"Margaret," he said, "this time I'm going like an old friend. If I makegood and live steady, as I mean to do, I shall come back like a lover.Meanwhile you shall think all things over, and if you think that you cancare for me, you shall tell me so when I come back. And if you concludethat you can't, you shall tell me. I'm not going to ask you to marry menow, because in no way am I in a position to. But if I come back and sayto you, 'Margaret, I have turned into a man at last,' you will know thatI am telling the truth and am in a position to ask anything I please.For I shall come back without a cent, but with a character, and that'severything. I shall not drink any more, and every night I shall prayto God to help me believe in Him. But, Margaret, I may not come back atall. If I don't it will be for one of two reasons. Either I shall failin becoming worthy to kiss the dust under your blessed feet, or I shallbe killed. In the first case, I beg that you will pray for me; but inthe second I pray that you will forget all that was bad in me and onlyremember what was good. And so, darling--" his voice broke, "because Iam a little afraid of death and terribly afraid of myself--"
She came obediently into his arms, and knew what it was to be kissed bythe man she loved.
"Aladdin," she said, "promise that nothing except--"
"Death?" said Aladdin.
"--that nothing, nothing except death--shall keep you from coming back."
"If I live," said Aladdin, "I will come back."
Everybody of education knows that Lucy Locket lost her pocket and thatBetty Pringle found it without a penny "in it" (to rhyme with "foundit"), but everybody does not know that the aforementioned Lucy Lockethad a tune composed for her benefit that has thrilled the hearts of moresons of the young republic when stepping to battle than any other tune,past, present, or to come. There is a martial vigor and a tear in "TheGirl I Left Behind Me"; some feet cannot help falling into rhythm whenthey hear the "British Grenadiers"; North and South alike are possessedwith a do-or-die madness when the wild notes of "Dixie" rush from thebrass; and "John Brown's Body" will cause the dumb to sing. But it isthe farcical little quickstep known by the ridiculous name of "YankeeDoodle" which the nations would do well to consider when straining thepatience of the peace-loving and United States.
And so they marched down the street to the station, and the tall menwalked on the right and the little men on the left, and the small boystrotted alongside, and the brand-new flags flung out, and bouquets werethrown, and there were cheers from the heart up all along the line. Butever the saucy fifes sang, and the drums gaily beat
Yankee Doodle came to town Riding on a pony, Stuck a feather in his Hat, And called it macaroni.
At the station the emotions attendant on departure found but one voice.The mother said to the son what the sweetheart said to the lover, andthe sister to the brother. Nor was this in any manner different fromwhat the brother, lover, and son said to the sister, sweetheart, andmother. It was the last sentence which bleeding hearts supply to lips atmoments of farewell:
"Write to me."
And the supercilious little quickstep went on:
Yankee Doodle came to town Riding on a pony, Stuck a feather in his Hat, And called it macaroni.
XXIII
A tongue of land with Richmond (built, like another capital beginningwith R, on many hills) for its major root, and a fortification vulgarlysupposed to be of the gentler sex for its tip, is formed by the yellowflow of the James and York rivers. To land an army upon the tip of thistongue, march the length of it and extract the root, after reducing itto a reminiscence, was the wise plan of the powers early in the year1862. To march an army of preponderous strength through leveland fertile country, flanked by friendly war-ships and backed byunassailable credit; to meet and overcome a much smaller and far lessrich army, intrenched behind earthworks of doubtful formidableness, andfinally to besiege and capture an isolated city of more historic thanstrategic advantages, seemed on the face of it as easy as rolling abarrel downhill or eating when hungry. But the level, fertile countrywas discovered to be very muddy, its supply of rain from heavenunparalleled in nature, its streams as deadly as arsenic, and itstopography utterly different from that assigned to it in any knowngeography. Furthermore, in its woods, and it was nearly all woods, dweltfar more mosquitos than there are lost souls in Hades, and each mosquitohad a hollow spike in his head through which he not only could but wouldsquirt, with or without provocation, the triple compound essence ofmalaria into veins brought up on oxygen, and on water through which youcould see the pebbles at the bottom. A bosom friend of the mosquito,and some say his paramour, was little Miss Tick. Of the two she wasconsiderably the more hellish, and forsook her dwelling-places in thewoods for the warm flesh of soldiers where it is rosiest, next the skin.The body, arms, and legs of Miss Tick could be scratched to nothing bypoisonous finger-nails, but her detached head was eternal, and througheternity she bit and gnawed and sometimes laughed in the hollow of herblack soul. For the horses, mules, and cattle there were shrubs whichdisagreed with them, and gigantic horse-flies. And for the general atthe head of the vast body of irritation there was an opposing armywhose numbers he overrated, and whose whereabouts he kept discoveringsuddenly. It is said that during the Peninsular campaign the buzzardswere so well nourished that they raised a second brood.
While the army was still in the vicinity of Fort Monroe, numbers ofofficers secured leave to ride over to Newport News and view the tracesof the recent and celebrated naval fight, which was to relegate woodenbattle-ships to the fireplace. Aladdin was among those to go. At thistime he was in great spirits, for it had been brought home to himthat he was one of the elect, one of those infinitely rare and godlikecreatures whom mosquitos do not bite nor ticks molest. His nights wereas peaceful as the grave, and the poisonous drinking-waters glanced fromhis rubber constitution. Besides, he had forsaken his regimental dutiesto enjoy a life of constant variety upon the staff of a general, and hadbegun to feel at home on horseback. It was one of those radiant, smilingdays, which later on were to become rarer than charity, and the woodswere positively festive with sunshine. And the temperature was preciselythat which brings to a young man's fancy thoughts of love. So that itwas in the nature of a shock to come suddenly upon the shore and beholdfor the first time the finality of war. There was no visible gloryabout it. What had happened to the Cumberland and the Congress wasdisappointingly like what would happen to two ships destroyed in shallowwater. The masts of the Cumberland, slightly off the vertical and stillrigged, projected for half their length from the yellow surface of theriver. That was all. Some distance to the left and half submerged was ablackened and charred mass that bore some resemblance to a ship that hadonce been proud and tall, and known by the name of Congress. Thatwas all. Aladdin had hoped that war would be a little more like thepictures.
As he rode back, pondering, toward the encampment, however, he came uponsomething which was truly an earnest of what was to come. There were somany buzzards perched in the trees of a certain wood that he turned into see what they had. He came upon it suddenly, just beyond a cheerfulbush of holly, and the buzzards stepped reluctantly back until he hadlooked. It was only a horse. Some of the buzzards, heavy with food,raised their eyelids heavily and looked at Aladdin, and then lapsedback into filthy sleep. Others, not yet satiated, looked upon himquerulously, and suggested as much as looks can suggest that he go, andtrouble them no more. Others, the newly arrived and ravenous, swoopedabove the trees, so that dark circles were drawn over the fallensunlight. Now a buzzard opened and closed its wings, and now one lookedfrom the horse to Aladdin, and back, fretfully, to the horse. Thereseemed to be hundreds of them, dark and dirty, with raw heads andeyelids. Aladdin sat solemn and motionless upon his horse, but he couldfeel the cold sweat of horror running down his sides from under hisarms, and the bristling of his hair. He wanted to make a great noise, toshout, to do anything, but he did not dare. It would have been breakingthe rules. In that assembly no sound was allowed, for
the meeting wasunholy and wicked and worked with hurried stealth, so that the attentionof God should not be drawn. Aladdin knew that he had no right to bethere, that without knocking he had entered the bedroom of horror andfound her naked in the arms of lust. He turned and rode away shiveringand without looking back. He had not ridden the distance between twoforest trees before the carcass was again black with the descendingbirds, and the blood streamed to their bills.
The Peninsular campaign developed four kinds of men: the survivors, thewounded, the dead, and the missing. When the campaign was over Aladdinsometimes woke starting in the night to think of those missing and ofwhat he had seen in the woods.
XXIV
The tedious locomotion of an army and the incessant reluctance ofthe battle to be met will try a sinner; but a scarcity of tobacco andconstantly wet feet will try a saint. Aladdin was somewhat of both. Butin the fidgety gloom which presently settled upon man and beast, his,great Irish gift of cheerfulness shone like a star. He even gave uplonging for promotion, and strained his mind to the cracking-point forhumorous verses and catching tunes. He went singing up the Peninsula,and thumped the gay banjo by the camp-fire, and was greatly beloved bythe foot-sore and sick. He had given up worrying about what he would doin battle, for there were much more important things to think about.
Battles are to soldiers what Christmas trees are to children: you mustwait, wait, and wait for them, and forever wait; and when they do comethe presents are apt to be a little tawdry. And you are only envied bythe other little children who didn't really see what you really got. Themost comforting man in the army was one minister of the gospel, andthe most annoying was another. The first had the divine gift ofstory-telling and laughter, and the second thanked God because thesoldiers had run out of their best friend, tobacco, which he describedthrough his nose as "filthy weed," "vile narcotic," or "pernicioushell-plant." And they both served the Lord as hard as they could--andthey both suffered from dysentery.
As the days passed and the temperature of the army rose, and itsdigestion became permanently impaired, Aladdin, by giving out, andconstantly, all that was best in himself, became gradually exhausted.He found himself telling stories as many as three times to the same man,and he began to steal from the poets and musicians that he knew in orderto keep abreast of his own original powers of production. He even wentso far as to draw inspiration from men of uneven heights stood in line:he would hum the intervals as scored by their heads on an imaginarystaff and fashion his tune accordingly, but this tended to a somewhatcompressed range and was not always happy in its results. His efforts,however, were appreciated, and the emaciated young Irishman became amost exceptional prophet, and received honor in his own land.
For the rest, being a staff-officer, he was kept busy and rode hundredsof extra miles through the rain. It was a large army, as inexperiencedas it was large, and it stood in great need of being kept in contactwith itself. If you lived at one end of it and wanted to know what wasgoing on at the other end, you had to travel about as far as from NewYork to New Haven. The army proper, marching by fours, stretched awaythrough the wet lands for forty miles. A fly-bitten tail of ambulancesand wagons, with six miserable horses or six perfectly happy mulesattached to each, added another twenty miles. At the not always attainedrate of fifteen miles a day the army could pass a given point in fourdays. To the gods in Olympus it would have appeared to have all thecharacteristic color and shape of an angleworm, without, however,enjoying that reptile's excellent good health. If the armies ofWashington, Cornwallis, Clive, Pizarro, Cortes, and Christian de Wet hadbeen added to it, they would have passed unnoticed in the crowd. And therecurring fear of the general in command of this army was that the armyhe sought would prove to be twice as big. So speculation was activebetween the York and James rivers.
In the minds of the soldiers a thousand years passed, and then there wasa little fight, and they learned that they were soldiers. And so didthe other army. Another thousand years passed, and it seemed tactful tochange bases. Accordingly, that which had been arduously established ona muddy river called the Chickahominy (and it was very far from eitherof those two good things) was forsaken, and the host began to be movedtoward the James. This move would have been more smoothly accomplishedif the enemy had not interfered. They, however, insisted upon makinghistory, turning a change of base into a nominal retreat, and begettingin themselves a brass-bound and untamable spirit which it took vastwealth and several years to humble. From Gaines's Mill to the awful browof Malvern Hill there were thunder and death. Forty thousand men weresomewhat needlessly killed, wounded, or (as one paradoxical account hasit) "found missing."
Aladdin missed the fight at Malvern Hill and became wounded in anon-bellicose fashion. His general desired to make a remark to anothergeneral, and writing it on a piece of thin yellow paper, gave it to himto deliver. He rode off to the tune of axes,--for a Maine regimentwas putting in an hour in undoing the stately work of a hundredyears,--trotted fifteen miles peacefully enough, delivered his general'sremark, and started back. Then came night and a sticky mist. Then theimpossibility of finding the way. Aladdin rode on and on, courageouslyif not wisely, and came in time to the dimly discernible outbuildings ofa Virginia mansion. They stood huddled dark and wet in the mist, whichwas turning to rain, and there was no sign of life in or about them.Aladdin passed them and turned into an alley of great trees. By lookingskyward he could keep to the road they bounded. As he drew near themansion itself a great smell of box and roses filled his nostrils withfragrance. But to him, standing under the pillared portico and knockingupon the door, came no word of welcome and no stir of lights. He gaveit up in disgust, mounted, and rode back through the rich mud to thestables. Had he looked over his shoulder he might have seen a face atone of the windows of the house.
He found a door of one of the stables unlocked, and went in, leading hishorse. Within there was a smell of hay. He closed the door behind him,unsaddled, and fell to groping about in the dark. He wanted severalarmfuls of that hay, and he couldn't find them. The hay kept calling tohis nose, "Here I am, here I am"; but when he got there, it was hidingsomewhere else. It was like a game of blindman's-buff. Then he heardthe munching of his horse and knew that the sought was found. He movedtoward the horse, stepped on a rotten planking, and fell through thefloor. Something caught his chin violently as he went through, and ina pool of filthy water, one leg doubled and broken under him, he passedthe night as tranquilly as if he had been dosed with laudanum.
XXV
Aladdin came to consciousness in the early morning. He was about as sickas a man can be this side of actual dissolution, and the pain in hisbroken leg was as sharp as a scream. He lay groaning and doubled inthe filthy half-inch of water into which he had fallen. About him wasdarkness, but overhead a glimmer of light showed a jagged and cruelhole in the planking of the stable floor. Very slowly, for his agony wasunspeakable, he came to a realization of what had happened. He calledfor help, and his voice was thick and unresonant, like the voice of adrunken man. His horse heard him and neighed. Now and again he lapsedinto semi-unconsciousness, and time passed without track. Hours passed,when suddenly the glimmer above him brightened, and he heard lightfootsteps and the cackling of hens. He called for help. Instantly therewas silence. It continued a long time. Then he heard a voice like softmusic, and the voice said, "Who's there?"
A shadow came between him and the light, and a fair face that wasdarkened looked down upon him.
"For God's sake take care," he said. "Those boards are rotten."
"You 're a Yankee, aren't you?" said the voice, sweetly.
"Yes," said Aladdin, "and I'm badly hurt."
The voice laughed.
"Hurt, are you?" it said.
"I think I've broken my leg," said Aladdin. "Can you get some one tohelp me out of this?"
"Reckon you're all right down there," said the voice.
Aladdin revolved the brutality of it in his mind.
"Do you mean to say that you're not goi
ng to help me?" he said.
"Help you? Why should I?"
Aladdin groaned, and could have killed himself for groaning.
"If you don't help me," he said, and his voice broke, for he wassuffering tortures, "I'll die before long."
A perfectly cool and cruel "Well?" came back to him.
"You won't help me?"
"No."
Anger surged in his heart, but he spoke with measured sarcasm.
"Then," he said, "will you at least do me the favor of getting frombetween me and God's light? If I die, I may go to hell, but I prefer notto see devils this side of it, thank you."
The girl went away, but presently came back. She lowered something tohim on a string. "I got it out of one of your holsters," she said.
Aladdin's fingers closed on the butt of a revolver.
"It may save you a certain amount of hunger and pain," she said. "Whenyou are dead, we will give it to one of our men, and your horse too.He's a beauty."
"I hope to God he may--" began Aladdin.
"Pretty!" said the girl.
She went away, and he heard her clucking to the chickens. After a timeshe came back. Aladdin was waiting with a plan.
"Don't move," he said, "or you'll be shot."
"Rubbish!" said the girl. She leaned casually back from the hole, andhe could hear her moving away and clucking to the chickens. Again shereturned.
"Thank you for not shooting," she said.
There was no answer.
"Are you dead?" she said.
When he came to, there was a bright light in Aladdin's eyes, for alantern swung just to the left of his head.
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