2. II.
There is a French proverb which declares that although you
may know when you set out on a journey, you do not know
when you will arrive. Those who journey through the fine land
of memory are, of all travellers, the most ignorant upon that
score, and are apt to become the most unconscionable vagarists.
Memory refuses to recall one scene or incident without recalling
also a hundred others which preceded or followed it. “You
people,” said John Randolph to a gentleman of an extensive
clan, with which the eccentric orator was always at war, “you
people all take up each other's quarrels. You are worse than a
pile of fish-hooks. If I try to grasp one, I raise the whole
bunch.” To end my preface, and come to my little incident. I
was sitting on my horse near General Stuart, who had put in the
skirmishers, and was now superintending the fire of his artillery,
when a cavalry-man rode up and reported that they had just
captured a deserter.
“Where is he?” was Stuart's brief interrogatory.
“Coming yonder, General.”
“How do you know he is a deserter?”
“One of my company knew him when he joined our army.”
“Where is he from?”
“—county.”
And the man mentioned the name of a county of Western
Virginia.
“What is his name?”
“M—.”
(I suppress the full name. Some mother's or sister's heart
might be wounded.)
“Bring him up,” said Stuart coldly, with a lowering, glance
from the blue eyes under the brown hat and black feather. As
he spoke, two or three mounted men rode up with the prisoner.
I can see him at this moment with the mind's eye, as I saw
him then with the material eye. He was a young man, apparently
eighteen or nineteen years of age, and wore the blue uniform,
tipped with red, of a private in the United States Artillery.
The singular fact was that he appeared completely at his ease.
He seemed to be wholly unconscious of the critical position
which he occupied; and as he approached, I observed that he
returned the dark glance of Stuart with the air of a man who
says, “What do you find in my appearance to make you fix your
eyes upon me so intently!” In another moment he was in
Stuart's presence, and calmly, quietly, without the faintest exhibition
of embarrassment, or any emotion whatever, waited to be
addressed.
Stuart's words were curtest of the curt.
“Is this the man?” he said.
“Yes, General,” replied one of the escort.
“You say he is a deserter?”
“Yes, sir; I knew him in—county, when he joined Captain—'s
company; and there is no sort of doubt about it,
General, as he acknowledges that he is the same person.”
“Acknowledges it!”
“Yes, sir; acknowledges that he is M—, from that county;
and that after joining the South he deserted.”
Stuart flashed a quick glance at the prisoner, and seemed at a
loss to understand what fatuity had induced him to testify against
himself—thereby sealing his fate. His gaze—clear, fiery, menacing—was
returned by the youth with apathetic calmness. Not
a muscle of his countenance moved, and I now had an opportunity
to look at him more attentively. He was even younger
than I at first thought him—indeed, a mere boy. His complexion
was fair; his hair flaxen and curling; his eyes blue,
mild, and as soft in their expression as a girl's. Their expression,
as they met the lowering glances of Stuart, was almost
confiding. I could not suppress a sigh—so painful was the
thought that this youth would probably be lying soon with a
bullet through his heart.
A kinder-hearted person than General Stuart never lived; but
in all that appertained to his profession and duty as a soldier, he
was inexorable. Desertion, in his estimation, was one of the
deadliest crimes of which a human being could be guilty; and
his course was plain—his resolution immovable.
“What is your name?” said the General coldly, with a lowering
brow.
“M—, sir,” was the response, in a mild and pleasing voice,
in which it was impossible to discern the least trace of emotion.
“Where are you from?”
“I belonged to the battery that was firing at you, over yonder,
sir.”
The voice had not changed. A calmer tone I never heard.
“Where were you born?” continued Stuart, as coldly as
before.
“In—, Virginia, sir.”
“Did you belong to the Southern army at any time?”
“Yes, sir.”
The coolness of the speaker was incredible. Stuart could
only look at him for a moment in silence, so astonishing was
this equanimity at a time when his life and death were in the
balance. Not a tone of the voice, a movement of the muscles,
or a tremor of the lip indicated consciousness of his danger.
The eye never quailed, the colour in his cheek never faded.
The prisoner acknowledged that he was a deserter from the
Southern army with the simplicity, candour, and calmness of
one who saw in that fact nothing extraordinary, or calculated in
any manner to affect his destiny unpleasantly. Stuart's eye
flashed; he could not understand such apathy; but in war there
is little time to investigate psychological phenomena.
“So you were in our ranks, and you went over to the enemy?”
he said with a sort of growl.
“Yes, sir,” was the calm reply.
“You were a private in that battery yonder?”
“Yes, sir.”
Stuart turned to an officer, and pointing to a tall pine near,
said in brief tones:
“Hang him on that tree!”
It was then that a change—sudden, awful, horrible—came
over the face of the prisoner; at that moment I read in the distended
eyeballs the “vision of sudden death.” The youth became
ghastly pale; and the eyes, before so vacant and apathetic,
were all at once injected with blood, and full of piteous
fright. I saw in an instant that the boy had not for a single
moment realized the terrible danger of his position; and that
the words “Hang him on that tree!” had burst upon him with
the sudden and appalling force of a thunderbolt. I have seen
human countenances express every phase of agony; seen the
writhing of the mortally wounded as their life-blood welled out,
and the horror of the death-struggle fixed on the cold upturned
faces of the dead; but never have I witnessed an expression
more terrible and agonizing than that which passed over the
face of the boy-deserter, as he thus heard his sentence. He had
evidently regarded himself as a mere prisoner of war; and now
he was condemned to death! He had looked forward, doubtless,
to mere imprisonment at Richmond until regularly exchanged,
when “hang him on that tree!” burst upon his ears
like the voice of some avenging Nemesis.
Terrible, piteous, sickening, was the expression of the boy's
face. He seemed to feel already the rope around his neck; he
choked; when he spoke his voice sounded like the death rattle.
An instant of horror-struck silence; a gasp or two as if the
words were trying to force their way against some obstacle in his
throat; then the sound came. His tones were not loud, impassioned,
energetic, not even animated. A sick terror seemed to
have frozen him; when he spoke it was in a sort of moan.
“I didn't know,” he muttered in low, husky tones. “I never
meant—when I went over to Maryland—to fight against the
South. They made me; I had nothing to eat—I told them I
was a Southerner—and so help me God I never fired a shot. I
was with the wagons. Oh! General, spare me; I never—”
There the voice died out; and as pale as a corpse, trembling
in every limb—a spectacle of helpless terror which no words
can describe, the boy awaited his doom.
Stuart had listened in silence, his gaze riveted upon the
speaker; his hand grasping his heavy beard; motionless amid
the shell which were bursting around him. For an instant he
seemed to hesitate—life and death were poised in the balances.
Then with a cold look at the trembling deserter, he said to the
men:
“Take him back to General Lee, and report the circumstances.”
With these words he turned and galloped off; the deserter
was saved, at least for the moment.
I do not know his ultimate fate; but if he saw General Lee in
person, and told his tale, I think he was spared. That great and
merciful spirit inflicted the death-penalty only when he could not
avoid it.
Since that day I have never seen the face of the boy—nor
even expect to see it. But I shall never forget that “vision of
sudden death” in his distended eyes, as Stuart's cold voice
ordered, “Hang him on that tree.”
