Part 7

And then Billy knew no more. The automobile was upon them; there was a crash as the horses whirled aside into the underbrush, another as the carriage turned turtle, then a succession of shrieks. No one was seriously hurt, however, but Billy himself. When, weeks later, he went back to his old post beside the station platform, where the guides waited the arrival of trains, Jakie Barsinger had his place, and Jakie would not move. He was of a new generation of guides, who made up in volubility what they lacked in knowledge.

For weeks Billy continued to drive to the station. He had enlisted the services of a chauffeur, and his horses were now accustomed to automobiles.

"I tamed 'em," he said to Abbie. "I drove 'em up to it, an' round it, an' past it. An' he snorted it, an' tooted it, an' brought it at 'em in front an' behind. They're as calm as pigeons."

Nevertheless, trade did not come back. Jakie Barsinger had become the recognized guide for the guests at the Palace, and John Harris for those at the Keystone, and it was always from the hotels that the best patronage came.

"Jakie Barsinger took the Secretary of War round the other day," the old man would say, tearfully, to his wife, "an' he made a fool of himself. He don't know a brigade from a company. An' he grinned at me—he grinned at me!"

Abbie did her best to comfort him.

"Perhaps some of the old ones what used to have you will come back."

"An' if they do," said Billy, "the clerk at the Palace'll tell 'em I ain't in the business, or I was in a accident, or that I'm dead. I wouldn't put it past 'em to tell 'em I'm dead."

Robbed of the occupation of his life, which was also his passion, Billy grew rapidly old. Abbie listened in distress as, sitting alone, he declaimed his old speeches.

"Here on the right they fought with clubbed muskets. Here—"

Often he did not finish, but dozed wearily off. There were times when it seemed that he could not long survive.

Now, however, as Memorial Day approached, he seemed to have taken a new lease of life. No longer did he sit sleepily all day on the porch or by the stove. He began to frequent his old haunts, and he assumed his old proud attitude towards his rivals.

Mrs. Gude did not share his unqualified elation.

"Something might happen," she suggested fearfully.

"Nothin' could happen," rejoined Billy scornfully, "unless I died. An' then I wouldn't care. But I hope the Lord won't let me die." Billy said it as though it were a prayer. "I'm goin' to set up once more an' wave my whip at 'em, with the President of the United States beside me. No back seat for him! Colonel Mott said the President 'd want to sit on the front seat. An' he said he'd ask questions. 'Let him ask,' I said. 'I ain't afraid of no questions nobody can ask. No s'tistics, nor manœuvres, nor—'"

"But Jakie Barsinger might do you a mean trick."

"There ain't nothin' he _can_ do. Mott said to me, 'Be on time, Gude, bright an' early.'" Then Billy's voice sank to a whisper. "They're goin' to stop the train out at the sidin' back of the Seminary, so as to fool the crowd. They'll be waitin' in town, an' we'll be off an' away. An' by an' by we'll meet Jakie with a load of jays. Oh, it'll be—it'll be immense!"

Through the weeks that intervened before the thirtieth of May, Abbie watched him anxiously. Each day he exercised the horses, grown fat and lazy; each day he went over the long account of the battle,—as though he could forget what was part and parcel of himself! His eyes grew brighter, and there was a flush on his old cheeks. The committee of arrangements lost their fear that they had been unwise in appointing him.

"Gude's just as good as he ever was," said Colonel Mott. "It wouldn't do to let the President get at Barsinger. If you stop him in the middle of a speech, he has to go back to the beginning." Then he told a story of which he never grew weary. "'Here on this field lay ten thousand dead men,' says Barsinger. 'Ten thousand dead men, interspersed with one dead lady.' No; Billy Gude's all right."

Colonel Mott sighed with relief. The planning for a President's visit was no light task. There were arrangements to be made with the railroad companies, the secret service men were to be stationed over the battle-field, there were to be trustworthy guards, a programme was to be made out for the afternoon meeting at which the President was to speak.

The night before the thirtieth Abbie did not sleep. She heard Billy talking softly to himself.

"Right yonder, Mr. President, they came creepin' through the bushes; right yonder—" Then he groaned heavily, and Abbie shook him awake.

"I was dreamin' about the automobile," he said, confusedly. "I—oh, ain't it time to get up?"

At daylight he was astir, and Abbie helped him dress. His hand shook and his voice trembled as he said good-bye.

"You better come to the window an' see me go past," he said; then, "What you cryin' about, Abbie?"

"I'm afraid somethin' 's goin' to happen," sobbed the old woman. "I'm afraid—"

"Afraid!" he mocked. "Do you think, too, that I'm old an' wore out an' no good? You'll see!"

And, defiantly, he went out.

Half an hour later he drove to the siding where the train was to stop. A wooden platform had been built beside the track, and on it stood Colonel Mott and the rest of the committee.

"Drive back there, Billy," Colonel Mott commanded. "Then when I signal to you, you come down here. And hold on to your horses. There's going to be a Presidential salute. As soon as that's over we'll start."

Billy drew back to the side of the road. Evidently, through some mischance, the plans for the President's reception had become known, and there was a rapidly increasing crowd. On the slope of the hill a battery of artillery awaited the word to fire. Billy sat straight, his eyes on his horses' heads, his old hands gripping the lines. He watched with pride the marshal waving all carriages back from the road. Only he, Billy Gude, had the right to be there. _He_ was to drive the President. The great day had come. He chuckled aloud, not noticing that just back of the marshal stood Jakie Barsinger's fine new carriage, empty save for Jakie himself.

Presently the old man sat still more erectly. He heard, clear above the noise of the crowd, a distant whistle—that same whistle for which he had listened daily when he had the best place beside the station platform. The train was rounding the last curve. In a moment more it would come slowly to view out of the fatal Railroad Cut, whose forty-year-old horrors Billy could describe so well.

The fields were black now with the crowd, the gunners watched their captain, and slowly the train drew in beside the bright pine platform. At the door of the last car appeared a tall and sturdy figure, and ten thousand huzzas made the hills ring. Then a thunder of guns awoke echoes which, like the terror-stricken cries from the Railroad Cut, had been silent forty years. Billy, listening, shivered. The horror had not grown less with his repeated telling.

He leaned forward now, watching for Colonel Mott's uplifted hand; he saw him signal, and then—From behind he heard a cry, and turned to look; then he swiftly swung Dan and Bess in toward the fence. A pair of horses, maddened by the noise of the firing, dashed toward him. He heard women scream, and thought, despairing, of Abbie's prophecy. There would not be room for them to pass. After all, he would not drive the President. Then he almost sobbed in his relief. They were safely by. He laughed grimly. It was Jakie Barsinger with his fine new carriage. Then Billy clutched the reins again. In the short glimpse he had caught of Jakie Barsinger, Jakie did not seem frightened or disturbed. Nor did he seem to make any effort to hold his horses in. Billy stared into the cloud of dust which followed him. What did it mean? And as he stared the horses stopped, skillfully drawn in by Jakie Barsinger's firm hand beside the yellow platform. The cloud of dust thinned a little, and Billy saw plainly now. Into the front seat of the tourists' carriage, beside Jakie Barsinger, climbed the President of the United States. Billy rose in his seat.

"Colonel Mott!" he called, frantically. "Colonel Mott!"

But no one heeded. If any one heard, he thought it was but another cheer. The crowd swarmed down to the road shouting, huzza-ing, here and there a man or a girl pausing to steady a camera on a fence-post, here and there a father lifting his child to his shoulder.

"Where is the President?" they asked, and Billy heard the answer.

"There, there! Look! By Jakie Barsinger!"

The old man's hands dropped, and he sobbed. It had all been so neatly done: the pretense of a runaway, the confusion of the moment, Colonel Mott's excitement—and the crown of his life was gone.

Long after the crowd had followed in the dusty wake of Jakie Barsinger's carriage, he turned his horses toward home. A hundred tourists had begged him to take them over the field, but he had silently shaken his head. He could not speak. Dan and Bess trotted briskly, mindful of the cool stable toward which their heads were set, and they whinnied eagerly at the stable door. They stood there for half an hour, however, before their master clambered down to unharness them. He talked to himself feebly, and, when he had finished, went out, not to the house, where Abbie, who had watched Jakie Barsinger drive by, waited in an agony of fear, but down the street, and out by quiet alleys and lanes to the National Cemetery. Sometimes he looked a little wonderingly toward the crowded main streets, not able to recall instantly why the crowd was there, then remembering with a rage which shook him to the soul. Fleeting, futile suggestions of revenge rushed upon him—a loosened nut in Jakie Barsinger's swingle-tree or a cut trace—and were repelled with horror which hurt as much as the rage. All the town would taunt him now. Why had he not turned his carriage across the road and stopped Jakie Barsinger in his wild dash? It would have been better to have been killed than to have lived to this.

Around the gate of the cemetery a company of cavalry was stationed, and within new thousands of visitors waited. It was afternoon now, and almost time for the trip over the field to end and the exercises to begin. As Billy passed through the crowd, he felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Thought you were going to drive the President," said a loud voice.

Billy saw for an instant the strange faces about him, gaping, interested to hear his answer.

"I ain't nobody's coachman," he said coolly, and walked on.

"They ain't goin' to get a rise out of me," he choked. "They ain't goin' to get a rise out of me."

He walked slowly up the wide avenue, and presently sat down on a bench. He was tired to death, his head nodded, and soon he slept, regardless of blare of band and shouting of men and roll of carriage wheels. There was a song, and then a prayer, but Billy heard nothing until the great speech was almost over. Then he opened his eyes drowsily, and saw the throng gathered round the wistaria-covered rostrum, on which the President was standing. Billy sprang up. At least he would hear the speech. Nobody could cheat him out of that. He pushed his way through the crowd, which, seeing his white hair, opened easily enough. Then he stood trembling, all his misery rushing over him again at sight of the tall figure. He was to have sat beside him, to have talked with him! He rubbed a weak hand across his eyes. Suddenly he realized that the formal portion of the speech was over, the President was saying now a short farewell.

"I wish to congratulate the Commission which has made of this great field so worthy a memorial to those who died here. I wish to express my gratification to the citizens of this town for their share in the preservation of the field, and their extraordinary knowledge of the complicated tactics of the battle. Years ago my interest was aroused by hearing my father tell of a visit here, and of the vivid story of a guide—his name, I think, was William Gude. I—"

"'His name, I think,'" old Billy repeated dully. "'His name, I think, was William Gude.'"

It was a few seconds before the purport of it reached his brain. Then he raised both arms, unaware that the speech was ended and that the crowd had begun to cheer.

"Oh, Mr. President," he called, "my name is William Gude!" His head swam. They were turning away; they did not hear. "My name is William Gude," he said again pitifully.

The crowd, pressing toward Jakie Barsinger's carriage, into which the President was stepping, carried him with them. They looked about them questioningly; they could see Colonel Mott, who was at the President's side, beckoning to some one; who it was they could not tell. Then above the noise they heard him call.

"Billy Gude!" he shouted. "Billy—"

"It's me!" said Billy.

He stared, blinking, at Colonel Mott and at the President.

Colonel Mott laid his hand on Billy's shoulder. He had been trying to invent a suitable punishment for Jakie Barsinger. No more custom should come to him through the Commission.

"The President wants you to ride down to the station with him, Billy," he said. "He wants to know whether you remember his father."

As in a dream, Billy climbed into the carriage. The President sat on the rear seat now, and Billy was beside him.

"I remember him like yesterday," he declared. "I remember what he said an' how he looked, an'—" the words crowded upon each other as eagerly as the President's questions, and Billy forgot all save them—the cheering crowd, the wondering, envious eyes of his fellow citizens; he did not even remember that Jakie Barsinger was driving him, Billy Gude, and the President of the United States together. Once he caught a glimpse of Abbie's frightened face, and he waved his hand and the President lifted his hat.

"I wish I could have known about you earlier in the day," said the President, as he stepped down at the railroad station. Then he took Billy's hand in his. "It has been a great pleasure to talk to you."

The engine puffed near at hand, there were new cheers from throats already hoarse with cheering, and the great man was gone, the great day over. For an instant Billy watched the train, his hand uplifted with a thousand other hands in a last salute to the swift-vanishing figure in the observation-car. Then he turned, to meet the unwilling eyes of Jakie Barsinger, helpless to move his carriage in the great crowd. For an instant the recollection of his wrongs overwhelmed him.

"Jakie—" he began. Then he laughed. The crowd was listening, open-mouthed. For the moment, now that the President was gone, he, Billy Gude, was the great man. He stepped nimbly into the carriage. "Coachman," he commanded, "you can drive home."

IX

MARY BOWMAN

Outside the broad gateway which leads into the National Cemetery at Gettysburg and thence on into the great park, there stands a little house on whose porch there may be seen on summer evenings an old woman. The cemetery with its tall monuments lies a little back of her and to her left; before her is the village; beyond, on a little eminence, the buildings of the Theological Seminary; and still farther beyond the foothills of the Blue Ridge. The village is tree-shaded, the hills are set with fine oaks and hickories, the fields are green. It would be difficult to find in all the world an expanse more lovely. Those who have known it in their youth grow homesick for it; their eyes ache and their throats tighten as they remember it. At sunset it is bathed in purple light, its trees grow darker, its hills more shadowy, its hollows deeper and more mysterious. Then, lifted above the dark masses of the trees, one may see marble shafts and domes turn to liquid gold.

The little old woman, sitting with folded hands, is Mary Bowman, whose husband was lost on this field. The battle will soon be fifty years in the past, she has been for that long a widow. She has brought up three children, two sons and a daughter. One of her sons is a merchant, one is a clergyman, and her daughter is well and happily married. Her own life of activity is past; she is waited upon tenderly and loved dearly by her children and her grandchildren. She was born in this village, she has almost never been away. From here her husband went to war, here he is buried among thousands of unknown dead, here she nursed the wounded and dying, here she will be buried herself in the Evergreen cemetery, beyond the National cemetery.

She has seen beauty change to desolation, trees shattered, fields trampled, walls broken, all her dear, familiar world turned to chaos; she has seen desolation grow again to beauty. These hills and streams were always lovely, now a nation has determined to keep them forever in the same loveliness. Here was a rocky, wooded field, destined by its owner to cultivation; it has been decreed that its rough picturesqueness shall endure forever. Here is a lowly farmhouse; upon it no hand of change shall be laid while the nation continues. Preserved, consecrated, hallowed are the woods and lanes in which Mary Bowman walked with the lover of her youth.

Broad avenues lead across the fields, marking the lines where by thousands Northerners and Southerners were killed. Big Round Top, to which one used to journey by a difficult path, is now accessible; Union and Confederate soldiers, returning, find their way with ease to old positions; lads from West Point are brought to see, spread out before them as on a map, that Union fish-hook, five miles long, inclosing that slightly curved Confederate line.

Monuments are here by hundreds, names by thousands, cast in bronze, as endurable as they can be made by man. All that can be done in remembrance of those who fought here has been done, all possible effort to identify the unknown has been made. For fifty years their little trinkets have been preserved, their pocket Testaments, their photographs, their letters—letters addressed to "My precious son," "My dear brother," "My beloved husband." Seeing them to-day, you will find them marked by a number. This stained scapular, this little housewife with its rusty scissors, this unsigned letter, dated in '63, belonged to him who lies now in Grave Number 20 or Number 3500.

There is almost an excess of tenderness for these dead, yet mixed with it is a strange feeling of remoteness. We mourn them, praise them, laud them, but we cannot understand them. To this generation war is strange, its sacrifices are uncomprehended, incomprehensible. It is especially so in these latter years, since those who came once to this field come now no more. Once the heroes of the war were familiar figures upon these streets; Meade with his serious, bearded face, Slocum with his quick, glancing eyes, Hancock with his distinguished air, Howard with his empty sleeve. They have gone hence, and with them have marched two thirds of Gettysburg's two hundred thousand.

Mary Bowman has seen them all, has heard them speak. Sitting on her little porch, she has watched most of the great men of the United States go by, Presidents, cabinet officials, ambassadors, army officers, and also famous visitors from other lands who know little of the United States, but to whom Gettysburg is as a familiar country. She has watched also that great, rapidly shrinking army of private soldiers in faded blue coats, who make pilgrimages to see the fields and hills upon which they fought. She has tried to make herself realize that her husband, if he had lived, would be like these old men, maimed, feeble, decrepit, but the thought possesses no reality for her. He is still young, still erect, he still goes forth in the pride of life and strength.

Mary Bowman will not talk about the battle. To each of her children and each of her grandchildren, she has told once, as one who performs a sacred duty, its many-sided story. She has told each one of wounds and suffering, but she has not omitted tales of heroic death, of promotion on the field, of stubborn fight for glory. By others than her own she will not be questioned. A young officer, recounting the rigors of the march, has written, "Forsan et hæc olim meminisse juvabit,"—"Perchance even these things it will be delightful to remember." To feel delight, remembering these things, Mary Bowman has never learned. Her neighbors who suffered with her, some just as cruelly, have recovered; their wounds have healed, as wounds do in the natural course of things. But Mary Bowman has remained mindful; she has been, for all these years, widowed indeed.

Her faithful friend and neighbor, Hannah Casey, is the great joy of visitors to the battle-field. She will talk incessantly, enthusiastically, with insane invention. The most morbid visitor will be satisfied with Hannah's wild account of a Valley of Death filled to the rim with dead bodies, of the trickling rivulet of Plum Creek swollen with blood to a roaring torrent. But Mary Bowman is different.

Her granddaughter, who lives with her, is curious about her emotions.

"Do you feel reconciled?" she will ask. "Do you feel reconciled to the sacrifice, grandmother? Do you think of the North and South as reunited, and are you glad you helped?"

Her grandmother answers with no words, but with a slow, tearful smile. She does not analyze her emotions. Perhaps it is too much to expect of one who has been a widow for fifty years, that she philosophize about it!

Sitting on her porch in the early morning, she remembers the first of July, fifty years ago.

"Madam!" cried the soldier who galloped to the door, "there is to be a battle in this town!"

"Here?" she had answered stupidly. "_Here?_"

Sitting there at noon, she hears the roaring blasts of artillery, she seems to see shells, as of old, curving like great ropes through the air, she remembers that somewhere on this field, struck by a missile such as that, her husband fell.

Sitting there in the moonlight, she remembers Early on his white horse, with muffled hoofs, riding spectralwise down the street among the sleeping soldiers.

"Up, boys!" he whispers, and is heard even in that heavy stupor. "Up, boys, up! We must get away!"

She hears also the pouring rain of July the fourth, falling upon her little house, upon that wide battle-field, upon her very heart. She sees, too, the deep, sad eyes of Abraham Lincoln, she hears his voice in the great sentences of his simple speech, she feels his message in her soul.

"Daughter!" he seems to say, "Daughter, be of good comfort!"

So, still, Mary Bowman sits waiting. She is a Christian, she has great hope; as her waiting has been long, so may the joy of her reunion be full.

The Riverside Press

CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS

U . S . A

Transcriber's note:

○ Chapter IV, fourth paragraph, the hyphen in out-standing was retained. In this context, the dress should have been standing out from her body. It was not an outstanding dress.

○ Chapters I, VI, the variable spelling of Emmittsburg / Emmitsburg is as in the original text