Four years have passed since our story opened, and the autumn of 1864 is
upon us. For more than three years Virginia has been devastated by war.
Most of Leicester’s pleasant homes have been broken up. My grandfather,
however, trusting to his gray hairs, had remained at Elmington. The
Poythresses were refugees in Richmond. Charley, who was now a major,
commanding a battalion of artillery in the army defending Richmond, had,
two months before, been taken in an ambulance-wagon to Mr. Carter’s. A
bullet had passed through his body, but he was now convalescent. Any
bright morning you might see him sunning himself in the garden. The
house was crowded to overflowing with refugee relatives and friends from
the invaded districts.
And illumined by a baby.
“He was born the very day I was wounded,” said Charley. “I remember how
anxious I was to see him before I died.”
“I knew you wouldn’t die,” said Alice; “and you didn’t!”
“I am here,” said Charley.
So, fair reader, Charley, in the last week of September, 1864, was a
father two months old. As for the baby (and I hereby set the fashion of
introducing one or more into every romance[1]), his mother had already
discovered whom he was like. He was a Carter, every inch of him,
especially his nose. But he had his father’s sense of humor,—there was
not the slightest doubt of _that_. For when Charley, who, in speaking to
the infant, always alluded to himself in those words,—when Charley,
chucking him gingerly under the chin, would ask him what he thought of
his venerable p-p-p-p-pop, he could be seen to smile, with the naked
eye. To smile that jerky, sudden-spreading, sudden-shrinking smile of
babyhood. You see it,—’tis gone! Ah, can it be that even then we dimly
discern how serious a world this is to be born into!
Major Frobisher’s battalion was in front of Richmond. The Don and I were
under General Jubal Early, in the lower valley,—he a captain in command
of the skirmishers of the Stonewall Division, I a staff-officer of the
same rank.
I know nothing which makes one’s morning paper more interesting than the
news of a great battle. It’s nice to read, between sips of coffee, how
the grape and canister mowed ’em down; and the flashing of sabres is
most picturesque, and bayonets glitter delightfully, in the columns of a
well-printed journal. Taking a hand in it—that’s different. Then the
bodily discomfort and mental inanition of camp-life. Thinking is
impossible. This, perhaps, does not bear hard upon professionals, with
whom, for the most part, abstention from all forms of thought is normal
and persistent; but to a civilian, accustomed to give his faculties
daily exercise, the routine-life of a soldier is an artesian bore. So,
at least, I found it. No doubt, with us, the ever-present consciousness
that we were enormously outnumbered made a difference. One boy, attacked
by three or four, may be plucky. It is rather too much to expect him to
be gay. I was not gay.
It was different with our friend, Captain Smith. He was one of the
half-dozen men I knew in those days who actually rejoiced in war. _He
longed for death_, my lovely and romantic reader is anxious to be told;
but I am sorry I cannot give her any proofs of this. It was Attila’s
_gaudium certaminis_ that inspired him. He was never tired of talking of
war, which, with Hobbes, he held to be the natural state of man. At any
rate, said he, one day, drawing forth his Iliad and tapping it
affectionately, they have been hard at it some time.
This little volume was on its last legs. He had read it to pieces, and
could recite page after page of it in the original. How closely, he
would say, we skirmishers resemble the forefighters of Homer. He never
spoke of his own men save as Myrmidons.
He had become an ardent student, too, of the art of war, and had Dumont
and Jomini at his fingers’ ends. Indeed, I am convinced that he would
have risen to high rank had he not begun, and for two years remained, a
private in the ranks. At the time of which we speak, his capacity and
courage were beginning to attract attention; and more than one general
officer looked upon Captain Smith as a man destined to rise high.
It remains for me to say that he and Mary have never met since that
farewell letter. What his feelings are towards her I can only
conjecture; for, although he frequently speaks of the old times, her
name never passes his lips. An analytical writer could tell you every
thought that had crossed his mind during all these years, and, in twenty
pages of Insight, work him up, by slow degrees, from a state of tranquil
bliss to one of tumultuous jimjams. But, if you wish to know what my
characters feel and think, you must listen to what they say, and see
what they do; which I find is the only way I have of judging of people
in real life. I should say, therefore (for guessing is inexpensive),
that the captain’s lips were sealed, either by deep, sorrowing love, or
else by implacable resentment. Choose for yourself, fair reader. I told
you, long ago, that this book is but the record of things seen or heard
by Charley, or by Alice, supplemented occasionally by facts which
chanced to fall under my own observation. Even where I seemed to play
analytical, through those weary chapters touching Mary’s religious
misgivings, I was not swerving from the line I had laid down. Every word
therein written down is from the lips of Mary herself, as reported to me
by Alice. Now, Charley tells me that never once did Captain Smith
mention Mary’s name, even to him. How, then, am I to know what were his
feelings towards her? I remember, indeed, that once a young lieutenant
of his, returning from furlough, greeted him with warmth; adding, almost
with his first breath, that he had met a friend of his—a lady—in
Richmond,—Miss Rolfe—Leigh Street—I spent an evening there—we talked
a great deal of you—
The captain touched the visor of his cap.
Here was a chance of finding out what he thought!
“She said she—she said she—”
The young fellow had met a siren during his furlough, and fallen
horribly in love himself (as he told me, a few moments afterwards, in a
burst of confidence), and would willingly have invented a tender phrase
for the consolation of his captain, whom he adored; but truth forbade.
“She said she was glad to hear you were well.”
“Miss Rolfe is very kind,” replied the captain, again touching his cap.
The young officer glanced at his chief, and instantly fell back upon the
weather. “I think there is a storm brewing,” he faltered.
“Very likely,” replied the captain of the Myrmidons.
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[1] Is this the language of a bachelor?—_Ed._