ever wrote. But--but--don't you know a woman can marry a feller, an'
be dutiful an' patient, an' all the time her heart's on fire an'
eatin' itself away in grief 'cause she's married the wrong feller?" He
paused a moment, and then broke out desperately: "And that's the way
with Mary. She wasn't but seventeen when I married her. She was too
young--she didn't know. An' here I am a mock an' a misery. I ain't fit
to earn a livin' for her. She'll faint dead away when she sees this
here." He struck his disfigured face savagely, and did not wince with
the pain. "It's better for her, an' God knows it's better for me to
die. After I got that letter I felt sorter low. The doctors kem in an'
talked about my havin' flutterin's at the heart, an' givin' me brandy.
Did you ever hear o' brandy curing a broken heart? Sergeant, I tell you
I've got a blow worser'n that bullet that shot my jaw away. I didn't
mean never to let her know I was alive unless I got cured an' made a
man of again, and--and--" Kaintuck dropped weakly down on the side of
the bed. The sergeant then noticed that he was of a deathly color, and
scarcely able to sit up, much less to stand. But the sergeant too wore
a strange look, and his strong hands clinched behind his back were
trembling.
Kaintuck, fumbling in the breast of his butternut shirt, produced a
little packet done up in white letter-paper, on which something was
written, and took from it a tress of chestnut hair, soft and long.
"This writin' is hers," he said, with a curious accent of pride, "and
her hair is as long as this all over her head--and wavy."
The sergeant could not read the words because they danced before his
eyes, but he knew the handwriting, and on his own breast reposed a lock
of hair that matched the one poor Kaintuck showed with such pride.
Kaintuck, in the frenzy of his suppressed excitement, did not notice
the sergeant's pallor and agitation. He was wrestling furiously and
blindly with his fate.
"Now don't you see," he asked, "why I don't want her to come? I ain't
got long to live. What's the use o' dragging her through it? An' I can
tell you, sergeant, it would be a heap easier to die now than before I
seen her an' the boy."
The sergeant turned quietly and walked out of the room. He went down
the corridor toward the window that overlooked the court-yard, where
everything was black but for occasional patches of moonlight. The grief
and horror with which he was overcome had an added sting of conscience.
He was an unlettered man, and was not used to arguing morals with
himself. He felt oppressed with guilt at allowing Kaintuck to go to
his grave without knowing how things really were. But some instinctive
common sense restrained him. It would only add a last cruelty of
fate to tell him that he had been forgotten and supplanted; and the
sergeant, after looking at Kaintuck closely, had adopted the chaplain's
opinion that Kaintuck was not long for this world. He did not know how
long he had stood at the window, when he became calmer, and returned
along the corridor. The lamp was turned up in Kaintuck's cell, and
there were two or three men standing over the bed.
"Sinkin' spells. Doctors workin' with him," sententiously remarked the
guard to the sergeant, pausing a moment in his regular tramp.
Every day after that the sergeant came to see Kaintuck, and every
day Kaintuck's face grew more pinched, and his eyes larger and more
pathetic. The doctors first wheedled, then grew angry and scolded
Kaintuck. Sometimes he would take the food and medicine prescribed for
him, and again he would not; but all the time he traveled steadily
toward the grave. Occasionally he endured furious agonies of pain from
his wounded jaw, which had suddenly grown violent again; and following
that he would lie for hours completely free from pain, and apparently
entirely at peace. But the poor sergeant was never at peace. A trouble,
a shade, that took the form of an accusing spirit, walked with him
all day, and lay down by his side at night. And if Mary should come!
The sergeant's heart leaped up into his throat at the bare idea.
Nevertheless he haunted the prison and Kaintuck's cell, even when he
was not on duty. One afternoon, when Kaintuck had been feebler than
usual, sitting by his bed, something like atonement seemed possible to
the sergeant.
"Kaintuck," he said, "may be you're troubled in your mind about that
boy?"
"I ought to be, but I ain't," answered Kaintuck, who shared the
delusion of his class that all humanity should be troubled of many
things, and should cherish grief and coddle sorrow. "I say, sergeant,
that 'ere little sheep-faced preacher has made me feel different about
things. He sets there where you is settin', an' talks to me kinder
manly. I ain't never been converted"--here he blushed--"but--but the
chaplain he says 'tain't how we _feel_ so much as how we do. He says
God will take keer of the child, and his mother too, an' sergeant, I
believe it."
The sergeant had a reverent, simple soul, and lifted his cap from his
head as Kaintuck spoke God's name. "The chaplain's right," he said,
putting his cap back; "and that there same little soft-spoken chaplain
ain't any more afraid of bullets than General Grant or General Lee. And
I've been thinkin' I'll find that boy of yours, and I'll do a good part
by him."
Kaintuck's eyes glistened. "You'll have an orphan asylum soon," he
said, remembering that other boy the sergeant had told him he meant
to provide for; at which the tall soldier felt his heart sink as with
guilt and deception. Presently Kaintuck said:
"I think I'll go to sleep now, sergeant. What you said about lookin'
out for the boy has made me feel a heap quieter. Just have an eye to
him and his mother once in a while; an', sergeant, I want him to grow
up a honest man; do you hear that?--a honest man."
The sergeant went out of the room and down the jail corridor. No
prisoner within its walls felt more sad and dispirited than he. Down
the wooden stairs he went, and out the door. At the steps outside was a
little one-roomed frame building. In it at a table always sat a young
officer, who examined the permits of the people who went in, and to
whom the corporal of the guard reported. As the sergeant passed the
open door of this little room he suddenly caught sight of a woman's
figure clothed in black, standing by the table. The officer, contrary
to his custom, had risen from his chair, and stood respectfully. The
sergeant could not have moved to save his life. He heard the young
woman's voice, as low and patient as Kaintuck's:
"I thought, sir, that he was dead. I wouldn't have forgot him or
neglected him for anything. I came right away from home, 'way down in
Jo Daviess County, as soon as I could."
"You will find him very much changed, madam," answered the young
officer, as deferentially as if the poor young country woman was the
general's wife. "He has been well attended to, as he was a quiet and
well-behaved prisoner, and the doctors have worked faithfully with him."
"I know, that, sir," she replied. "Your men was very good to me when
I was alone, and I thought my husband was dead, and I had nobody but
my child. The cap'n looked out for me, though I was nothing but a poor
woman, and--some others--"
She stopped suddenly, and the color stole into her pallid cheeks,
when, looking up, she saw the sergeant standing white and dazed-looking
before her. She turned a brilliant red, and then, in an instant, the
color dropped out of her face as the mercury drops down in the tube.
The officer caught her and placed her in the chair from which he had
risen.
"Mary," cried the sergeant, coming forward and taking her hand, "I
didn't know it no more than you did. Don't look at me that way. Before
God, I never would have deceived you. You know I ain't written you a
line since I found this out less'n a week ago."
The young officer clapped his cap on his head and ran out, closing the
door after him. He saw how it was in a moment.
"Mary," said the sergeant again, after a pause, "don't you believe me?"
"Yes, I believe you," she answered, recovering herself a little and
standing up. She looked so slight and pale in her black dress that the
big sergeant's heart smote him with pity. "But I don't think we can see
each other any more. I ain't forgetful. The only thing for me and him
to do is to get back to Jo Daviess County, and for me to tend and nurse
him faithful. That's the only kind o' peace I look for now. It'll be
hard on you, but men gets over these things better than women."
"Do they?" cried the sergeant roughly and fiercely. "Do they, I say?
I'll get over mine by trying to get to the front all the time, and
hopin' some rebel bullet'll end everything. For a man who loves
another man's wife has got no place on earth. He's in hell already."
Her wide and frightened eyes caused the sergeant a pang of shame at
his language and his violence. He hesitated a minute, and then said
hurriedly: "I ask your pardon. I ask your pardon for all. Good-by," and
strode out of the little room.
But at the very door he came near running over the chaplain. The
sergeant's strange looks made the chaplain seize him by the arm, and
then the tall man saw that the little man too was agitated. His mouth
was twitching, and he looked quite shaken and nervous.
"Do you know Kaintuck is dead?" he said. "It was rather sudden at the
last. I have just come from his room. He was a good, simple-hearted
fellow, full of love for his wife and child. He had very strange eyes.
They retained their brightness to the last."
"For God's sake," cried the sergeant, "his wife's in there!"
The door opened and she came out. She had not heard anything, and
she was about to pass them both, holding her head down patiently
and deprecatingly. Something in the chaplain's face stopped her,
though--and she recognized his clerical attire.
"If you please," she said, "I'm--I'm going to my husband."
The chaplain took her hand and led her inside the prison door, while
the sergeant walked rapidly out of the jail yard.
The widow with her child went back to Jo Daviess County. They would
have fared hardly, but for some money that came every month addressed
to the child. The widow took it very thankfully, for they were poor and
plain people, and when the sergeant had told her that he had promised
poor Kaintuck to look out for the boy, she thought quite naturally and
simply that "looking out" meant wherewith to feed and clothe the child.
The sergeant did not turn up the next spring, but the spring after
he came to Jo Daviess County. He was a sergeant still, and wore his
worsted chevrons with a pride as honest as a major-general wears his
stars. The little widow was not so pale and disheartened as she had
been. The sergeant told her that he had got good quarters for her, and
the boy could go to the company school, and that a non-commissioned
officer's wife had a good billet--to all of which the little woman
agreed, and thought it a fine thing to be married to a great tall
sergeant. And soon not only she and the sergeant quite forgot poor
Kaintuck, but even the little boy grew up to think that the big kind
sergeant was his only father.
THE END.
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Transcriber's note:
Blank pages have been eliminated.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation have been left as in the
original.
The book cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed
in the public domain.