Would the sons of the first families surrender, “Never!” cried a young
lady who sat behind the blinds in Mrs. Catherwood's parlor. It seemed to
her when she stopped to listen for the first guns of the coming battle
that the tumult in her heart would drown their roar.
“But, Jinny,” ventured that Miss Puss Russell who never feared to speak
her mind, “it would be folly for them to fight. The Dutch and Yankees
outnumber them ten to one, and they haven't any powder and bullets.”
“And Camp Jackson is down in a hollow,” said Maude Catherwood,
dejectedly. And yet hopefully, too, for at the thought of bloodshed she
was near to fainting.
“Oh,” exclaimed Virginia, passionately, “I believe you want them to
surrender. I should rather see Clarence dead than giving his sword to a
Yankee.”
At that the other two were silent again, and sat on through an endless
afternoon of uncertainty and hope and dread in the darkened room. Now
and anon Mr. Catherwood's heavy step was heard as he paced the hall.
From time to time they glanced at Virginia, as if to fathom her
thought. She and Puss Russell had come that day to dine with Maude. Mr.
Catherwood's Ben, reeking of the stable, had brought the rumor of the
marching on the camp into the dining-room, and close upon the heels of
this the rumble of the drums and the passing of Sigel's regiment. It was
Virginia who had the presence of mind to slam the blinds in the faces of
the troops, and the crowd had cheered her. It was Virginia who flew to
the piano to play Dixie ere they could get by, to the awe and admiration
of the girls and the delight of Mr. Catherwood who applauded her spirit
despite the trouble which weighed upon him. Once more the crowd had
cheered,--and hesitated. But the Dutch regiment slouched on, impassive,
and the people followed.
Virginia remained at the piano, her mood exalted patriotism, uplifted
in spirit by that grand song. At first she had played it with all her
might. Then she sang it. She laughed in very scorn of the booby soldiers
she had seen. A million of these, with all the firearms in the world,
could not prevail against the flower of the South. Then she had begun
whimsically to sing a verse of a song she had heard the week before, and
suddenly her exaltation was fled, and her fingers left the keys. Gaining
the window, trembling, half-expectant, she flung open a blind.
The troops, the people, were gone, and there alone in the road
stood--Stephen Brice. The others close behind her saw him, too, and Puss
cried out in her surprise. The impression, when the room was dark once
more, was of sternness and sadness,--and of strength. Effaced was the
picture of the plodding recruits with their coarse and ill-fitting
uniforms of blue.
Virginia shut the blinds. Not a word escaped her, nor could they tell
why--they did not dare to question her then. An hour passed, perhaps
two, before the shrill voice of a boy was heard in the street below.
“Camp Jackson has surrendered!”
They heard the patter of his bare feet on the pavement, and the cry
repeated.
“Camp Jackson has surrendered!”
And so the war began for Virginia. Bitter before, now was she on fire.
Close her lips as tightly as she might, the tears forced themselves to
her eyes. The ignominy of it!
How hard it is for us of this age to understand that feeling.
“I do not believe it!” she cried. “I cannot believe it!”
The girls gathered around her, pale and frightened and anxious. Suddenly
courage returned to her, the courage which made Spartans of Southern
women. She ran to the front door. Mr. Catherwood was on the sidewalk,
talking to a breathless man. That man was Mr. Barbo, Colonel Carvel's
book-keeper.
“Yes,” he was saying, “they--they surrendered. There was nothing else
for them to do. They were surrounded and overpowered.”
Mr. Catherwood uttered an oath. But it did not shock Virginia.
“And not a shot fired?” he said.
“And not a shot fired?” Virginia repeated, mechanically. Both men
turned. Mr. Barbo took off his hat.
“No, ma'am.”
“Oh, how could they!” exclaimed Virginia.
Her words seemed to arouse Mr. Catherwood from a kind of stupor. He
turned, and took her hand.
“Virginia, we shall make them smart for this yet, My God!” he cried,
“what have I done that my son should be a traitor, in arms against his
own brother fighting for his people? To think that a Catherwood should
be with the Yankees! You, Ben,” he shouted, suddenly perceiving an
object for his anger. “What do you mean by coming out of the yard? By
G-d, I'll have you whipped. I'll show you niggers whether you're to be
free or not.”
And Mr. Catherwood was a good man, who treated his servants well.
Suddenly he dropped Virginia's hand and ran westward down the hill. Well
that she could not see beyond the second rise.
Let us go there--to the camp. Let us stand on the little mound at
the northeast of it, on the Olive Street Road, whence Captain Lyon's
artillery commands it. What a change from yesterday! Davis Avenue is
no longer a fashionable promenade, flashing with bright dresses. Those
quiet men in blue, who are standing beside the arms of the state troops,
stacked and surrendered, are United States regulars. They have been in
Kansas, and are used to scenes of this sort.
The five Hessian regiments have surrounded the camp. Each commander
has obeyed the master mind of his chief, who has calculated the time
of marching with precision. Here, at the western gate, Colonel Blair's
regiment is in open order. See the prisoners taking their places between
the ranks, some smiling, as if to say all is not over yet; some with
heads hung down, in sulky shame. Still others, who are true to the
Union, openly relieved. But who is this officer breaking his sword to
bits against the fence, rather than surrender it to a Yankee? Listen to
the crowd as they cheer him. Listen to the epithets and vile names which
they hurl at the stolid blue line of the victors, “Mudsills!” “Negro
Worshippers.”
Yes, the crowd is there, seething with conflicting passions. Men with
brows bent and fists clenched, yelling excitedly. Others pushing, and
eager to see,--there in curiosity only. And, alas, women and children
by the score, as if what they looked upon were not war, but a parade,
a spectacle. As the gray uniforms file out of the gate, the crowd has
become a mob, now flowing back into the fields on each side of the road,
now pressing forward vindictively until stopped by the sergeants and
corporals. Listen to them calling to sons, and brothers, and husbands in
gray! See, there is a woman who spits in a soldier's face!
Throughout it all, the officers sit their horses, unmoved. A man on the
bank above draws a pistol and aims at a captain. A German private steps
from the ranks, forgetful of discipline, and points at the man, who is
cursing the captain's name. The captain, imperturbable, orders his man
back to his place. And the man does not shoot--yet.
Now are the prisoners of that regiment all in place between the two
files of it. A band (one of those which played lightsome music on the
birthday of the camp) is marched around to the head of the column. The
regiment with its freight moves on to make place for a battalion of
regulars, amid imprecations and cries of “Hurrah for Jeff Davis!” and
“Damn the Dutch! Kill the Hessians!”
Stephen Brice stood among the people in Lindell's Grove, looking up at
the troops on the road, which was on an embankment. Through the rows of
faces he had searched in vain for one. His motive he did not attempt
to fathom--in truth, he was not conscious at the time of any motive. He
heard the name shouted at the gate.
“Here they are,--the dragoons! Three cheers for Colfax! Down with the
Yankees!”
A storm of cheers and hisses followed. Dismounted, at the head of his
small following, the young Captain walked erect. He did not seem to hear
the cheers. His face was set, and he held his gloved hand over the place
where his sword had been, as if over a wound. On his features, in his
attitude, was stamped the undying determination of the South. How those
thoroughbreds of the Cavaliers showed it! Pain they took lightly. The
fire of humiliation burned, but could not destroy their indomitable
spirit. They were the first of their people in the field, and the last
to leave it. Historians may say that the classes of the South caused the
war; they cannot say that they did not take upon themselves the greatest
burden of the suffering.
Twice that day was the future revealed to Stephen. Once as he stood
on the hill-crest, when he had seen a girl in crimson and white in
a window,--in her face. And now again he read it in the face of her
cousin. It was as if he had seen unrolled the years of suffering that
were to come.
In that moment of deep bitterness his reason wavered. What if the South
should win? Surely there was no such feeling in the North as these
people betrayed. That most dangerous of gifts, the seeing of two
sides of a quarrel, had been given him. He saw the Southern view. He
sympathized with the Southern people. They had befriended him in his
poverty. Why had he not been born, like Clarence Colfax, the owner of a
large plantation, the believer in the divine right of his race to rule?
Then this girl who haunted his thoughts! Would that his path had been as
straight, his duty as easy, as that of the handsome young Captain.
Presently these thoughts were distracted by the sight of a back
strangely familiar. The back belonged to a gentleman who was
energetically climbing the embankment in front of him, on the top
of which Major Sexton, a regular, army officer, sat his horse. The
gentleman was pulling a small boy after him by one hand, and held a
newspaper tightly rolled in the other. Stephen smiled to himself when it
came over him that this gentleman was none other than that Mr. William
T. Sherman he had met in the street car the day before. Somehow Stephen
was fascinated by the decision and energy of Mr. Sherman's slightest
movements. He gave Major Saxton a salute, quick and genial. Then, almost
with one motion he unrolled the newspaper, pointed to a paragraph, and
handed it to the officer. Major Saxton was still reading when a drunken
ruffian clambered up the bank behind them and attempted to pass through
the lines. The column began to move forward. Mr. Sherman slid down the
bank with his boy into the grove beside Stephen. Suddenly there was a
struggle. A corporal pitched the drunkard backwards over the bank, and
he rolled at Mr. Sherman's feet. With a curse, he picked himself up,
fumbling in his pocket. There was a flash, and as the smoke rolled from
before his eyes, Stephen saw a man of a German regiment stagger and
fall.
It was the signal for a rattle of shots. Stones and bricks filled the
air, and were heard striking steel and flesh in the ranks. The regiment
quivered,--then halted at the loud command of the officers, and the
ranks faced out with level guns, Stephen reached for Mr. Sherman's boy,
but a gentleman had already thrown him and was covering his body.
He contrived to throw down a woman standing beside him before the
mini-balls swished over their heads, and the leaves and branches began
to fall. Between the popping of the shots sounded the shrieks of wounded
women and children, the groans and curses of men, and the stampeding of
hundreds.
“Lie down, Brice! For God's sake lie down!” Mr. Sherman cried.
He was about to obey when a young; man, small and agile, ran past him
from behind, heedless of the panic. Stopping at the foot of the bank he
dropped on one knee, resting his revolver in the hollow of his left
arm. It, was Jack Brinsmade. At the same time two of the soldiers above
lowered their barrels to cover him. Then smoke hid the scene. When it
rolled away, Brinsmade lay on the ground. He staggered to his feet with
an oath, and confronted a young man who was hatless, and upon whose
forehead was burned a black powder mark.
“Curse you!” he cried, reaching out wildly, “curse you, you d--d Yankee.
I'll teach you to fight!”
Maddened, he made a rush at Stephen's throat. But Stephen seized his
hands and bent them down, and held them firmly while he kicked and
struggled.
“Curse you!” he panted; “curse you, you let me go and I'll kill
you,--you Yankee upstart!”
But Stephen held on. Brinsmade became more and more frantic. One of the
officers, seeing the struggle, started down the bank, was reviled, and
hesitated. At that moment Major Sherman came between them.
“Let him go, Brice,” he said, in a tone of command. Stephen did as he
was bid. Whereupon Brinsmade made a dash for his pistol on the ground.
Mr. Sherman was before him.
“Now see here, Jack,” he said, picking it up, “I don't want to shoot
you, but I may have to. That young man saved your life at the risk of
his own. If that fool Dutchman had had a ball in his gun instead of a
wad, Mr. Brice would have been killed.”
A strange thing happened. Brinsmade took one long look at Stephen,
turned on his heel, and walked off rapidly through the grove. And it may
be added that for some years after he was not seen in St. Louis.
For a moment the other two stood staring after him. Then Mr. Sherman
took his boy by the hand.
“Mr. Brice,” he said, “I've seen a few things done in my life, but
nothing better than this. Perhaps the day may come when you and I may
meet in the army. They don't seem to think much of us now,” he added,
smiling, “but we may be of use to 'em later. If ever I can serve you,
Mr. Brice, I beg you to call on me.”
Stephen stammered his acknowledgments. And Mr. Sherman, nodding his head
vigorously, went away southward through the grove, toward Market Street.
The column was moving on. The dead were being laid in carriages, and the
wounded tended by such physicians as chanced to be on the spot. Stephen,
dazed at what had happened, took up the march to town. He strode faster
than the regiments with their load of prisoners, and presently he found
himself abreast the little file of dragoons who were guarded by some of
Blair's men. It was then that he discovered that the prisoners' band in
front was playing “Dixie.”
They are climbing the second hill, and are coming now to the fringe
of new residences which the rich citizens have built. Some of them are
closed and dark. In the windows and on the steps of others women are
crying or waving handkerchiefs and calling out to the prisoners, some
of whom are gay, and others sullen. A distracted father tries to break
through the ranks and rescue his son. Ah, here is the Catherwood house.
That is open. Mrs. Catherwood, with her hand on her husband's arm, with
red eyes, is scanning those faces for the sight of George.
Will he ever come back to her? Will the Yankees murder him for treason,
or send him North to languish the rest of his life? No, she will not
go inside. She must see him. She will not faint, though Mrs. James has,
across the street, and is even now being carried into the house. Few
of us can see into the hearts of those women that day, and speak of the
suffering there.
Near the head of Mr. Blair's regiment is Tom. His face is cast down as
he passes the house from which he is banished. Nor do father, or mother,
or sister in their agony make any sound or sign. George is coming. The
welcome and the mourning and the tears are all for him.
The band is playing “Dixie” once more. George is coming, and some one
else. The girls are standing in a knot bend the old people, dry-eyed,
their handkerchiefs in their hands. Some of the prisoners take off their
hats and smile at the young lady with the chiselled features and brown
hair, who wears the red and white of the South as if she were born to
them. Her eyes are searching. Ah, at last she sees him, walking erect
at the head of his dragoons. He gives her one look of entreaty, and that
smile which should have won her heart long ago. As if by common consent
the heads of the troopers are uncovered before her. How bravely she
waves at them until they are gone down the street! Then only do her eyes
fill with tears, and she passes into the house.
Had she waited, she might have seen a solitary figure leaving the line
of march and striding across to Pine Street.
That night the sluices of the heavens were opened, and the blood was
washed from the grass in Lindell Grove. The rain descended in floods
on the distracted city, and the great river rose and flung brush from
Minnesota forests high up on the stones of the levee. Down in the long
barracks weary recruits, who had stood and marched all the day long,
went supperless to their hard pallets.
Government fare was hard. Many a boy, prisoner or volunteer, sobbed
himself to sleep in the darkness. All were prisoners alike, prisoners
of war. Sobbed themselves to sleep, to dream of the dear homes that were
here within sight and sound of them, and to which they were powerless to
go. Sisters, and mothers, and wives were there, beyond the rain, holding
out arms to them.
Is war a thing to stir the blood? Ay, while the day lasts. But what of
the long nights when husband and wife have lain side by side? What of
the children who ask piteously where their father is going, and who are
gathered by a sobbing mother to her breast? Where is the picture of that
last breakfast at home? So in the midst of the cheer which is saddest in
life comes the thought that, just one year ago, he who is the staff
of the house was wont to sit down just so merrily to his morning meal,
before going to work in the office. Why had they not thanked God on
their knees for peace while they had it?
See the brave little wife waiting on the porch of her home for him to go
by. The sun shines, and the grass is green on the little plot, and the
geraniums red. Last spring she was sewing here with a song on her lips,
watching for him to turn the corner as he came back to dinner. But
now! Hark! Was that the beat of the drums? Or was it thunder? Her good
neighbors, the doctor and his wife, come in at the little gate to cheer
her. She does not hear them. Why does God mock her with sunlight and
with friends?
Tramp, tramp, tramp! They are here. Now the band is blaring. That is his
company. And that is his dear face, the second from the end. Will she
ever see it again? Look, he is smiling bravely, as if to say a thousand
tender things. “Will, are the flannels in your knapsack? You have not
forgotten that medicine for your cough?” What courage sublime is that
which lets her wave at him? Well for you, little woman, that you cannot
see the faces of the good doctor and his wife behind you. Oh, those guns
of Sumter, how they roar in your head! Ay, and will roar again, through
forty years of widowhood!
Mrs. Brice was in the little parlor that Friday night, listening to the
cry of the rain outside. Some thoughts such as these distracted her. Why
should she be happy, and other mothers miserable? The day of reckoning
for her happiness must surely come, when she must kiss Stephen a brave
farewell and give him to his country. For the sins of the fathers are
visited on the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them
that hate Him who is the Ruler of all things.
The bell rang, and Stephen went to the door. He was startled to see Mr.
Brinsmade. That gentleman was suddenly aged, and his clothes were wet
and spattered with mud. He sank into a chair, but refused the spirits
and water which Mrs. Brice offered him in her alarm.
“Stephen,” he said, “I have been searching the city for John. Did you
see him at Camp Jackson--was he hurt?”
“I think not, sir,” Stephen answered, with clear eyes.
“I saw him walking southward after the firing was all over.”
“Thank God,” exclaimed Mr. Brinsmade, fervently. “If you will excuse me,
madam, I shall hurry to tell my wife and daughter. I have been able to
find no one who saw him.”
As he went out he glanced at Stephen's forehead. But for once in his
life, Mr. Brinsmade was too much agitated to inquire about the pain of
another.
“Stephen, you did not tell me that you saw John,” said his mother, when
the door was closed.