The Fanatics/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI
AT HOME
With the incidents that immediately succeeded the skirmish at Vienna, this story has little to do. Notwithstanding the enlistment of only three-months-men, the country had begun to settle down to the realization of war, not insurrection, not only rebellion any longer, but war, stern, implacable, and perhaps to last longer than had at first been expected. As the days passed, there was talk of reorganization. The first was not behindhand in the matter, and by the August following work among the men had begun.
On the day that the men came home, Dorbary, complacent because no casualty had as yet attacked her ranks, was out in full force to meet them. They, too, recognized the state of war, but as yet, it was only a passive condition, and when they saw their unbroken lines come back, three months' veterans, their pride and joy knew no bounds. That many of their men would return to the field, would go back to soldiers' deaths and soldiers' graves, did not disturb them then. Sufficient into the day is the evil thereof. So they put away all thought of further disaster, and revelled only in the present.
Among those who came back, proud and happy, none was more noticeable than "Nigger Ed." The sight of camps, the hurry of men and the press of a real responsibility had evoked a subtle change in the negro, and though his black face showed its accustomed grins, and he answered with humor the sallies made at him, he capered no more in the public square for the delectation of the crowd that despised him. He walked with a more stately step and the people greeted him in more serious tones, as if his association with their soldiers, light though it had been, had brought him nearer to the manhood which they still refused to recognize in him.
Perhaps the least joyous of them all was Walter Stewart, who had given up his family for a principle. While the other boys returned to eager relatives, he came home to no waiting mother's arms, and no sweetheart was there to greet him with love and pride in her eyes. There were friends, of course, who gave him hearty hand-clasps. But what were friends compared with one's own family?
His mood was not improved when less than two days after the return there came a telegram. calling him to the bedside of his dying father. It was a great blow to the young fellow, and coming as it did, seemingly as a reproof of his carcer, it may be forgiven him, if in his grief, his heart grew lukewarm towards the cause he had espoused. As soon as he was able, he hastened away to Virginia and his father's bedside, torn with conflicting emotions of remorse, love and sorrow.
On an open space topping a hill near Dorbury, the white tents of the reorganizing regiment had begun to settle like a flock of gulls on a green sea. Most of the men who had been out wore going back again, and the town took on a military appearance. It came to be now that the girl who had not a military lover or relative was one to be pitied, and the one who had, stood up with complacent Phariseeism and thanked her Creator that she was not as other maidens were.
It was now that the sewing-circle exerted itself to the utmost, both in their natural province and in entertainment for the soldiers. Everything now, had the military prefix to it. There were soldiers' balls, soldiers' teas, soldiers' dinners and soldiers' concerts. Indeed, the sentiment bade fair to run to a foolish craze, and those who felt most deeply and looked forward with fear to what the days might bring forth, beheld this tendency deprecatingly.
Many of the volunteers, from being decent, sensible fellows, had developed into conceited prigs. The pride of their families and the adulation of indiscreet women and none-two-well balanced men, combined to turn their thoughts more upon the picturesqueness of their own personalities than upon the seriousness of what was yet to be done. They were blinded by the glare of possible heroism, and sometimes lost sight of the main thing for which they had banded them- selves together. It would be entirely false to say that at their first realization of what they had gone into they did not rise to all that was expected of them. But such was for a time the prevailing spirit, and for a while it called forth the sneers of old men who had not forgotten 1812 and 1846, at these three months' soldiers.
There were others, too, who smiled at the behavior of the young soldiers with less generous thoughts. Among them, Stephen Van Doren, who watched from behind closed blinds their comings and goings.
"Do they expect to whip the South, which is all fire and passion, with their stripling dandies, who go about the streets posing for a child's wonder and a woman's glance? Bah, the men who have gone into the field from the states of rebellion, have gone to fight for a principle, not to wear a uniform. They are all earnestness and self-sacrifice, and that's what's going to take the South to victory."
His old housekeeper, who was alone with him on the place, heard with admiration and belief, for she shared her master's opinion of the relative worth of the two sections of the country. Neither one of them know that the young men of the South were taking their valets into the service with them; entering it as gallants with the traditionary ideas of the day, and leaving college for the field, because they believed it would be a famous lark.
It was perfectly true of both sections that neither looked upon the contest at first with a great amount of seriousness. But it is equally true that the fact might have been forgiven the youth of a country whose sons hitherto had made a common cause against a general enemy.
Unlike Van Doren, who stayed between walls and chuckled at the coming discomfiture of the Union arms, Bradford Waters was much upon the streets, and at Camp Corwin, as if the sight of these blue-coated defenders of the flag gave him courage and hope. He had a good word for every soldier he met, and his eyes sparkled as they told him of Tom, and the few experiences they had had together.
Tom, true to his promise, had not returned with the rest, but had preferred to remain near the seat of war, and to join his regiment after its reorganization. The old man took pride, even, in this fact. To him, it was as if Tom were staying on the field where he could guard the safety of his country in an hour of laxity on the part of his comrades. He longed to see him, of course, but there was joy in the pain he felt at making a sacrifice of his own desires. He had not loaned his son to the cause. He had given him freely and fully.
The difference in attitude, between Van Doren and Waters, was the difference between regard for traditions and a personal faith. The Southerner said, "What my people have done," the Yankee, "What a man must do." Said one, "Coming from the stock he does, Bob must fight well." Said the other, "If they all fight like Tom, we're bound to whip." It all came to the same thing at last, but the contrast was very apparent then.
At news of the safety of his enemy's son, the copperhead had lost any sympathy he may have had for his Union antagonist, and the other no longer looked wistfully at his foreman's face when they chanced to meet.
It was not unnatural that the two girls, Nannie and Mary, should be affected by the hero-worshipping spirit of the town, and being deprived of the objects of their immediate affection, enter heartily into the business of spoiling all the other young men they could. To Nannie, it was all very pleasant, and something of coquetry entered into her treatment of the soldiers. But with Mary it was different. Her thoughts and motives were serious, and her chief aim was to do something for Tom's old associates, for Tom's sake.
There was no abatement of the rigor of the estrangement between her and her father, for although, after the incident of the letter, she had expected him to call her home, he had made no further sign, nor had she. She had yielded not one whit in her devotion and loyalty to Robert Van Doren. But she took pleasure in doing little kindnesses for the men whom she know hated him for the choice he had made. The time soon came, when even this pleasure, gentle as it was, was denied her.
The story went round among the soldiers that old Waters' daughter was the sweetheart of a rebel soldier, and that in spite of all her good work, she had left home for love of him and his cause, and they grew cold towards her. Some were even rude.
It hurt the girl, but she continued her ministrations, nevertheless. Then one day as she passed through the camp where the girls sometimes went, she heard a voice from a tent singing derisively,
But I, I'm making lots o' things
To keep a rebel warm."
Mary flushed and hurried on, but the voice sang after her:
What's the glorious stars and stripes
Beside Jeff Davis rag?
Damn my home and family, damn my Northern pride,
So you let me go my way to be a rebel's bride."
The song which some scalawag had improvised, cut Mary to the heart, but though no man would have dared sing it openly, she never took the chance of hearing it again. In spite of Nannie's pleadings, she would not go again where soldiers were congregated. Nor would she tell her reason, not that she felt shame in her love, but that there seemed some shade of truth in the song. She did want to go her way and she did want to be Robert's bride, even though they called him by such a name as rebel. She loved him and what had the stars and stripes or love of country to do with that? What he believed was nothing to her, it was only what he was.
She had heard from Robert but once since his departure; a brief but brave and loving letter, in which he told her that he was safe within the Confederate lines, and spoke of John Morgan, whom he had already begun to admire. Now in the dark moment of her sorrow, when every hand seemed turned against her because she loved this man, she dreamed over his letter as if it were a sacred writing, and so dreaming kept to herself whenever she could. Even old Nathan Woods began to look askance at her when her visits and ministrations to the soldiers ceased. But he comforted himself with the philosophy that "A woman is an unreasonable creature and novor is responsible for her actions," and however false this may be in fact, it satisfied him towards Mary, and kept him unchanged to her. He was influenced, too, by Nannie's stalwart faith. While she could not understand Mary, could not enter into the secret chambers of her soul and see what was within there, she believed in her, and faith is stronger than knowledge.
"Never mind," she said one day after roundly scolding her friend for remaining so close to the house, "I know you've got some good reason, though I'm sure it's something fanciful. It's so like you, Mary." This may have been a bit inconsistent in the young girl, but it was expressive of her trust in Mary, and the burdened girl was grateful for it.
So, with bicker, prejudice, adulation, discontent and a hundred other emotions that must come to human beings, the stream of days went on, and the reorganization of the First was an accomplished fact. Still, from the South there came news of battle and from Cincinnati there wore tidings of Kentucky's threatening attitude. West Virginia had been rescued for the Union, but what if this even more powerful state went over to the Confederacy. Men were of many minds. Some were wondering at the president for his tardiness, and others cursing Dennison for his rashness. It became the fashion to damn Lincoln on Sunday and Dennison on Monday. It was from such a hot-bed of discontent that the First finally tore itself, and left Dorbury on the last day of October for the southernmost city of the state.