Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21

"I think I know him,"--his head to one side. "Woodenish-looking chap, all
run up into shoulders, with yellow hair?"

Blecker nodded, and motioned them to carry O'Shaughnessy into a low
tool-house near, a mere shed, half tumbling down from a shell that had
shattered its side. There was a bench there, where they could lay the
wounded man, however. He stooped over the big mangled body, joking with
him,--it was the best comfort to Pat to give him a chance to show how
little he cared for the surgeon's knife,--glancing now and then at the
pearly embankment of clouds in the south, or at the delicate locust-boughs
in black and shivering tracery against the moonlight, trying to shut his
ears to the unceasing under-current of moans that reached him in the
silence.

Seeing him there with his lantern and instruments, they brought him one
wounded man after another, to whom he gave what aid he could, and then
despatched them in the army-wagons, looking impatiently after Dan, in his
search for the Captain. He had not known before how much he cared for
McKinstry, with a curious protecting care. Other men in the army were more
his chums than Mac, but they were coarse, able to take care of themselves.
Mac was like that simple-hearted old Israelite in whom there was no guile.
In the camp he had been perpetually imposed on by his men,--giving them
treats of fresh beef and bread, and tracts at the same time. They laughed
at him, but were oddly fond of him; he was a sharp disciplinarian, but was
too quiet, they always had thought, to have much pluck.

Blecker, glancing at his watch, saw that it was eleven; the moon was
sinking fast, her level rays fainter and bluer, as from some farther depth
of rest and quiet than before. His keenly set ears distinguished just then
an even tramp among the abrupt sounds without,--the feet of two or three
men carrying weight.

"He's here, Zur," said Dan, who held the feet, tenderly enough. "Aisy now,
b'ys. It's not bar'ls ye're liftin'." They laid him down. "Fur up th'
ridge he was: not many blue-coats furder an. That's true,"--in a loud,
hearty tone. "I'm doubtin'," in an aside, "it's all over wid him. I'll
howld the lantern, Zur."

"You, Blecker?" McKinstry muttered, as he opened his eyes with his usual
pleased smile. "We've lost the day?"

"Yes. No matter now, Mac. Quiet one moment,"--cutting the boot from his
leg.

"Not fifty of my boys escaped,"--a sort of spasm passing over his face.
"Tell them at home they fought nobly,--nobly."

His voice died down. Blecker finished his examination,--it needed but a
minute,--then softly replaced the leg, and, coming up, stood quiet, only
wiping the dampness off his forehead. Dan set down the lantern.

"I'll go, Zur," he whispered. "Ther' 's work outside, belike."

The Doctor nodded. McKinstry opened his eyes.

"Good bye, my friend,"--stretching out his hand to Dan. "My brother
couldn't have been kinder to me than you were to-night."

"Good bye, Zur." The rough thrust out his great fist eagerly. "God open
the gate wide for yer Honor, the night,"--clearing his voice, as he went
out.

"I'm going, then, Blecker?"

Paul could not meet the womanish blue eyes turned towards him: he turned
abruptly away.

"Why! why! Tut! I did not think you cared, Paul,"--tightening his grasp of
the hand in his. Then, closing his eyes, he covered his face with his left
hand, and was silent awhile.

"Go, Doctor," he said, at last. "I forgot that others need you. Go at
once. I'm very comfortable here."

"I will not go. Do you see this?"--pointing to the stream of bright
arterial blood. "It was madness to throw your life away thus; a
handkerchief tightened here would have sufficed until they carried you off
the field."

"Yes, yes, I knew. But the wound came just as we were charging. Sabre-cut,
it was. If I had said I was wounded, the men would have fallen back. I
thought we could take that battery; but we did not. No matter. All right.
You ought to go?"

"No. Have you no message for home?"--pushing back the yellow hair as
gently as a woman. The mild face grew distorted again and pale.

"I've a letter,--in my carpet-sack, in our tent. I wrote it last night.
It's to Lizzy,--you will deliver it, Doctor?"

"I will. Yes."

"It may be lost now,--there is such confusion in the camp. The key is in
my right pocket,--inside the spectacle-case: have you got it?"

"Yes."

Blecker could hardly keep back a smile: even the pocket-furniture was
neatly ordered in the hour of death.

"If it is lost,"--turning his head restlessly,--"light your lantern,
Blecker, it is so dark,--if it is,--tell her"--his voice was gone. "Tell
her," lifting himself suddenly, with the force of death, "to be pure and
true. My loving little girl, Lizzy,--wife." Blecker drew his head on his
shoulder. "I thought--the holidays were coming,"--closing his eyes again
wearily,--"for us. But God knows. All right!"

His lips moved, but the sound was inaudible; he smiled cheerfully, held
Paul's hand closer, and then his head grew heavy as lead, being nothing
but clay. For the true knight and loyal gentleman was gone to the Master
of all honor, to learn a broader manhood and deeds of higher emprise.

Paul Blecker stood silent a moment, and then covered the homely, kind face
reverently.

"I would as lief have seen a woman die," he said, and turned away.

Two or three men came up, carrying others on a broken door and on a
fence-board.

"Hyur's th' Doctor,"--laying them on a hillock of grass. "Uh wish ye'd see
toh these pore chaps, Doctor,"--with a strong Maryland accent. "One o'
them's t' other side, but"--and so left them.

One of them was a burly Western boatman, with mop-like red hair and beard.
Blecker looked at him, shook his head, and went on.

"No use?"--gritting his heavy jaw. "Well!"--swallowing, as if he accepted
death in that terrible breath. "Eh, Doctor? Do you hear? Wait a
bit,"--fumbling at his jacket. "I can't--There's a V in my pocket. I wish
you'd send it to the old woman,--mother,--Mrs. Jane Carr,
Cincinnati,--with my love."

The Doctor stopped to speak to him, and then passed to the next,--a
fair-haired boy, with three bullet-holes in his coat, one in his breast.

"Will I die?"--trying to keep his lips firm.

"Tut! tut! No. Only a flesh-wound. Drink that, and you'll be able to go
back to the hospital,--be well in a week or two."

"I did not want to die, though I was not afraid,"--looking up anxiously;
"but"--

"But the Doctor had left him, and, kneeling down in the mud, was turning
the wounded Confederate over on his back, that he might see his face.

The boy saw him catch up his lantern and peer eagerly at him with
shortened breath.

"What is it? Is he dead?"

"No, not dead,"--putting down the lantern.

But very near it, this man, John Gurney,--so near that it needed no deed
of Blecker's to make him pass the bound. Only a few moments' neglect. A
bandage, a skilful touch or two, care in the hospitals, might save him.

But what claim had he on Paul that he should do this? For a moment the hot
blood in the little Doctor's veins throbbed fiercely, as he rose slowly,
and, taking his lantern, stood looking down.

"In an hour," glancing critically at him, "he will be dead."

Something within him coolly added, "And Paul Blecker a murderer."

But he choked it down, and picked his steps through scorched winter
stubble, dead horses, men, wagon-wheels, across the field; thinking, as he
went, of Grey free, his child-love, true, coaxing, coming to his tired
arms once more; of the home on the farm yonder, he meant to buy,--he, the
rough, jolly farmer, and she, busy Grey, bustling Grey, with her loving,
fussing ways. Why, it came like a flash to him! Yet, as it came, tugging
at his heart with the whole strength of his blood, he turned, this poor,
thwarted, passionate little Doctor, and began jogging back to the
locust-woods,--passing many wounded men of his own kith and spirit, and
going back to Gurney.

Because--he was his enemy.

"Thank God, I am not utterly debased!"--grinding the tobacco vehemently in
his teeth.

He walked faster, seeing that the moon was going down, leaving the
battle-field in shadow. Overhead, the sinking light, striking upward from
the horizon, had worked the black dome into depths of fretted silver.
Blecker saw it, though passion made his step unsteady and his eye dim. No
man could do a mean, foul deed while God stretched out such a temple-roof
as that for his soul to live in, was the thought that dully touched his
outer consciousness. But little Grey! If he could go home to her
to-morrow, and, lifting her thin, tired face from the machine, hold it to
his breast, and say, "You're free now, forever!" O God!

He stopped, pulling his coat across his breast in his clenched
hands,--then, after a moment, went on, his arms falling powerless.

"I'm a child! It is of no use to think of it! Never!"--his hard, black
eyes, that in these last few months had grown sad and questioning as a
child's, looking to the north hill, as he strode along, as though he were
bidding some one good-bye. And when he came to the hillock and knelt down
again beside Gurney, there was no malice in them. He was faithful in every
touch and draught and probe. With the wish in his heart to thrust the
knife into the heart of the unconscious man lying before him, he touched
him as though he had been his brother.

Gurney, opening his eyes at last, saw the yellow, haggard face, in its
fringe of black beard, as rigid as if cut out of stone, very near his own.
The grave, hopeless eyes subdued him.

"Take me out of this," he moaned.

"You are going--to the hospital,"--helping some men lift him into an
ambulance.

"Slowly, my good fellows. I will follow you."

He did follow them. Let us give the man credit for every step of that
following, the more that the evil in his blood struggled so fiercely with
such a mortal pain as he went. In Fredericksburg, one of the old
family-homesteads had been taken for a camp-hospital. As they laid Gurney
on a heap of straw in the library, a surgeon passed through the room.

"Story," said Paul, catching his arm, "see to that man: this is your post,
I believe. I have dressed his wound. I cannot do more."

Story did not know the meaning of that. He stuck his eye-glasses over his
hook-nose, and stooped down, being nearsighted.

"Hardly worth while to put him under my care, or anybody's. The fellow
will not live until morning."

"I don't know. I did what I could."

"Nothing more to be done.--Parr's out of lint, did you know? He's enough
to provoke Job, that fellow! I warned him especially about lint and
supporters.--Why, Blecker, you are worn out,"--looking at him closer. "It
has been a hard fight."

"Yes, I am tired; it was a hard fight."

"I must find Parr about that lint, and"--

Paul walked to the window, breathing heavy draughts of the fresh morning
air. The man would not die, he thought. Grey would never be free. No. Yet,
since he was a child, before he began to grapple his way through the
world, he had never known such a cheerful quiet as that which filled his
eyes with tears now; for, if the fight had been hard, Paul Blecker had won
the victory.

Sunday morning dawned cold and windy. Now and then, volleys of musketry,
or a repulse from the Southern batteries on the heights, filled the blue
morning sky with belching scarlet flame and smoke: through all, however,
the long train of army-wagons passed over the pontoon-bridge, bearing the
wounded. About six o'clock some men came out from the camp-hospital.
Doctor Blecker stood on the outside of the door: all night he had been
there, like some lean, unquiet ghost. Story, the surgeon, met the men.
They carried something on a board, covered with an old patchwork quilt.
Story lifted the corner of the quilt to see what lay beneath. Doctor
Blecker stood in their way, but neither moved nor spoke to them.

"Take it to the trenches," said the surgeon, shortly nodding to
them.--"Your Rebel friend, Blecker."

"Dead?"

"Yes."

"Story, I did what I could?"

"Of course. Past help.--When are we to be taken out of this trap,
eh?"--going on.

"I did what I could."

As the Doctor's parched lips moved, he looked up. How deep the blue was!
how the cold air blew his hair about, fresh and boisterous! He went down
the field with a light, springing step, as he used, when a boy, long ago,
to run to the hay-field. The earth was so full of health, life, beauty, he
could have cried or laughed out loud. He stopped on the bridge, seeing
only the bright, rushing clouds, the broad river, the sunlight,--a little
way from him in the world, little Grey.

"I thank Thee," baring his head and bending it,--the words died in an
awestruck whisper in his heart,--"for _Thy_ great glory, O Lord!"

* * * * *

"Will you come a little farther? Let a few months slip by, and let us see
what a March day is in the old Pennsylvania hills. The horrors of the war
have not crept hither yet, into these hill-homesteads. Never were crops
richer than those of '61 and '62, nor prices better. So the barns were
full to bursting through the autumn of those years, and the fires were big
enough to warm you to your very marrow in winter.

Even now, if young Corporal Simpson, or Joe Hainer, or any other of the
neighbors' boys come home wounded, it only spices the gossip for the
apple-butter-parings or spelling-matches. Then the men, being Democrats,
are reconciled to the ruin of the country, because it has been done by the
Republicans; and the women can construct secret hiding-places in the
meat-cellar for the dozen silver teaspoons and tea-pot, in dread of
Stuart's cavalry. Altogether, the war gives quite a zest to life up here.
Then, in these low-hill valleys of the Alleghanies the sun pours its
hottest, most life-breeding glow, and even the wintry wind puts all its
vigor into the blast, knowing that there are no lachrymose, whey-skinned
city-dyspeptics to inhale it, but full-breasted, strong-muscled women and
men,--with narrow brains, maybe, but big, healthy hearts, and _physique_
to match. Very much the same type of animal and moral organization, as
well as natural, you would have found before the war began, ran through
the valley of Pennsylvania and Virginia.

One farm, eight or ten miles from the village where the Gurneys lived,
might be taken as a specimen of these old homesteads. It lay in a sort of
meadow-cove, fenced in with low, rolling hills that were wooded with oaks
on the summits,--sheep-cots, barns, well-to-do plum and peach orchards
creeping up the sides,--a creek binding it in with a broad, flashing band.
The water was frozen on this March evening: it had plenty of time to
freeze, and stay there altogether, in fact, it moved so slowly, knowing it
had got into comfortable quarters. There was just enough cold crispiness
in the air to-night to make the two fat cows move faster into the stable,
with smoking breath, to bring out a crow of defiance from the chickens
huddling together on the roost; it spread, too, a white rime over the
windows, shining red in the sinking sun. When the sun was down, the
nipping northeaster grew sharper, swept about the little valley, rattled
the bare-limbed trees, blew boards off the corn-crib that Doctor Blecker
had built only last week, tweaked his nose and made his eyes water as he
came across the field clapping his hands to make the blood move faster,
and, in short, acted as if the whole of that nook in the hills belonged to
it in perpetuity. But the house, square, brick, solid-seated, began to
glow red and warm out of every window,--not with the pale rose-glow of
your anthracite, but fitful, flashing, hearty, holding out all its hands
to you like a Western farmer. That's the way our fires burn. The very
smoke went out of no stove-pipe valve, but rushed from great mouths of
chimneys, brown, hot, glowing, full of spicy smiles of supper below. Down
in the kitchen, by a great log-fire, where irons were heating, sat Oth,
feebly knitting, and overseeing a red-armed Dutch girl cooking
venison-steaks and buttermilk-biscuit on the coal-stove beside him.

"Put jelly on de table, you, mind! Strangers here fur tea. Anyhow it ort
to go down. Nuffin but de best ob currant Miss Grey 'ud use in her
father's house. Lord save us!"--in an underbreath. "But it's fur de honor
ob de family,"--in a mutter.

"Miss Grey" waited within. Not patiently: sure pleasure was too new for
her. She smoothed her crimson dress, pushed back the sleeves that the
white dimpled arms might show, and then bustled about the room, to tidy it
for the hundredth time. A bright winter's room: its owner had a Southern
taste for hot, heartsome colors, you could be sure, and would bring heat
and flavor into his life, too. There were soft astral lamps, and a charred
red fire, a warm, unstingy glow, wasting itself even in long streams of
light through the cold windows. There were bright bits of Turnerish
pictures on the gray walls, a mass of gorgeous autumn-leaves in the soft
wool of the carpet, a dainty white-spread table in the middle of the room,
jars of flowers everywhere, flowers that had caught most passion and
delight from the sun,--scarlet and purple fuchsias, heavy-breathed
heliotrope. Yet Grey bent longest over her own flower, that every
childlike soul loves best,--mignonette. She chose some of its brown sprigs
to fasten in her hair, the fragrance was so clean and caressing. Paul
Blecker, even at the other end of the field, and in the gathering
twilight, caught a glimpse of his wife's face pressed against the pane. It
was altered: the contour more emphatic, the skin paler, the hazel eyes
darker, lighted from farther depths. No glow of color, only in the meaning
lips and the fine reddish hair.

Doctor Blecker stopped to help a stout little lady out of a buggy at the
stile, then sent the boy to the stable with it: it was his own, with
saddle-bags under the seat. But there was a better-paced horse in the
shafts than suited a heavy country-practice. The lady looked at it with
one eye shut.

"A Morgan-Cottrell, eh? I know by the jaw,"--jogging up the stubble-field
beside him, her fat little satchel rattling as she walked. Doctor Blecker,
a trifle graver and more assured than when we saw him last, sheltered her
with his overcoat from the wind, taking it off for that purpose by the
stile. You could see that this woman was one of the few for whom he had
respect.

"Your wife understands horses, Doctor. And dogs. I did not expect it of
Grey. No. There's more outcome in her than you give her credit
for,"--turning sharply on him.

He smiled quietly, taking her satchel to carry.

"When we came to Pittsburg, I said to Pratt, 'I'll follow you to New York
in a day or two, but I'm going now to see Paul Blecker's little wife.
_She_'s sound, into the marrow.' And I'll tell you, too, what I said to
Pratt. 'That is a true marriage, heart and soul and ways of thinking. God
fitted those two into one another.' Some matches, Doctor Blecker, put me
in mind of my man Kellar, making ready the axes for winter's work, little
head on big heft, misjoined always: in consequence, thing breaks apart
with no provocation whatever. "When God wants work done down here, He
makes His axes better,--eh?"

There was a slight pause.

"Maybe, now, you'll think I take His name in vain, using it so often. But
I like to get at the gist of a matter, and I generally find God has
somewhat to do with everything,--down to the pleasement, to me, of my
bonnet: or the Devil,--which means the same, for he acts by leave.--Where
_did_ you get that Cottrell, Doctor? From Faris? Pha! pha! Grey showed me
the look in his face this morning, innocent, _naif_, as all well-blooded
horses' eyes are. Like her own, eh? I says to Pratt, long ago,--twenty he
was then,--'When you want a wife, find one who laughs out from her heart,
and see if dogs and horses kinsfolk with her: that's your woman to marry,
if they do.'"

They had stopped by the front-steps for her to finish her soliloquy. Grey
tapped on the window-pane.

"Yes, yes, I see. You want to go in. But first,"--lowering her voice,--"I
was at the Gurney house this evening."

"You were?" laughed the Doctor, "And what did you do there?"

"Eh? What? Something is needed to be done, and I--Yes, I know my
reputation,"--her face flushing.

"You strike the nails where they are needed,--what few women do, Mrs.
Sheppard," said the Doctor, trying to keep his face grave. "Strike them on
the head, too."

"Umph!"

No woman likes to be classed properly,--no matter where she belongs.

"I never interfere, Doctor Blecker; I may advise. But, as I was going to
say, that father of Grey's seemed to me such a tadpole of a man, rooting
after tracks of lizards that crept ages ago, while the country is going to
mash, and his own children next door to starvation, I thought a little
plain talk would try if it was blood or water in his veins. So I went over
to spend the day there on purpose to give it to him."

"Yes. Well?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"I see. Then you tried Joseph?"

"No, he is in able hands. That Loo is a thorough-pacer,--after my own
heart.--Talking of your family, my dear," as Grey opened the door. "Loo
will do better for them than you. Pardon me, but a lot of selfish men in a
family need to be treated like Pen here, when his stomach is sour. Give
them a little wholesome alkali: honey won't answer."

Grey only laughed. Some day, she thought, when her father had completed
his survey of the coal-formation, and Joseph had induced Congress to stop
the war, people would appreciate them. So she took off Mrs. Sheppard's
furs and bonnet, and smoothed the two black shiny puffs of hair, passing
her husband with only a smile, as a stranger was there, but his
dressing-gown and slippers waited by the fire.

"Paul may be at home before you," she said, nodding to them.

Grey had dropped easily through that indefinable change between a young
girl and a married woman: her step was firmer, her smile freer, her head
more quietly poised. Some other change, too, in her look, showed that her
affections had grown truer and wider of range than before. Meaner women's
hearts contract after marriage about their husband and children, like an
India-rubber ball thrown into the fire. Hers would enter into his nature
as a widening and strengthening power. Whatever deficiency there might be
in her brain, she would infuse energy into his care for people about
him,--into his sympathy for his patients; in a year or two you might be
sure he would think less of Paul Blecker _per se_, and hate or love fewer
men for their opinions than he did before.

The supper, a solid meal always in these houses, was brought in. Grey took
her place with a blush and a little conscious smile, to which Mrs.
Sheppard called Doctor Blecker's attention by a pursing of her lips, and
then, tucking her napkin under her chin, prepared to do justice to venison
and biscuits. She sipped her coffee with an approving nod, dear to a young
housekeeper's soul.

"Good! Grey begins sound, at the foundations, in cooking, Doctor. No
shams, child. Don't tolerate them in housekeeping. If not white sugar,
then no cake. If not silver, then not albata. So you're coming with me to
New York, my dear?"

Grey's face flushed.

"Paul says we will go."

"Sister there? Teaching, did you say?"

Doctor Blecker's moustache worked nervously. Lizzy Gurney was not of his
kind; now, more than ever, he would have cut every tie between her and
Grey, if he could. But his wife looked up with a smile.

"She is on the stage,--Lizzy. The opera,--singing;--in choruses only,
now,--but it will be better soon."

Mrs. Sheppard let her bit of bread fall, then ate it with a gulp. Why,
every drop of the Shelby blood was clean and respectable; it was not easy
to have an emissary of hell, a tawdry actress, brought on the carpet
before her, with even this mild flourish of trumpets.

The silence grew painful. Grey glanced around quickly, then her Welsh
blood made her eyelids shake a little, and her lips shut. But she said
gently,--

"My sister is not albata ware,--that you hate, Mrs. Sheppard. She is no
sham. When God said to her, 'Do this thing,' she did not ask the neighbors
to measure it by their rule of right and wrong."

"Well, well, little Grey,"--with a forbearing smile,--"she is your
sister,--you're a clannish body. Your heart's all right, my
dear,"--patting the hard nervous hand that lay on the table,--"but you
never studied theology, that's clear."

"I don't know."

Mrs. Blecker's face grew hot; but that might have been the steam of the
coffee-urn.

"We'll be just to Lizzy," said her husband, gravely. "She had a hurt
lately. I don't think she values her life for much now. It is a hungry
family, the Gurneys,"--with a quizzical smile. "My wife, here, kept the
wolf from the door almost single-handed, though she don't understand
theology. You are quite right about that. When I came home here two months
ago, she would not be my wife; there was no one to take her place, she
said. So, one day, when I was in my office alone, Lizzy came to me,
looking like a dead body out of which the soul had been crushed. She had
been hurt, I told you:--she came to me with an open letter in her hand. It
was from the manager of one of the second-rate opera-troupes. The girl can
sing, and has a curious dramatic talent, her only one.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21