Josie relaxed.
“I thought all the fighting was down in Virginia.”
“It is. That’s where we’re heading—this is the third time I rode north into Maryland with the army and I reckon it’s the third time I’m heading back with it.”
“What did my brother mean when he said you were a gorilla?”
She looked at him for the first time with a certain human interest.
“I reckon because I didn’t shave since yesterday.” He laughed. “Anyway he didn’t mean ‘gorilla’ he meant ‘guerrilla.’ When it’s a Yankee on detached service they call him a scout but when it’s one of us they call us spies and string us up.”
“Any soldier not in uniform is a spy,” Josie said.
“Me not in uniform? Look at my buckle. Half of Stuart’s cavalry wouldn’t be considered in uniform if they had to have the uniforms they started with. I tell you, Miss Pilgrim, I was a smart-looking trooper when I rode out of Lynchburg four years ago.”
He described to her how the young volunteers had been dressed that day; Josie listened, thinking it was not unlike the scene when the first young volunteers had got on the train at Chillicothe.
“—with a big red ribbon from Mother’s trunk for a sash. One of the girls read a poem I wrote in front of the troop.”
“Oh say the poem,” Josie exclaimed, “I would so enjoy to hear it.”
Tib considered. “Reckon I’ve forgot it. All I remember is ‘Lynchburg, thy guardsmen bid thy hills farewell.’ ”
“I love it.”
Josie repeated slowly, “ ‘Lynchburg, thy guardsmen bid thy hills farewell,’ ” and forgetting the errand on which Lynchburg’s guardsmen were bent she added, “I certainly wish you remembered the rest of it.”
Came a scream from across the hall and a medley of French expletives. The distraught face of the aide-de-camp appeared at the door.
“He has pulled out not just the tooth but the stomatic—He has killed him, he has done him to the death!”
A face pushed over his shoulder.
“Say, Tib—the Yank got the tooth.”
“Did he?” said Tib, but absently. His tendency to metaphor had suddenly reasserted itself and he was thinking, “All inside of half an hour one Yank got a tooth and his sister got a heart.”
II
A minute later Wash dashed back into the living room.
“Say, Tib, we oughtn’t to stay here. A patrol just went by mighty fast shootin back from the saddle. Ain’t we fixin to leave? This here Doctor knows we’re Mosby’s men.”
“You leave without us?” the aide demanded suspiciously.
“We sure do,” said Tib. “The Prince can observe the war from the Yankee side for a while. Miss Pilgrim, I don’t want to take advantage of a prisoner but I must say that I never knew a Yankee girl could be so pretty.”
“I never heard anything so ridiculous,” she answered. But she was pleased at the compliment stretched across the Mason-Dixon line.
Peering hastily into the library Tib found the Prince so far recovered as to be sitting upright, panting and gasping.
“You are an artiste,” he exclaimed to Dr. Pilgrim. “You see I live! After all the terror I still live. In Paris I am told that if they take from you the tooth you have hemorrhage and die. You should come to Paris and I will tell the Emperor of you—of that new instrument you use.”
“It’s just a kind of forceps,” said Dr. Pilgrim gruffly.
Wash called from the door.
“Come on, Tib!”
Tib spoke to the Prince.
“Well, au revoir, sir.”
There was firing very near now. The two scouts had scarcely unhitched their horses when Wash exclaimed: “Hell fire!” and pointed down the drive. Half a dozen Federal troopers had come into view behind the foliage of the far gate. Wash swung his carbine one handed to his right shoulder and with his free arm reached for a cartridge in his pouch.
“I’ll take the two on the left,” he said.
Standing concealed by their horses they waited.
“Maybe we could run for it,” Tib suggested.
“I looked the place over. It’s got seven rail fences.”
“Don’t fire till they get nearer.”
Leisurely the file of cavalry trotted up the drive. Even after four years on detached service up and down the valley, Tib hated to shoot from ambush, but he concentrated on the business and the front sight of his carbine came into line with the center of the Yankee corporal’s tunic.
“Got your mark, Wash?”
“Think so.”
“When they break we’ll ride through ’em.”
But the ill luck of Southern arms that day took shape before they could loose a shot. A heavy body flung against Tib and pinioned him. A voice shouted beside his ear.
“Men, they’re rebels here!”
Even as Tib turned, wrestling desperately with Dr. Pilgrim, the Northern patrol stopped, drew pistols. Wash was bobbing desperately from side to side to get a shot at Pilgrim, but the Doctor maneuvered Tib’s body in between.
In a split second it was over. Wash loosed a single shot but the Federals were around them before he was in his saddle. Furious, the two young men faced their captors. Dr. Pilgrim spoke sharply to the Federal corporal:
“These are Mosby’s men.”
Those years were bitter on the border. The Federals slew Wash when he made another attempt to get away—grabbing at the revolver in the corporal’s hand. Tib, still struggling, was trussed up at the porch rail.
“There’s a good tree,” one of the Federals said, “and there’s a rope on the swing.”
The corporal glanced from Dr. Pilgrim to Tib.
“Are you one of Mosby’s men?”
“I’m with the Seventh Virginia Cavalry.”
“Didn’t ask you that. Are you one of Mosby’s men?”
“None of your business.”
“All right, boys, get the rope.”
Dr. Pilgrim’s austere presence asserted itself again.
“I don’t think you should hang him but certainly this type of irregular has got to be discouraged.”
“We hang them up by their thumbs, sometimes,” suggested the corporal.
“Then do that,” said Dr. Pilgrim. “He spoke of hanging me.”
. . . By six that evening the road outside was busy again. Two brigades of Sheridan’s finest were on Early’s trail, pursuing and harassing him down the valley. Mail and fresh vegetables were moving toward the capital and the raid was over, except for a few stragglers who lay exhausted along the Rockville Pike.
In the farmhouse it was quiet. Prince Napoleon was waiting for an ambulance from Washington. There was no sound there—except from Tib, who, as his skin slipped off his thumbs, gradually down the knuckles, said fragments of his own political verses aloud to himself. When he could think of no more verses he ruminated on what was happening to him.
“Thumbs are like a glove—they turn inside out. When the nails turn over I’ll yell out loud . . .”
He kept singing a new song that he had sung just before they had marched out of Lynchburg:
We’ll follow the feather of Mosby tonight;
We’ll steal from the Yankees our horse-flesh and leather.
We’ll follow the feather, Mosby’s white feather.
’Twas once made a sign of a sin and a shame;
The plume was of white but he gave it a name
As different from shame as the dark is from light
So we’ll follow the feather of Mosby tonight.
Josie had waited till it was full dark and she could hear the sentry snoring on the porch. She knew where the step-ladder was because she had heard them dump it down after they had strung up Tib. When she had half sawed through the rope she went back to her room for pillows and moved the table under him and laid the pillows on it.
Josie did not need any precedents for what she was doing. When he fell with a grunting gasp, murmuring “—
serve your country and nothing to be ashamed of,” Josie poured half a bottle of sherry wine over his hands. Then, sick suddenly herself, she ran back to her room.
III
As always with victorious causes, the war was over in the North by sixty-seven. Josie was grown at nineteen and proud at helping along her brother’s career with her tact atoning for his arrogance. Her lovely face shone for the young men on Government pay when she danced at the balls with President Johnson’s profile at the end of the room melancholy against the massed flowers from the Shenandoah.
“What is a guerrilla—exactly?” she asked a military man one time. “You’re holding me quite tight enough thank you.”
But she didn’t marry any of them. Her eyes had seen the coming of the glory of the Lord and then she had seen the glory of the Lord hung up by the thumbs.
Just home from market she called to the maid:
“I’ll answer, Candy.”
But on the way to the door her hoop slipped from its seam and tripped her and she only called through:
“Who is it?”
“I want to see Dr. Pilgrim.”
Josie hesitated. Her brother was asleep.
“I’m afraid he can’t see you now,” she said.
But as she turned away from the door the bell rang again, harsh and imperative. This time Candy had lumbered up from the kitchen.
“Tell him the Doctor can’t see anybody this morning.”
She went into the drawing room and rested a moment. Candy interrupted her.
“Miss Josie—that’s a right funny man out there. Look to me he fixin to do some mischief to y’all. He got kind of black gloves on him that wobble when he talk.”
“What did he say?” asked Josie in alarm.
“He only say he want to see your brother.”
Josie went out into the hall again. It was a small quadrangle, lit by a semicircular window that shed a blue and olive glow. Candy had left the door faintly ajar and Josie peered out cautiously from the safe semi-darkness. She saw half a hat and half a coat.
“What do you want?”
“I’ve got to see Dr. Pilgrim.”
She had a peremptory “No” ready when another visitor came into view on the door-step, and she hesitated, feeling unjustified in sending away two callers without consulting her brother. Reassured by this second presence she threw open the door. In a second she wished she hadn’t because the two figures standing there brought back in a sudden rush of memory another July day three years before. The man just arrived was the young French aide-de-camp who had been with Prince Napoleon; the other, the one in whose tone Candy had scented undefined danger Josie had last seen in a crumpled mass of agony on a farmhouse table. The Frenchman was the first to speak.
“You probably do not recollect me, Miss Pilgrim. My name is Silvé. I am now military attache at the French embassy here and we have met on that day that your brother rendered such service to Prince Napoleon in the war.”
Josie steadied herself against the door-frame, with an effort restraining the impulse to cry out, “Yes, but what is the Southerner doing here?”
Tib had not spoken, but Josie’s mind was working so fast that words could not have made plainer to her the nature of his errand, though her appearance and the simultaneous arrival of the other visitor had confused him. The light in his eyes was of a purpose long conceived, long planned; for two years he had so haunted Josie’s dreams that she had reconstructed in her imagination his awful return to consciousness that night, his escape before sunrise and the desperate agony that must have accompanied his search for shelter that morning—after her months in the soldiers’ hospital Josie could envisage the amputation of his torn thumbs.
The Frenchman spoke again: “It is only because the Paquebot Rochambeau leaves on the day after tomorrow that I dare present myself at such an hour. Miss Pilgrim, the Prince has not forgotten the great service that your brother rendered him. This morning even cables of the most serious nature have been postponed so that I should come to see your brother. At this moment there is a toothache in Europe of such international significance—” For the first time in a cautious glance he became fully cognizant of Tib’s presence, but there was no mutual recognition. “If I could talk to your brother for a moment?”
A voice spoke suddenly over Josie’s shoulder:
“I am Dr. Pilgrim. Who wants to speak to me?”
Instinctively Josie blocked the space of sunlight between Tib Dulany, ex-sergeant of Stuart’s cavalry, and her brother.
“I’m sorry, gentlemen,” said Dr. Pilgrim, “but I can’t see you now.” To Josie he said, “This is the morning that I’ve promised to devote to Candy’s tooth—that’s why I got up so confounded early.” He pressed past her and faced the two men. “We have a faithful negro servant whom I have long intended to supply with a tooth and I am afraid that I can have no other appointments for this morning. My sister will take your addresses and arrange any consultations.”
Josie saw he was in one of his icy humors. On his way downstairs he had called Candy from the kitchen; she was bustling behind him with a basket on her arm.
Josie, the only one of the five who grasped the entirety of the situation, sparred for time.
“Very well. If you gentlemen will give me your addresses—”
“I only ask for a moment of the Doctor’s time,” said Captain Silvé.
“I will give you just that moment,” said the Doctor impatiently. “This poor colored woman needs me more than anyone and I have never thought to put white before black with those who need my services.”
For the next few minutes while Captain Silvé explained himself and Dr. Pilgrim unbent to the extent of walking with him to the edge of the veranda, Josie was alone with Tib—alone with him in spirit. She could not untie those old cords which she had once cut through—but for that little time she could hold him with her bright beauty.
“My brother doesn’t know who you are,” she said quickly. “What do you want here?”
Again she read through to the dark hours and brooding years that lay behind his eyes.
Tib looked aside.
“I only came to get an appointment.”
Dr. Pilgrim turned about. “My time is limited as I said. Josie, you may tell any further callers that I will be available after four o’clock.”
Nodding briefly to Tib he started down the steps still listening with a distant air to Silvé’s plea. All of a sudden the five of them were in motion down the sunny street, Josie, without a bonnet, walking beside Tib, and Candy bringing up the rear.
“—but it’s a court appointment,” Silvé pled earnestly. “You will be assistant to the great Doctor Evans, patronized by everyone in Paris. It is what the English would call a ‘command,’ you comprehend, Doctor.”
Dr. Pilgrim stopped and the procession stopped behind him.
“I am an American first and I shall depend entirely upon my own judgment as to whether or not to accept an offer so suddenly—if at all.”
Captain Silvé flung up his hands in despair. “Surgeon to the French Empire! High fees, probably the Legion d’honneur, a fine equipage to drive in the Bois de Boulogne—yet you would consider staying here in this mud hole?”
Dr. Pilgrim had begun to walk again.
“It is not a mud hole to me,” he said. “You have seen that building on our left?”
“Certainly. It is the Capitol.”
“It was from those steps that our martyred president delivered the second inaugural.”
A voice behind Josie breathed humbly:
“I don’t know whether you all is goin where you is goin on account of me but I feels as if I’s jest trailin along.”
Candy’s urging made Josie realize that she herself was simply an element in a parade, and she called to her brother in her most positive voice, “Where are we going, Ernest?”
“We’re going to the jeweler’s of course,” Dr. Pilgrim answered, “I can’t make a gold tooth out of nothing, an
d I told you I used the last piece of gold leaf yesterday afternoon.”
If the young Southerner would only speak Josie might have been able to resolve the situation but he only reflected her uncertainty as to the next step.
At the next corner she turned upon him with an almost intimate anger:
“Will you kindly excuse us, sir? You may call another time when my brother is able to see you.”
“I think I shall accompany your brother,” said Tib grimly.
“Oh please,” she whispered, “is this some more of that awful war?”
“I hope there will be no violence in your presence,” said Tib.
Setting the pace Dr. Pilgrim threw a glance over his shoulder.
“Walking is more healthful if one makes better time.” And he continued his discourse upon the Capitol up to the portal of Viner’s Jewelry Store on Pennsylvania Avenue.
At this point his two early callers became conscious that they were upon an errand in which they had no concern, and momentarily fell back while Dr. Pilgrim, Josie, and Candy went in.
“I cannot understand it,” said Captain Silvé. “No pleasure except duty would hold me in Washington. Two or three buildings, some beautiful girls like Miss Pilgrim and nothing more.”
He reached for the door-knob at the same moment as Tib and withdrew his own hand with a start. His thumb had pressed through another thumb, soft and tangible within its black kid covering.
“Have I hurt you?” he exclaimed.
“What? Oh I see.” What Tib saw was that the thumb of his stuffed glove had been crushed flat by the accidental encounter. Instinctively his other hand bent to reshape it while he held the door open with his elbow. “You didn’t hurt me—that was an accident I was in. I haven’t any thumbs.”
Captain Silvé, brought up in the proudest traditions of Saint Cyr, would request no information when none had been offered. But he looked curiously at Tib as they went into the store. Then, being French, he became fascinated by the bargain that was being transacted within.
Mr. Viner had produced from his stock a velvet covered board on which reposed several dozen gold pieces, each of them representing some badge of office, distinction or occasion, or obscure foreign coinage. Some were topped by multi-color ribbons. Over them bent Candy, muttering to herself that she was “jest steadyin” while Dr. Pilgrim weighed one of the pieces in his hand.
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