A LETTER FROM THE FRONT
There was consternation in the house of Bannister. The son of the house
had disappeared over night. His mother was distracted, his father was
anxious and angry. The morning wore on and he did not return. No one
had seen him nor could any trace of him be found. Toward noon Seth
Mills came over. He was able to quiet, to some extent, the apprehension
concerning the boy. But he would not tell where Bob had gone.
“The boy knows what he’s a-doin’,” said the old man, “and he’s
perfectly safe. He won’t git back to-night. He may be back to-morrow
night--I don’t know. Ef he don’t come till the day after, I’ll tell ye
more about ’im. He’s on the right track an’ he’s able to take keer of
’imself, an’ some day ye’re a-goin’ to be proud o’ that boy, both of
ye. That’s what I say.”
He stood up very straight and rapped his cane three times on the floor
for emphasis and turned toward the door. With this statement and this
promise the Bannisters had to be satisfied. They knew, from long
experience, that the old man could not be forced to tell more than he
chose. So the day dragged on. Rhett Bannister had not been so unhappy
before in all his life. A dozen times he thought of starting out to
find his son, and a dozen times he abandoned the idea. A dozen times he
felt that he must go over and choke the truth out of old Seth Mills,
and as often he restrained himself. He surmised something of what had
happened, and what he surmised hurt and angered him.
The day went by, and the night, and the next day, and Bob did not
return. The next night a candle shone all night from the porch-window,
that the boy might be guided safely to his door, if haply he should
come back, and all night Rhett Bannister lay sleepless and perplexed.
The next morning he started out to find Seth Mills. It was the first
time in two weeks that he had left his own premises. He met the old man
in the road, hobbling toward the Bannister home.
“Seth,” he said, “I want you to tell me where Robert has gone, and I
want you to tell me now. Do you hear? _now!_”
His voice rose in anger as he spoke, a look of determination was in his
eyes, and the old man knew that the time had come when he must reveal
his secret.
“Yes,” he replied deliberately, “I was jes’ comin’ over to tell ye.
I think it’s time now ye ort to know. Well, sir, the night before he
left, Bob come an’ told me ’at he was a-goin’ to Easton to try to
pervail on the provost-marshal there to let him go as a substitute in
your place. Ef he ain’t back to-day I expect they’ve let him do it. Now
you’ve got it, Rhett Bannister, straight from the shoulder; make the
most of it.”
For a moment Bannister did not reply. His worst fear had been realized.
A great wave of indignation and anger swept over his soul. He stood
over the bent form of his old neighbor, white-faced and quivering.
“And you!” he cried, “you of all men, to encourage him, to assist him
in this rebellious, this disgraceful, this suicidal folly!”
And again the old man stood up very straight.
“I did encourage him,” he replied. “And I glory in his grit. And ef you
hed one drop of human blood in your veins, you’d be the proudest father
on the Lord’s footstool to-day.”
Then, lest in his wrath he should wholly forget himself, Bannister
turned on his heel and strode away. But he did not go immediately to
his home. He felt that he could not yet trust himself to tell his wife.
And when, finally, he did go to her he found that she already knew.
Seth Mills had been there and told her that since he had seen her
husband he had received a letter from Bob, saying that he had been
refused as a substitute, but that he was about starting to the front
with Sergeant Anderson to enlist. Then Rhett Bannister lost entire
control of his tongue.
“So,” he said, “the radicals have caught their prey at last. Such
Lincoln bigots as Seth Mills and Henry Bradbury and Sarah Jane Stark
have drilled into the boy’s mind their brand of pestilent patriotism
till they have turned his head and sent him off on this wild-goose
chase after glory. Little thought have they for his health or life or
the peace of mind of his parents. And when he dies, as die he will,
in that awful struggle, his blood will be on their heads. Oh, it’s
horrible! horrible!”
He had not thought to give way, like this, to his passion, and the
next moment he had repented himself of his anger. His wife had thrown
herself into a chair, and, resting her head on a table, was sobbing
hysterically. He went over to her and put his arms about her shoulders.
“There, Mary,” he said, “there, never mind. We’ll get him back somehow.
He’s too young to enlist. They can’t hold him against his will or ours.
We’ll get him back.”
And so, little by little, she was calmed and comforted.
Seth Mills had told her that Bob would write as soon as he reached
his destination. But the day went by and the night wore away and no
letter came. Another day and another night dragged their long hours
out, and still there was no letter. Word reached Bob’s parents from
those who had seen him on the way to Easton. Congratulations on their
son’s patriotism and bravery came to them in almost every mail. Henry
Bradbury wrote to Bannister:--
“If you are not proud of your boy, you ought to be. I saw him when he
started. A braver boy never left this town. If you hang for treason, he
will redeem your family from disgrace. Get down on your knees and thank
God for him.”
And some of these darts sank deeply into Rhett Bannister’s sensitive
soul. At times he was wild with rage, at other times he was bowed
and silent with grief and despair. His own fate mattered little to
him any more. His whole thought was as to when and by what method he
could rescue his son from the hateful hands into which he had fallen.
But, even as he pondered and grieved, there crept into his heart a
softer feeling toward the boy, an almost unconscious sympathy with the
enthusiasm, the ambition, the noble unselfishness which had governed
the lad’s conduct, which had impelled him to seek his father’s welfare
at peril of his own, which had led him willingly, gladly into the
ranks of the Union armies. Indeed, he went so far as to wonder if he
himself could by any possibility be mistaken in his attitude toward the
Federal government, and his view concerning the conduct of the war.
If, after all, there might not possibly be something back of all this
attempt at coercion, back of all these vast fighting armies in blue,
back of all this lavish expenditure of blood and treasure, some great
principle, some high ideal, which his eyes had been too dim to see,
but which appealed to the hearts and souls of large-minded men, and
fervent patriotic youth, and led them into untold sacrifices that that
principle might be upheld and that ideal maintained.
On the fifth day after Bob’s disappearance, the boy who brought mail
from the post-office to the residents along the North and South
Turnpike road, left a letter at the Bannister house, a letter which,
at the first glance, Mrs. Bannister knew was from Bob. With trembling
hands she tore the envelope apart and drew forth the sheet of paper
inclosed. In her calmer moments she could have read the letter without
difficulty. Now, the words, strangely twisted and distorted, swam
before her eyes, and the whole page was an unsolved mystery. She ran to
the door calling to her husband:--
“Rhett! Rhett! Here’s a letter--from Rob--come quick!”
At his bench in the shop he heard her, and hurried to her side. She
thrust the letter into his hands.
“Read it!” she exclaimed. “Read it aloud!”
So he read it.
“IN CAMP AT TURKEY RUN, VA.,
_October 23, 1863_.
“MY DEAREST FATHER AND MOTHER:--
“I know I gave you a good deal of anxiety and distress. I am
very sorry for that, but I thought I was doing what was right
and now I know I was. I wrote Uncle Seth about it. I suppose
he has told you. They wouldn’t take me as a substitute for
father, so I thought I would enlist anyway, and I met Sergt.
Anderson at Easton, and he brought me down here and got me
into his company. The only regret I have is that father isn’t
here with me as a soldier. I am so anxious and fearful about
him. It is such a splendid thing to be a soldier of the United
States. I am so happy, all except about father. We marched
here to-day from Auburn. We are in camp here. They say Gen.
Meade may take us on down to Fredericksburg and have a battle
there. I am very well and happy. Oh, mother, do you remember
how the boys wouldn’t have me in the company last summer, and
how bad I felt about it? Well, they are still in Mount Hermon
playing soldier with wooden swords and guns, and now I am in
the army with a real musket and knapsack and canteen, and maybe
to-morrow or next day I shall go into a real battle to fight
for my country. Oh, mother, I’m so proud of being a soldier. I
am in Col. Gordon’s regiment, Co. M, Army of the Potomac, Va.
Please write to me. I am so sorry I gave you anxiety about me,
but I couldn’t help it. If anything happens to father, tell me.
If he could only be here and see things the way I do. Give my
dear love to Dottie.
“Your affectionate son,
“ROBERT BARNWELL BANNISTER.”
When he had finished reading the letter, the man held it in his hand
and said nothing. Neither did he see anything in the room about him.
His eyes were piercing the distance, gazing on a blue-coated stripling
in Meade’s army down among the Virginia hills.
The woman was the first to speak. There was no longer in her face the
strain of grief or anxiety, the steady look of pain. Her eyes were
shining and tearless. Her hands were clasped.
“Rhett,” she said, “I’m proud of him. He’s the bravest boy in the
world. What a splendid, splendid letter!”
For one moment the mother’s pride in her offspring asserted itself,
the spirit of her Kentucky ancestors shone forth in her countenance,
and she spoke the words that came straight from her heart to her lips.
Then, suddenly realizing that for the first time in all their twenty
years of married life, she had expressed a thought in direct antagonism
to the opinion of the husband whom she honored and loved, she sank
back into a chair, pale-faced and silent, and let her hands fall
dejectedly to her side.
But there was no protest from him. Instead, with a look in his eyes
which she could not quite fathom, he came over and sat down by her and
kissed her and said:--
“We are both proud of his spirit, Mary, however mistaken his conduct.
But he is too good a boy for us to permit him to be lost and destroyed
in this awful whirlpool of war. We must get him back.”
Late in the evening of that day there came a knock at the kitchen door
of the Bannister house. When the door was opened some one from the
outer darkness thrust in a scrap of paper and disappeared. On the paper
was scrawled:--
“Rounding-up squad expected at Scranton to-night. Look out!”
When Rhett Bannister read the warning, he said:--
“It makes little difference now. It simply hastens my departure.
Doubtless the end will be the same.”
To his wife he added:--
“I start to-morrow morning to try to reach Robert. The probability is
that I shall not succeed. But the least I can do is to make the effort.”
Then, gently, calmly, carefully, he outlined to his wife the plan that
he had in mind, and explained to her why there was nothing left for him
to do but to try to reach and save the boy. The effort might cost him
his life, but to stay at home was likely also to cost him his life, and
to attempt to escape from the Federal authorities was utterly useless.
There was a wild possibility, the thousandth part of a chance, that he
might get to Bob and be able to take the boy’s place in the ranks. That
was all. And when it was all said, he did not find her nerveless, or
hysterical, or in tears, as he had expected and feared, but, instead,
in her eyes there was a look of resolution and bravery, across her
gentle lips there was drawn a line of courage and determination such
as, in all their married life, he had never seen there before.
“I am content,” she said. “I believe you are doing right. Rhett, dear,
no matter what happens now, come life or death or desolation, I shall
have two heroes to worship and dream of as long as I live.”
Strange it is, and divine, that in a woman so weak so strong a spirit
will develop when the right hour strikes.
So, in the bleak darkness of the next morning, at the same hour on
which his son had left home scarcely a week before, Rhett Bannister
kissed his wife and his sleeping child good-by, and set forth on a
mission which, even in his most hopeful moments, promised him only
bitter and disastrous failure.
Up the dark road, in the face of the chill October wind, he hurried,
into the streets of Mount Hermon, past the home of Sarah Jane Stark,
making the same détour around the village that Bob had made, coming
out into the main road where he had come, hurrying on in the gray
light of the morning, toward his hoped-for destination. But, farther
on, he left the main highway and struck off across the country by a
little-traveled road, expecting to reach a way station on the railroad
a few miles beyond Carbon Creek, and there meet the morning train.
In this effort he was successful. He met no one on the way, nor did
any one at the station recognize him. But he had no sooner boarded
the train than that happened which he might have expected. Soldiers
in uniform arose mysteriously and one stood guard at each door of the
car, and another one, followed by an officer, came down the aisle and
stopped at the conscript’s seat.
“Is your name Bannister?” inquired the officer.
“It is,” responded the man. “Rhett Bannister of Mount Hermon, at your
service; drafted by the government, classed as a deserter, and on my
way to join the Army of the Potomac in Virginia.”
“Good! you are our prisoner. Have you any arms about you?”
The officer hastily and skillfully examined the prisoner’s clothing.
“I am unarmed and defenseless,” replied Bannister. “I will go with you
willingly. I am not disappointed nor surprised. I only ask to be heard
by any officer in authority before whom you take me.”
The mode of capture had been simple enough. The provost-guard had only
to follow the conscript’s trail, to board the train at Carbon Creek,
and be ready to apprehend him when he should appear. They did not
handcuff him. He was entirely in their power, and it was apparent that
he would make no resistance.
And so the notorious copperhead, the man who had denounced Abraham
Lincoln, who had ridiculed the draft, who had defied the Federal army,
was at last a prisoner of the United States. Within five minutes the
fact of his identity was known to every person on the train. Men hissed
and jeered at him as he was taken into an adjoining car, and women
looked on him with detestation. At a station where a change of cars was
made, a sympathizer, with more zeal than discretion, attempted, in a
loud voice, to argue justification for the prisoner. But his oratory
was soon drowned in a storm of protest, and he himself was buffeted by
the crowd till he was glad to escape.
So, all the way to Easton, the despised conscript was mocked and
frowned upon. Accustomed as he had been to condemnation by his fellow
men, the experience of this day was the most bitter and degrading that
his life had thus far known. With little to eat, and no comfortable
resting-place, he passed a sleepless night. In the morning he was
brought before the provost-marshal.
“Captain Yohe,” said the officer in charge, “this is Rhett Bannister,
the Mount Hermon deserter.”
The provost-marshal laid down his pen and looked the prisoner in the
face.
“Your son,” he said, “was before me a few days ago seeking to be
substituted in your place. Were you aware of that fact?”
“I have since learned it, sir.”
“I understand that he afterward enlisted and is now at the front. Is
that true?”
“I believe it is.”
“How is it that so unpatriotic a father can have so patriotic a son?”
“I hold myself to be as much of a patriot, sir, as any man in this
state. The boy and I take different views of the same matter, that
is all. He is young, barely seventeen, and easily influenced by
professions of loyalty and the glitter of arms. He has no business to
be in the ranks. His place is at home with his mother. I am willing, I
desire, to be substituted for him.”
“I see. The scheme is a pretty one, but we cannot permit you to
purchase immunity from punishment in that way. Neither your son’s age,
nor his patriotism, nor his bravery can serve to effect your release.
You have the standing only of a deserter, you must be dealt with as
such. I shall remand you to the officers of the division and regiment
to which, as a drafted man, you were assigned. They may shoot you, or
hang you, or do what they will with you. I am through with you. In my
judgment no power on earth can save you from the extreme penalty meted
out to deserters unless it be Abraham Lincoln himself. At any rate, I
do not want you longer on Pennsylvania soil. Remove the prisoner.”
No wonder Rhett Bannister received little sympathy or consideration at
the hands of his captors after that condemnation. Between two soldiers
under orders to deliver him to the commander of the regiment to which
he had been assigned, he was hustled and hurried on board train, and so
off toward Washington.
The soldier guard, at the first opportunity, purchased a pack of cards
and a bottle of whiskey. At the station where the next change of cars
was made another bottle of whiskey was obtained. The smoking-car in
which they sat, and up and down the aisle of which they reeled, was
filled with the noise of their harsh orders, their rude quarreling with
each other, and their coarse jests at the expense of their prisoner.
To Rhett Bannister it was a bitter, a humiliating, a degrading night.
But long before the train rolled into the station at Washington, both
drunken soldiers had fallen into a heavy sleep. Nor did they awaken
when the brakeman announced the station and cried, “All out!”
The few passengers remaining in the car rose to leave. Bannister rose
with them. Not so much because he desired to escape from the custody of
the Federal authorities, as because he wished to relieve himself of the
odious and repellent society of his drunken and disreputable guards.
One man, looking at him askance, said:--
“He ought not to be allowed to get away like that.”
And another one replied:--
“Let him go. After such a night as he has had he deserves his freedom.
But I hope his guards will be court-martialed and shot.”
After that no one attempted to detain him, and Rhett Bannister
stepped down from the car, a free man. He walked leisurely up the
train platform, across the lobby, through the waiting-room, and out
into the street. Over the roofs of the houses to the east the sky was
beginning to show the first faint streaks of morning gray. An all-night
restaurant at the corner attracted his attention, and it occurred
to him that he should be hungry. He knew that he was very tired. He
entered, and the sleepy and sullen waiter served him with a sandwich
and a cup of coffee. Refreshed, he went out once more into the street.
It was very quiet in the city at this hour. Only a few stragglers were
abroad and they did not notice him.
When he reached Pennsylvania Avenue he turned up toward the Treasury
building and sauntered slowly on. Not that he cared particularly which
direction he took. But, in other days, he had been familiar with the
streets of Washington, and some trend of mind or instinct of memory led
his steps that way. He knew that he could not permanently escape, that,
sooner or later, he would be recaptured and put to his punishment, and
that his punishment would be the more hasty and severe because of his
temporary freedom.
The hope that he had dared to entertain on leaving home, that he
might be permitted to take his son’s place in the ranks, had now
quite vanished. Before him lay only disgrace and death and a stain
on his family name in the North for generations. It was the darkest,
most desolate hour his life had known. A small squad of soldiers, in
command of an officer, approached him, marching up the street through
the crisp morning air in brisk time, swinging their arms in unison as
they came, and the thought entered his mind that the best thing he
could do would be to surrender himself to them. But when he met them he
passed without speaking, and they paid no attention to him. A little
farther on a crippled veteran with crutches sat on the curb and asked
alms as Bannister passed by. And this hater of the Federal blue thrust
his hand into his pocket, drew forth a liberal sum, and gave it to the
uniformed beggar, without a word. The man was probably a fraud, but
what did it matter? It was doubtless a doomed man’s last opportunity to
do a charitable deed. So he passed on, up around the Treasury building
and along the front of the White House. It was almost daylight now, but
the street-lamps had not yet been extinguished, and in the President’s
mansion two windows were still brilliantly illuminated.
As Bannister reached the corner by the War Department building he
turned and looked back at the White House. There lived the man whom he
had ridiculed as a buffoon, whom he had denounced as a tyrant, whom he
had decried as a malefactor. And the remark made by Captain Yohe the
day before at Easton came back into his mind: “No power on earth can
save you from the extreme penalty meted out to deserters unless it be
Abraham Lincoln himself.”
So this man held also in his hands dominion over life and death. At
his word, spoken or withheld, he, Rhett Bannister, would live or die.
At his word, spoken or withheld, soldiers by the thousands had given
and would still give their lives that his counsels and his judgments
might prevail. What an awful responsibility! How it must weigh on a
man’s soul! How it must sober him and search him, and drive from his
heart all forms of avarice and selfishness and hatred and hypocrisy!
How could this man Lincoln, by any human possibility, be anything but
honest and humble and God-fearing, with such an awful load upon his
mind and heart!
Involuntarily, as he pondered, Bannister had turned into the park lying
between the White House and the War Department and was sauntering
leisurely up the path. There was no purpose in it. Doubtless, his
thoughts being upon Abraham Lincoln, he was drawn unconsciously toward
the physical abiding-place of the man.
And then, suddenly, he became aware that some one was coming toward him
down the walk. In the gray light of the morning, under the frost-bitten
foliage, a man, tall, bent, with a high black hat on his head, and a
gray plaid shawl thrown about his shoulders to protect him from the
chill October air, came shuffling down the path. One glance at the
uncouth figure, at the deep-lined, careworn face, into the sad and
measureless depths of the never-to-be-forgotten eyes told Bannister
that the man who approached him was Abraham Lincoln.