Chapter 486

I did secure my picket that night--not by authority, but by diplomacy. I got Bowers to go, by agreeing to exchange ranks with him for the time being, and go along and stand the watch with him as his subordinate. We stayed out there a couple of dreary hours in the pitchy darkness and the rain, with nothing to modify the dreariness but Bowers's monotonous growlings at the war and the weather; then we began to nod, and presently found it next to impossible to stay in the saddle; so we gave up the tedious job, and went back to the camp without waiting for the relief guard. We rode into camp without interruption or objection from anybody, and the enemy could have done the same, for there were no sentries. Everybody was asleep; at midnight there was nobody to send out another picket, so none was sent. We never tried to establish a watch at night again, as far as I remember, but we generally kept a picket out in the daytime.

In that camp the whole command slept on the corn in the big corn-crib; and there was usually a general row before morning, for the place was full of rats, and they would scramble over the boys' bodies and faces, annoying and irritating everybody; and now and then they would bite some one's toe, and the person who owned the toe would start up and magnify his English and begin to throw corn in the dark. The ears were half as heavy as bricks, and when they struck they hurt. The persons struck would respond, and inside of five minutes every man would be locked in a death-grip with his neighbour. There was a grievous deal of blood shed in the corn-crib, but this was all that was spilt while I was in the war. No, that is not quite true. But for one circumstance it would have been all. I will come to that now.

Our scares were frequent. Every few days rumours would come that the enemy were approaching. In these cases we always fell back on some other camp of ours; we never stayed where we were. But the rumours always turned out to be false; so at last even we began to grow indifferent to them. One night a negro was sent to our corn-crib with the same old warning: the enemy was hovering in our neighbourhood. We all said let him hover. We resolved to stay still and be comfortable. It was a fine warlike resolution, and no doubt we all felt the stir of it in our veins --for a moment. We had been having a very jolly time, that was full of horse-play and school-boy hilarity; but that cooled down now, and presently the fast-waning fire of forced jokes and forced laughs died out altogether, and the company became silent. Silent and nervous. And soon uneasy--worried--apprehensive. We had said we would stay, and we were committed. We could have been persuaded to go, but there was nobody brave enough to suggest it. An almost noiseless movement presently began in the dark, by a general and unvoiced impulse. When the movement was completed, each man knew that he was not the only person who had crept to the front wall and had his eye at a crack between the logs. No, we were all there; all there with our hearts in our throats, and staring out toward the sugar-troughs where the forest foot-path came through. It was late, and there was a deep woodsy stillness everywhere. There was a veiled moonlight, which was only just strong enough to enable us to mark the general shape of objects. Presently a muffled sound caught our ears, and we recognised it as the hoof-beats of a horse or horses. And right away a figure appeared in the forest path; it could have been made of smoke, its mass had so little sharpness of outline. It was a man on horseback; and it seemed to me that there were others behind him. I got hold of a gun in the dark, and pushed it through a crack between the logs, hardly knowing what I was doing, I was so dazed with fright. Somebody said 'Fire!' I pulled the trigger. I seemed to see a hundred flashes and hear a hundred reports, then I saw the man fall down out of the saddle. My first feeling was of surprised gratification; my first impulse was an apprentice-sportsman's impulse to run and pick up his game. Somebody said, hardly audibly, 'Good--we've got him!--wait for the rest.' But the rest did not come. There was not a sound, not the whisper of a leaf; just perfect stillness; an uncanny kind of stillness, which was all the more uncanny on account of the damp, earthy, late-night smells now rising and pervading it. Then, wondering, we crept stealthily out, and approached the man. When we got to him the moon revealed him distinctly. He was lying on his back, with his arms abroad; his mouth was open and his chest heaving with long gasps, and his white shirt-front was all splashed with blood. The thought shot through me that I was a murderer; that I had killed a man--a man who had never done me any harm. That was the coldest sensation that ever went through my marrow. I was down by him in a moment, helplessly stroking his forehead; and I would have given anything then--my own life freely--to make him again what he had been five minutes before. And all the boys seemed to be feeling in the same way; they hung over him, full of pitying interest, and tried all they could to help him, and said all sorts of regretful things. They had forgotten all about the enemy; they thought only of this one forlorn unit of the foe. Once my imagination persuaded me that the dying man gave me a reproachful look out of his shadowy eyes, and it seemed to me that I would rather he had stabbed me than done that. He muttered and mumbled like a dreamer in his sleep, about his wife and child; and I thought with a new despair, 'This thing that I have done does not end with him; it falls upon them too, and they never did me any harm, any more than he.'

In a little while the man was dead. He was killed in war; killed in fair and legitimate war; killed in battle, as you might say; and yet he was as sincerely mourned by the opposing force as if he had been their brother. The boys stood there a half hour sorrowing over him, and recalling the details of the tragedy, and wondering who he might be, and if he were a spy, and saying that if it were to do over again they would not hurt him unless he attacked them first. It soon came out that mine was not the only shot fired; there were five others--a division of the guilt which was a grateful relief to me, since it in some degree lightened and diminished the burden I was carrying. There were six shots fired at once; but I was not in my right mind at the time, and my heated imagination had magnified my one shot into a volley.

The man was not in uniform, and was not armed. He was a stranger in the country; that was all we ever found out about him. The thought of him got to preying upon me every night; I could not get rid of it. I could not drive it away, the taking of that unoffending life seemed such a wanton thing. And it seemed an epitome of war; that all war must be just that--the killing of strangers against whom you feel no personal animosity; strangers whom, in other circumstances, you would help if you found them in trouble, and who would help you if you needed it. My campaign was spoiled. It seemed to me that I was not rightly equipped for this awful business; that war was intended for men, and I for a child's nurse. I resolved to retire from this avocation of sham soldiership while I could save some remnant of my self-respect. These morbid thoughts clung to me against reason; for at bottom I did not believe I had touched that man. The law of probabilities decreed me guiltless of his blood; for in all my small experience with guns I had never hit anything I had tried to hit, and I knew I had done my best to hit him. Yet there was no solace in the thought. Against a diseased imagination, demonstration goes for nothing.

The rest of my war experience was of a piece with what I have already told of it. We kept monotonously falling back upon one camp or another, and eating up the country--I marvel now at the patience of the farmers and their families. They ought to have shot us; on the contrary, they were as hospitably kind and courteous to us as if we had deserved it. In one of these camps we found Ab Grimes, an Upper Mississippi pilot, who afterwards became famous as a dare-devil rebel spy, whose career bristled with desperate adventures. The look and style of his comrades suggested that they had not come into the war to play, and their deeds made good the conjecture later. They were fine horsemen and good revolver-shots; but their favourite arm was the lasso. Each had one at his pommel, and could snatch a man out of the saddle with it every time, on a full gallop, at any reasonable distance.

In another camp the chief was a fierce and profane old blacksmith of sixty, and he had furnished his twenty recruits with gigantic home-made bowie-knives, to be swung with the two hands, like the machetes of the Isthmus. It was a grisly spectacle to see that earnest band practising their murderous cuts and slashes under the eye of that remorseless old fanatic.

The last camp which we fell back upon was in a hollow near the village of Florida, where I was born--in Monroe County. Here we were warned, one day, that a Union colonel was sweeping down on us with a whole regiment at his heels. This looked decidedly serious. Our boys went apart and consulted; then we went back and told the other companies present that the war was a disappointment to us and we were going to disband. They were getting ready, themselves, to fall back on some place or other, and were only waiting for General Tom Harris, who was expected to arrive at any moment; so they tried to persuade us to wait a little while, but the majority of us said no, we were accustomed to falling back, and didn't need any of Tom Harris's help; we could get along perfectly well without him and save time too. So about half of our fifteen, including myself, mounted and left on the instant; the others yielded to persuasion and stayed--stayed through the war.

An hour later we met General Harris on the road, with two or three people in his company--his staff, probably, but we could not tell; none of them was in uniform; uniforms had not come into vogue among us yet. Harris ordered us back; but we told him there was a Union colonel coming with a whole regiment in his wake, and it looked as if there was going to be a disturbance; so we had concluded to go home. He raged a little, but it was of no use; our minds were made up. We had done our share; had killed one man, exterminated one army, such as it was; let him go and kill the rest, and that would end the war. I did not see that brisk young general again until last year; then he was wearing white hair and whiskers.

In time I came to know that Union colonel whose coming frightened me out of the war and crippled the Southern cause to that extent--General Grant. I came within a few hours of seeing him when he was as unknown as I was myself; at a time when anybody could have said, 'Grant?--Ulysses S. Grant? I do not remember hearing the name before.' It seems difficult to realise that there was once a time when such a remark could be rationally made; but there was, and I was within a few miles of the place and the occasion too, though proceeding in the other direction.

The thoughtful will not throw this war-paper of mine lightly aside as being valueless. It has this value: it is a not unfair picture of what went on in many and many a militia camp in the first months of the rebellion, when the green recruits were without discipline, without the steadying and heartening influence or trained leaders; when all their circumstances were new and strange, and charged with exaggerated terrors, and before the invaluable experience of actual collision in the field had turned them from rabbits into soldiers. If this side of the picture of that early day has not before been put into history, then history has been to that degree incomplete, for it had and has its rightful place there. There was more Bull Run material scattered through the early camps of this country than exhibited itself at Bull Run. And yet it learned its trade presently, and helped to fight the great battles later. I could have become a soldier myself, if I had waited. I had got part of it learned; I knew more about retreating than the man that invented retreating.

[1] It was always my impression that that was what the horse was there for, and I know that it was also the impression of at least one other of the command, for we talked about it at the time, and admired the military ingenuity of the device; but when I was out West three years ago I was told by Mr. A. G. Fuqua, a member of our company, that the horse was his, that the leaving him tied at the door was a matter of mere forgetfulness, and that to attribute it to intelligent invention was to give him quite too much credit. In support of his position, he called my attention to the suggestive fact that the artifice was not employed again. I had not thought of that before.

MEISTERSCHAFT

IN THREE ACTS [1]

DRAMATIS PERSONAE:

MR. STEPHENSON. MARGARET STEPHENSON. GEORGE FRANKLIN. ANNIE STEPHENSON. WILLIAM JACKSON. MRS. BLUMENTHAL, the Wirthin. GRETCHEN, Kellnerin

ACT I. SCENE I.

Scene of the play, the parlour of a small private dwelling in a village. (MARGARET discovered crocheting--has a pamphlet.)

MARGARET. (Solus.) Dear, dear! it's dreary enough, to have to study this impossible German tongue: to be exiled from home and all human society except a body's sister in order to do it, is just simply abscheulich. Here's only three weeks of the three months gone, and it seems like three years. I don't believe I can live through it, and I'm sure Annie can't. (Refers to her book, and rattles through, several times, like one memorising:) Entschuldigen Sie, mein Herr, konnen Sie mir vielleicht sagen, um wie viel Uhr der erste Zug nach Dresden abgeht? (Makes mistakes and corrects them.) I just hate Meisterschaft! We may see people; we can have society; yes, on condition that the conversation shall be in German, and in German only--every single word of it! Very kind--oh, very! when neither Annie nor I can put two words together, except as they are put together for us in Meisterschaft or that idiotic Ollendorff! (Refers to book, and memorises: Mein Bruder hat Ihren Herrn Vater nicht gesehen, als er gestern in dem Laden des deutschen Kaufmannes war.) Yes, we can have society, provided we talk German. What would conversation be like! If you should stick to Meisterschaft, it would change the subject every two minutes; and if you stuck to Ollendorff, it would be all about your sister's mother's good stocking of thread, or your grandfather's aunt's good hammer of the carpenter, and who's got it, and there an end. You couldn't keep up your interest in such topics. (Memorising: Wenn irgend moglich--mochte ich noch heute Vormittag Geschaftsfreunde zu treffen.) My mind is made up to one thing: I will be an exile, in spirit and in truth: I will see no one during these three months. Father is very ingenious--oh, very! thinks he is, anyway. Thinks he has invented a way to force us to learn to speak German. He is a dear good soul, and all that; but invention isn't his fach'. He will see. (With eloquent energy.) Why, nothing in the world shall--Bitte, konnen Sie mir vielleicht sagen, ob Herr Schmidt mit diesem Zuge angekommen ist? Oh, dear, dear George--three weeks! It seems a whole century since I saw him. I wonder if he suspects that I--that I--care for him--j-just a wee, wee bit? I believe he does. And I believe Will suspects that Annie cares for him a little, that I do. And I know perfectly well that they care for us. They agree with all our opinions, no matter what they are; and if they have a prejudice, they change it, as soon as they see how foolish it is. Dear George! at first he just couldn't abide cats; but now, why now he's just all for cats; he fairly welters in cats. I never saw such a reform. And it's just so with all his principles: he hasn't got one that he had before. Ah, if all men were like him, this world would--(Memorising: Im Gegentheil, mein Herr, dieser Stoff ist sehr billig. Bitte, sehen Sie sich nur die Qualitat an.) Yes, and what did they go to studying German for, if it wasn't an inspiration of the highest and purest sympathy? Any other explanation is nonsense--why, they'd as soon have thought of studying American history.

[Turns her back, buries herself in her pamphlet, first memorising aloud, until Annie enters, then to herself, rocking to and fro, and rapidly moving her lips, without uttering a sound.]

Enter ANNIE, absorbed in her pamphlet--does not at first see MARGARET.

ANNIE. (Memorising: Er liess mich gestern fruh rufen, und sagte mir dass er einen sehr unangenehmen Brief von Ihrem Lehrer erhalten hatte. Repeats twice aloud, then to herself, briskly moving her lips.)

M. (Still not seeing her sister.) Wie geht es Ihrem Herrn Schwiegervater? Es freut mich sehr dass Ihre Frau Mutter wieder wohl ist. (Repeats. Then mouths in silence.)

A. (Repeats her sentence a couple of times aloud; then looks up, working her lips, and discovers Margaret.) Oh, you here? (Running to her.) O lovey-dovey, dovey-lovey, I've got the gr-reatest news! Guess, guess, guess! You'll never guess in a hundred thousand million years--and more!

M. Oh, tell me, tell me, dearie; don't keep me in agony.

A. Well I will. What--do--you--think? They're here!

M. Wh-a-t! Who? When? Which? Speak!

A. Will and George!

M. Annie Alexandra Victoria Stephenson, what do you mean?

A. As sure as guns!

M. (Spasmodically embracing and kissing her.) 'Sh! don't use such language. O darling, say it again!

A. As sure as guns!

M. I don't mean that! Tell me again, that--

A. (Springing up and waltzing about the room.) They're here--in this very village--to learn German--for three months! Es sollte mich sehr freuen wenn Sie--

M. (Joining in the dance.) Oh, it's just too lovely for anything! (Unconsciously memorising:) Es ware mir lieb wenn Sie morgen mit mir in die Kirche gehen konnten, aber ich kann selbst nicht gehen, weil ich Sonntags gewohnlich krank bin. Juckhe!

A. (Finishing some unconscious memorising.)--morgen Mittag bei mir speisen konnten. Juckhe! Sit down and I'll tell you all I've heard. (They sit.) They're here, and under that same odious law that fetters us --our tongues, I mean; the metaphor's faulty, but no matter. They can go out, and see people, only on condition that they hear and speak German, and German only.

M. Isn't--that--too lovely!

A. And they're coming to see us!

M. Darling! (Kissing her.) But are you sure?

A. Sure as guns--Gatling guns!

M. 'Sh! don't, child, it's schrecklich! Darling--you aren't mistaken?

A. As sure as g--batteries! [They jump up and dance a moment--then--]

M. (With distress.) But, Annie dear!--we can't talk German--and neither can they!

A. (Sorrowfully.) I didn't think of that.

M. How cruel it is! What can we do?

A. (After a reflective pause, resolutely.) Margaret--we've got to.

M. Got to what?

A. Speak German.

M. Why, how, child?

A. (Contemplating her pamphlet with earnestness.) I can tell you one thing. Just give me the blessed privilege: just hinsetzen Will Jackson here in front of me, and I'll talk German to him as long as this Meisterschaft holds out to burn.

M. (Joyously.) Oh, what an elegant idea! You certainly have got a mind that's a mine of resources, if ever anybody had one.

A. I'll skin this Meisterschaft to the last sentence in it!

M. (With a happy idea.) Why Annie, it's the greatest thing in the world. I've been all this time struggling and despairing over these few little Meisterschaft primers: but as sure as you live, I'll have the whole fifteen by heart before this time day after to-morrow. See if I don't.

A. And so will I; and I'll trowel in a layer of Ollendorff mush between every couple of courses of Meisterschaft bricks. Juckhe!

M. Hoch! hoch! hoch!

A. Stoss an!

M. Juckhe! Wir werden gleich gute deutsche Schulerinnen werden! Juck--

A. --he!

M. Annie, when are they coming to see us? To-night?

A. No.

M. No? Why not? When are they coming? What are they waiting for? The idea! I never heard of such a thing! What do you--

A. (Breaking in.) Wait, wait, wait! give a body a chance. They have their reasons.

M. Reasons?--what reasons?

A. Well, now, when you stop and think, they're royal good ones. They've got to talk German when they come, haven't they? Of course. Well, they don't know any German but Wie befinden Sie sich, and Haben Sie gut geschlafen, and Vater unser, and Ich trinke lieber Bier als Wasser, and a few little parlour things like that; but when it comes to talking, why, they don't know a hundred and fifteen German words, put them all together.

M. Oh, I see.

A. So they're going to neither eat, sleep, smoke, nor speak the truth till they've crammed home the whole fifteen Meisterschafts auswendig!

M. Noble hearts!

A. They've given themselves till day after to-morrow, half-past 7 P.M., and then they'll arrive here loaded.

M. Oh, how lovely, how gorgeous, how beautiful! Some think this world is made of mud; I think it's made of rainbows. (Memorising.) Wenn irgend moglich, so mochte ich noch heute Vormittag dort ankommen, da es mir sehr daran gelegen ist--Annie, I can learn it just like nothing!

A. So can I. Meisterschaft's mere fun--I don't see how it ever could have seemed difficult. Come! We can't be disturbed here; let's give orders that we don't want anything to eat for two days; and are absent to friends, dead to strangers, and not at home even to nougat peddlers--

M. Schon! and we'll lock ourselves into our rooms, and at the end of two days, whosoever may ask us a Meisterschaft question shall get a Meisterschaft answer--and hot from the bat!

BOTH. (Reciting in unison.) Ich habe einen Hut fur meinen Sohn, ein Paar Handschuhe fur meinen Bruder, und einen Kamm fur mich selbst gekauft. [Exeunt.]

Enter Mrs. BLUMENTHAL, the Wirthin.

WIRTHIN. (Solus.) Ach, die armen Madchen, sie hassen die deutsche Sprache, drum ist es ganz und gar unmoglich dass sie sie je lernen konnen. Es bricht mir ja mein Herz ihre Kummer uber die Studien anzusehen.... Warum haben sie den Entchluss gefasst in ihren Zimmern ein Paar Tagezu bleiben?... Ja--gewiss--das versteht sich; sie sind entmuthigt--arme Kinder!(A knock at the door.) Herein!

Enter GRETCHEN with card.

GR. Er ist schon wieder da, und sagt dass er nur Sie sehen will. (Hands the card.) Auch-WIRTHIN. Gott im Himmel--der Vater der Madchen? (Puts the card in her pocket.) Er wunscht die Tochter nicht zu treffen? Ganz recht; also, Du schweigst.

GR. Zu Befehl. WIRTHIN. Lass ihn hereinkommen.

GR. Ja, Frau Wirthin! [Exit GRETCHEN.]

WIRTHIN. (Solus.) Ah--jetzt muss ich ihm die Wahrheit offenbaren.

Enter Mr. STEPHENSON.

STEPHENSON. Good-morning, Mrs. Blumenthal--keep your seat, keep your seat, please. I'm only here for a moment--merely to get your report, you know. (Seating himself.) Don't want to see the girls--poor things, they'd want to go home with me. I'm afraid I couldn't have the heart to say no. How's the German getting along?

WIRTHIN. N-not very well; I was afraid you would ask me that. You see, they hate it, they don't take the least interest in it, and there isn't anything to incite them to an interest, you see. And so they can't talk at all.

S. M-m. That's bad. I had an idea that they'd get lonesome, and have to seek society; and then, of course, my plan would work, considering the cast-iron conditions of it.