Old Man Savarin and Other Stories

E >> Edward William Thomson >> Old Man Savarin and Other Stories

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Harry's vision of his mother coming into his room, shading her candle
with her hand to see if he were asleep, passed away as a small gust
came, shaking the canvas, for he was instantly alert with a certainty
that the breeze had borne a strong rolling of musketry.

"Bader, Bader!" he said. "Bader!"

"Can't you shut up, you Wallbridge?" came Orderly Sergeant Gravely's
sharp tones from the next tent.

"What's wrong with you, Harry, boy?" asked Bader, turning.

"I thought I heard heavy firing closer than the picket lines; twice
now I've thought I heard it."

"Oh, I guess not, Harry. The Johnnies won't come out no such night as
this. Keep quiet, or you'll have the sergeant on top of you. Better
lie down and try to sleep, buddy; the bugles will call morning soon
now."

Again Harry fell to his revery of home, and his vision became that of
the special evening on which his boyish wish to go to the war had, for
the family's sake, become resolve. He saw his mother's spectacled and
lamp-lit face as she, leaning to the table, read in the familiar
Bible; little Fred and Mary, also facing the table's central lamp,
bent sleepy heads over their school-books; the father sat in the
rocking-chair, with his right hand on the paper he had laid down, and
gazed gloomily at the coals fallen below the front doors of the
wood-burning stove. Harry dreamed himself back in his own chair,
looking askance, and feeling sure his father was inwardly groaning
over the absence of Jack, the eldest son. Then nine o'clock struck,
and Fred and Mary began to put their books away in preparation for
bed.

"Wait a little, children," Mrs. Wallbridge said, serene in tone from
her devotional reading. "Father wants that I should tell you
something. You mustn't feel bad about it. It's that we may soon go out
West. Your Uncle Ezra is doing well in Minnesota. Aunt Elvira says so
in her letter that came to-day."

"It's this way, children," said Mr. Wallbridge, ready to explain, now
that the subject was opened. "Since ever your brother Jack went away
South, the store expenses have been too heavy. It's near five years
now he's been gone. There's a sheaf of notes coming due the third of
next month; twice they've been renewed, and the Philadelphia men say
they'll close me up this time sure. If I had eight hundred
dollars--but it's no use talking; we'll just have to let them take
what we've got. Times have been bad right along around here, anyhow,
with new competition, and so many farmers gone to the war, and more
gone West. If Jack had stopped to home--but I've had to pay two
clerks to do his work, and then they don't take any interest in the
business. Mind, I'm not blaming Jack, poor fellow,--he'd a right to go
where he'd get more'n his keep, and be able to lay up something for
himself,--but what's become of him, God knows; and such a smart, good
boy as he was! He'd got fond of New Orleans,--I guess some nice girl
there, maybe, was the reason; and there he'd stay after the war began,
and now it's two years and more since we've heard from him. Dead,
maybe, or maybe they'd put him in jail, for he said he'd never join
the Confederates, nor fight against them either--he felt that
way--North and South was all the same to him. And so he's gone; and I
don't see my way now at all. Ma, if it wasn't for my lame leg, I'd
take the bounty. It'd be _something_ for you and the children after
the store's gone."

"Sho, pa! don't talk that way! You're too down-hearted. It'll all come
right, with the Lord's help," said Harry's mother. How clearly he, in
the damp cold tent, could see her kind looks as she pushed up her
spectacles and beamed on her husband; how distinctly, in the still dim
dawn, he heard her soothing tones!

It was that evening's talk which had sent Harry, so young, to the
front. Three village boys, little older than he, had already contrived
to enlist. Every time he saw the Flag drooping, he thought shame of
himself to be absent from the ranks of its upholders; and now, just as
he was believing himself big and old enough to serve, he conceived
that duty to his parents distinctly enjoined him to go. So in the
night, without leave-taking or consent of his parents, he departed.
The combined Federal, State, and city bounties offered at Philadelphia
amounted to nine hundred dollars cash that dreadful winter before
Richmond fell, and Harry sent the money home triumphantly in time to
pay his father's notes and save the store.

While the young soldier thought it all over, carbine and sabre came
out more and more distinctly outlined above the mud-plastered
fireplace. The drizzle had ceased, the drip into the trench was almost
finished, intense stillness ruled; Harry half expected to hear cocks
crow from out such silence.

Listening for them, his dreamy mind brooded over both hosts, in a
vision even as wide as the vast spread of the Republic in which they
lay as two huddles of miserable men. For what were they all about him
this woful, wet night? they all fain, as he, for home and industry and
comfort. What delusion held them? How could it be that they could not
all march away and separate, and the cruel war be over? Harry caught
his breath at the idea,--it seemed so natural, simple, easy, and good
a solution. Becoming absorbed in the fancy, tired of listening, and
soothed by the silence, he was falling asleep as he sat, when a heavy
weight seemed to fall, far away. Another--another--the fourth had the
rumble of distant thunder, and seemed followed by a concussion of the
air.

"Hey--Big Guns! What's up toward City Point?" cried Bader, sitting up.
"I tell you they're at it. It can't be so far away as Butler. What? On
the left too! That was toward Hatcher's Run! Harry, the rebs are out
in earnest! I guess you did hear the pickets trying to stop 'em. What
a morning! Ha--Fort Hell! see that!"

The outside world was dimly lighted up for a moment. In the
intensified darkness that followed Bader's voice was drowned by the
crash of a great gun from the neighboring fort. _Flash, crash--flash,
crash--flash, crash_ succeeded rapidly. Then the intervals of Fort
Hell's fire lengthened to the regular periods for loading, and between
her roars were heard the sullen boom of more distant guns, while
through all the tumult ran a fierce undertone,--the infernal hurrying
of musketry along the immediate front.

"The Johnnies must have got in close somehow," cried Bader. "Hey,
Sergeant?"

"Yes," shouted Gravely. "Scooped up the pickets and supports too in
the rain, I guess. Turn out, boys, turn out! there'll be a wild day.
Kid! Where's the Kid? Kid Sylvester!"

"Here! All right, Barney; I'll be out in two shakes," shouted the
bugler.

"Hurry, then! I can hear the Colonel shouting already. Man, listen to
that!"--as four of Fort Hell's guns crashed almost simultaneously.
"Brownie! Greasy Cook! O Brownie!"

"Here!" shouted the cook.

"Get your fire started right away, and see what salt horse and biscuit
you can scare up. Maybe we'll have time for a snack."

"Turn out, Company K!" shouted Lieutenant Bradley, running down from
the officers' quarters. "Where's the commissary sergeant? There?--all
right--give out feed right away! Get your oats, men, and feed
instantly! We may have time. Hullo! here's the General's orderly."

As the trooper galloped, in a mud-storm, across the parade ground, a
group of officers ran out behind the Colonel from the screen of pine
saplings about Regimental Headquarters. The orderly gave the Colonel
but a word, and, wheeling, was off again as "Boot and saddle" blared
from the buglers, who had now assembled on parade.

"But leave the bits out--let your horses feed!" cried the Lieutenant,
running down again. "We're not to march till further orders."

Beyond the screen of pines Harry could see the tall canvas ridges of
the officers' cabins lighted up. Now all the tents of the regiment,
row behind row, were faintly luminous, and the renewed drizzle of the
dawn was a little lightened in every direction by the canvas-hidden
candles of infantry regiments, the glare of numerous fires already
started, and sparks showering up from the cook-houses of company after
company.

Soon in the cloudy sky the cannonade rolled about in broad day, which
was still so gray that long wide flashes of flame could be seen to
spring far out before every report from the guns of Fort Hell, and in
the haze but few of the rebel shells shrieking along their high curve
could be clearly seen bursting over Hancock's cheering men.
Indistinguishably blent were the sounds of hosts on the move,
field-guns pounding to the front, troops shouting, the clink and
rattle of metal, officers calling, bugles blaring, drums rolling,
mules screaming,--all heard as a running accompaniment to the cannon
heavily punctuating the multitudinous din.

"Fwat sinse in the ould man bodderin' us?" grumbled Corporal Kennedy,
a tall Fenian dragoon from the British army. "Sure, ain't it as plain
as the sun--and faith the same's not plain this dirthy mornin'--that
there's no work for cavalry the day, barrin' it's escortin' the
doughboys' prisoners, if they take any?--bad 'cess to the job. Sure
it's an infantry fight, and must be, wid the field-guns helpin', and
the siege pieces boomin' away over the throops in the mud betwigst
our own breastworks and the inner line of our forts.

"Oh, by this and by that," the corporal grumbled on, "ould Lee's not
the gintleman I tuk him for at all, at all,--discomfortin' us in the
rain,--and yesterday an illigant day for fightin'. Couldn't he wait,
like the dacint ould boy he's reported, for a dhry mornin', instead av
turnin' his byes out in the shlush and destroyin' me chanst av
breakfast? It's spring chickens I'd ordhered."

"You may get up to spring-chicken country soon, now," said Bader. "I'm
thinking this is near the end; it's the last assault that Lee will
ever deliver."

"Faith, I dunno," said the corporal; "that's what we've been saying
sinst last fall, but the shtay of them Johnnies bates Banagher and the
prophets. Hoo--ow! by the powers! did you hear them yell? Fwat? The
saints be wid us! who'd 'a' thought it possible? Byes! Bader! Harry!
luk at the Johnnies swarmin' up the face of Hell!"

Off there Harry could dimly see, rising over the near horizon made by
tents, a straggling rush of men up the steep slope, while the rebel
yell came shrill from a multitude behind on the level ground that was
hidden from the place occupied by the cavalry regiment. In the next
moment the force mounting Fort Hell's slope fell away, some lying
where shot down, some rolling, some running and stumbling in heaps;
then a tremendous musketry and field-gun fire growled to and fro under
the heavy smoke round and about and out in front of the embrasures,
which had never ceased their regular discharge over the heads of the
fort's defenders and immediate assailants.

Suddenly Harry noted a slackening of the battle; it gradually but soon
dropped away to nothing, and now no sound of small-arms in any
direction was heard in the lengthening intervals of reports from the
siege pieces far and near.

"And so that's the end of it," said Kennedy. "Sure it was hot work for
a while! Faix, I thought onct the doughboys was nappin' too long, and
ould Hell would be bullyin' away at ourselves. Now, thin, can we have
a bite in paice? I'll shtart wid a few sausages, Brownie, and you may
send in the shpring chickens wid some oyshters the second coorse. No!
Oh, by the powers, 'tis too mane to lose a breakfast like that!" and
Corporal Kennedy shook his fist at the group of buglers calling the
regiment to parade.

In ten minutes the Fifty-third had formed in column of companies. "Old
Jimmy," their Colonel, had galloped down at them and once along their
front; then the command, forming fours from the right front, moved off
at a trot through the mud in long procession.

"Didn't I know it?" said Kennedy; "it's escortin' the doughboys'
prisoners, that's all we're good for this outrageous day. Oh, wirra,
wirrasthru! Police duty! and this calls itself a cavalry rigiment.
Mounted Police duty,--escortin' doughboys' prisoners! Faix, I might as
well be wid Her Majesty's dhragoons, thramplin' down the flesh and
blood of me in poor ould Oireland. Begor, Harry, me bhy, it's a mane
job to be setting you at, and this the first day ye're mounted to save
the Union!"

"Stop coddin' the boy, Corporal," said Bader, angrily. "You can't
think how an American boy feels about this war."

"An Amerikin!--an Amerikin, is it? Let me insthruct ye thin, Misther
Bader, that I'm as good an Amerikin as the next man. Och, be jabers,
me that's been in the color you see ever since the Prisident first
called for men! It was for a three months' dance he axed us first. Me,
that's re-enlishted twice, don't know the feelin's of an Amerikin!
What am I here for? Not poverty! sure I'd enough of that before ever I
seen Ameriky! What am I wallopin' through the mud for this mornin'?"

"It's your trade, Kennedy," said Bader, with disgust.

"Be damned to you, man!" said the corporal, sternly. "When I touched
fut in New York, didn't I swear that I'd never dhraw swoord more,
barrin' it was agin the ould red tyrant and oprissor of me counthry?
Wasn't I glad to be dhrivin' me own hack next year in Philamedink like
a gintleman? Oh, the paice and the indipindence of it! But what cud I
do when the counthry that tuk me and was good to me wanted an ould
dhragoon? An Amerikin, ye say! Faith, the heart of me is Amerikin, if
I'm a bog throtter by the tongue. Mind that now, me bould man!"

Harry heard without heeding as the horses spattered on. Still wavered
in his ears the sounds of the dawn; still he saw the ghostlike forms
of Americans in gray tumbling back from their rush against the sacred
flag that had drooped so sadly over the smoke; and still, far away
beyond all this puddled and cumbered ground the dreamy boy saw
millions of white American faces, all haggard for news of the
armies--some looking South, some North, yearning for the Peace that
had so long ago been the boon of the Nation.

Now the regiment was upon the red clay of the dead fight, and brought
to halt in open columns. After a little they moved off again in fours,
and, dropping into single file, surrounded some thousands of disarmed
men, the remnant of the desperate brigades that Lee had flung through
the night across three lines of breastworks at the great fort they had
so nearly stormed. Poor drenched, shivering Johnnies! there they
stood, not a few of them in blue overcoats, but mostly in butternut,
generally tattered; some barefoot, some with feet bound in ragged
sections of blanket, many with toes and skin showing through crazy
boots lashed on with strips of cotton or with cord; many stoutly on
foot, streaming blood from head wounds.

Some lay groaning in the mud, while their comrades helped Union
surgeons to bind or amputate. Here and there groups huddled together
in earnest talk, or listened to comrades gesticulating and storming as
they recounted incidents of the long charge. But far the greater
number faced outward, at gaze upon the cavalry guard, and, silently
munching thick flat cakes of corn-bread, stared into the faces of the
horsemen. Harry Wallbridge, brought to the halt, faced half-round in
the saddle, and looked with quick beatings of pity far and wide over
the disorderly crowd of weather-worn men.

"It's a Louisiana brigade," said Bader.

"Fifty-three, P. V. V. C.," spoke a prisoner, as if in reply, reading
the letters about the little crossed brass sabres on the Union hats.
"Say, you men from Pennsylvany?"

"Yes, Johnny; we come down to wake up Dixie."

"I reckon we got the start at wakin' you this mornin'," drawled the
Southerner. "But say,--there's one of our boys lyin' dyin' over
yonder; his folks lives in Pennsylvany. Mebbe some of you 'ud know
'em."

"What's his name?" asked Bader.

"Wallbridge--Johnny Wallbridge."

"Why, Harry--hold on!--you ain't the only Wallbridges there is. What's
up?" cried Bader, as the boy half reeled, half clambered from his
saddle.

"Hold on, Harry!" cried Corporal Kennedy.

"Halt there, Wallbridge!" shouted Sergeant Gravely.

"Stop that man!" roared Lieutenant Bradley.

But, calling, "He's my brother!" Harry, catching up his sabre as he
ran, followed the Southerner, who had instantly divined the situation.
The forlorn prisoners made ready way for them, and closing in behind,
stretched in solid array about the scene.

"It's not Jack," said the boy; but something in the look of the dying
man drew him on to kneel in the mud. "Is it _you_, Jack? Oh, now I
know you! Jack, I'm Harry! don't you know me? I'm Harry--your brother
Harry."

The Southern soldier stared rigidly at the boy, seeming to grow paler
with the recollections that he struggled for.

"_What's_ your name?" he asked very faintly.

"Harry Wallbridge--I'm your brother."

"Harry Wallbridge! Why, I'm _John_ Wallbridge. Did you say Harry? _Not
Harry!_" he shrieked hoarsely. "No; Harry's only a little fellow!" He
paused, and looked meditatively into the boy's eyes. "It's nearly five
years I've been gone,--he was near twelve then. Boys," lifting his
head painfully and casting his look slowly round upon his comrades, "I
know him by the eyes; yes, he's my brother! Let me speak to him
alone--stand back a bit," and at once the men pushed backward into the
form of a wide circle.

"Put down your head, Harry. Kiss me! Kiss me again!--how's mother? Ah,
I was afraid she might be dead--don't tell her I'm dead, Harry." He
groaned with the pain of the groin wound. "Closer, Harry; I've got to
tell you this first--maybe it's all I've time to tell. Say,
Harry,"--he began to gasp,--"they didn't ought to have killed me, the
Union soldiers didn't. I never fired--high enough--all these years.
They drafted me, Harry--tell mother that--down in New Orleans--and
I--couldn't get away. Ai--ai! how it hurts! I must die soon 's I can
tell you. I wanted to come home--and help father--how's poor father,
Harry? Doing well now? Oh. I'm glad of that--and the baby? there's a
new baby! Ah, yes, I'll never see it, Harry."

His eyes closed, the pain seemed to leave him, and he lay almost
smiling happily as his brother's tears fell on his muddy and
blood-clotted face. As if from a trance his eyes opened, and he spoke
anxiously but calmly.

"You'll be sure to tell them I was drafted--conscripted, you
understand. And I never fired at any of us--of you--tell all the boys
_that_." Again the flame of life went down, and again flickered up in
pain.

"Harry--you'll stay by father--and help him, won't you? This cruel
war--is almost over. Don't cry. Kiss me. Say--do you remember--the old
times we had--fishing? Kiss me again, Harry--brother in blue--you're
on--_my_ side. Oh I wish--I had time--to tell you. Come close--put
your arms around--my neck--it's old times--again." And now the wound
tortured him for a while beyond speech. "You're with me, aren't you,
Harry?

"Well, there's this," he gasped on, "about my chums--they've been as
good and kind--marching, us, all wet and cold together--and it wasn't
their fault. If they had known--how I wanted--to be shot--for the
Union! It was so hard--to be--on the wrong side! But--"

He lifted his head and stared wildly at his brother, screamed rapidly,
as if summoning all his life for the effort to explain, "Drafted,
_drafted, drafted_--Harry, tell mother and father _that_. I was
_drafted_. O God, O God, what suffering! Both sides--I was on both
sides all the time. I loved them all, North and South, all,--but the
Union most. O God, it was so hard!"

His head fell back, his eyes closed, and Harry thought it was the end.
But once more Jack opened his blue eyes, and slowly said in a steady,
clear, anxious voice, "Mind you tell them I never fired high enough!"
Then he lay still in Harry's arms, breathing fainter and fainter till
no motion was on his lips, nor in his heart, nor any tremor in the
hands that lay in the hand of his brother in blue.

"Come, Harry," said Bader, stooping tenderly to the boy, "the order is
to march. He's past helping now. It's no use; you must leave him here
to God. Come, boy, the head of the column is moving already."

Mounting his horse, Harry looked across to Jack's form. For the first
time in two years the famous Louisiana brigade trudged on without
their unwilling comrade. There he lay, alone, in the Union lines,
under the rain, his marching done, a figure of eternal peace; while
Harry, looking backward till he could no longer distinguish his
brother from the clay of the field, rode dumbly on and on beside the
downcast procession of men in gray.

A TURKEY APIECE.

Not long ago I was searching files of New York papers for 1864, when
my eye caught the headline, "Thanksgiving Dinner for the Army." I had
shared that feast. The words brought me a vision of a cavalry brigade
in winter quarters before Petersburg; of the three-miles-distant and
dim steeples of the besieged city; of rows and rows of canvas-covered
huts sheltering the infantry corps that stretched interminably away
toward the Army of the James. I fancied I could hear again the great
guns of "Fort Hell" infrequently punctuating the far-away
picket-firing.

Rain, rain, and rain! How it fell on red Virginia that November of
'64! How it wore away alertness! The infantry-men--whom we used to
call "doughboys," for there was always a pretended feud between the
riders and the trudgers--often seemed going to sleep in the night in
their rain-filled holes far beyond the breastworks, each with its
little mound of earth thrown up toward the beleaguered town. Their
night-firing would slacken almost to cessation for many minutes
together. But after the b-o-o-oom of a great gun it became brisker
usually; often so much so as to suggest that some of Lee's ragged
brigades, their march silenced by the rain, had pierced our fore-front
again, and were "gobbling up" our boys on picket, and flinging up new
rifle-pits on the acres reclaimed for a night and a day for the
tottering Confederacy.

Sometimes the _crack-a-rac-a-rack_ would die down to a slow fire of
dropping shots, and the forts seemed sleeping; and patter, patter,
patter on the veteran canvas we heard the rain, rain, rain, not unlike
the roll of steady musketry very far away.

I think I sit again beside Charley Wilson, my sick "buddy," and hear
his uneven breathing through all the stamping of the rows of wet
horses on their corduroy floor roofed with leaky pine brush.

That _squ-ush, squ-ush_ is the sound of the stable-guard's boots as he
paces slowly through the mud, to and fro, with the rain rattling on
his glazed poncho and streaming corded hat. Sometimes he stops to
listen to a frantic brawling of the wagon-train mules, sometimes to
the reviving picket-firing. It crackles up to animation for causes
that we can but guess; then dies down, never to silence, but warns,
warns, as the distant glow of the sky above a volcano warns of the
huge waiting forces that give it forth.

I think I hear Barney Donahoe pulling our latch-string that November
night when we first heard of the great Thanksgiving dinner that was
being collected in New York for the army.

"Byes, did yez hear phwat Sergeant Cunningham was tellin' av the
Thanksgivin' turkeys that's comin'?"

"Come in out of the rain, Barney," says Charley, feebly.

"Faith, I wish I dar', but it's meself is on shtable-guard. Bedad,
it's a rale fire ye've got. Divil a better has ould Jimmy himself (our
colonel). Ye've heard tell of the turkeys, then, and the pois?"

"Yes. Bully for the folks at home!" says Charley. "The notion of
turkey next Thursday has done me good already. I was thinking I'd go
to hospital to-morrow, but now I guess I won't."

"Hoshpital! Kape clear av the hoshpital, Char-les, dear. Sure, they'd
cut a man's leg off behind the ears av him for to cure him av
indigestion."

"Is it going to rain all night, Barney?"

"It is, bad 'cess to it; and to-morrow and the day afther, I'm
thinkin'. The blackness av night is outside; be jabers! you could cut
it like turf with a shpade! If it wasn't for the ould fort flamin' out
wanst in a whoile, I'd be thinkin' I'd never an oi in my head, barrin'
the fires in the tints far an' near gives a bit of dimness to the
dark. Phwat time is it?"

"Quarter to twelve, Barney."

"Troth, then, the relief will be soon coming. I must be thramping the
mud av Virginia to save the Union. Good-night, byes. I come to give
yez the good word. Kape your heart light an' aisy, Char-les, dear.
D'ye moind the turkeys and the pois? Faith, it's meself that has the
taste for thim dainties!"

"I don't believe I'll be able to eat a mite of the Thanksgiving," says
Charley, as we hear Barney _squ-ush_ away; "but just to see the brown
on a real old brown home turkey will do me a heap of good."

"You'll be all right by Thursday, Charley, I guess; won't you? It's
only Sunday night now."

Of course I cannot remember the very words of that talk in the night,
so many years ago. But the coming of Barney I recollect well, and the
general drift of what was said.

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