You do not like this Lizzy Gurney? I know. There are a dozen healthy
girls in that country-town whose histories would have been pleasanter to
write and to read. I chose hers purposely. I chose a bilious, morbid
woman to talk to you of, because American women are bilious and morbid.
Men all cling desperately to the old book-type of women, delicate,
sunny, helpless. I confess to even a man's hungry partiality for
them,--these roses of humanity, their genus and species emphasized by
but the faintest differing pungency of temper and common sense,--mere
crumpling of the rose-leaves. But how many of them do you meet on the
street?
McKinstry (with most men) kept this ideal in his brain, and bestowed it
on every woman in a street-car possessed of soft eyes, gaiter-boots, and
a blush. Dr. Blecker (with all women) saw through that mask, and knew
them as they are. He knew there was no more prurient sign of the age of
groping and essay in which we live than the unrest and diseased brains
of its women.
Lizzy Gurney was but like nine-tenths of the unmarried young girls of
the Northern States; there was some inactive, dumb power within,--she
called it genius; there was a consciousness that with a man's body she
would have been more of a man than her brother; there was, stronger than
all, the unconquerable craving of Nature for a husband's and child's
love,--she, powerless. So it found vent in this girl, as in the others,
in perpetual self-analyzing, in an hysteric clinging to one creed after
another,--in embracing the chimera of the Woman's-Rights prophets with
her brain, and thrusting it aside with her heart: after a while, to
lapse all into a marriage, made in heaven or hell, as the case might be.
Dr. Blecker used no delicate euphuism in talking of women, which, maybe,
was as well. He knew, that, more than men, though quietly, they are
facing the problem of their lives, their unused powers, their sham
marriages, and speak of these things to their own souls with strong,
plebeian words. So much his Northern education opened his eyes to see,
but he stopped there; if he had been a clear-sighted truth-seeker, he
would have known that some day the problem would be solved, and by no
foul Free Love-ism. But Paul was enough Southerner by birth to shrink
from all inquiry or disquiet in women. If there were any problem of life
for them, Grey Gurney held it solved in her nature: that was all he
cared to know. Did she?
After the regiment was gone, she went into the old work,--cooking,
sewing, nursing Pen. Very little of her brain or heart was needed for
that; the heavy surplus lay dormant. No matter; God knew. Jesus waited
thirty years in a carpenter's shop before He began His work,--to teach
_us_ to wait: hardest lesson of all. Grey understood that well. Not only
at night or morning, but through the day, at the machine, or singing
songs to Pen, she used to tell her story over and over to this Jesus,
her Elder Brother, as she loved to call Him: _He_ would not be tired of
hearing it, how happy she was,--she knew. She did not often speak of the
war to Him,--knowing how stupid she was, near-sighted, apt to be
prejudiced,--afraid to pray for one side or the other, there was such
bitter wrong on both; she knew it all lay in His hand, though; so she
was dumb, only saying, "_He_ knows." But for herself, out of the need of
her woman's nature, she used to say, "I can do more than I do here. Give
me room, Lord. Let me be Paul Blecker's wife, for I love him." She
blushed, when even praying that silently in her heart. Then she used to
sing gayer songs, and have a good romp with the children and Pen in the
evenings, being so sure it would all come right. How, nobody could see:
who could keep this house up, with the ten hungry mouths, if she were
gone? But she only changed the song to an earnest hearty hymn, with the
thought of that. It would come at last: _He_ knew.
Was the problem solved in her?
It being so sure a thing to her that this was one day to be, she began
in a shy way to prepare for it,--after the day's work was done to the
last stitch, taking from the bottom of her work-basket certain pieces of
muslin that fitted herself, and sewing on them in the quiet of her own
room. She did not sing when she worked at these; her cheeks burned,
though, and there was a happy shining in her eyes bright enough for
tears.
Sitting, sewing there, when that July night came, she had no prescience
that her trial day was at hand: for to stoop-shouldered women over
machines, as well as to Job, a trial day does come, when Satan obtains
leave in heaven to work his will on them, straining the fibre they are
made of, that God may see what work they are fit for in the lives to
come. This was the way it came to the girl. That morning, when she was
stretching out some muslin to bleach in a light summer shower, there was
a skirmish down yonder in among some of the low coal-hills along the
Shenandoah, and half a dozen men were brought wounded in to Harper's
Ferry. There was no hospital there then; one of the half-burnt
Government offices was used for the purpose; and as the surgeon at that
post, Dr. Blecker, was one of the wounded, young Dr. Nott came over from
the next camp to see to them. His first cases: he had opened an office
only for six months, out in Portage, Ohio, before he got into the army;
in those six months he played chess principally, and did the poetry for
the weekly paper,--his tastes being innocent: the war has been a grand
outlet into a career for doctors and chaplains of that calibre. Dr.
Nott, coming into the low arsenal-room that night, stopped to brush the
clay off his trousers before going his rounds, and to whisk the attar of
rose from his handkerchief. "No fever? All wounds?" of the orderly who
carried the flaring tallow candle.
All wounds: few of them, but those desperate. Even the vapid eyes of
Nott grew grave before he was through, and he ceased tipping on his
toes, and tittering: he was a good-hearted fellow, at bottom, growing
silent altogether when he came to operate on the surgeon, who had waited
until the last. "The ball is out, Dr. Blecker,"--looking up at length,
but not meeting the wounded man's eye.
"I know. Cross the bandage now. You'll send a despatch for me, Nott?
There is some one I want to see, before----I'll hold out two or three
days?"
"Pooh, pooh! Not so bad as that. We'll hope at least, Dr. Blecker, not
so bad as that. I've paper and pencil here." So Dr. Blecker sent the
despatch.
It was a hot July night, soon after the seven days' slaughter at
Richmond. You remember how the air for weeks after that lay torpid with
a suppressed heat,--as though the very earth held her breath to hear the
sharp tidings of death. It never was fully told aloud,--whispered
only,--and even that hoarse whisper soon died out. We were growing used
to the taste of blood by that time, in North and South, like bulls in a
Spanish arena. This night, and in one or two following it, the ashy
sultriness overhead was hint of some latent storm. It is one of the vats
of the world where storms are brewed,--Harper's Ferry: stagnant
mountain-air shut in by circling peaks whose edges cut into the sky; the
sun looking straight down with a torrid compelling eye into the water
all the day long, until at evening it goes wearily up to him in a pale
sigh of mist, lingering to rest and say good-bye among the wooded sides
of the hills. Our hill-storms are generally bred there: it was not
without a certain meaning that the political cloud took its rise in this
town, whose thunder has shaken the continent with its bruit.
Paul Blecker lay by a window: he could see the tempest gathering for
days: it was a stimulus that pleased him well. Death, or that nearness
to it which his wound had brought, fired his brain with a rare life,
like some wine of the old gods. The earth-life cleared to him, so tired
he grew then of paltry words and thoughts, standing closer to the inner
real truth of things. So, when he had said to the only creature who
cared for him, "They say I will not live, come and stay with me," he
never had doubted, as a more vulgar man might have done, that she would
come,--never doubted either, that, if it were true that he should die,
she would come again after him some day, to work and love yonder with
him,--his wife. Nature sends this calmness, quiet reliance on the real
verities of life, down there into that border-ground of death,--kind, as
is her wont to be. When the third day was near its close, he knew she
would come that night; half smiling to himself, as he thought of what an
ignorant, scared traveller she would be; wishing he could have seen her
bear down all difficulties in that turbulent house with her child-like
"He wants me,--I must go." How kind people would be to her on the road,
hearing her uncertain timid voice! Why, that woman might pass through
the whole army, even Blenker's division, unscathed: no roughness could
touch her, remembering the loving trust in her little freckled face, and
how innocently her soul looked out of her hazel eyes. He used to call
her Una sometimes: it was the only pet name he gave her. She was in the
Virginia mountains now. If he could but have been with her when she
first saw them! She would understand there why God took his prophets up
into the heights when He would talk to them.
So thinking vaguely, but always of her, not of the fate that waited him,
if he should die. Literally, the woman was dearer to him than his own
soul.
The room was low-ceiled, but broad, with windows opening on each side.
Overhead the light broke in through broken chinks in the rafters,--the
house being, in fact, but a ruin.
A dozen low cots were scattered about the bare floor: on one a man lay
dead, ready for burial in the morning; on the others the men who were
wounded with him, bearing trouble cheerfully enough, trying, some of
them, to hum a chorus to "We're marching along," which the sentry sang
below.
The room was dark: he was glad of that; when she came, she could not see
his altered face: only a dull sconce spattered at one end, under which
an orderly nodded over a dirty game of solitaire.
Outside, he could see the reddish shadow of the sky on the mountains: a
dark shadow, making the unending forests look like dusky battalions of
giants scaling the heights. Below, the great tide of water swelled and
frothed angrily, trying to bury and hide the traces of the battles
fought on its shore: ruined bridges, masses of masonry, blackened beams
of cars and engines. One might fancy that Nature, in her grand
temperance, was ashamed of man's petty rage, and was striving to hide it
even from himself. Laurel and sumach bushes were thrusting green foliage
and maroon velvet flowers over the sand ledges on the rock where the
Confederate cannon had been placed; and even over the great masses of
burnt brick and granite that choked the valley, the delicate moss,
undaunted and indefatigable, was beginning to work its veiling way. Near
him he saw a small square building, uninjured,--the one in which John
Brown had been held prisoner: the Federal troops used it as a
guard-house now for captured Confederates.
One of these men, a guerrilla, being sick, had been brought in to the
hospital, and lay in the bed next to Blecker's,--a raw-boned,
wooden-faced man, with oiled yellow whiskers, and cold, gray, sensual
eye: complaining incessantly in a whining voice,--a treacherous humbug
of a voice, Blecker fancied: it irritated him.
"Move that man's bed away from mine to-morrow," he said to the nurse
that evening. "If I must die, let me hear something at the last that has
grit in it."
He heard the man curse him; but even that was softly done.
The storm was gathering slowly. Low, sharp gusts of wind crept along the
ground at intervals, curdling the surface of the water, shivering the
grass: far-off moans in the mountain-passes, beyond the Maryland
Heights, heard in the dead silence: abrupt frightened tremors in the
near bushes and tree-tops, then the endless forests swaying with a
sullen roar. The valley darkened quickly into night; a pale greenish
light, faint and fierce, began to flash in the north.
"Thunder-storm coming," said the sleepy orderly, Sam, coming closer to
fasten the window.
"Let it be open," said Blecker, trying nervously to rise on one arm. "It
is ten o'clock. I must hear the train come in."
The man turned away, stopping by the bed of the prisoner to gossip
awhile before going down to camp. He thought, as they talked in a
desultory way, as men do, thrown together in the army, of who and what
they had been, that the Yankee doctor listened attentively, starting
forward, and throwing off the bed-clothes.
"But he was an uneasy chap always, always," thought Sam, "as my old
woman would say,--in a kippage about somethin' or other. But darned ef
this a'n't somethin' more 'n usual,"--catching a glimpse of Blecker's
face turned toward the prisoner, a curious tigerish look in his
half-closed eyes.
The whistle of the train was heard that moment far-off in the gorge.
Blecker did not heed it, beckoning silently to the orderly.
"Go for the Colonel, for Sheppard," in a breathless way; "bring some
men, stout fellows that can lift. Quick, Sam, for God's sake!"
The man obeyed, glancing at the prisoner, who lay with his eyes closed
as though asleep.
"Blecker glowers at him as though he were the Devil,"--stopping outside
to light a cigar at the oil-lamp. "That little doctor has murder writ in
his face plain as print this minute."
Sam may not have been wrong. Paul Blecker was virulent in hates, loves,
or opinions: in this sudden madness of a moment that possessed him, if
his feet would have dragged him to that bed yonder, and his wrists been
strong enough, he would have wrung the soul out of the man's body, and
flung him from his way. Looking at the limbs stretched out under the
sheet, the face, an obscene face, even with the eyes closed, as at a
deadly something that had suddenly reared itself between him and his
chance of heaven. The man was Grey Gurney's husband. She was coming: in
a moment, it might be, would be here. She thought that man dead. She
always should think him dead. He held back his breath in his clinched
teeth: that was all the sign of passion; his brain was never cooler,
more alert.
Sheppard, the colonel of the regiment, a thick-set, burly little fellow,
with stubbly black whiskers and honest eyes, came stumping down the
room.
"What is it, hey? Life and death, Blecker?"
"More, to me," with a smile. "Make your men remove that man Gurney into
the lower ward. Don't stop to question, Colonel: I'll explain
afterwards. I'm surgeon of this post."
"You're crotchety as a woman, Paul," laughed the other, as he gave the
order.
"What d' ye mean to do, old fellow, with this wound of yours? Go under
for it, as you said at first?"
"This morning I would have told you yes. I don't know now. I can't
afford to leave the world just yet. I'll fight death to the last
breath." Watching the removal of the prisoner as he spoke; when the door
closed on him, letting his head fall on the pillow with a sigh of
relief. "Sheppard, there was another matter I wished to see you about.
Your mother came to see me yesterday."
"Yes; was the soup good she sent this morning? We're famous for our
broths on the farm, but old Nance isn't here, and"----
"Very good;--but there was another favor I wished to ask."
"Well?"--staring into the white-washed wall to avoid seeing how red poor
crotchety Blecker's face grew.
"By the way, Paul, my mother desired me to bring that young lady you
told her of home with me. She means to adopt her for the present, I
believe."
The redness grew hotter.
"It was that I meant to ask of her,--you knew?"
"Yes, I knew. Bah, man, don't wring my fingers off. If the girl's good
and pure enough to do this thing, my mother's the woman to appreciate
it. She knows true blood in horses or men, mother. Not a better eye for
mules in Kentucky than that little woman's. A Shelby, you know?
Stock-raisers. By George, here she comes, with her charge in tow
already!"
Blecker bit his parched lips: among the footsteps coming up the long
hall, he heard only one, quick and light; it seemed to strike on his
very brain, glancing to the yellow-panelled door, behind which the
prisoner lay. She thought that man dead. She always should think him
dead. She should be his wife before God; if He had any punishment for
that crime, he took it on his own soul,--now. And so turned with a smile
to meet her.
"Don't mind Paul's face, if it is skin and bone," said the Colonel,
hastily interposing his squat figure between it and the light. "Needs
shaving, that's all. He'll be round in no time at all, with a bit of
nursing; 's got no notion of dying."
"I knew he wouldn't die," she said, half to herself, not speaking to
Paul,--only he held both her hands in his, and looked in her eyes.
Sheppard, after the first glance over the little brown figure and the
face under the Shaker hood, had stood, hat in hand, with something of
the same home-trusty smile he gave his wife on his mouth. The little
square-built body in black seeded silk and widow's cap, that had
convoyed the girl in, touched the Colonel's elbow, and they turned their
backs to the bed,--talking of hot coffee and sandwiches. Paul drew her
down.
"My wife, Grey? _Mine?_" his breath thin and cold,--because no oath now
could make that sure.
"Yes, Paul."
He shut his eyes. She wondered that he did not smile when she put her
timorous fingers in his tangled hair. He thought he would die, maybe. He
could not die. Her feet seemed to take firmer root into the ground. A
clammy damp broke out over her body. He did not know how she had
wrestled in prayer; he did not believe in prayer. He could not die. That
which a believer asked of God, believing He would grant, was granted.
She held him in life by her hand on Christ's arm.
"Were you afraid to travel alone, eh?"
Grey looked up. The little figure facing her had a body that somehow put
you in mind of unraised dough: and there was nothing spongy or porous or
delusive in the solid little soul either, inside of the body,--that was
plain. She looked as if Kentucky had sent her out, a tight, right,
compact drill-sergeant, an embodiment of Western reason, to try by
herself at drum-head court-martial the whole rank and file of
Northernisms, airy and intangible illusions. Nothing about her that did
not summon you to stand and deliver common sense; the faint down on her
upper-lip, the clog-soled shoes, the stiff dress, the rope of a gold
watch-chain, the single pure diamond blazing on one chubby white hand,
the general effect of a lager-bier keg, unmovable, self-poised, the
round black eyes, the two black puffs of hair on each temple, said with
one voice, "No fooling now; no chance for humbug here." Why should there
be? One of the Shelbys; well-built in bone and blood, honest,
educated,--mule-raisers; courted by General Sheppard according to form,
a modest, industrious girl, a dignified, eminently sensible wife, a
blindly loving mother, a shrewd business-woman as a widow. Her son was a
Christian, her slaves were fat and contented, her mules the best stock
imported. She hated the Abolitionists, lank, uncombed, ill-bred
fanatics; despised the Secessionists as disappointed Democrats; clung
desperately to the Union, the Constitution, and the enforcement of the
laws, not knowing she was holding to the most airy and illusive nothings
of all. So she was here with Pratt, her son, at Harper's Ferry, nursing
the sick, keeping a sharp eye on the stock her overseer sold to
Government, looking into the face of every Rebel prisoner brought in,
with a very woman's sick heart, but colder growing eyes. For Buckner,
you know, had induced Harry to go into the Southern army. Harry Clay,
(they lived near Ashland,)--Harry was his mother's pet, before this, the
youngest. If he was wounded, like to die, not all their guerrillas or
pickets should keep her back; though, when he was well, she would leave
him without a word. He had gone, like the prodigal son, to fill his
belly with the husks the swine did eat,--and not until he came back,
like the prodigal son, would she forgive him. But if he was wounded--If
Grey had stopped one hour before coming to this man she loved, she would
have despised her.
"Were you afraid to travel alone?"
"Yes; but I brought Pen for company, Paul. You did not see that I
brought Pen."
But Pen shied from the outstretched hand, and had recourse to a vial of
spirituous-looking liquorice-water.
It was raining now, heavily. By some occult influence, Mrs. Sheppard had
caused a table to spring up beside the bed, whereon a cozy
round-stomached oil-lamp burned and flared in the wind, in a jolly,
drunken fashion, and a coffee-pot sent out mellow whiffs of brown steam.
"It's Mocha, my dear,--not rye. I mean to support my Government, and
I'll not shirk the duty when it comes to taxes on coffee. So you were
afraid? It's the great glory of our country that a woman can travel
unprotected from one end to----Well. But you are young and silly yet."
And she handed Grey a cup with a relaxing mouth, which showed, that,
though she were a woman herself, capable of swallowing pills without
jelly, she did not hope for as much from weaker human nature.
Paul Blecker had not heard the thunder the first hour Grey was there,
nor seen the livid flashes lighting up those savagest heights in the
mountains: his eye was fixed on that yellow door yonder in the
flickering darkness of the room, and on the possibility that lay beyond
it.
Now, while Grey, growing used to her new home, talked to Pen and her
hostess, Paul's thoughts came in cheerier and warmer: noting how the
rain plashed like a wide sweep of loneliness outside, forcing all
brightness and comfort in,--how the red lamp-light glowed, how even the
pale faces of the men, in the cold beds yonder, grew less dour and
rigid, looking at them; hearing the low chirp of Grey's voice now and
then,--her eyes turned always on him, watchful, still. It was like home,
that broad, half-burnt arsenal-room. Even the comfortable little black
figure, sturdily clicking steel needles through an uncompromising pair
of gray socks, fitted well and with meaning into the picture, and burly
Pratt Sheppard holding little Pen on his knee, his grizzly black brows
knitted. Because Mary, down at home there, was nursing his baby boy now,
most likely, just as he held this one. His baby was only a few months
old: he had never seen it: perhaps he might never see it.
"She looks like Mary, a bit, mother, eh?"--nodding to Grey, and
steadying one foot on the rung of his chair.
Mrs. Sheppard shot a sharp glance.
"About the nose? Mary's is sharper."
"The forehead, _I_ think. Hair has the same curly twist."
Grey, hearing the whisper, colored, and laughed, and presently took off
the Shaker hood.
"'Pon my soul, mother, it's a remarkable likeness.--You're _not_ related
to the Furnesses, Miss Gurney,--Furnesses of Tennessee?"
"Pratt sees his wife in every woman he meets," said his mother, toeing
off her sock.
She had not much patience with Pratt's wife-worship: some of these days
he'd be sold to those Furnesses, soul and body. They were a mawkish,
"genteel" set: from genteel people might the Lord deliver her!
"Does the boy look like this one at all, mother?--I never saw my boy,
Miss Gurney,"--explaining. "Fellows are shirking so now, I won't ask for
a furlough."
"The child's a Shelby, out and out,"--angrily enough. "Look here, Dr.
Blecker,"--pulling up her skirt, to come at an enormous pocket in her
petticoat. "Here's the daguerreotype, taken when he was just four weeks
old, and there's Pratt's eyes and chin to a T. D'ye see? Pratt _was_ a
fine child,--weighed fourteen pounds. But he was colicky to the last
degree. And as for croup----Does your Pen have croup, Miss Grey? Sit
here. These men won't care to hear our talk."
They did care to hear it. It was not altogether because Blecker was
weakened by sickness that he lay there listening and talking so
earnestly about their home and Grey's, the boy and Mary,--telling
trifles, too, which he remembered, of his own childhood. It was such a
new, cordial, heartsome life which this bit of innocent gossip opened to
him. What a happy fellow old Pratt was, with his wife and child! Good
fighter, too. Well, some day, maybe, he, too----
They were all quiet that night, coming closer together, maybe because
they heard the rain rushing down the gorges, and knew what ruin and
grief and slaughter waited without. Looking back at that night often
through the vacancy of coming days, Paul used to say, "I was at home
then," and after that try to whistle its thought off in a tune. He never
had been at home before.
So, after that night, the summer days crept on, and out of sight: the
sea of air in which the earth lay coloring and massing the sunlight down
into its thin ether, until it ebbed slowly away again in yellow glows,
tinctured with smells of harvest-fields and forests, clear and pungent,
more rare than that of flowers. Here and there a harvest-field in the
States was made foul with powder, mud,--the grain flat under broken
artillery-wheels, canteens, out of which oozed the few drops of whiskey,
torn rags of flesh, and beyond, heaped in some unploughed furrow, a
dozen, a hundred, thousands, it may be, of useless bodies, dead to no
end. Up yonder in New England, or down in some sugar-plantation, or
along the Lakes, some woman's heart let the fresh life slip out of it,
to go down into the grave with that dead flesh, to grovel there, while
she dragged her tired feet the rest of the way through the world. Her
pain was blind; but that was all that was blind. The wind, touching the
crimson moccasin-flower in the ditch, and the shining red drops beside
it, said only, "It is the same color; God wills they shall be there,"
and went unsaddened on its appointed way. The white flesh, the curly
hair, (every ring of that hair the woman yonder knew by heart,) gave
back their color cheerily in the sunlight, and sank into the earth to
begin their new work of roots and blossoming, and the soul passed as
quietly into the next wider range of labor and of rest. And God's
eternal laws of sequence and order worked calmly, and remained under
all.
This world without the valley grew widely vague to Blecker, as he lay
there for weeks. These battles he read of every morning subserved no
end: the cause stood motionless; only so many blue-coated machines
rendered useless: but behind the machines--what? That was what touched
him now: every hour some touch of Grey's, some word of the home-loving
Kentuckians, even Pen's giant-stories, told as he sat perched on
Blecker's bolster, made him think of this, when he read of a battle. So
many thousand somethings dead, who pulled a trigger well or ill, for
money or otherwise; so much brute force lost; behind that, a home
somewhere, clinging little hands, a man's aspirations, millions of fears
and hopes, religion, chances of a better foothold in the next life. It
was that background, after all, the home-life, the notions of purity,
honor, bravery absorbed there, that made the man a man in the
battle-field.
So, lying on the straw mattress there, this man, who had been making
himself from the first, got into the core of the matter at last, into
his own soul-life, brought himself up face to face with God and the
Devil, letting the outside world, the great war, drift out of sight for
the time. His battle-field was here in this ruined plat of houses,
prisoned by peaks that touched the sky. The issues of the great
struggles without were not in his hands; this was. What should he do
with this woman, with himself?
He gained strength day by day. They did not know it, he was so grave and
still, not joining in the hearty, cheery life of the arsenal-room; for
Mrs. Sheppard had swept the half-drunken Dutch nurses out of the
hospital, and she and Grey took charge of the dozen wounded men (many
dainty modiste-made ladies find that they are God-made women in this
war). So the room had whitened and brightened every day; the red,
unshaved faces slept sounder on their clean pillows; the men ate with a
relish; and Grey, being the best of listeners, had carried from every
bed a story of some home in Iowa or Georgia or the North. Only behind
the yellow door yonder she never went. Blecker had ordered that, and
she obeyed like a child in everything.
So like a child, that Mrs. Sheppard, very tender of her, yet treated her
with as much deference as she might a mild kitten. That girl was just as
anxious that Bill Sanders's broth should be properly salted, and Pen's
pinafore white, as she was to know Banks's position. Pish! Yet Mrs.
Sheppard told Pen pages of "Mother Goose" in the evenings, that the girl
might have time to read to Doctor Blecker. She loved him as well as if
he were her husband; and a good wife she would be to him! Paul, looking
at the two, as they sat by his bedside, knew better than she; saw
clearly in which woman lay the spring of steel, that he never could
bend, if her sense of right touched it. He used to hold her freckled
little hands, growing yellow and rough with the hard work, in his,
wondering what God meant him to do. If they both could lie dead together
in that great grave-pit behind the Virginia Heights, it would have been
relief to him. If he should let her go blindfold into whatever hell lay
beyond death, it would be more merciful to her than to give her to her
husband yonder. For himself--No, he would think only of her, how she
could be pure and happy. Yet bigamy? No theory, no creed could put that
word out of his brain, when he looked into her eyes. Never were eyes so
genial or so pure. The man Gurney, he learned from Sheppard and Nott,
recovered but slowly; yet there was no time to lose; a trivial accident
might reveal all to her. Whatever struggle was in Blecker's mind came to
an end at last; he would go through with what he purposed; if there were
crime in it, he took it to his own soul's reckoning, as he said before.
It was a cool morning in early August, when the Doctor first crept out
of bed; a nipping north-wind, with a breath of far-off frost in it, just
enough to redden the protruding cheek of the round gum-trees on the
mountain-ledges and make them burn and flame in among the swelling green
of the forests. He dragged himself slowly to the wooden steps and waited
in the sunshine. The day would be short, but the great work of his life
should be done in it.
"Sheppard!" he called, seeing the two square, black figures of the
Colonel and his mother trotting across the sunny street.
"Hillo! you'll report yourself ready for service soon, at this rate,
Doctor."
"In a week. That man Gurney. When can he be removed?"
"What interest can you have in that dirty log, Blecker? I've noticed the
man since you asked of him. He's only a Northern rogue weakened into a
Southern bully."
"I know. But his family are known to me. I have an order for his
exchange: it came yesterday. He holds rank as captain in the other
service, I believe?"
"Yes,--but he's in no hurry to leave his bed, Nott tells me."
"This order may quicken his recovery, eh?"
"Perhaps."
Sheppard laughed.
"You are anxious to restore him to his chances of promotion down yonder;
yet I fancied I saw no especial love for him in your eyes, heh? Maybe
you'd promote him to the front rank, as was done with Uriah,--what d' ye
say, Paul?"
He went on laughing, without waiting for an answer.
"As was done with Uriah?" Pah, what folly was this? He took out his
handkerchief, wiping his face and neck; he felt cold and damp,--from
weakness, it might be.
"You will tell that man Gurney, Sam," beckoning to the orderly who was
loitering near, "that an order for his exchange is made out, when he is
able to avail himself of it."
"Won't you see him yerself, Doctor?" insinuated Sam. "He's a weak
critter, an' 'll be monstrous thankful, I'm thinkin'."
Blecker shook his head and turned off, waiting for Mrs. Sheppard. She
was on the sidewalk, laying down the law to the chaplain, who, with his
gilt-banded cap, looked amazingly like a footman. The lady's tones had
the Kentucky, loud, mellow ring; her foot tapped, and her nervous
fingers emphasized the words against her palm.
"Ill-bred," thought the young man; but he bowed, smiling suavely. "If I
have been derelict in duty, Madam, I will be judged by a Higher Power."
"But it's my way, young Sir, to go to the root of the matter, when I see
things rotting,--be it a potato-field or a church. We're plain-tongued
in my State. And I think the Higher Power needs a mouth-piece just now."
And something nobler of mien than good-breeding gave to Sarah Sheppard's
earnest, pursy little figure meaning just then, before which the flimsy
student of the Thirty-Nine Articles stood silent.
"I'm an old woman, young man; you're a boy, and the white cravat about
your neck gives me no more respect for you than the bit of down on your
chin, so long as you are unworthy to wear either. We Virginians and
Kentuckians may be shelled up yet in our old-fogy notions; it's likely,
as you say. We don't understand the rights of man, maybe, or know just
where Humanity has got to in its progress. But we've a grip on the
old-fashioned Christianity, and we mean to make it new again. And when I
see hundreds of young, penniless preachers, and old, placeless
preachers, shoving into the army for the fat salaries, drinking,
card-playing with the men, preaching murder instead of Christ's gospel
of peace, I'll speak, though I am a woman. I'll call them the Devil's
servants instead of the Lord's, and his best and helpfullest servants,
too, nowadays. If there's a time when a man's soul cries out to get a
clear sight of God, it's when he's standing up for what he thinks right,
with his face to the foe, and his country behind him. And it's not the
droning, slovenly prayers nor hashed-up political speeches of such men
as you, that will show Him to them. Oh, my son!" putting her hand on the
young man's arm, her voice unsteady, choking a minute, "I wish you'd be
earnest, a peace-teacher like your Master. It's no wonder the men
complain of the Federal chaplains as shams and humbugs. I don't know how
it is on the other side. I've a son there,--Harry. I'd like to think
he'd hear some live words of great truth before he goes into battle. Not
vapid gabbling over the stale, worn-out cant, nor abuse of the enemy.
When he's lying there, the blood coming from his heart on the sod, life
won't be stale to him, nor death, nor the helping blood of the cross.
And for his enemy, when he lies dead there, my Harry, would God love his
soul better because it came to Him filled with hate of his brother?"
She was half talking to herself now, and the young man drew his
coat-sleeve out of her hold and slipped away. Afterwards he said that
old lady was half-Secesh, because she had a son in the Rebel army; but I
think her words left some meaning in his brain other than that.
She met Blecker, her face redder, her eyebrows blacker than usual.
"You up and out, Doctor Blecker? Very well! You'll pay for it in fever
to-morrow. But every young man is wiser in his own conceit, to-day, than
seven men that can render a reason. It was not so in my day. Young
people knew their age. I never sat down before my mother without
permission granted, nor had an opinion of my own."
She stood silent a moment, cooling.
"Pha, pha! I'm a foolish old body. Fretting and fuming to no purpose,
likely. There's Pratt, now, laughing, down the street. 'Mother, if
you're going to have one of your brigazoos with that young parson, I'm
off,' he says. He says,--'You're not in your own country, where the
Shelbys rule the roast.' What if I'm not, Doctor Blecker? Truth's truth.
I'm tired of cant, whether it belongs to the New-England new age of
reason, their Humanity and Fourierism and Broad-Church and Free-Love,
or what not, or our own Southern hard-bit, tight-reined men's creeds.
Not God's,--driving men headlong into one pit, all but a penned-up
dozen. I'm going back of all churches to the words of Jesus. There's my
platform. But you said you wanted to speak with me. What's _your_
trouble?"
Blecker hesitated,--not knowing how this sturdy interpreter of the words
of Jesus would look on his marriage with another man's wife, if she
understood the matter clearly. He fumbled his cravat a minute, feeling
alone, as if the earth and heaven were vacant,--no background for him to
lean against. Men usually do stand thus solitary, when they are left to
choose by God.
"You're hard on the young fellow, Mrs. Sheppard. I wish for my own sake
he was a better specimen of his cloth. There's no one else here to marry
me."
"Tut! no difference what _he_ is,"--growing graver, as she spoke. "God's
blessing comes pure, if the lips are not the cleanest that speak it. You
are resolved, then, on your course, as you spoke to me last night?"
"Yes, I am, if Grey will listen to reason. You and the Colonel leave
to-morrow?"
"Yes, and she cannot stay here behind me, to a certainty. Pratt is
ordered off, and I must go see to my three-year-olds. Morgan will have
them before I know what I'm about. I'll take the girl back to Wheeling,
so far on her way home. As to this marriage"----
She stopped, with her fingers on her chin. The Doctor laughed to
himself. She was deciding on Grey's fate and his, as if they were a pair
of her three-year-olds that Government wanted to buy.
"It's unseemly, when the child's father is not here. That's how it seems
to me, Dr. Blecker. As for love, and that, it will keep. Pha, pha!
There's one suggestion of weight in favor of it. If you were killed in
battle, the girl would have some provision as your widow that she could
not have now. D'ye see?"
Blecker laughed uneasily.
"I see; you come at the bone of the matter, certainly. I have concluded,
Mrs. Sheppard, Grey must go with you; but she shall leave here as my
wife. If there is any evil consequence, it shall come to me."
There was a moment's silence. He avoided the searching black eyes fixed
on his face.
"It is not for me to judge in this matter," she said, with some reserve.
"The girl is a good girl, however, and I will try and take the place of
a mother to her. You have reasons for this haste unknown to me,
probably. When do you wish the ceremony, and where, Doctor? The church
up yonder," sliding into her easy, dogmatic tone again; "it's one of the
few whole roofs in the place. That is best,--yes. And for time, say
sunset. That will suit me. I must go write to that do nothing M'Key
about the trousers for Pratt's men. They're boxed up in New York yet:
and then I've to see to getting a supply of blue pills. If you'll only
give one to each man two nights before going into battle, just enough to
stir their livers up, you'll find it work like a charm in helping them
to fight. Sundown,--yes. I cannot attend to it possibly before."
"It was the time I had fixed upon, if Grey consents."
"Pah! she's a bit of linen rag, that child. You can turn her round your
finger, and you know it. You will find her down on the shore, I think. I
must go and tell my young parson he had better read over the ceremony
once or twice to be posted up in it."
"To be sure, Pratt," she said, a few moments after, as she detailed the
intended programme to the Colonel, farther down the street,--"to be
sure, it's too hasty. I have not had time to give it consideration as I
ought. These wartimes, my brain is so thronged night and day. But I
think it's a good match. There's an honest, downright vein in young
Blecker that'll make a healthy life. Wants birth, to be sure. Girl's got
that. You needn't sneer, Pratt. It is only men and women that come of
the old rooted families, bad or good, that are self-poised. Made men
always have an unsteady flicker, a hitch in their brains
somewhere,--like your Doctor, eh? Grey's out of one of the solid old
Pennsylvania stocks. Better blooded the mule, the easier goer, fast or
not."
She shut her porte-monnaie with a click, and repinned her little veil
that struck out behind her, stiff, pennant-wise, as she walked.
"Well, I've no time now. I'm going to drop in and see that Gurney, and
tell him he's exchanged. And the sooner he's up and out, the better for
him. Dyspepsia's what ails _him_. I'll get him out for a walk to-day. 'S
cool and bracing."
It was a bracing day, the current of wind coming in between the Maryland
Heights fresh and vigorous, driving rifts of gray cloud across the
transparent blue overhead. A healthy, growing day, the farmers called
it; one did fancy, too, that the late crops, sowed after the last
skirmish about the town, did thrust out their green blades more
hopefully to-day than before; the Indian corn fattened and yellowed
under its tresses of soft sun-burnt silk. Grey, going with Pen that
afternoon through a great field of it, caught the clean, damp perfume of
its husk; it put her in mind of long ago, somehow, when she was no older
than Pen. So she stopped to gather the scarlet poppies along the fence,
to make "court-ladies" out of them for him, as she used to do for
herself in those old times.
"Make me some shawls for them," said Pen, presenting her some
lilac-leaves, which she proceeded to ornament by biting patterns with
her teeth.
"Oth said, if I eat poppy-seeds, I'd sleep, an' never waken again. Is
that true, Sis?"
"I believe it is. I don't know."
Death and eternal sleeps were dim, far-off matters to Grey always,--very
trivial to-day. She was a healthy, strong-nerved woman, loving God and
her kin with every breath of her body, not likely to trouble herself
about death, or ever to take her life as a mean, stingy makeshift and
cheat, a mere rotten bridge to carry her over to something better, as
more spiritually-minded women do. It was altogether good and great;
every minute she wanted a firmer hold on it, to wring more work and
pleasure out of it. She was so glad to live. God was in this world.
Sure. She knew that, every moment she prayed. In the other? Yes; but
then that was shadowy, and there were no shadows nor affinity for them
in Grey. This was a certainty,--here. And to-day----So content to be
alive to-day, that a something dumb in her brown eyes made Pen, looking
up, laugh out loud.
"Kiss me, Sis. You're a mighty good old Sis to-day. Let's go down to the
river."
They went down by the upper road, leaving the town behind them. The road
was only a wide, rutted cow-path on the side of the hill. Here and there
a broken artillery-wheel, or bomb-shell, or a ragged soldier's jacket
lay among the purple iron-weed. She would not see them--to-day. Instead,
she saw how dark the maple-leaves were growing,--it was nearly time for
them to turn now; the air was clear and strong this morning, as if it
brought a new lease of life into the world; on the hill-banks, brown and
ash-colored lichen, and every shade of green, from pale apple-tint to
the blackish shadows like moss in October, caught the sunshine, in the
cheeriest fashion. Yellow butterflies chased each other about the grass,
tipsily; the underbrush was full of birds, chattering, chirping calls,
stopping now and then to thrill the air up to heaven with a sudden
shiver of delight,--so glad even they were to be alive. Mere flecks of
birds, some of them, bits of shining blue and scarlet and brown,
trembling in and out of the bushes: chippeys, for instance,--you
know?--so contemptibly little; it was ridiculous, in these sad times,
to see how much joy they made their small bodies hold. But it isn't
their fault that they only have instinct, and not reason. I'm afraid
Grey, with most women, was very near their predicament. That day was so
healthy, though, that the very bees got out of their drowsiness, and
made a sort of song of their everlasting hum; and that old coffin-maker
of a woodpecker in the hollow beech down by the bridge set to work at
his funereal "thud, thud," with such sudden vigor, it sounded like a
heartsome drum, actually, beating the reveille. Not much need of that:
Grey thought the whole world was quite awake: looking up to the
mountains, she did not feel their awful significance of rest, as Paul
Blecker might have done. They only looked to her like the arms this
world had to lift up to heaven its forests and flowers,--to say, "See
how glad and beautiful I am!" Why, up there in those barest peaks above
the clouds she had seen delicate little lakes nestling, brimming with
light and lilies.
They came to the river, she and Pen, where it bends through the gorge,
and sat down there under a ledge of sandstone, one groping finger of the
sunshine coming in to hold her freckled cheek and soft reddish hair.
They say the sun does shine the same on just and unjust; but he likes
best to linger, I know, on things wholesome and pure like this girl.
When Pen began to play "jacks" with the smooth stones on the shore, she
spread out her skirt for him to sit on,--to keep him close, hugging him
now and then, with the tears coming to her eyes: because she had seen
Paul an hour before, and promised all he asked. And Pen was the only
thing there of home, you know. And on this her wedding-day she loved
them all with a hungry pain, somehow, as never before. She was going
back to-morrow; she could work and help them just as before; and yet a
gulf seemed opening between them forever. She had been selfish and
petulant,--she saw that now; sometimes impatient with her old father's
trumpery rocks, or Lizzy's discontent; in a rage, often, at Joseph. Now
she saw how hardly life had dealt with them, how poor and bare their
lives were. _She_ might have made them warmer and softer, if she had
chosen. Please God, she would try, when she went home again,--wiping the
hot tears off, and kissing Pen's dismal face, until he rebelled. The
shadows were lengthening, the rock above her threw a jagged, black
boundary about her feet. When the sun was behind yon farthest hill she
was going back, up to the little church, with Pen; then she would give
herself to her master, forever.
Whatever feeling this brought into her soul, she kept it there silent,
not coming to her face as the other had done in blushes or tears. She
waited, her hands clutched together, watching the slow sinking of the
sun. Not even to Paul had she said what this hour was to her. She had
come a long journey; this was the end.
"I would like to be alone until the time comes," she had said, and had
left him. He did not know what he was to the girl; she loved him,
moderately, he thought, with a temperate appreciation that taunted his
hot passion. She did not choose that even he should know with what
desperate abandonment of self she had absorbed his life into hers. She
chose to be alone, shrinking, with a sort of hatred, from the vulgar or
strange eyes that would follow her into the church. In this beginning of
her new life she wanted to be alone with God and this soul, only kinsman
of her own. If they could but go, Paul and she, up into one of these
mountain-peaks, with Him that made them very near, and there give
themselves to each other, before God, forever!
She sat, her hands clasped about her knees, looking into the gurgling
water. The cool, ashen hue that precedes sunset in the mountains began
to creep through the air. The child had crouched down at her feet, and
fallen into a half doze. It was so still that she heard far down the
path a man's footsteps crushing the sand, coming close. She did not
turn her head,--only the sudden blood dyed her face and neck.
"Paul!"
She knew he was coming for her. No answer. She stood up then, and looked
around. It was the prisoner Gurney, leaning against the rock,
motionless, only that he twisted a silk handkerchief nervously in his
hand, looking down at it, and crunching tobacco vehemently in his teeth.
"I've met you at last, Grey. I knew you were at the Ferry."
The girl said nothing. Sudden death, or a mortal thrust of Fate, like
this, brings only dumb astonishment at first: no pain. She put her
fingers to her throat: there was a lump in it, choking her. He laughed,
uneasily.
"It's a devilish cool welcome, considering you are my wife."
Pen woke and began to cry. She patted his shoulder in a dazed way, her
eyes never leaving the man's face; then she went close, and caught him
by the arm.
"It is flesh and blood,"--shaking her off. "I'm not dead. You thought I
was dead, did you? I got that letter written from Cuba,"--toying with
his whiskers, with a complacent smirk. "That was the sharpest dodge of
my life, Grey. Fact is, I was damnably in debt, and tied up with your
people, and I cut loose. So, eh? What d' ye think of it, Puss?" putting
his hand on her arm. "_Wife_, eh?"
She drew back against the sandstone with a hoarse whisper of a cry such
as can leave a woman's lips but once or twice in a lifetime: an animal
tortured near its death utters something like it, trying to speak.
"Well, well, I don't want to incommode you,"--shifting his feet
uncertainly. "I--it's not my will I came across you. Single life suits
me. And you too, heh? I've been rollicking round these four years,--Tom
Crane and I: you don't know Tom, though. Plains,--Valparaiso,--New
Orleans. Well, I'm going to see this shindy out in the States now. Tom's
in it, head-devil of a guerrilla-band. _I_ keep safe. Let Jack Gurney
alone for keeping a whole skin! But, eh, Grey?"--mounting a pair of
gold-rimmed eye-glasses over his thick nose. "You've grown. Different
woman, by George! Nothing but a puling, gawky girl, when I went away.
Your eyes and skin have got color,--luscious-looking: why, your eyes
flash like a young bison's we trapped out in Nevada. Come, kiss me,
Grey. Eh?"--looking in the brown eyes that met his, and stopping short
in his approach.
Of the man and woman standing there face to face the woman's soul was
the more guilty, it may be, in God's eyes, that minute. She loathed him
with such intensity of hatred. The leer in his eyes was that of a fiend,
to her. In which she was wrong. There are no thorough-bred villains, out
of novels: even Judas had a redeeming trait (out of which he hanged
himself). This man Gurney had a weak, incomplete brain, strong sensual
instincts, and thick blood thirsty for excitement,--all, probably, you
could justly say of Nero. He did not care especially to torment the
woman,--would rather she were happy than not,--unless, indeed, he needed
her pain. So he stopped, regarding her. Enough of a true voluptuary,
too, to shun turmoil.
"There! hush! For God's sake don't begin to cry out. I'm weak yet; can't
bear noise."
"I'm not going to cry," her voice so low he had to stoop to hear.
Something, too, in her heart that made her push Pen from her, when he
fumbled to unclasp her clinched hands,--some feeling she knew to be so
foul she dared not touch him.
"Do you mean to claim me as your wife, John?"
He did not reply immediately; leisurely inspecting her from head to
foot, as she stood bent, her eyes lying like a dead weight on his,
patting and curling his yellow whiskers meanwhile.
"Wife, heh? I don't know. Your face is getting gray. Where's that
pretty color gone you had a bit ago, Puss? By George!"--laughing,--"I
don't think it would need much more temptation to make a murderer out of
you. I did not expect you to remember the old days so well. I was hard
on you then,"--stopping, with a look of half admiration, half fear, to
criticize her again. "Well, well, I'll be serious. Will I claim you
again? N--o. On the whole, I believe not. I'll be candid, Grey,--I
always was a candid man, you know. I'd like well enough to have the
taming of you. It would keep a man alive to play Petruchio to such a
Kate, 'pon honor! But I do hate the trammels,--I've cut loose so long,
you see. You're not enough to tempt a fellow to hang out as family man
again. It's the cursedest slavery! So I think," poising his ringed
finders on his chin, thoughtfully, "we'd best settle it this way. I'll
take my exchange and go South, and we'll keep our own counsel. Nobody's
wiser. If it suits you to say I'm dead, why, I'm dead at your service. I
won't trouble you again. Or if you would rather, you can sue out a
divorce in some of the States,--wilful desertion, etc. I'm willing."
She shook her head.
"In any case you are free."
She wrung her hands.
"I am never free again! never again!"--sobs coming now, shaking her
body. She crouched down on the ground, burying her head out of sight.
"Tut! tut! A scene, after all! I tell you, girl, I'll do what you wish."
She raised her head.
"If you were _dead_, John Gurney! That is all. I was going to be a pure,
good, happy woman, and now"----
Her eyes closed, her head fell slowly on her breast, her hands and face
gray with the mottled blood blued under the eyes.
"Oh, damn it! Poor thing! She won't know anything for a bit," said
Gurney, laying her head back against the sandstone. "I'll be off. What a
devil she is, to be sure! Boy, you'd best put some water on your
sister's face in a minute or two,"--to the whimpering Pen. "If I was
safe out of this scrape, and off from the Ferry"----
And thrusting his eye-glass into his pocket, he went up the hill, still
chafing his whiskers. Near the town he met Paul Blecker. The sun was
nearly down. The Doctor stopped short, looking at the man's face
fixedly. He found nothing there, but a vapid self-complacency.
"He has not seen her," said Paul, hurrying on. "Another hour, and I am
safe."
But Gurney had a keen twinkle in his eye.
"It's not the first time that fellow has looked as if he would like to
see my throat cut," he muttered. "I begin to understand, eh? If he has a
mind to the girl, I'm not safe. Jack Gurney, you'd best vamose this
ranch to-night. Sheppard will parole me to headquarters, and then for an
exchange."