University of Virginia Library

17. CHAPTER XVII.

Colonel Blank did not forget his promise of putting
Dora under the care and instruction of the chaplain of
his regiment; and the morning after her arrival in camp
she was summoned to the colonel's tent, to be introduced
to the Rev. Mr. Brown, commonly called, among the
somewhat unruly members of his flock, Fight-and-pray,
from a tradition that he had been found, on the occasion
of a sudden surprise by the enemy, crouching behind a
stone wall within aiming distance, and loading and firing
with a promptness and exactness that no amount of drill
could have improved.

In person the chaplain was tall, broad-shouldered, and
athletic, with a face more manly than handsome, and a
manner more earnest than polished. The men almost
adored him; his brother officers were divided into two
classes, one of ardent friends, the other of sneering enemies;
no one regarded the Rev. Mr. Brown with indifference
or contempt.

“Here is our new daughter, parson,” said the colonel,
as Dora, deserted at the door of the tent by the orderly
who had brought her, entered alone and came slowly

forward. “This is Mr. Brown, Dora, who is going to
be so kind as to look after you a little while we remain
here. He is your spiritual father, child, although of the
church militant, and as ready with his weapon, on occasion,
as any of us poor sinners.”

“Don't puzzle her, Blank,” whispered the chaplain
hastily to the colonel, who ranked first in the class of
ardent friends above alluded to. “Don't make her afraid
of us. Come here, my dear,” continued he aloud,
extending a cordial hand to meet Dora's somewhat
backward one.

“So you have come to help me a little in the hospital?”
asked he, kindly, as he seated the child on a
camp stool beside him.

“Yes, sir,” said Dora, rather coldly; and then her
eyes, hitherto downcast, rose slowly to the level of his
face, and calmly, not boldly, rested there long enough
to fully scan its lines and expression.

“He isn't handsome, but he looks real good, and as
if he knew more than almost any one,” was the thought
that shaped itself in Dora's mind as she kept her steady
eyes fixed upon the somewhat rugged face, that at last
blushed like a boy's beneath her scrutiny.

“Ma foi, cette demoiselle vous fait grand'attention,
mon beau garçon,”[1] said the colonel, laughing.

“Chut! C'est enfant d'àpres nature. N'effrayez
pas,”[2] retorted the chaplain, recovering his self-possession.

“And perhaps you will like to study a little with me,
when we have time,” continued the chaplain, who all
this time had looked at Dora as steadily as she at him.
A sudden color flashed over the child's face, not, as with
the sturdy chaplain, from diffidence, but from the sudden
spring of hope and joy.

“O, sir,” cried she, “will you teach me?” I want
so to know things.”

“Things? What things?” laughed her new friend.

“Everything,” returned Dora, with confident resolve
in her voice.

“Then you feel ready to set yourself to work to learn
everything, supposing I allow myself able to teach it to
you?” asked Mr. Brown, still smiling.

“Yes. I think I never should be tired of learning.
I don't know anything now,” said Dora, thoughtfully.

“So far advanced as that!” exclaimed the chaplain.
“Well, if you are going to be so untiring, we shall
have our hands full, for I will never be the first to cry,
`Enough!' So, now, if Colonel Blank will excuse us,
we will go to the hospital for a while, and then begin
our course of study.”

“But don't try to learn everything in one day, my

Fille du Régiment, or we may lose our little vivandière
before we have even seen her in service. By the way, I
must look up some sort of uniform for her.”

Passing from the tent of the colonel, Mr. Brown, holding
Dora's hand within his own, now led her toward a
large pavilion a little without the camp, made by the
combination of several tents into one, the curtains between
being looped up for air, or lowered for warmth, as
occasion might require. Along the sides of this pavilion
lay two long ranges of pallets spread upon the floor,
which had been roughly boarded, or, more properly
speaking, logged, from the neighboring forest.

Another row of beds down the middle of the pavilion
was also nearly filled with wounded or diseased sufferers;
for many of the prisoners taken upon the previous evening
had been wounded, and were now placed side by
side, and attended with the same care as the Union
soldiers.

The surgeons passed busily from bed to bed, followed
by attendants with bandages, basins, clean garments,
and food. The chaplain's smiling face grew earnest as
the sights and sounds of suffering that filled the place
smote upon eye and ear.

“Here is enough to be done, Dora,” said he, cheerfully.
“Let us set ourselves to work. You had better
wash this poor fellow's face and hands. The nurses have
no time to attend to him, with all these wounds to look

after. He is a fever patient, and has been here some
days. Melvin, you can give your basin and towel to
this girl — can you not? and bring another for yourself.”

The attendant immediately complied with this request,
and Dora went to work so deftly and so tenderly, that
the chaplain, after watching her a moment or two, said
cheerily, —

“Yes, you will do nicely. After you have finished
with him, you can get more water from the pail out
there, and go to the next. All at this end of the tent
are convalescents, whom you can attend as well as a surgeon.
When you wish to know anything more, you can
come to me.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Dora, softly, as she leaned
tenderly over the poor fever patient, who was moaning
out a petition for water.

Mr. Brown watched again while the youthful nurse
raised the heavy head, and carefully placed the cup to
the eager lips. Then once more saying, —

“Yes, you will do nicely, my child,” he turned away
to seek the spot where his strong arm and brave words
might best uphold the shrinking sufferers groaning beneath
the surgeon's sharp remedies.

Noon came, and Dora, hastening from the kitchen tent
with a bowl of broth for a poor fellow who had confided
to her that he was “just about starving for his dinner,”
was met by the chaplain, who had been looking for her.

“Come, Dora Darling,” said he, after a scrutinizing
glance at her pale face and disordered dress, “I think
you have done enough for once. I will not have you
tire yourself out the first day. Come to my tent, and
I shall send you some dinner there. I am sorry I
cannot ask you to dine with me; but I do not keep
a table by myself, and do not wish to take you to the
mess-table. You will want to arrange your dress a
little before dinner, I suppose. Where are your quarters?”

“Sir?”

“Where did you sleep last night?”

“In the cooking tent, sir. Picter made me a bed
there with some blankets.”

“You must have another place. I will see to it before
night. Meantime you shall come to my tent, or rather
wait here a few minutes till I have washed my own
hands, and then I will send for you.”

He laughed as he went away, and Dora remained in a
happy reverie upon her new life and new friends, until
the chaplain's servant came to summon her to the tent
which Mr. Brown had left for her occupation while he
was at dinner. The servant, having pointed out the
toilet apparatus, which had been scrupulously re-arranged
for her, withdrew, after promising to return with some
dinner in a few minutes.

Dora, with a new care for her appearance, hastened to

remove the stains of her late occupation from hands and
arms, to bathe her heated face, and scrupulously arrange
her luxuriant and waving hair. Then she looked down
at her torn and travel-stained dress, and hoped that the
colonel would not forget his intention to provide a new
one for her.

“Picter thinks I am so wonderfully neat! I wonder
if he ever looked at Mr. Brown's hands, and nails, and
teeth, and hair,” thought simple little Dora, wistfully examining
herself in the bit of looking-glass taken from
the chaplain's dressing-case, and hung up for her accommodation.

She was still engaged in this amusement when the servant,
whose name was Hepburn, reëntered the tent with
some dinner upon a little tray. He set it upon the camp
table with the remark, —

“Mr. Brown sent you this, miss, from the colonel's
table.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Dora, turning away from the
glass with a very unusual color burning in her cheeks.

“I ain't only Mr. Brown's man, miss,” said the man,
smiling a little at the title given him. “Is there anything
more that I can get for you?”

“No, I thank you. Do you belong to the regiment?”

“Yes, miss.”

“Then don't say miss to me. I'm the daughter of
the regiment,” said Dora, with a little laugh.

“Yes, miss, I know it,” said Hepburn. “And we're
all proud and glad to have you our daughter; but Mr.
Brown said I was to call you Miss Dora, and that the
colonel wanted all the men to do the same.”

“O,” said Dora, thoughtfully, “then I suppose you
must. Do you know what they call them generally?”

“What, Miss Dora?”

“Why, what the colonel said I was to be — a vivandero,
I believe,” said Dora, coloring again with the fear
of committing a blunder.

“Vivandière, I think they call it, miss.”

“Well, how do the soldiers speak to them generally?”

“I don't know, miss. I never knew a regiment that
had one, though I know some of them do.”

“Well, I suppose, if Mr. Brown says so, it is right;
but no one ever called me miss, before,” said Dora,
thoughtfully, as she seated herself and began to eat.

Hepburn, after waiting a moment to see if he could
do anything more, withdrew to assure his mess-mates
that the little vivandière was a darling by nature as
well as by name, and that he, for one, would stick by
her just the same as if she was his own sister.

After dinner, Mr. Brown, returning to the tent, found
his little charge somewhat impatiently awaiting him.

“Well, Dora,” said he, gayly, “are you all ready for
the Greek Grammar, or shall we begin with German?”

“I think sir, if you will let me, I had rather go back

to the hospital, and see if all the men have had their dinner.
I know there were a good many who wanted some when
I came away,” said Dora, earnestly.

Mr. Brown looked at her attentively, and then took
from his trunk a little volume of illustrated poems.

The plates were artistic in design and exquisite in execution,
and Mr. Brown, carelessly opening the book,
placed it in Dora's hand, saying, in an off hand manner,
—

“Well, we will go in a few minutes. There are some
pictures for you to look at.”

“O, thank you, sir!” said the child, as she eagerly,
but carefully, grasped the book.

Mr. Brown, taking another, sat down to watch her.
The engraving to which he had accidentally opened represented
King Arthur floating alone upon the haunted
lake, whence uprose the arm “clothed in white samite,
mystic, wonderful,” extending towards his grasp the magic
sword Excalibur.

An air of romance, of chivalry, of knightly prowess
clung about not only the figure of the king, but was expressed
in all his surroundings, — in the prow of his boat,
carved to the likeness of the dragon's head — in the bold
sweep of the shore — in the transparent waters, where
the dim outline of the mermaid's figure melted undistinguishably
into the ripple of the wave — in the gemmed
hilt of the wonderful sword, whence dripped the sparkling

drops, as it uprose to meet the extended hand of
the great Pendragon.

Dora looked at it eagerly for a moment, and then
raised her eyes inquiringly to the chaplain's face. He
met and answered the look smilingly.

“Do you wonder what it means?”

“Yes, sir. Will you please tell me?”

“Certainly I will.” And in a few, clear, sparkling
phrases the chaplain related the outline of Arthur's story,
particularly the scene represented in the picture.

Dora listened, not with her ears alone, but with her
eyes, her parted lips, her deepening color, her whole lithe
body. She was charmed and absorbed as only a child
on the verge of maturity, to whose youth has been denied
all knowledge of such matters, can be, when the world
of romance and story is first opened to her bewildered
vision.

Suddenly, however, her attention wavered. She closed
the book, and rising, stood waiting until the chaplain
should have finished speaking.

“What is it?” asked Mr. Brown, breaking off abruptly
in the middle of a most interesting account of
the Round Table. “Are you tired of my story?”

“O, no, indeed, sir,” cried Dora, with such unaffected
earnestness, that the chaplain smiled. “I could listen all
night and all to-morrow to it; but, sir, you know those
men haven't had their dinner.”

“Well, on the next page there is another picture that
shows the last scene of Arthur's life. Don't you want
to look at that, and hear a little about it before you
go?”

Dora glanced wistfully at the book, still in her hand,
then stepped resolutely forward, and laid it upon the
table, saying, at the same time, —

“If you had just as lief, sir, I had rather hear about
it another time.”

“But suppose, Dora, I can't tell you about it another
time?” asked the chaplain, intent upon trying the child's
resolution to the extent.

Dora looked steadily into the grave face, where was
to be read no leniency of purpose.

“I think you will, sir,” said she boldly, at length.

“But if I won't?”

“Then, sir, I think I had better go without the pictures
than the men without their dinner,” said the girl,
with a little sigh, as she turned to leave the tent.

“Wait a moment; I am coming too,” said Mr. Brown,
briefly; and as he carefully deposited the book in its
place, he smiled, and whispered to himself, “You'll do,
my little heroine.”

But the chaplain was too wise to spoil by praise the unconsciousness
of merit that gave such a charm to the little
act of self-sacrifice, and as he walked along with Dora
towards the hospital, he only said, —

“Yes; duty comes before pleasure, or should do so,
at even a greater cost than the story of King Arthur.”

“Good morning, or afternoon, if you have dined,
Brown,” called a cheery voice from behind.

“Good afternoon, Windsor,” said the chaplain, turning
to meet the young captain, who was hastening after him.
“You were coming to see me?”

“Not you exactly, but this young lady, who is an old
friend of mine. You have not forgotten me, Miss Dora
— have you?”

“No, sir; you are Captain Karl,” said Dora, gravely.

The two officers smiled, and Captain Windsor answered,
—

“So I am, Dora. Captain Karl to you and my little
sister and brother at home, and one or two other good
friends far away just now. I knew you in a moment last
night, but could not get a chance to speak to you, although
I am sure you heard me cheer when the colonel proposed
you as `Daughter of the Regiment;' now, didn't you?”

“They all cheered, you know, Captain Karl,” said
Dora, hesitatingly, evidently afraid of hurting her new
friend's feelings by confessing that she had not distinguished
his voice from the rest.

“But I louder than any one else,” persisted the captain,
with a twinkle of the bright blue eyes. “Now confess
that you noticed one particularly clear and sonorous
note above the general shout, and wondered whose it was.”

“You was very kind to try so hard,” said Dora, with
a simple pity in her voice that quite turned the intended
jest against its perpetrator.

“Yes, Windsor,” said the chaplain, gravely, “it was
wrong of you to make such an effort. You might have
injured yourself seriously.”

Captain Karl colored a little, but answered the chaplain's
satirical smile with a gay laugh.

“La Fille du Régiment has an able ally in its chaplain,”
said he, merrily. “And where are you going now?”

“To the hospital. We are volunteer aids on the staff
of nurses,” replied Mr. Brown, in the same tone. “But
if you will come to my tent after parade, I shall be happy
to see you; and so will Dora, I do not doubt.”

“Au revoir, then. I don't affect hospital sights and
sounds when I can be of no use;” and the young man
sauntered away, twisting his fair mustache, and humming
a soldier's air.

“That boy has the making of a fine man in him, if he
learns that little maxim I just quoted, Dora,” said Mr.
Brown, as he held aside the flap of the tent door for her
to enter first.

“What maxim, sir?” asked Dora, a little puzzled.

“Now let us see who wants some dinner?” replied
the chaplain, with a smile.