Tom has gone, but the Professor is here still. I do not mean to stay
long,――I shall rejoin my regiment in a day or two. In the mean time,
I amuse myself, when the Professor is not here, by scribbling in
my note-book and reading it over. Such a book as it is now! My own
thoughts begin it; then, as we reach the battle-fields, I have not time
to think, much less to put my thoughts in writing; then comes a record
of deaths,――poor fellows, who wanted me to write to their homes. How
curious that record is! Men whom I didn’t care for grew heroic to me
in those first days,――when death was a novelty,――and I am minute in
my descriptions of them. Then, as the deaths become more and more
frequent, my descriptions grow shorter, and I give a line only, even
to those whom I really loved. It is strange reading, this note-book of
mine!
Here is an item which I find in my note-book: “Quarrelled with Tom!”
How we have fought, to be sure! I don’t know what this quarrel was
about, but I know how it ended. We didn’t speak for two days, and then
came another attack from that restless creature, Stonewall Jackson.
It was such a lovely day,――fresh and spring-like, but it soon grew hot
and dusty. Every once in a while a bullet would whiz past; I could hear
the rumble of the artillery, and I was terribly thirsty. I didn’t see
Tom, but I knew he was near,――we always kept close together at such
times;――still, if I had seen him, I wouldn’t have spoken to him. My
horse had been shot from under me, and I had cut open the head of the
man who did it; it seems strange, now that it is all over, that I could
do such a thing. Suddenly I saw the barrel of a rifle pointed at me.
The face of the man who was pointing it peered from behind a tree with
a malicious grin. I felt that death was near, and the feeling was not
pleasant. However, the situation had an element of absurdity in it, and
that made me laugh a little. The man who was going to kill me laughed
too. I heard a little click, a report, and his gun went up, and he went
down. Tom had shot him.
“Tom,” said I, with some feeling, “you have saved my life.”
“There!” said he, triumphantly, “you spoke first.”
I saw that I had, and I was dreadfully provoked. However, he admitted
that he was wrong; and so, under the circumstances, I decided that a
reconciliation was advisable.
* * * * *
The Professor has been here to-day. He is the most delightful companion
I know; and, what is his special charm, he really believes that he is
hard and cynical, the tender-hearted old baby! I know that he fancies
himself a second Diogenes. His liking for us boys is very queer to me.
Tom is his pet, but he prefers to talk to me. He discusses Tom with me,
and then he discusses me, just as if I were a third person. To-day he
told me I was a mass of selfish pettinesses. I don’t think that was his
word, but that was what he meant; “and yet,” said he, “you are capable
of heroic generosity.” I always know that part of what the Professor
says is said in earnest; but I am never quite sure what part it is.
He doesn’t fatigue me, and doesn’t excite me, and it is well for me
that he is here; still, I am impatient to get back again. He has told
me about Tom’s staying with me, instead of going home. I don’t know
what to say about it; I don’t know what to think. It makes me want to
die for him; nothing else that I can do seems sufficient. When this
war is over, I suppose Tom will marry and forget me. I never will go
near his wife――I shall hate her. Now, that is a very silly thing for a
lieutenant-colonel to write. I don’t care, it is true.
* * * * *
I wonder if I am so very selfish, after all. I like refinement and
elegance, and I hate dirt; and I do like to have people care for me
and do things to oblige me. But my first thought is not always of
myself; and I don’t think I am unjust to others, because of myself.
And, if I desire the sympathy and appreciation of others, I am sure it
is not wrong.
“_C’est qu’un cœur bien atteint veut qu’on soit tout à lui._”
I can’t remember, though, just now, a single unselfish thing that I
have ever done, unless it was giving some of the fruit and jelly that
the Professor brought me yesterday to a poor fellow with hungry eyes,
whom I saw glaring at them through the door. That wouldn’t have been
generous, either, if he hadn’t been a rebel. Giving aid and comfort
to the enemy is the only generous action that I can discover of mine,
after all my self-analysis. Confound self-analysis, any way! It is only
another form of selfishness, mingled with morbid conceit. If I did what
I ought to do, without thinking about myself at all, it would be better
for me; but I haven’t anything to do just now, except scribble away
here, and it is dreadfully stupid.
How talking with the Professor has set me to thinking of Harvard again!
Now that the lights are glimmering at intervals through the ward, I
can see the yard, with Holworthy and Stoughton and Hollis beaming away
from their windows at each other, and Massachusetts standing a little
apart, as becomes its greater age, but benignant in its seclusion. I
hear the voices of singing in the yard, on the steps, and under the
trees; I can see fellows sitting round the tables in their rooms,
studying and not studying; I can hear recitations made to the different
professors and tutors; and just as the bell for morning prayers, which
I still hate, begins to clang upon my memory, I remember that I am here
in a hospital, while we are still fighting and killing each other for
the sake of the country that has given us all we enjoy. I shall be out
soon, I know. There is always good prospect of a battle when I feel
this way; and yet I do horribly loathe the tint of blood which has
seemed to rest on everything I have seen or dreamed of for a year past.
How I hate war, and yet how wholly I am absorbed in it! I am getting
feverish; I shall write no more to-day.
* * * * *
In looking over my note-book, I find something which, luckily for
me, I had almost forgotten; and that is, the prediction of my friend
Mooney. Poor idiot! he was shot the first time that we were under fire.
How pleasant it would have been for me in all the work I have been
through, if I had remembered that prophecy! How it would have aided my
recovery in my sickness, if I had been haunted by those words! I am
to meet a dishonorable death for a dishonorable action, am I? The only
dishonorable action I can commit is to go over to Stonewall Jackson,
and learn how to fight. By Jove! I do admire that man. He is what too
few officers on either the Union or the Rebel sides are, unselfish and
in earnest. But I don’t think that I shall join him, for all that; and,
if I did, I should not be likely to meet with death,――his luck and his
pluck would take me through.
* * * * *
The Professor has confided to me a plan of his, which delights me. He
says that he will go North, and bring Tom’s mother on to Washington,
if her health permits. As Tom’s father is in Europe at present, and
as it would be highly unpleasant, to use the mildest term, for a lady
to travel alone to Washington, knowing nothing of the place and its
peculiarities, it is very thoughtful and very kind, and something more,
in the Professor to do this. Then Tom can run up to Washington for a
day or two to see her, poor fellow! and all, or rather part, of his
great generosity will be rewarded. The Professor is a brick to think of
it; and I have made him promise to start to-morrow. And when he goes, I
shall go too, only in the other direction. How happy this will make Tom!
* * * * *
I don’t know what makes me think of our class-day now, but I do wonder
who had the rooms which Tom and I engaged for our spread. Perhaps
it’s the contrast between salad and strawberries, and hardtack and
corned-beef; though now everything seems to me to be saturated with
gruel. I wonder if Tiny Snow was at class-day this year! She was an
object of awe to me in Freshman year; then I despised the sex when I
was a Sophomore; and then in Junior year I saw a good deal of her. She
had a way of drooping her head a little; and then, with a sort of shy
little gulp, raising it, and making her eyes childlike and plaintive.
It was quite pleasant, even after familiarity with it had destroyed
its novelty. I wrote some verses to her once, and sent them to “The
Harvard Magazine;” but they came into the hands of an editor who was
gone on her himself, and he very properly rejected them. Once I showed
Tiny, quite by accident, the Etruscan locket which I got abroad, and
which Tom admired so much that I had his initials cut on it to give to
him.
“Oh, how lovely!” said Tiny. “Who is it for?”
“Don’t you see the initials?” said I.
“T. S.,” said she, innocently; “who can it be?”
I thought there seemed something like a blush upon her cheek as she
spoke; but I told her that T. S. was some one I cared a great deal
about.
“Is she pretty?” asked Tiny.
“She!” I answered; “it isn’t any girl; it’s my chum, Tom, you know.”
Then she really colored; and a little while afterward I remembered that
those were her initials. How she must have hated me,――perhaps!
* * * * *
I have eaten a real breakfast at last, and am upon my feet again. The
Professor has gone, and I am going at once. How curious it will be to
come out of this dream, and go back again to work! The doctor begs me
not to get excited, and yet tells me that in three days I shall be as
well as ever. I have been excited for a year now, and I go to the front
this very afternoon. I am rather thin, and my shirt feels something
like an air-box; but I shall get over all that soon. We are to make an
attack before long, I understand.
* * * * *
I am back in camp. This is the last entry that I shall make in this
note-book for some time to come. I am alarmed a little about Tom. I
think he is going to be sick; he seems excited and feverish, and yet
dull. However, he has brightened up wonderfully since I told him about
the Professor’s intention; and I am not sure but that it was a dreadful
homesickness that oppressed him when I first met him. He won’t see
a doctor; he laughs the idea to scorn, and says he is only tired and
overworked, and that, if I can manage to secure him a little rest, he
will soon be all right. But he is dying to see his mother, he confesses
to me, and I am not surprised to hear it.
I said that this is the last entry I shall make here. I am not sure
now but that these are the last words which I shall ever write. I take
charge of a small expedition to-night, with men whom I have personally
selected for the purpose; and we are to destroy the bridge above here.
It must be done at once. Jackson is near there, and we expect and fear
an attack from him. The work is delicate rather than difficult; but
it is sufficiently dangerous for me to commend my soul to God before I
start upon it. Good-by, little note-book, perhaps forever. If Tom and
I return safe,――and Tom will, I am sure,――why, then, perhaps, I may
tell you all about this coming night’s work; but, if not, you will be
destroyed, unread; and so farewell.