attack; the carroty head
banged on the curb and knocked him stupid, and then the peace-makers
really might have been less deliberate in pulling Shorty off. Briggs was
a wreck when his raging assailant was dragged away, and Halsey,
wild-eyed, came rushing out to stop the fray. "Prime, Prime!" he said,
as he held him by the collar. "You've tried the rector's patience to the
utmost this last week, and I fear this will end it all."
"I don't care if it does!" panted Shorty. "I'd rather be killed than
kept here any longer. I hope he _will_ expel me. Then perhaps they'll
let me go where I belong!" And in a torrent of wrath the youngster's
swelling heart burst over all bounds, and he was led sobbing away.
Still dazed, half blind, and bleeding, Briggs was lifted to his feet.
"It served you right, you hulking coward," said Joy, as he and Bertram
led the battered object to the horse-trough in the stable. "You couldn't
have insulted him more brutally."
"It's of no use," said the Doctor that evening, gravely, to a
gray-haired grandsire, who was himself burning with longing to go to the
front. "That boy can't study now. You see he was regularly enlisted as
a drummer. He fully believed that when his regiment was called out that
nothing could keep him back, and, boy-like, he has said so among his
fellows,--probably bragged of it a little. He who had been so boastfully
confident now has to stay and face the sneers of the school, while big
boys of eighteen and nineteen like Dix and Julian have gone with the
Seventh. It breaks his heart, my friend. There's no likelihood of
fighting just now. The rebels won't be fools enough to attack
Washington. Send him down there to his uncle. Let him have a taste of
camp life. The city troops will come home as soon as the volunteers
begin to arrive. In fact, if you don't there'll be incessant war right
here at school."
"But there's his examination for college," said the head of the Primes,
himself a don of Columbia.
"Well, didn't you assure Dix and Julian that Columbia would admit them
without examination whenever they knocked at the doors? Didn't you at
faculty meeting say that three seniors, who never could have got their
diplomas in the world, should have their degrees without further
question, despite the fact that they have dragged along at the foot of
their class for the last two years, all just because of the fact that
they have gone to the front with their regiments?"
"But then he's so small for his years," was the next objection.
"All the better soldier! Those big, long giants break down. Those
stocky little fellows are the stayers. Besides," says Pop, with a
twinkle in his eyes, "size doesn't seem to count for much. You--ought to
have seen Briggs."
"Was he well pounded?" asked the head of the house, with interest ill
becoming his years and station. Perhaps he is thinking of old, old days
at "Harrow on the Hill," when he, too, had been under the ban for more
than one forbidden fight.
"Halsey says he looked as though he'd been mauled by a wildcat;" and to
save his reputation the Doctor cannot repress a grim smile.
"The young rascal!" says the head of the house.
Shorty, meantime, remanded to his room to cool off and meditate on his
sins, has done neither. The drum which was his joy and the jaunty
uniform are gone. To his unspeakable grief, there had come an order for
them from the adjutant the day before the regiment marched. Another boy
had been accepted in his place, a bigger boy, who could hardly squeeze
into either jacket or trousers, but, of course, did not return them.
They were regimental property, and yet Shorty felt a sense of personal
indignity that, even when he couldn't go, the adjutant should permit any
other one to take his place. Of his misery when, clinging to his perch
on a lamp-post above the cheering throngs, he saw those twenty
red-jacketed lads, led by the drum-major, coming proudly trudging down
Broadway at the head of the splendid command, it would be impossible to
tell; and now, twitted and insulted at school because he was bound to
obey the decree of his grandparents, virtually suspended for resenting
the insult, and, last of all, practically a prisoner in his room, poor
Shorty's cup was full.
There came a step in the hallway without, a knock at the door, and the
butler's boy, a stanch friend, ally, and fellow-fireman, stood and
waited. There was no answer, and he stooped and hailed through the
keyhole.
"Mr. Shorty, father sent me up with some dinner,--and there's a letter,
looks like Mr. Snipe's writin'."
The door flew open and the letter was seized.
* * * * *
"DEAR SHORTY," it read,--"I used to think nothing would ever
make me a soldier any more than nothing could keep you from
being one, but here I am, high private in the rear rank, and as
big if not as broad as the rest of 'em. I swore I was eighteen
and over. I have the height and looked strong. They wanted to
fill the company up to a hundred, and there was no further
question. Fancy my delight when we went into camp next your
regiment and my surprise when I couldn't find you among the
drum-boys. Billy Archer says you nearly went crazy when they
came away without you. What's the matter? You _are_ coming,
aren't you? I saw your Uncle Hal in his captain's uniform
yesterday, and stood up and saluted with the rest. I shan't
tell you my regiment or address this time, though Park
couldn't take me away from Uncle Sam even if he did come. But
when you get here hunt up Billy Archer, and he'll tell you
where to find your old chum.
"SNIPE."
* * * * *
That night, late, it occurred to some one that it might be well to go up
and see Shorty and try to reason with him and comfort him, or "do
something," as it was vaguely expressed. The room door was wide open,
the dinner stood untasted on the tray, the tray was on the bed, and
Shorty was gone.