The Strange Woman

by Ben Ames Williams

  Dan when he saw his mother was shocked by the change in her. Her cheek was a dry yellow, her eyes sunken and deeply shadowed. Her chief happiness, Dan found, came from poring over Will’s letters, and she read them aloud to him. Will wrote of his successes, proudly and openly; but Dan knew he was not so much boasting as telling Jenny the things he knew would make his mother happy. Once he said:

  The doctors with whom I had to compete here helped me. That is, they recommended me to a lot of people who couldn’t afford to pay their bills.

  Dan could imagine the quiet amusement in Will’s eyes as he wrote the words.

  But that really did help, because I was pretty successful in curing putrid sore-throat. Before I came here it killed about all the people who had it, but I have not lost one case where I was the first called. I didn’t have many women patients at first, but about five weeks since I had a bad case of obstetrics, a young woman in her first labor with a deformed pelvis. I thought she must have instrumental aid, but they called another doctor and he went on about eighteen hours, exhausting her strength with stimulants until prostration came on and she was about dead, so he called on me. She came through fine, and that has placed me all right with the women, and with the doctors too. I have about eight hundred dollars in money owing me and not much paid yet, but I’m doing a lot of work and better all the time.

  And there was a postscript:

  No, mother, I am not married yet. That is an accident that has not happened to me.

  There were five of Will’s letters which Jenny read aloud to Dan; but for news of Tom and Mat he turned to his father. Tom’s first baby had been a boy, and another was expected. Mat when he left Bangor had gone direct to join Tom in Georgia, and Tom said that in spite of the fact that they were from the North, Mat had made many friends. He wrote:

  Mat already thinks as I do that people down here have a fine, gracious, friendly way of life. The people here are so polite and friendly and at the same time so brave and self- respecting that you can’t help liking and admiring them. None of the gentlemen I know want Georgia to secede; but they say Georgia will have to do it if the other states do, and South Carolina is sure to unless she gets her way.

  They talk a lot more about politics down here than we do at home. We were always so busy—or maybe it was just because I was so young—that I never thought much about such things; but the men I know don’t do much except ride around their plantations and hunt foxes and turkeys and ducks and go visiting, so they have lots of time to talk and they’re more interested in politics than in anything else.

  Dan read Tom’s letters—and Mat’s hasty, lusty scrawls—with a lively interest, yet with misgivings too. Since his first meeting with Senator Hamlin he had shared the Senator’s expectation that sooner or later the differences between the North and the South would lead to fighting; and it seemed to him that if that happened, Tom and Mat might find their positions difficult.

  He had been home only a few days when Lincoln and Hamlin were nominated by the Republican Convention to head the ticket. Jenny saw in these nominations the sure success of the Republican Party and the end of slavery; but Dan and his father did not share her certainty. Tom’s letters had persuaded them that if Lincoln were elected, the South would secede. What would happen then, no one could foresee; but Dan voiced the thought in both their minds when he said:

  ‘If there’s trouble, father, will Tom and Mat come home?’

  John shook his head. ‘I don’t know, Dan,’ he said. ‘I don’t know.’

  Dan ventured a day or two later to write to his brothers. He said that Jenny was not well, suggested that Tom and Mat come North and bring Tom’s family for a visit and to avoid the summer hot weather; but it would be weeks before an answer to his letter came.

  II

  Within a few days after the conventions, the campaign got under way. There were four parties in the field, and the split between the Breckinridge and the Douglas Democrats made Republican success probable. To Dan the Republican platform seemed fair and just, leaving to every state the right to control its own internal affairs, with the corollary that just as a Southern state could maintain slavery within its boundaries, so could a Northern state refuse to admit the institution. He was too young to realize that this was a dangerous oversimplification of the dispute in which passion now replaced reason. Southern editorials damning the Northern Republicans as nigger-lovers and fanatics were reprinted in the Whig and Courier; and when Barnwell Rhett in a speech in Charleston asserted that Hannibal Hamlin was a mulatto, even Mr. Lebbeus in the Star and Mr. Emery in the Democrat, though they consistently opposed the Republican ticket, published editorials ridiculing the charge.

  The effect of Mr. Rliett’s speech was to increase the pride of Bangor men in Mr. Hamlin, and when he came to Maine in June for the party convention his welcome was tremendous. At the convention Israel Washburn of Freeport was nominated for Governor. He was one of seven brothers, all remarkable men. Three of them had served in the national House of Representatives at the same time and from as many different states, and the others were equally distinguished in their several fields. Mr. Washburn was generally credited with having been the first to suggest founding the Republican Party, calling anti-slavery members of Congress together after the passage of the Wilmot Proviso to lay the proposal before them. Dan’s father knew and admired him, and his nomination went a long way to persuade John that the Republican Party was the country’s best hope.

  Dan had no doubts of the long wisdom of the Republican position; and as the campaign got under way he joined the Wide Awakes, and marched with them in torchlight parades, and worked with them in the vigorous fight to give Washburn the largest possible plurality. The pleasure barge, Fairy of the Waves, was launched toward the end of June from Isaac Dunning’s shipyard in Brewer; and the Wide Awakes chartered her for a trip down the river. She was decorated with flags and bunting, almost fifteen hundred people crowded aboard her, the Bangor Cornet Band played all day long, and men shouted the campaign songs.

  ‘There’s a sound like the surges of ocean

  Or winds sweeping forest and lea;

  It comes from a nation in motion

  From the millions who’ve sworn to be free . . .’

  Beth Pawl was fourteen that summer, and she found Dan in his marching uniform a splendid figure. She had a pleasing voice—she was taking piano lessons too, from Madame Zimmerman—and at one of the mass meetings, very lovely in starched white on the flag-draped platform, she ‘ sang this song, and the crowd joined in the smashing chorus, picking up the last lines of the stanza:

  ‘Here’s to Lincoln and Hamlin! God bless them!

  And bless, too, our country and cause!

  And bless, too, our country and cause! And bless, too, our country and cause!

  Here’s to Lincoln and Hamlin! God bless them!

  And bless, too, our country and cause!’

  Beth’s clear small voice was drowned by that mighty surge of sound; and Dan, watching her, felt a sudden fulness in his throat; she stood so straight and proudly there above the packed ranks of men, her small head high. There were songs and then some speech-making and then more songs; and when the meeting ended, Dan went to find Beth and to escort her home, offering her his arm as gravely as though she were a young lady instead of a child, smiling to himself at her demure composure as she walked happily by his side.

  Aunt Meg was at home before them, and when Beth went upstairs to change her dress, leaving them alone, Meg said smilingly:

  ‘You made her mighty happy, Dan, bringing her home. You know she thinks that after you were made, the mold was broken.’

  ‘She’s mighty sweet!’

  Meg looked at him thoughtfully, her eyes shadowed by some faint concern. ‘She takes you so seriously, dreams about you, writes in her diary about you.’ She added, smiling again: ‘But of course she’ll get over it.’

  ‘I don’t want her to get over it,’ he declared, chuckling a little. ‘I lik
e her too.’

  ‘You’ll be falling in love pretty soon, though,’ she reminded him. ‘Finding someone and getting married. I hope she gets over it before that happens.’

  He laughed. ‘I haven’t seen anyone I want to marry, yet,’ he said. ‘Maybe I’ll wait for Beth.’

  III

  During that summer the campaign filled Dan’s mind. He gave only what time he must to business. Lumber was in demand. On the fourteenth of July, sixty vessels made up Bangor River seeking cargoes. But the drouth had made logs scarce, and mill after mill was forced to shut down; and there was a cry for new industries to give employment to the idle. One result of the hardships of the period was an increase in the number of incendiary fires, and piles of lumber, wharf buildings, sheds and mills were from time to time set alight. A reward was offered by the city government for the capture of the incendiaries, but the fires went 011, and as the water fell lower, even those mills which had logs on hand were forced to shut down.

  The election of Governor Washburn by a fine plurality forecast the Republican victory which followed in November; and the election of Lincoln and Hamlin was welcomed with complacent satisfaction by the Republicans. The Whig and Courier said editorially that in the face of this demonstration of the firm will of the North, Southern threats of secession would evaporate, and predicted a long era of peace and prosperity; but Dan and his father, reading the letters that came from Tom, thought there was more hope than wisdom in this prediction. Tom wrote:

  There’s trouble coming, sure. They’re calling Lincoln an ape down here, and saying that he’s not really President because a minority elected him. Up in South Carolina they’re shouting for secession, and saying the South ought to unite with Mexico and make a new nation. The only chance I see—judging by the talk I hear—is that something may happen to prevent Lincoln’s being inaugurated. If he’s as bad as they say he is, then the South is in for it. You know I think the real trouble down here is they’re seared. They’re afraid what Lincoln will do. And they’re sure they can secede without having any trouble.

  Dan wrote hopefully to suggest again that Tom and Mat come home. ‘I don’t think Mr. Lincoln will let the South secede,’ he said. ‘And if the South starts a fight, the North won’t back down. If there’s fighting, you’ll be in an unpleasant position down there.’

  But Tom—and Mat signed the letter too—replied:

  This is our home down here now, Dan. We like these people. They’ve been good to us, and if there’s trouble, we’ll stay and do our share with them. I hate it, but you have to stick with your neighbors and relatives. I’ve a Southern wife, you know, Dan, and a Southern baby. There’s nothing else I can do.

  Dan showed this letter to his father, explaining his invitation which had prompted it. John nodded in sober acceptance of Tom’s decision. ‘I’m not surprised, Dan,’ he said. ‘They’re both grown men, old enough to know their own minds. They’ll have to decide for themselves what they want.’ Yet he added: ‘It’s going to be hardest on mother. I can see some justice on both sides, but she is sure the South is wrong.’

  Dan nodded. ‘And she hasn’t mentioned Tom or Mat for months,’ he said. ‘She won’t let me talk to her about them at all.’

  IV

  During that winter, when the long uncertainty kept every man uneasy in his mind, Dan and his father both wrote Tom and Mat, accepting their decision and without recriminations. Congress met and President Buchanan in his message said the Government had no power to prevent secession. In Bangor the Star and the Democrat each argued that the union was a federation of sovereign states from which any state could at will withdraw. Little by little secession rather than slavery became the dominant issue. When South Carolina demanded the surrender of the harbor forts, the immediate crisis drew nearer. In mid-February, Senator Hamlin left Bangor for Washington for the inauguration, and a line of sleighs a mile long escorted him to the station. The Bangor papers recorded his progress to Washington and reported the throngs which cheered him at Worcester, Hartford, Meriden, New Haven, and all along his route. Dan read every dispatch, and through the weeks that followed he forgot personal and business considerations in the breathless suspense which held the nation.

  But if Dan and his father still hoped that the tension would somehow pass, Jenny was by this time serenely sure what was to come. ‘There will be war,’ she said confidently. ‘The Southerners are cowards, forever bragging and bullying, but cowards all the same. They’ve been needing a whipping for years. I’d like to see every slave-owner whipped till his back is as raw and bleeding as the lacerated backs of his miserable slaves. They’ve been talking fight for years. Well, they shall have it now!’

  Dan, though he still hoped for peace, had some of his mother’s feeling that the North had been patient too long, that this thing must be settled for good and all. Then Sumter was attacked and fell; and the Whig and Courier printed an editorial: ‘Has the War Begun?’ and another, two days later: ‘The People Aroused, The War Begun’; and then grimly: ‘A Call for Troops from Maine.’

  When there was no longer any doubt, as though during the months of tightening tension men had waited poised for action, things happened fast. From Augusta came orders to the Major-Generals of Militia to enroll ten thousand volunteers, and when the Legislature in special session authorized the raising of ten regiments, the State Arsenal in Bangor became the focus of activity that went on twenty-four hours a day. As recruiting got under way, the Arsenal became a general rendezvous into which poured squads and companies from the whole Penobscot Valley. The place was like a hive, not only with recruits, but with hundreds of small boys gathered to watch the excitement, and with Bangor folk come to see and hear.

  Every day in the Whig and Courier there were dispatches which increased the steadily rising anger against the South. Two Scots, woodsmen who had been getting out ship timbers in the hard-pine forest of South Carolina, arrived in Bangor with a lurid story of their narrow escape from being forced into the Confederate armies. Three Belfast vessels were reported seized on the same South Carolina river. Jenny began to organize Bangor ladies to take care of the sick and wounded who with the first fighting would begin to come home; and she helped collect subscriptions for the fund that was being raised to take care of the families of soldiers. She was instrumental in drawing up a schedule of advice for volunteers, warning them not to wear cotton stockings, and suggesting that even woollen stockings be soaked in tallow to prevent blisters. Mayor Stetson received from S. H. Ruggles, Esq., of New York a specimen of the Havelock Cap Cover, designed to protect troops in a hot climate against sunstroke. It included a loose cloth flap to hang down over the back of the neck, and had been devised by General Havelock at Lucknow. Jenny’s sewing circle and a dozen other groups of ladies bought up all available linen cloth and began to make these cap covers by the dozens, finding in this way an outlet for their emotional enthusiasm, and blissfully sure that they would thus save many a soldier’s life. The young men who received the first of these products vowed that a Havelock made by lovely Bangor hands was a better ward against harm than any armor.

  Dan was, of course, one of the first to volunteer. He joined the Second Regiment, which within a fortnight after the fall of Sumter was already filled and organized. It numbered some two hundred officers of all grades and about seven hundred men, and there were in it so many tall woodsmen that someone suggested forming a regiment of six-foot grenadiers to terrify the enemy by their colossal size. One proud lumber operator boasted that the thirty men in his crew were all of the required height; and he wrote the Whig and Courier that of twenty-five passengers on the the river steamer on a recent trip, twenty-two were over six feet. It was proposed to call the regiment the Infants; and a dozen people told Dan he should withdraw from the Second to join this new organization.

  But he preferred the Bangor regiment. As soon as it was organized, preparations were put under way to transport the men to Long Island, there to be mustered into the United States Ser
vice. On May 13, the regiment was ordered to leave by rail on the following day; but not all the men were as yet outfitted and equipped, and Dan was among those who stayed behind to go forward later.

  He was glad of that respite, of that longer time at home, finding on the eve of departure a nostalgic pleasure in reviewing and revisiting familiar sights and scenes. Even to read the Whig and Courier with its familiar advertisements—of Mr. Williams’ Hair Cutting and Shaving Saloon, of the Fresh Teas and Pure Coffees to be had at the China Tea Company, of Mr. Kirkpatrick’s new shipment of skirts, of Doctor Swett’s Infallible Liniments and Doctor Langley’s Root and Herb Bitters, of the new carpet hooks so much superior to tacks for laying carpets—was a quiet pleasure. He read, too, quotations from Southern papers which said that the North was bent upon a war of extermination, and he read Beauregard’s proclamation that the Northern armies would seek to invade the South and lay predatory hands upon Beauty and Booty alike. When the Little Singers of Bangor gave an entertainment with tableaux directed by Mr. William Wilder, he went to hear Beth sing ‘The Flag of Our Union’ and assured her afterward that hers was the sweetest voice of all. When the Democrat published the statement that forty thousand Democrats in Maine were opposed to the war, he told his father that Marcellus Emery was a liar and should be tarred and feathered; but he was appeased when next day the Democrat attacked the New York Tribune, calling it one of the disguised organs of rebellion in the North, because it had said this was a politicians’ war.

  Before he left Bangor, a letter came from Will in Wisconsin.

  Dear mother and father and Dan—

  Well, this war has upset all my plans and I can think of nothing else but being in it. I have a good practice here, more debts than pay, but there will be good crops this fall and they will have money to pay, but I won’t be here. There is a company going from this place, and I will go in that and then try to get a place in the surgical department. I don’t mind a good fight when it is just a question of hitting the other fellow some licks and getting some yourself, but when it comes to bullet holes and killing I would rather cure than kill, if I can. Anyway, even if it is just to carry a musket, I would like a hand in settling our national difficulties. Maybe I ought to stay here, because I can do some good here, but there is so much excitement of war and so much necessity for all to turn out that I do not think I can stay home at peace with myself. The Northern people are on the right side of the question and must succeed in whipping the South and putting down this rebellion. I want to help do it.