 | II. Marjorie Daw, and other people |  |
2. II.
The Indian summer, with its infinite beauty
and tenderness, came like a reproach that year
to Virginia. The foliage, touched here and there
with prismatic tints, dropped motionless in the
golden haze. The delicate Virginia creeper was
almost minded to put forth its scarlet buds
again. No wonder the lovely phantom — this
dusky Southern sister of the pale Northern June
— lingered not long with us, but, filling the once
peaceful glens and valleys with her pathos, stole
away rebukefully before the savage enginery of
man.
The preparations that had been going on for
months in arsenals and foundries at the North
were nearly completed. For weeks past the air
had been filled with rumors of an advance; but
the rumor of to-day refuted the rumor of yesterday,
and the Grand Army did not move. Heintzelman's
corps was constantly folding its tents,
like the Arabs, and as silently stealing away;
next morning. One day, at length, orders came
down for our brigade to move.
“We're going to Richmond, boys!” shouted
Strong, thrusting his head in at the tent; and
we all cheered and waved our caps like mad.
You see, Big Bethel and Bull Run and Ball's
Bluff (the bloody B's, as we used to call them,)
had n't taught us any better sense.
Rising abruptly from the plateau, to the left
of our encampment, was a tall hill covered with
a stunted growth of red-oak, persimmon, and
chestnut. The night before we struck tents I
climbed up to the crest to take a parting look at
a spectacle which custom had not been able to
rob of its enchantment. There, at my feet, and
extending miles and miles away, lay the camps
of the Grand Army, with its camp-fires reflected
luridly against the sky. Thousands of lights
were twinkling in every direction, some nestling
in the valley, some like fire-flies beating their
wings and palpitating among the trees, and
others stretching in parallel lines and curves, like
the street-lamps of a city. Somewhere, far off,
a band was playing, at intervals it seemed; and
bugle shot sharply up through the night, and
seemed to lose itself like a rocket among the
stars, — the patient, untroubled stars. Suddenly
a hand was laid upon my arm.
“I'd like to say a word to you,” said Bladburn.
With a little start of surprise, I made room
for him on the fallen tree where I was seated.
“I may n't get another chance,” he said.
“You and the boys have been very kind to me,
kinder than I deserve; but sometimes I 've
fancied that my not saying anything about myself
had given you the idea that all was not right
in my past. I want to say that I came down to
Virginia with a clean record.”
“We never really doubted it, Bladburn.”
“If I did n't write home,” he continued, “it
was because I had n't any home, neither kith
nor kin. When I said the old folks were dead,
I said it. Am I boring you? If I thought I
was —”
“No, Bladburn. I have often wanted you to
talk to me about yourself, not from idle curiosity,
I trust, but because I liked you that rainy night
you ever since. This is n't too much to say,
when Heaven only knows how soon I may be
past saying it or you listening to it.”
“That's it,” said Bladburn, hurriedly, “that's
why I want to talk with you. I've a fancy that
I sha' n't come out of our first battle.”
The words gave me a queer start, for I had
been trying several days to throw off a similar
presentiment concerning him, — a foolish presentiment
that grew out of a dream.
“In case anything of that kind turns up,” he
continued, “I'd like you to have my Latin grammar
here, — you've seen me reading it. You
might stick it away in a bookcase, for the sake
of old times. It goes against me to think of it
falling into rough hands or being kicked about
camp and trampled under foot.”
He was drumming softly with his fingers on
the volume in the bosom of his blouse.
“I did n't intend to speak of this to a living
soul,” he went on, motioning me not to answer
him; “but something took hold of me to-night
and made me follow you up here. Perhaps if I
told you all, you would be the more willing to
me. When the war broke out I was teaching
school down in Maine, in the same village where
my father was schoolmaster before me. The old
man when he died left me quite alone. I lived
pretty much by myself, having no interests outside
of the district school, which seemed in a
manner my personal property. Eight years ago
last spring a new pupil was brought to the
school, a slight slip of a girl, with a sad kind
of face and quiet ways. Perhaps it was because
she was n't very strong, and perhaps because she
was n't used over well by those who had charge
of her, or perhaps it was because my life was
lonely, that my heart warmed to the child. It
all seems like a dream now, since that April
morning when little Mary stood in front of my
desk with her pretty eyes looking down bashfully
and her soft hair falling over her face. One day
I look up, and six years have gone by, — as they
go by in dreams, — and among the scholars is a
tall girl of sixteen, with serious, womanly eyes
which I cannot trust myself to look upon. The
old life has come to an end. The child has become
a woman and can teach the master now.
her until that day!
“Long after the children had gone home I sat
in the school-room with my face resting on my
hands. There was her desk, the afternoon shadows
failing across it. It never looked empty and
cheerless before. I went and stood by the low
chair, as I had stood hundreds of times. On the
desk was a pile of books, ready to be taken away,
and among the rest a small Latin grammar which
we had studied together. What little despairs
and triumphs and happy hours were associated
with it! I took it up curiously, as if it were
some gentle dead thing, and turned over the
pages, and could hardly see them. Turning the
pages, idly so, I came to a leaf on which something
was written with ink, in the familiar girlish
hand. It was only the words `Dear John,'
through which she had drawn two hasty pencil
lines — I wish she had n't drawn those lines!”
added Bladburn, under his breath.
He was silent for a minute or two, looking off
towards the camps, where the lights were fading
out one by one.
“I had no right to go and love Mary. I was
would have blighted her youth. I was as wrong
as wrong can be. But I never meant to tell her.
I locked the grammar in my desk and the secret
in my heart for a year. I could n't bear to meet
her in the village, and kept away from every
place where she was likely to be. Then she came
to me, and sat down at my feet penitently, just
as she used to do when she was a child, and
asked what she had done to anger me; and then,
Heaven forgive me! I told her all, and asked her
if she could say with her lips the words she had
written, and she nestled in my arms all a trembling
like a bird, and said them over and over
again.
“When Mary's family heard of our engagement,
there was trouble. They looked higher
for Mary than a middle-aged schoolmaster. No
blame to them. They forbade me the house, her
uncles; but we met in the village and at the
neighbors' houses, and I was happy, knowing she
loved me. Matters were in this state when the
war came on. I had a strong call to look after
the old flag, and I hung my head that day when
the company raised in our village marched by
could n't tear myself away. About this time the
minister's son, who had been away to college,
came to the village. He met Mary here and
there, and they became great friends. He was
a likely fellow, near her own age, and it was
natural they should like one another. Sometimes
I winced at seeing him made free of the home
from which I was shut out; then I would open
the grammar at the leaf where `Dear John' was
written up in the corner, and my trouble was
gone. Mary was sorrowful and pale these days,
and I think her people were worrying her.
“It was one evening two or three days before
we got the news of Bull Run. I had gone down
to the burying-ground to trim the spruce hedge
set round the old man's lot, and was just stepping
into the enclosure, when I heard voices
from the opposite side. One was Mary's, and
the other I knew to be young Marston's, the
minister's son. I did n't mean to listen, but
what Mary was saying struck me dumb. We
must never meet again, she was saying in a wild
way. We must say good by here, forever, —
good by, good by! And I could hear her sobbing.
no; my hand, not my lips! Then it seemed he
kissed her hands, and the two parted, one going
towards the parsonage, and the other out by the
gate near where I stood.
“I don't know how long I stood there, but the
night-dews had wet me to the bone when I stole
out of the graveyard and across the road to the
school-house. I unlocked the door, and took the
Latin grammar from the desk and hid it in my
bosom. There was not a sound or a light anywhere
as I walked out of the village. And now,”
said Bladburn, rising suddenly from the tree-trunk,
“if the little book ever falls in your way,
won't you see that it comes to no harm, for my
sake, and for the sake of the little woman who
was true to me and did n't love me? Wherever
she is to-night, God bless her!”
As we descended to camp with our arms resting
on each other's shoulder, the watch-fires were
burning low in the valleys and along the hillsides,
and as far as the eye could reach the silent
tents lay bleaching in the moonlight.
| II. Marjorie Daw, and other people | |