Chapter 4
“Where are the tall men that marched on the right, That marched to the battle so handsome and tall? They ‘ve been left to mark the places where they saw the foemen’s faces, For the fever and the lead took them all, Jenny Orde, The fever and the lead took them all.
“I found him in the forefront of the battle, Kenny Orde, With the bullets spitting up the ground around him, And the sweat was on his brow, and his lips were on his sword, And his life was going from him when I found him.
“We lowered him to rest, Jenny Orde, With your picture on his breast, Jenny Orde, And the rumble of pursuit was the regiment’s salute To the man that loved you best, Jenny Orde.”
XXX
As a dam breaking gives free passage to the imprisoned waters, and they rush out victoriously, so Vicksburg, starving and crumbling in the West, was about to open her gates and set the Father of Waters free forever. That was where the Union hammer, grasped so firmly by strong fingers that their knuckles turned white, was striking the heaviest blows upon the cracking skull of the Confederacy. On the other hand, Chancellorsville had verged upon disaster, and the powers of Europe were waiting for one more Confederate victory in order to declare the blockade of Southern ports at an end, and to float a Southern loan. That a Confederate victory was to be feared, the presence in Northern territory of Lee, grasping the handle of a sword, whose splendid blade was seventy thousand men concentrated, testified. That Lee had lost the best finger of his right hand at Chancellorsville was but job’s comfort to the threatened government at Washington. That government was still, after years of stern fighting, trying generals and finding them wanting. But now the Fates, in secret conclave, weighed the lots of Union and Disunion; and that of Disunion, though glittering and brilliant like gold, sank heavily to the ground, as a great eagle whose wing is broken by the hunter’s bullet comes surely if fiercely down, to be put to death.
Early on the morning of July 1, 1863, Lee found himself in the neighborhood of a small and obscure town named Gettysburg. A military invasion is the process of occupying in succession a series of towns. To occupy Gettysburg, which seemed as possible as eating breakfast, Lee sent forward a division of a corps, and followed leisurely with all his forces. But Gettysburg and the ridges to the west of Gettysburg were already occupied by two brigades of cavalry, and those, with a cockiness begotten of big lumps of armed friends approaching from the rear, determined to go on occupying. This, in a spirit of great courage, with slowly increasing forces, against rapidly increasing forces, they did, until the brisk and pliant skirmish which opened the business of the day had grown so in weight and ferocity that it was evident to the least astute that the decisive battle of the New World was being fought.
XXXI
There was a pretty girl in Manchester, Maryland (possibly several, but one was particularly pretty), and Aladdin, together with several young officers (nearly all officers were young in that war) of the Sixth Army Corps, rather flattered himself that he was making an impression. He was all for making impressions in those days. Margaret was engaged to marry Peter--and a pretty girl was a pretty girl. The pretty girl of Manchester had several girls and several officers to tea on a certain evening, and they remained till midnight, making a great deal of noise and flirting outrageously in dark corners. Two of the girls got themselves kissed, and two of the officers got their ears boxed, and later a glove each to stick in their hat-bands. At midnight the party broke up with regret, and the young officers, seeking their quarters, turned in, and were presently sleeping the sleep of the constant in heart. But Aladdin did not dream about the pretty girl of Manchester, Maryland. When he could not help himself--under the disadvantage of sleep, when suddenly awakened, or when left alone--his mind harped upon Margaret. And often the chords of the harping were sad chords. But on this particular night he dreamed well. He dreamed that her little feet did wrong and fled for safety unto him. What the wrong was he knew in his dream, but never afterward--only that it was a dreadful, unforgivable wrong, not to be condoned, even by a lover. But in his dream Aladdin was more than her lover, and could condone anything. So he hid her feet in his hands until those who came to arrest them had passed, and then he waked to find that his hands were empty, and the delicious dream over. He waked also to find that it was still dark, and that the Sixth Army Corps was to march to a place called Taneytown, where General Meade had headquarters. He made ready and presently was riding by his general at the head of a creaking column, under the starry sky. In the great hush and cool that is before a July dawn, God showed himself to the men, and they sang the “Battle-hymn of the Republic,” but it sounded sweetly and yearningly, as if sung by thousands of lovers:
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword His truth is marching on.
The full sunlight gives man poise and shows him the practical side of things, but in the early morning and late at night man is seldom quite rational. He weakly allows himself to dwell upon what was not, is not, and will not be. And so Aladdin, during the first period of that march, pretended that Margaret was to be his and that all was well.
A short distance out of Manchester the column met with orders from General Meade and was turned westward toward Gettysburg. With the orders came details of the first day’s fight, and Aladdin learned of the officer bringing them, for he was a Maine man, that Hamilton St. John was among the dead. Aladdin and the officer talked long of the poor boy, for both had known him well. They said that he had not been as brilliant as John, nor as winning as Hannibal, but so honest and reliable, so friendly and unselfish. They went over his good qualities again and again, and spoke of his great strength and purity, and of other things which men hold best in men.
And now they were riding with the sun in their eyes, and white dust rolled up from the swift feet of horses and men. Wild roses and new-mown grass filled the air with delightful fragrance, and such fields as were uncut blazed with daisies and buttercups. Over the trimmed lawns about homesteads yellow dandelions shone like stars in a green sky. Men, women, and children left their occupations, and stood with open mouths and wide eyes to see the soldiers pass. The sun rose higher and the day became most hot, but steadily, unflinchingly as the ticking of a clock, the swift, bleeding, valiant feet of the Sixth Army Corps stepped off the miles. And the men stretched their ears to hear the mumbled distant thunder of artillery--that voice of battle which says so much and tells so little to those far off. The Sixth Corps felt that it was expected to decide a battle upon Northern soil for the North, and marching in that buoyant hope, left scarcely a man, broken with fatigue and disappointment, among the wild flowers by the side of the way.
If you have ever ridden from Cairo to the Pyramids you will remember that at five miles’ distance they look as huge as at a hundred yards, and that it is not until you actually touch them with your hand that you even begin to realize how wonderfully huge they really are. It was so with the thunders of Gettysburg. They sounded no louder, and they connoted no more to the column now in the immediate vicinage of the battle, than they had to its far-distant ears. But presently the column halted behind a circle of hills, and beheld white smoke pouring heavenward as if a fissure had opened in the earth and was giving forth steam. And they beheld in the heavens themselves tiny, fleecy white clouds and motionless rings, and they knew that shells were bursting and men falling upon the slopes beyond the hills.
A frenzy of eagerness seized upon the tired feet, and they pressed upward, lightly, like dancers’ feet. Straps creaked upon straining breasts, and sweat ran in bubbles. Then the head of the column reached the ridge of a hill, and its leaders saw through smarting eyes a great horseshoe of sudden death.
XXXII
That morning Peter Manners had received a letter, but he had not had a chance to open and read it. It was a letter that belonged next to his heart, as he judged by the writing, and next to his heart, in a secure pocket, he placed it, there to lie and give him strength and courage for the cruel day’s work, and something besides the coming of night to look forward to. For the rest, he went among the lines, and smiled like a boy released from school to see how silently and savagely they fought.
The Sixth Corps rested wherever there was shade along the banks of Rock Creek, and gathered strength and breath for whatever work should be assigned to it.
Aladdin, sharing a cherry-pie with a friend, shivered with excitement, for there was a terrific and ever-increasing discharge of cannons and muskets on the left, and it seemed that the time to go forward again and win glory was at hand. Presently one came riding back from the battle. His face was shining with delight, and, sitting like a centaur to the fiery plunges of his horse, he swung his hat and shouted. It was Sedgwick’s chief of staff, McMahon, and he brought glorious news, for he said that the corps was to move toward the heavy firing, where the fighting was most severe.
Then the whole corps sprang to its feet and went forward, tearing down the fences in its path and trampling the long grass in the fields. A mile away the long, flowery slopes ended in a knobbed hill revealed through smoke. That was Little Round Top, and its possession meant victory or defeat. The corps was halted and two regiments were sent forward up the long slope. To them the minutes seemed moments. They went like a wave over the crest to the right of the hill, and poured down into the valley beyond. Here the blue flood of men banked against a stone wall, spreading to right and left, as the waters of a stream spread the length of a dam. Then they began to fire dreadfully into the faces of their enemy, and to curse terribly, as is proper in battle. Bullets stung the long line like wasps, and men bit the sod.
Aladdin was ordered to ride up Little Round Top for information. Half-way up he left his horse among the boulders and finished the laborious ascent on foot. At the summit he came upon a leaderless battery loading and firing like clockwork, and he saw that the rocks were strewn with dead men in light-blue Zouave uniforms, who looked as if they had fallen in a shower from the clouds. Many had their faces caved in with stones, and terrible rents showed where the bayonet had been at work, for in this battle men had fought hand to hand like cave-dwellers. Bullets hit the rocks with stinging blows, and round shot screamed in the air. Sometimes a dead man would be lifted from where he lay and hurled backward, while every instant men cried hoarsely and joined the dead. In the midst of this thunder and carnage, Aladdin came suddenly upon Peter, smiling like a favorite at a dance, and shouted to him. They grinned at each other, and as Aladdin grinned he looked about to see where he could be of use, and sprang toward a gun half of whose crew had been blasted to death by a bursting shell. The sweat ran down his face, and already it was black with burning powder. The flash of the guns set fire to the clothing of the dead and wounded who lay in front, and on the recoil the iron-shod wheels broke the bones of those lying behind. It was impossible to know how the fight was going. It was only possible to go on fighting.
There was a voice in front of the battery that kept calling so terribly for water that it turned cold the stomachs of those that heard. It came from a Confederate, a general officer, who had been wounded in the spine. Occasionally it was possible to see him through the smoke. Sometimes a convulsion seized him, and he beat the ground with his whole body, as a great fish that has been drawn from the water beats the deck of a vessel. It was terrible to look at and hear. Bullets and shot tore the ground about the man and showered him with dust and stones. Aladdin shook his canteen and heard the swish of water. It seemed to him, and his knees turned to water at the thought, that he must go out into that place swept by the fire of both sides, and give relief to his enemy. He did not want to go, and fear shook him; but he threw down the rammer which he had been serving, and drawing breath in long gasps, took a step forward. His resolve came too late. A blue figure slipped by him and went down the slope at a run. It was Manners. They saw him kneel by the dying Confederate in the bright sunlight, and then smoke swept between like a wave of fog. The red flashes of the guns went crashing into the smoke, and on all sides men fell. But presently there came a star-shaped explosion in the midst of the smoke, hurling it back, and they saw Manners again. He was staggering about with his hands over his eyes, and blood was running through his fingers. Even as they looked, a shot struck him in the back, and he came down. They saw his splendid square chest heaving, and knew that he was not yet dead. Then the smoke closed in, but this time another figure was hidden by the smoke. For no sooner did Aladdin see Peter fall than he sprang forward like a hound from the leash. Aladdin kneeled by Manners, and as he kneeled a bullet struck his hat from his head, and a round shot, smashing into the rocky ground a dozen feet away, filled his eyes with dirt and sparks. There was a pungent smell of brimstone from the furious concussions of iron against rock. A bullet struck the handle of Aladdin’s sword and broke it. He unstopped his canteen and pressed the nozzle to Manners’ lips. Manners sucked eagerly, like an infant at its mother’s breast. A bullet struck the canteen and dashed it to pieces. The crashing of the cannon was like close thunder, and the air sang like the strings of an instrument. But Aladdin, so cool and collected he was, might have been the target for praises and roses flung by beauties. He put his lips close to Peter’s ear, and spoke loudly, for the noise of battle was deafening.
“Is it much, darlint?”
Manners turned his bleeding eyes toward Aladdin.
“Go back, you damn little fool!” he said.
“Peter, Peter,” said Aladdin, “can’t you see?”
“No, I can’t. I’m no use now. Go back; go back and give ‘em hell!”
Aladdin endeavored to raise Peter in his arms, but was not strong enough.
“I can’t lift you, I can’t lift you,” he said.
“You can’t,” said Peter. “Bless you for coming, and go back.”
“Shut up, will you?” cried Aladdin, savagely. “Where are you hit?”
“In the back,” said Peter, “and I’m done for.”
“The hell you are!” said Aladdin. Tears hotter than blood were running out of his eyes. “What can I do for you, Peter?” he said in a husky voice.
Manners’ blackened fingers fumbled at the buttons of his coat, but he had not the strength to undo them.
“It’s there, ‘Laddin,” he said.
“What’s there?” said Aladdin. He undid the coat with swift, clever fingers.
“Let me hold it in my hands,” said Peter.
“Is it this--this letter--this letter from Margaret?” asked Aladdin, chokingly, for he saw that the letter had not been opened.
A shower of dirt and stones fell upon them, and a shell burst with a sharp crash above their heads.
“Yes,” said Peter. “Give it to me. I can’t ever read it now.”
“I can read it for you,” said Aladdin. He was struggling with a sob that wanted to tear his throat.
“Will you? Will you?” cried Peter, and he smiled like a beautiful child.
“Sure I will,” said Aladdin.
With the palm of his hand he pressed back the streaming sweat from his forehead twice and three times. Then, having wiped his hands upon his knees, he drew the battered fragment of his sword, and using it as a paper-knife, opened the letter carefully, as a man opens letters which are not to be destroyed. Then his stomach turned cold and his tongue grew thick and burred. For the letter which Margaret had written to her lover was more cruel than the shell which had blinded his eyes and the bullet which was taking his life.
“‘Laddin--” this in a fearful voice.
“Yes.”
“Thank God. I thought you’d been hit. Why don’t you read?”
Aladdin’s eyes, used to reading in blocks of lines rather than a word at a time, had at one glance taken in the purport of Margaret’s letter, and his wits had gone from him. She called herself every base and cruel name, and she prayed her lover to forgive her, but she had never had the right to tell him that she would marry him, for she had never loved him in that way. She said that, God forgive her, she could not keep up the false position any longer, and she wished she was dead.
“There’s a man at the bottom of this,” thought Aladdin. He caught a glimpse of Peter’s poor, bloody face and choked.
“I--it--the sheets are mixed,” he said presently. “I’m trying to find the beginning. There are eight pages,” he went on, “fighting for time,” and they ‘re folded all wrong, and they’re not numbered or anything.”
Peter waited patiently while Aladdin fumbled with the sheets and tried, to the cracking-point, to master the confusion in his mind.
Suddenly God sent light, and he could have laughed aloud. Not in vain had he pursued the muse and sought after the true romance in the far country where she sweeps her skirts beyond the fingers of men. Not in vain had he rolled the arduous ink-pots and striven manfully for the right word and the telling phrase. The chance had come, and the years of preparation had not been thrown away. He knew that he was going to make good at last. His throat cleared of itself, and the choking phlegm disappeared as if before a hot flame of joy. His voice came from between his trembling lips clear as a bell, and the thunder of battle rolled back from the plain of his consciousness, as, slowly, tenderly, and helped by God, he began to speak those eight closely lined pages which she should have written.
“My Heart’s Darling--” he began, and there followed a molten stream of golden and sacred words.
And the very soul of Manners shouted aloud, for the girl was speaking to him as she had never spoken before.
XXXIII
When the fighting was over for that day, Aladdin wrote as follows to Margaret:
MARGARET DEAR: Peter was shot down to-day, while doing more than his duty by his enemies and by his country and by himself, which was always his way. He will not live very long, and you must come to him if it is in any way possible. His love for you makes other loves seem very little, and I think it would be better that you should walk the streets than that you should refuse to come to him now. He had a letter from you, which God, knowing about, blinded him so that he could not read it, and he believes that you love him and are faithful to him. It is very merciful of God to let him believe that. He must not be undeceived now, and you must come and be lovely to him and pretend and pretend, and make his dying beautiful. I have the right to ask this of you, for, next to Peter, I was the one that loved you most. And when I made you think I didn’t I lied. I lied because I felt that I was not worthy, and I loved you enough to want you to belong to the best man God ever made, and I loved him too. And that was why it was. I tell you because I think you must have wondered about it sometimes. But it was very hard to do, and because I did it, and because Peter is what he is, you must come to him now. If God will continue to be merciful, you will get here in time. I hope I may be on hand to see you, but I do not know. Hamilton is gone, and Peter is going, and there will be a terrible battle to-morrow, and thousands of poor lads will lie on this field forever. And here, one way or another, the war will be decided. I have not the heart to write to you any more, my darling. You will come to Peter, I know, and all will be as well as it can be. I pray to God that I too shall live to see you again, and I ask him to bless you and keep you for ever and ever. Always I see your dear face before me in the battle, and sometimes at night God lets me dream of you. I am without dogma, sweetest of all possible sweethearts, but this creed I say over and over, and this creed I believe: I believe in one God, Maker of heaven and Margaret.
Angels guard you, darling.
ALADDIN. GETTYSBURG, July 2, 1863.
XXXIV
On the morning of the third day of July, young Hannibal St. John shaved his face clean and put himself into a new uniform. The old nth Maine was no longer a regiment, but a name of sufficient glory. On three occasions it had been shot to pieces, and after the third the remaining tens were absorbed by other regiments. Hannibal’s father had obtained for him a lieutenancy in the United States artillery, Beau Larch was second lieutenant in another Maine regiment, and John, the old and honored colonel of the nth, was now, like Aladdin, serving on a staff.
The battle began with a movement against Johnson on the Confederate left, and one against Longstreet on their right.
That against Longstreet became known in history as Farnsworth’s charge, and Aladdin saw it from the signal-station on Little Round Top.
It was a series of blue lines, whose relations to one another could not be justly estimated, because of the wooded nature of the ground, which ran out into open places before fences and woods that spat red fire, and became thinner and of less extension, as if they had been made of wax and were melting under the blaze of the July sun. In that charge Farnsworth fell and achieved glory.
Aladdin held a field-glass to his eyes with trembling hands, and watched the cruel mowing of the blue flowers. Sometimes he recognized a man that he knew, and saw him die for his country. Three times he saw John St. John in the forefront of the battle. The first time he was riding a glorious black horse, of spirit and proportions to correspond with those of the hero himself. The second time he was on foot, running forward with a-halt in his stride, hatless, and carrying a great battle-flag. Upon the top of it gleamed a gold eagle, that nodded toward the enemy. A dozen blue-coated soldiers, straggling like the finishers in a long-distance race, followed him with bayonets fixed. The little loose knot of men ran across a field toward a stone wall that bounded it upon the other side. Then white smoke burst from the wall, and they were cut down to the last man. The smoke cleared, and Aladdin saw John lying above the great flag which he had carried. A figure in gray leaped the stone wall and ran out to him, stooped, and seizing the staff of the flag in both hands, braced his hands and endeavored to draw it from beneath the great body of the hero. But it would not come, and as he bent closer to obtain a better hold, the back of a great clenched hand struck him across the jaw, and he fell like a log. Other men in gray leaped the wall and ran out. The flag came easily now, for St. John was dead; but so was the gray brother, for his comrades raised him, and his head hung back over his left shoulder, and they saw that his neck had been broken like a dry stick.
Aladdin had not been sent to that place to mourn, but to gain information. Twice and three times he wiped his eyes clear of tears, and then he swept his faltering glass along the lines of the enemy, until, ranged in their center, he beheld a great semicircle of a hundred and more iron and brass cannons, and movements of troops. Then Aladdin scrambled down from Little Round Top to report what he had seen in the center of the Confederate lines.
At one o’clock the Confederate batteries, one hundred and fifteen pieces in all, opened their tremendous fire upon the center of the Union lines. Eighty cannons roared back at them with defiant thunder, and the blue sky became hidden by smoke. Among the Union batteries horses began to run loose, cannons to be splintered like fire-wood, and caissons to explode. At these moments men, horses, fragments of men and horses, stones, earth, and things living and things dead were hurled high into the air with great blasts of flame and smoke, and it was possible to hear miles of exultant yells from the hills opposite. But fresh cannon were brought lumbering up at the gallop and rolled into the places of those dismantled, shot and shell and canister and powder were rushed forward from the reserve, and the grim, silent infantry, the great lumbermen of Maine and Vermont, the shrill-voiced regiments from New York, the shrewd farmers of Ohio and Massachusetts, the deliberate Pennsylvanians, and the rest, lay closely, wherever there was shelter, and moistened their lips, and gripped their rifles, and waited--waited.
For two hours that terrible cannonading was maintained. The men who served the guns looked like stokers of ships, for, such was the heat, many of them, casting away first one piece of clothing and then another, were half naked, and black sweat glistened in streams on their chests and backs. As sight-seers crowd in eagerly by one door of a building where there is an exhibition, and come reluctantly out by another and go their ways, so the reserves kept pressing to the front, and the wounded maintained an unceasing reluctant stream to the rear.
A little before three o’clock Hannibal St. John had his right knee smashed by the exploding of a caisson, and fell behind one of the guns of his battery. He was so sure that he was to be killed on this day that it had never occurred to him that he might be trivially wounded and carried to the rear in safety. An expression of almost comical chagrin came over his face, for life was nothing to him, and somewhere far above the smoke a goodly welcome awaited him: that he knew. Men came with a stretcher to carry him off, but he cursed them roundly and struggled to his well knee. The cannon behind which he had fallen was about to be discharged.
“Give ‘em hell!” cried Hannibal.
As he spoke, the piece was fired, and leaping back on the recoil, as a frenzied horse that breaks its halter, one of the wheels struck him a terrible blow on the body, breaking all the ribs on that side and killing him instantly. His face wore a glad smile, and afterward, when Aladdin found him and took the gold locket from his pocket, and read the inscription written, a great wonder seized men:
July 3, 1863. Nunc dimittis. Te Deum laudamus.
Thus in one battle fell the three strong hostages which an old man had given to fortune.
XXXV
Three o’clock the Union batteries were ordered to be silent, for it was well known to those in command that presently there would be a powerful attack by infantry, for which the cannonade was supposed to have paved the way with death and disorder, and it was necessary that the pieces should be kept cool in order to be in efficient condition to grapple with and suppress this attack. Sometimes a regiment, stung to a frenzy of courage by bullets and the death of comrades, will rise from its trench without the volition of its officers, and go frantically forward against overwhelming odds. A different effect of an almost identical psychological process is patience. Men will sometimes lie as quietly under a rain of bullets, in order to get in one effective shot at an enemy, as cattle in the hot months will lie under a rain of water to get cool. It was so now. The whole Union army was seized by a kind of bloody deliberation and lay like statues of men, while, for quarter of an hour more, the Confederates continued to thunder from their guns. Now and again a man felt lovingly the long black tube of a cannon to see if its temperature was falling. Others came hurrying from the rear with relays of powder, shot, shell, and canister.
It seemed now to the Confederate leaders that the Union batteries had been silenced, and that the time had come for Pickett, the Ney of the South, to go forward with all his forces. Only Longstreet demurred and protested against the charge. When Pickett asked him for the order to advance he turned away his head sorrowfully and would not speak. Then Pickett, that great leader of men, who was one half daring and one half magnetism and all hero, said proudly: “I shall go forward, sir.” And turned to his lovers.
Silence and smoke hung over Gettysburg.
Presently out of the smoke on the Confederate side came three lines of gray a mile long. Battle-flags nodded at intervals, and swords blazed in the sun.
Very deliberately and with pains about aiming, the Union batteries began to hurl solid shot against the gray advance. Soon holes were bitten here and there, and occasionally a flag went down, to be instantly snatched up and waved defiantly. When Pickett, Pettigrew, and the splendid brigade of Cadmus Wilcox had reached the bottom of the valley, their organization was as unbroken as a parade. But there shell, instead of round shot, met them, and men tasted death by fives and tens. But the lines, drawing together, closed the spaces left by mortality, and the flags began to approach each other. Then the gray men began to come up the slope, and there were thousands of them. But shell yielded to canister, and the muskets of the infantry sent out death in leaden showers, so that the great charge began to melt like wax over heat, and the flags hung close together like a trophy of battle in a chapel. But still the gray men came. And now, in a storm of flame and smoke, they reached the foremost cannons of the Union line, and planted their flags. So much were they permitted for the glory of a lost cause. For a little, men killed one another with the butts of guns, with bayonets, and with stones, and then, as the overdrip of a wave broken upon an iron coast trickles back through the stones of the beach to the ocean, so all that was left of Pickett’s great charge trickled back down the slope, driblets of gray, running blood. For a little while longer the firing continued. Battle-flags were gathered, and thrown together in sheaves. There was a little broken cheering, and to all intents and purposes the great war was at an end.
Aladdin, broken with grief and fatigue, went picking his way among the dead and wounded. He had lost Peter and Hannibal in that battle, and Hamilton and John were dead; he alone remained, and it was not just. He felt that the Great Reaper had spared the weed among the flowers, and he was bitter against the Great Reaper. But there was one more sorrow reserved for Aladdin, and he was to blaspheme against the God that made him.
There was still desultory firing from both armies. As when, on the Fourth of July, you set off a whole bunch of firecrackers, there is at first a crackling roar, and afterward a little explosion here and a little explosion there, so Gettysburg must have sounded to the gods in Olympus. Thunder-clouds begotten of the intense heat rolled across the heavens from east to west, accentuating the streaming glory of the setting sun, and now distant thunder rumbled, with a sound as of artillery crossing a bridge. Drops of rain fell here and there.
Aladdin heard himself called by name, “‘Laddin, ‘Laddin.”
As quickly as the brain is advertised of an insect’s sting, so quickly did Aladdin recognize the voice and know that his brother. Jack was calling to him. He turned, and saw a little freckled boy, in a uniform much too big for him, trailing a large musket.
“Jack!” he cried, and rushed toward him with outstretched arms. “You little beggar, what are you doin’ here?”
Jack grinned like one confessing to a successful theft of apples belonging to a cross farmer. And then God saw fit to take away his life. He dropped suddenly, and there came a rapid pool of blood where his face had been. With his arms wrapped about the little figure that a moment before had been so warlike and gay, Aladdin turned toward the heavens a face of white flint.
“I believe in one God, Maker of hell!” he cried.
Thunder rumbled and rolled slowly across the battle-field from east, to west.
“I believe in one God, Maker of hell!” cried Aladdin, “Father of injustice and doer of hellish deeds! I believe in two damnations, the damnation of the living and the damnation of the dead.”
He turned to the little boy in his arms, and terrible sobs shook his body, so that it appeared as if he was vomiting. After a while he turned his convulsed face again to the sky.
“Come down,” he cried, “come down, you--”
Far down the hill there was a puff of white smoke, and a merciful bullet, glancing from a rock, struck Aladdin on the head with sufficient force to stretch him senseless upon the ground.
When the news of Gettysburg reached the Northern cities, lights were placed in every window, and horns were blown as at the coming of a new year. Senator Hannibal St. John had lost his three boys and the hopes of his old age in that terrible fight, but he caused his Washington house to be illuminated from basement to garret.
And then he walked out in the streets alone, and the tears ran down his old cheeks.
XXXVI
There had been a wedding in the hospital tent. Margaret bent over Peter and kissed him goodby. She was in deep black, and by her side loomed a great, dark figure, whose eyes were like caverns in the depths of which burned coals. The great, dark man leaned heavily upon a stick, and did not seem conscious of what was going on. The minister who had performed the ceremony stood with averted face. Every now and then he moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue. The wounded in neighboring cots turned pitiful eyes upon the girl in black, for she was most lovely--and very sad. Occasionally a throat was cleared.
“When you come, darling,” said the dying man, “there will be an end of sorrow.”
“There will be an end of sorrow,” echoed the girl. She bent closer to him, and kissed him again.
“It is very wonderful to have been loved,” said Peter. Then his face became still and very beautiful. A smile, innocent like that of a little child, lingered upon his lips, and his blind eyes closed.
St. John laid his hand upon Margaret’s shoulder.
A man, very tall and lean and homely, entered the tent. He was clad in an exceedingly long and ill-fitting frock-coat. Upon his head was a high black hat, somewhat the worse for wear. He turned a pair of very gentle and pitying eyes slowly over those in the tent.
Aladdin, his head almost concealed by bandages, sat suddenly upright in a neighboring cot. A wild, unreasoning light was in his eyes, and marking time with his hand, he burst suddenly into the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet! Our God is marching on.
He sang on, and the wounded joined him with weak voices:
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me; As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While God is marching on.
The tall man who had entered, to whom every death was nearer than his own, and to whom the suffering of others was as a crucifixion, removed the silk hat from his head, and wiped his forehead with a colored handkerchief.
Margaret knelt by Aladdin and held his unconscious form in her arms.
Outside, the earth was bathing in exquisite sunshine.
XXXVII
It was not long before Aladdin got back the strength of his body, but the gray bullet which had come in answer to his cry against God, even as the lightning came to Amyas Leigh, in that romance to which it is so good to bow, had injured the delicate mechanism of his brain, so that it seemed as if he would go down to the grave without memory of things past, or power upon the hour. Indeed, the war ended before the surgeons spoke of an operation which might restore his mind. He went under the knife a little child, his head full of pictures, playthings, and fear of the alphabet; he came forth made over, and turned clear, wondering eyes to the girl at his side. And he held her hand while she bridged over the years for him in her sweet voice.
He learned that she had married Peter, making his death peaceful, and he God-blessed her for so doing, while the tears ran down his cheeks.
But much of Aladdin that had slept so long was to wake no more. For it was spring when he woke, and waking, he fell in love with all living things.
One day he sat with Margaret on the porch of a familiar house, and looked upon a familiar river that flowed silverly beyond the dark trees.
Senator St. John, very old and very moving, came heavily out of the house, and laid his hands upon the shoulders of Margaret and Aladdin. It was like a benediction.
“I have been thinking,” said the senator, very slowly, and in the voice of an old man, “that God has left some flowers in my garden.”
“Roses?” said Aladdin, and he looked at Margaret.
“Roses perhaps,” said the senator, “and withal some bittersweet, but, better than these, and more, he has left me heart’s-ease. This little flower,” continued the senator, “is sown in times of great doubt and sorrow and trouble, and it will grow only for a good gardener, one who has learned to bow patiently in all things to God’s will, and to set his feet valiantly against the stony way which God appoints. I call Margaret ‘Heart’s-ease,’ and I call you, too, ‘Heart’s-ease,’ Aladdin, for you are becoming like a son to me in my declining years. Consider the river, how it flows,” said the old man, “smoothly to the sea, asking no questions, and making no lamentations against the length of its days, and receiving cheerfully into the steadfast current of its going alike the bitter waters and the sweet.”
We have forgotten Aladdin’s songs and the tunes which he made, for the people’s ear is not tuned to them any more. But that is a little thing. It is pleasant to think of that night when, the knocking of his heart against his ribs louder than the knocking of his hand upon her door, he carried to Margaret’s side the wonderful lamp which, years before, had been lighted within him, and which, burning always, now high, now low, like the rising and falling tides in the river, had at length consumed whatever in his nature was little or base, until there was nothing left save those precious qualities, love and charity, which fire cannot calcine nor cold freeze. Also it is pleasant to think that little children came of their love and sang about their everlasting fire.