_"At first happy news came, in gay letters moiled
With my kisses,--of camp life and glory."_
Browning.
The fall and winter wore on. Spring was near. Griffith wrote to
Katherine daily and mailed his letters whenever and wherever it was
possible. His personal reports of progress went with regularity to
Mr. Lincoln, and an occasional note of congratulation or thanks or
encouragement came to him in reply. Meantime the Army of the Potomac
did little but wait, and the armies of the South and West were active.
Letters from the boys came to Katherine with irregular regularity. Those
from Howard were always brief and full of an irresponsible gurgle of fun
and heroics. He had been in two or three small fights, and wrote of them
as if he had enjoyed an outing on a pleasure excursion. He said in one
that when he was on picket duty he had "swapped lies and grub" with the
picket on the other side. "He tried to stuff me with a lot of fiction
about the strength of their force--said they had not less than ninety
thousand men in front of us ready to lick us in the morning. I told him
that I'd just happened by accident to hear our roll called, and it took
two days and a night to read the names of our officers alone. He was a
crack liar but I reckon we got off about even. He had the worst old
gun I ever saw. It came out of the ark. He admired mine, and it was a
tip-top Enfield, but I told him it was just an old borrowed thing (the
last of which was true) and that my own was nearly as big as fifty of
it and would shoot ten miles. He kicked at me and laughed, but I didn't
tell him I was a gunner in a battery. A battery is a jim-dandy of a
place. I get to ride all the time. That suits me right down to the
ground. I haven't had a scratch yet and I'm not afraid I'll get one."
His letters rattled on in some such fashion whenever he remembered or
exerted himself enough to write at all. They developed in slang as the
months went by, and Katherine smiled and sighed.
Beverly's letters kept up their old tone, and he tried in every way he
could think of, to cheer his mother. He had wholly recovered, he said,
from his wounds, and was now with Grant in Tennessee. He described the
long moss on the trees, and wrote: "We are moving now toward Corinth.
That is the objective point. I was transferred a month ago to Grant's
army, and so, unless Roy has been transferred since you wrote me last,
I'll get to see him in a few days, I hope. That will be good. It seems
as if we boys had traveled a pretty long road in the matter of age and
experience since we were at home together. I'm glad to hear of Roy's
promotion--the handsome fellow! And so it was for conspicuous bravery at
Fort Donaldson, was it? Good! Good! Ah, we can be proud of Roy, mother.
And he got only a little flesh-wound in it all, and did not have to go
to the hospital at all! What lucky dogs we boys are, to be sure. I
hope father is home with you by this time. Of course, I understand the
ominous silence and inaction in Virginia--in the army of the Potomac--as
only a few of us can. But I do hope that father will do all the
President asked of him, and get home before they undertake to act upon
the information he is enabling them to gather. Yes, yes, mother, I know
how terribly hard he took it, and how silently heroic he is and will
be, God bless him! But after all, mother mine, _your_ part is about the
hardest of all to bear. I think of that more and more! To sit and wait!
To silently sit and wait for you know not what. To take no active part!
Oh, the heroic patience and endurance that must take! But don't worry
about us. The fact is that we are not in half so much danger as you
think. When one comes to know how few, after all, of the millions of
rounds of ammunition that are fired, ever find their mark in human
flesh, one can face them pretty courageously. We were talking it over in
camp the other day--a lot of the officers. I really had had no idea what
a safe place a battle-field is. It seems that out of 7260 balls fired,
only ten hit anybody, and only one of those are serious or fatal! Just
look at the chances a fellow has. Why he doesn't seem to be in much more
danger than he is that a brick will fall on him as he walks the streets,
or that he'll slip and break his neck on the ice. Doesn't seem so very
dangerous, now, does it, mother? Now, I want you to remember those
figures, for they are correct. Then you remember that I got my
three--which is more than my share of balls, in the very first fight I
was in; so you see _I'm_ not likely to get any more. Roy had one, so his
chance to catch any more is poor; and as for Howard--well, somehow or
other, I never feel the least anxiety about Howard. He'd pull through
a knot-hole if the knot was still in it. He is so irresistibly,
irresponsibly, recklessly indifferent. But at all events, mother, don't
worry too much. My only anxiety, now, is to hear that father is at
home again; both for your sake and for his. Ye gods! what a terrific
sacrifice the President demanded of him! And what a stubborn heroism it
has taken to make father do it,--with his temperament and feelings,--a
heroism and patriotism beyond even the comprehension of most men. Give
little Margaret the enclosed note, please. I don't know that she can
read it, but I wrote it as plain as I could on this shingle. We are
moving pretty steadily now. We stopped to-day, to let the supplies catch
up. We start again in an hour or so. We are all ready now.
"I never cease to be glad that you have old aunt Judy, and that she
continues such a comfort,--and trial. Give her my love, and tell the
gentle and buxom Rosanna, that if she were in this part of the country
she'd 'see the loikes av me' at every turn. Soldiers are thicker than
peas in a pod, and she'd not have 'to go fur t' foind the loikes av me'
multiplied by ten thousand, all of whom 'become their soger close' quite
as truly as did the undersigned when the admiration of Rosanna for me
blossomed forth in such eloquence and elaboration of diction. This seems
rather a frivolous letter; but I want you to keep up good heart, little
mother. It won't--it can't--last much longer, and just as soon as father
gets home, I, for one, shall feel quite easy again. I hope he is there
by this time, with his part all done. The last letter I got from him, he
thought it would not take much longer to do all they expected him to
do, now. Dear old father! His last letter to me was an inspiration and a
sermon, in living (as he is), without the least bit of preaching in it.
He doesn't need to preach. He lives far better than any creed or than
any religion; but----"
Katherine broke off and pondered. Was Beverly still reading Thomas
Paine? If he were to be killed! What did he believe? "Lives far better
than any creed or than any religion," what did he mean? Had Beverly
become openly an unbeliever in creeds and religions? The thought almost
froze her blood. She fell upon her knees and wept and prayed--not for
her son's life to be spared from the bullets of the enemy, as was her
habit, but that the "shafts of the destroyer" might spare his soul! Her
cup of anxiety and sorrow was embittered and made to overflow by
the sincerity of a belief which was so simple, and knew so little of
evasion, that the bottomless pit did, indeed, yawn before her for this
son of her youth.
"Save him! save him!" she moaned aloud, "if not from death, at least
from destruction, oh, God of my salvation!"
The terrors which should follow unbelief had been long ago, in her rigid
Presbyterian home, made so much a part of her very nature, that the
simple, cheerful, happy side of Griffith's religion, which had been
uppermost all these years, had not even yet, in cases of unusual stress,
obliterated the horror of Katherine's literal belief in and fear of
an awful hell, and a vengeance-visiting God for those who slighted or
questioned the justice or truth of a cruel revelation of Him. A great
and haunting fear for Beverly's soul eclipsed her fear for his life, and
Katherine's religion added terrors to the war that were more real and
dark and fearful than the real horrors that are a natural and legitimate
part of a cruel, civil contest. The "comforts," to a loving heart and
a clear head, of such a religion, were vague and shadowy; indeed. Its
certain and awful threats were like a flaming sword of wrath ever before
her eyes. To those who could evade the personal application of the
tenets of their faith, who could accept or reject at will the doctrines
they professed, who could wear as an easy garment the parts they liked,
and slip from their shoulders the features of their "revelation" to
which the condition of their own loved ones did not respond, there might
be comfort. But to Katherine there was none. Her faith was so real and
firm, that it did not doubt a literal damnation, nor could she read
from under the decree those she loved, simply because she loved them.
An eternal decree of suffering hung over her first-born, the idol of her
soul! The awful burden of her religion was almost more than she could
bear in these days of fear and loneliness, stimulated as it was by the
ever-present threat and shadow of death for the lamb that had strayed,
even so little, from the orthodox fold. Her days were doubly burdened by
the new anxiety, shadowed by the real, and haunted by the agony of fear
for the imaginary, danger to her son. In her dreams, that night, she
saw him stand before an angry and avenging God, and she awoke in a very
panic of delirium and mental anguish. Great beads of moisture stood upon
her brow. "Save him! save him! oh, God of our salvation!" she cried out,
and little Margaret stirred uneasily in her bed.
"Wat dat, honey? Wat dat yoh say, Mis' Kate!" called out Judy from her
cot in the next room. "Did yoh call me, Mis' Kate?"
"No, no, aunt Judy, I had a bad dream. I----"
The old woman hobbled in. "Now, des look aheah, honey, des yoh stop that
kine er dreams, now. Dey ain't no uste t' nobody, an' dey des makes
bad wuk all de way 'roun'. An' 'sides dat dey ain't got no sense to'em,
nohow." Poor old aunt Judy, her philosophy was deeper and truer than she
knew or than her mistress suspected; but the sound of her kind old voice
comforted Katherine as no philosophy could.
"Dar now, honey, yoh des lay right down dar'n' go to sleep agin. Yoah
ole aunt Judy des gwine ter stay right heah twell yoah skeer gits gone.
Dar now, dar now, honey, dem kine er dreams is all foolishness. Dey is
dat! Now, I gwine ter set heah an' yoh des whorl in an' dream sompin'
good 'bout Mos Grif, dat's what you do! Aunt Judy gwine ter set right
heah by de bed. Dar now, honey! Dar now, go sleep."