CHAPTER XXIV

A LOST BURDEN

Dad, his trifling hurts nearly well again, stood at attention in General Hooker’s new headquarters across the Maryland border.

Thither, almost as soon as the Army of the Potomac had mobilized in Maryland, he had been summoned.

The corps commander, for a miracle, had been as honest as he was inexpert, and had made full report to General McClellan, through Hooker, of the part Dad had played in drawing forth the endangered demi-corps from the Confederate trap during the retreat from Virginia.

With the result that Captain James Dadd found himself promoted to the rank of brevet-major, and found himself incidentally the day’s hero of his corps. The latter honor he shared with his grandson, who, as Battle Jimmie, was enthusiastically adopted by the officers and men alike.

The two chums bore their laurels with a similar and schoolboy sheepishness, seeking to hide as much as possible from the noisy adulation that was their meed.

And now, in the thick of it all, came the summons from Hooker. As Dad stood in Fighting Joe’s presence once more he recalled keenly his first interview with the eccentric fire-eater, when, despite his error in failing to be captured, he had won the general’s approval and his own first commission.

This time he found Hooker dictating to a military secretary on the porch of a farmhouse. Hooker dismissed the secretary with a nod and turned to the waiting officer.

“Major Dadd,” he began abruptly, “General McClellan has asked me to thank you personally, in his name, for your share in the affair of last week. Which I herewith do. That ends my official business with you at the moment. But I would like to add a question or so on my own account--questions you are not bound to answer unless you choose.”

He hesitated, then went on:

“I am told that several of the officers of your corps planned a little supper in your honor a night or two ago to celebrate your promotion and its cause--also, that you refused to attend it.

“May I ask why you offered this slight to them?

“I repeat--you need not answer unless you wish to do so.”

“Slight?” Dad caught up the word. “I--I surely did not intend it so, sir. And I’m heartily sorry they took it as such. I made my refusal as courteous as I could. And--”

“But why did you refuse?”

“I had done nothing worthy of any special ovation,” evaded Dad.

Hooker frowned.

“Modesty is supposed to be an excellent quality,” said he, “though for my own part I could never see any particular use for it. But false modesty is absurd. You know well enough the worth of what you did. Also, you are dodging the issue. That surely was not your reason for refusing a courtesy tendered you by your brother officers.”

“No, sir,” assented Dad simply. “It was not. I refused because--because there was certain to be more or less drinking. And--”

“And, as the guest of honor, you might have had to get very pleasantly drunk? Or are you a temperance devotee?”

“Neither, sir. I would probably have been foolish enough to drink. And then--all I have been striving for this past year would have gone for nothing. I was afraid. So I ran away from the danger.”

Hooker was eying him narrowly.

“You couldn’t trust yourself where drink was?”

“I don’t say that,” corrected Dad. “I only say it was safer for me not to. That’s why I refused.”

“You have not the look of a man who has been a heavy drinker,” said Hooker, noting the lean and muscular figure, the clear and level eyes, the firm mouth.

Dad made no comment.

Hooker spoke again.

“There is much curiosity about you in your corps, Major Dadd,” said he. “And while I have no wish to pry into any man’s personal affairs, yet the interests of all my officers are close to me. And I do not like to have rumors about them spread among the men. Soldiers are worse gossips than spinsters.

“Your action in last week’s affair was not like that of a man recently promoted from the ranks--a man who, until a year or so ago, was a mere civilian. The tactics you made use of in extricating your demi-corps from a bad corner were those of a strategist. Other officers are commenting on that.”

He paused.

Dad looked at him miserably. The past that he had so carefully buried was stirring in its grave. The old disgrace threatened to rise, to rob him of all he had so hardly earned.

Where there was gossip and curiosity there was fairly certain to be plenty of amateur investigation. And investigation might readily unearth the truth. There were many men in the Army of the Potomac who had served in Mexico.

“Is there any good reason for concealing the fact that you had held a commission before this present war?” went on the general. “It was clear to me the first day I saw you. I knew it by the way you drew your sword. Let me say again that I have no wish to break in upon any man’s privacy. But I wish you to know that others are asking questions. And to tell you that the truth often stops the circulation of such rumors as you might not care to have circulated.”

“Rumors?”

“One is that you deserted from the army at some earlier time and that--”

“Pardon me, general,” interposed Dad stiffly, “but if you can persuade the man who voiced such a lie to face me with it, I shall be your debtor.”

“Who can nail army gossip? One man guesses at a thing to-day. To-morrow fifty men are quoting it as a proven fact.

“I like you, Dadd. You are a good deal of a man. That is why I have bothered to advise you in this matter. Not officially, but as man to man. If you do not care to speak I have no wish to urge you. That is all.”

He turned back to a notebook in which close-scrawled hieroglyphics crammed every page. Dad saluted, turned, and walked away.

At the top step of the porch Dad halted, wheeled and, on impulse, returned to the table where Hooker lounged.

“I thank you, general,” he said, speaking in a rush, as though fearing to lose hold on his new-made resolve. “It was kind of you to take an interest in me, and I am sorry if I seemed ungracious. I--I served for more than two years in the United States army, in the Mexican War. I was a lieutenant-colonel of cavalry and I was afterward attached to General Taylor’s staff.”

Hooker looked up in quick interest. Speaking from an almost phenomenal memory of American war-history, he hastily interjected:

“There was no officer on Taylor’s staff--and no commissioned officer in the Mexican War--named James Dadd. I will stake my reputation on that.”

“No, sir. ‘Dadd’ is not my name. I--I assumed it when I reëntered the service.”

“But why, man, why? Surely you knew that commissioned officers with military experience were at a premium when the Civil War began, and that they were certain of promotion. Look at the men in the army who have had war experience and how they have risen. Dozens of them.”

“I enlisted under an assumed name,” said Dad slowly and forcing each word from his whitened lips, “because I did not believe I would be accepted under my own name.”

“But why? With a war record--By the way, if it is a fair question, what is your name?”

“My name,” said Dad, bidding farewell to hope, “is James Brinton.”

“Brinton?” repeated Hooker reflectively. “Brinton?”

He was evidently racking his brain. And presently he found what he sought. For he glanced up, wide-eyed.

“Not--not the Brinton who--”

“Who was kicked out of the army for drunkenness and for grossly insulting the general commanding,” supplemented Dad, his voice dead as though he were reciting some entirely impersonal fact.

“I remember,” said Hooker briefly.

Then fell a pause. The two men were eying each other. Hooker’s face a mask; Dad’s white and wretched. It was Dad who broke the silence.

“You will wish--General McClellan will wish--my resignation?” he said haltingly. “It irks me to beg a favor of any man, sir. But I entreat you not to drive me from the army. You can take away my commission if it seems best to you. But let me serve in the ranks.

“If I did wrong I have paid for it. Paid more heavily than I have words to tell you or than you would care to hear.

“I do not ask anything except leave to serve my country at a time when she needs every man she can get. Drunkards, thieves, blackguards are recruited in every regiment nowadays and no questions are asked. May I not serve, too? If I have forfeited a right to my commission, at least let me--”

“Major Dadd,” interposed Hooker, his voice harsh and more abrupt than ever, “you talk like a fool. You have brooded over a silly piece of ancient history till it has made you lose all judgment.

“Why, man,” he broke out angrily, “what in blazes does Uncle Sam care about your getting drunk fifteen years ago and telling old Fuss-and-Feathers what you thought of him? Many a perfectly sober man has said worse things of poor old Scott.”

“But--but, sir--”

“But nothing! Here you’ve been doing a real man’s work for a year or more and getting none of the benefits of it, first because you are dunce enough to think the American nation has nothing to do but remember you once got drunk! Why, half the country has even forgotten the Mexican War. And the other half doesn’t care if a man named Brinton chased Scott with an ax. Ever hear of Grant in those Mexican days? He was down there.”

“Yes, sir,” stammered Dad, his brain a-whirl. “I--”

“Well, he’s doing big things out West, just now. And some idiot complained the other day to Lincoln that Grant enjoys a bout with John Barleycorn, now and then.

“Do you know what the President said? He said: ‘I wish I knew what brand of whisky Grant uses. I’d buy a hogshead of it for every other general in the army.’

“That’s what Lincoln thinks of such things. And I, for one, would rather be judged by Abraham Lincoln than by any other man alive. Man, don’t look so dumfounded! You’ve been in a fool nightmare. Wake up!”

“Do you mean, sir, that--”

“I mean I’m going to tell your story to everyone who asks me about you. And I’m going to write to the President about it next time I send him a report. It’s the sort of story he likes to hear.

“Good Lord! Do you think it’s nothing for a man to drop drink at your age and make his life all over afresh? Why, why--curse it all, shake hands! And get out of here. I’m busy.”

Dad walked away, his feet on air; the angry fuming of the general behind him sounding like wondrous music in his ears.

All at once he seemed like Christian in his favorite “Pilgrim’s Progress” to have dropped from his shoulders a world-heavy burden which had crushed him to earth. All at once his terrible secret was seen by him through Hooker’s keen eyes. And from that moment it forever lost its terror.

“I--I wish,” he murmured, “I wish I knew just exactly where Mrs. Sessions is. I’d love to tell her. And, till I can tell her--I guess I’ll be happy over it all alone. James Brinton. Lieutenant-Colonel James Brinton. Of Taylor’s staff!”