Rebels of Babylon

by Parry, Owen

  As a member long admitted to their company, Mr. Barnaby could step backstage. Where I am told all theaters are sordid.

  I watched the fellow’s haunches recede through the doors that led to the terrace. The night gulped him down and I felt the stirrings of pity. After all, I am a lucky man, well married and well loved. But times there were when I believed that loneliness, not greed, was the root of all evil. Perhaps he was taken with the girl not because of a fullness he saw in her, but because of the hollowness echoing in himself. It is a hard enough life when we are loved. To walk the world alone is a terrible thing.

  Well, we would find his missy, if she lived. In good time.

  As I trudged up the staircase beside the guard who would post outside my door, the clerk come running after, calling my name.

  Holding out a packet of letters, he told me, “Sorry, Major. I just plain forgot. Ship put in from Baltimore. Carrying the mails. Brought you these. Navy feller sent a letter, too.”

  Such lads expect a “tip” for merely doing their work, but the clerk got none from me. Such generosities only breed corruption.

  Yet, I was pleased and there is no denying it. At the thought of news from home, the stench of bloody murder faded wonderfully. Exhausted though I was, I could hardly restrain myself from hunting through the letters there on the landing. But an officer must be dignified in front of the other ranks. I marched myself to my old room and gathered up my belongings in good order.

  Annoyed I was at finding blood on my traveling bag, which had been a Christmas gift from my Mary Myfanwy.

  It is a horrid thing to admit, but the stains upon the leather moved me more than the lot of the servant girl. I would excuse myself by pleading weariness and the heartless temper that overtakes us all, but the truth is that a tired man reveals himself. I am a sorry sinner, there is true.

  I let the soldier bear my bag, while I carried a uniform. It had been returned, nicely cleaned, by the merchants who had dressed me head to toe. Concealed in the wardrobe, it had not suffered attack.

  Halfway down the hall, that lass with the painted cheeks slipped by with a wink.

  In my new room, which was haunted by cigars, I tumbled everything over a chair, bid the guard goodnight, and locked the door. Throwing off my cape and wrestling my new boots free of my ankles, I meant to have a hasty wash, if water there was in the pitcher, then to scour my letters and pay my debt of prayers.

  I made the mistake of lying back on the mattress in my clothing. Intending only to gather my strength, I plunged into sleep before I could read one word. Nor did I thank the Lord for all my blessings.

  My punishment was a dream of my wife and son. So real they were that it tore my heart in two.

  TWAS DAY WHEN I awoke, with the city rumbling and squawking beyond the window-glass. I reached out for my darling, who had been so vivid while my eyes were closed, but found only an emptiness fouled by cigars.

  The ache had come to visit my jaw again.

  I spent a moment on personal matters, then pushed the pot under the bed. Water there was in the pitcher, so I scrubbed my hands and splashed myself to life. Quick as a miner under the eye of his pit boss, I bent to dig out the crock the servant had given me. My only purpose was relief from pain. I had forgotten the hint to look inside.

  There was a message in the jar, scrawled on a slip of paper:

  QUENE MANWELER NO EVTHIN

  I took it to mean that some personage called ‘Queen Manweler,’ whoever such might be, knew everything that Papa Champlain had not been obliged to tell me. Perhaps the words were only darky nonsense, yet I regretted my hounding of Mr. Barnaby. If a ‘Queen Manweler’ lived in the city, the fellow seemed likely to know of her. But I would not see him until the afternoon. Punished I was for being so heartless and hard.

  Well, the intelligence had waited out the night. It could wait some hours longer. I dipped a finger into the pot and come up with a dab of green paste.

  My wound was not complacent when I touched it.

  After a shock that called tears to my eyes, I gently rubbed the concoction over my stitches. Then I coated the meat around the damage.

  With my finger still roaming in my mouth, I recalled the stack of letters. I had been so worn down and weary that true events had blended into dreams, the letters consigned to a nether-world.

  The missives lay beneath my cape, a happy dozen and more. Flipping from one to the next with the haste of a child, I saw that fully seven were from my darling, with one from dear Mrs. Schutzengel, a pair from our Pottsville lawyers, another from Matt Cawber, who had become a partner in our coal business, and, not least in value, two letters from my friend, Dr. Mick Tyrone. He was serving General Sherman, north of Vicksburg. With the Rebels stubborn between us, his letters had needed to travel a great, long way.

  A note from a Navy captain intruded into the welcome stack. I laid it aside, unread. Once informed that I answered to Mr. Lincoln, the Navy men missed no chance to curry favor. I had been asked aboard many a ship for dinner, but my duty, as well as my interests, lay ashore. I had no time for fripperies and flatterers.

  Now, a single letter from loved ones is a soldier’s pride and joy, but to receive such abundance all at once promised me an interlude of happiness amid the horrors of Babylon. Nor could the timing have been more opportune. I had resolved the night before to cordon off the morning for rumination. Too much had happened too swiftly and I know myself well enough to understand that, while I may be deep of mind, I am not quick of grasp. I needed time to ponder, to let the facts arrange themselves—as facts will do when they are left to themselves. I also intended to give myself the pleasantest breakfast my wounded mouth would bear, then to engage my Bible for my soul’s sake. My duty to our Union could wait for the afternoon. Every man has a higher duty still.

  Oh, I love a letter when the news blows fair.

  There is the queerness of it: I knew in my heart that the news would not be bad, at least not of my Mary, John or Fanny. There is still much that Mick Tyrone and his science cannot explain to us.

  Oh, I was rich that morning! Joy gripped me before I cut a single envelope. Murder was naught, sin vanquished. All my thoughts were of hearth and home, of those I loved beyond reckoning. I yearned to read every letter at once, to devour all they contained.

  Still, a fellow must not be weak or unmanly. My Mary says that a gentleman is someone who will not do in private what he would not do before the public’s eye, although such a rule seems hard.

  Leaving my Colt in my bag for the term of my breakfast, I allowed myself to choose three letters to take along to table, all from my wife. Then I warned myself that Southron indolence might well mean I would have to wait for my victuals. I took up the other letters from home, as well. Just at the door, I turned again and added the missives from Mick Tyrone and Matt Cawber. But I am not completely without restraint. I let the letters from the lawyers and the naval fellow wait.

  The guard without my door had changed, but the new fellow looked alert, if a bit unkempt. He greeted me with a countryman’s nod, which hardly suited military courtesy.

  I said nothing. I wanted only my coffee and all the news from home.

  To my dismay, I was far from the only officer in the dining room. They should have been at work, since it was Friday and after nine. But a dozen dawdled over their plates, like gentlemen at a club in Piccadilly.

  I ordered coffee, soft eggs and bread with butter. It seemed a wise and careful choice that morning, although I found the smell of bacon tempting. A well-fried pig has a lovelier scent than all the perfumes of the Peshawar bazaar.

  As soon as the waiter slouched away, I opened the first letter from my darling. The world faded away. The scald of coffee hot as guns in action drew little notice. The slop of eggs and moistened bread slipped down my gullet half-tasted. One after another, the letters carried me to a realm of goodness and affection, reminding me of all that makes this world worth enduring.

  MY MARY MYFANWY, my darlin
g, could pack more love in a letter than a corporal can stuff rations in his bedroll. The child was not yet arrived, of course, since the letters had spent long weeks coming by ship. But my Mary is not the sort to take to a day bed while awaiting her confinement. She wrote that she still spent some hours in her shop each day. Of course, that concerned me. Even if robust in constitution, a woman approaching her lying in must have some care in her doings. But my Mary has a head for business that rivals many a man’s and, though I sought to persuade her to give up dressmaking after our fortunes turned for the better, she had grown a taste for being a proprietress.

  Young John was ever larking about, and delighted in the snow. He sometimes asked where I had gone, which moved me. Little enough sense he had of me, his father gone off to war. Whenever I returned home, the lad spent the first few days in outright fear, though I am gentle. He was healthy and ever so clever, Mary wrote. Concerns that had been raised to me by Mr. Evan Evans on his deathbed found no credence in our young son’s person.

  Fanny was much praised by my wife, which was a pleasant change. My darling had not taken to her at first. An orphan she was, as I myself had been. As lovely as an angel dressed for Sunday, she hardly seemed of this hard world to me. Her voice might have humbled the cherubim and seraphim, for she made a hymn sound gentle as a love song, without suggesting any lack of faith.

  Fair she was, our Fanny, with her auburn hair a tumult. Swift to obey, she was also quick to learn. Privilege had not been her domain and the poor thing lived in fear of being cast out, no matter how often I told her that was nonsense. She worked in the kitchen and washed our clothes in the tub in the backyard, applied herself to her letters to make up for years of neglect, looked after John when Mary was out and studied the art of the seamstress in my darling’s shop. All vigor and glow our Fanny was. The life in her was pretty as May and heady as September.

  But I must not be partial.

  Other doings there were in plenty, with Mr. Gowen and his ilk still switching between offers to buy out the colliery holdings left us by Mr. Evans and clumsy threats of what might happen should we not agree to sell. Cowed they were now by Matthew Cawber’s backing of our company, for he was the terror of all Philadelphia.

  Matt’s letter to me was confident. He wrote the lines himself, as the grammar and spelling attested. There was no word of Dolly Walker, whose partnership with us was best kept silent. Instead, he spoke of the boundless fortunes we were set to make, during the war and after, from the black gold of the anthracite fields.

  I will admit that I do not object to owning earthly riches. I know the Bible warns us of wealth’s perils, but might it not be a sign of heavenly favor?

  Reading the letters from my wife a second time, I paused over the interest Mahantango Street society took in us. There had been plentiful invitations at Christmas, before I embarked upon my latest journey. Now Mary had been invited to join a number of clubs and circles. She was asked to tea by ladies for whom her shop provided dresses. I know that such behavior is hypocrisy, that only our wealth improved us in their eyes. But then I think of England and Wales, where not even money gives a man a chance. Oh, grab his funds the high and mighty will, selling off ruined estates at monstrous prices. They will let him make a fool of himself by aping a country gentleman and sponsoring undistinguished hunts for a bankrupt viscount’s convenience. But he will never be master of the hounds, nor will he be fully master of himself. If he sits at a baronet’s table, it will be on account of the nobleman’s debts or a favor badly wanted, and his dinner companions will be the dreariest squires, not a London set. He may, if he is fortunate, be permitted to marry off his loveliest daughter to a penniless, tided fop in broken health.

  No, I will take America and hypocrisy, if it means my wife can sit at the finest tables. We have our snobs, but they do not have tides. And loathe to admit it though they may be, even their money comes from sweat and not a dead king’s favor. It is the fluid nature of our society that I like, as if it were a matter of hydraulics. A forceful man can rise and lift his loved ones. If Matt Cawber and I are not good enough for the highest families of Philadelphia society, our children will be. In Britain, the boy is doomed as his father’s son.

  Suffice it to say that all were well at home. Oh, how I longed to be there with my darling! My resolve to resign my commission, to turn my back on the war and death, redoubled. I had done my part for my new country. And any love I ever had for soldiering had perished during the Mutiny, in India. I was nearing life’s meridian, like that Italian fellow lost in the forest, the one who was such a fibber. Twas time to devote my remaining years to my family and our business. To make a proper gentleman of myself, to read good books and take my darling out riding in our carriage.

  I did not need more scars.

  I needed to go home. As soon as I had done with Susan Peabody. I promised myself that even Mr. Lincoln would not win me over again. I would not ever purpose war, nor would I be its servant.

  BUT WAR WOULD not release me quite so easily. My dear friend, Mick Tyrone, was near despair.

  He began well enough, describing his observations about medical matters. The physiognomy of the brain had become his consuming interest and his work as a wartime surgeon allowed him to study the living organ revealed, to compare the matter’s conformity to the contours of the skull. His experiments led him to question the laws of phrenology, which I thought bold. Of course, much that Mick believed was hard to credit. He speculated that bodily chemicals rule our deepest emotions—what you and I term our “souls,” although Mick has no patience with the word. And he did not think our wills were all our own.

  Twas when Mick got to the war itself that his temper scorched the page. Even after General Grant was restored to his command, the campaign lagged. Our troops advanced into Mississippi, only to withdraw again. The desultory affairs that trailed our autumn successes brought us no closer to victory. Vicksburg defied us proudly, interrupting strategy and commerce, with the results that Mick had witnessed just after Christmas.

  General Sherman had taken up positions north of the city, where the Rebels had entrenched upon high bluffs. According to Mick, even a fool could have seen the formidable cost in lives that must be spent, likely for naught, in any assault upon the Confederate lines. But William Tecumseh Sherman was a fellow not shy of a fight. I had quite liked him, with his ginger hair and courage, as soon as I grew accustomed to his brusqueness. He was a lion on the field of Shiloh. But a general must not let his energies flank his judgement.

  Leaving Mick aghast, Sherman ordered his men against the heights, hurling them forward over bad ground and expecting them to scale the bluffs in the face of Rebel volleys.

  Our troops did not fare well.

  Mick, who had to clean up after the butchery, was unforgiving. He cursed Sherman. Then he cursed General Grant for not keeping closer watch on his subordinate. Instead of bringing Vicksburg under siege, our soldiers had retired toward Memphis. Leaving a number of dead sufficient to raise the enemy’s spirits.

  Had I been upon the field that day, I might have seen possibilities Mick’s eyes could not detect. He is not a soldier, after all. But as I read his lines I felt my heart sink. Along with my regard for General Sherman. The day would come when I would think well of Sherman again, when his fierce determination brought us victory. But on that morning in the St. Charles Hotel, I found myself so troubled that I had to fold away my letters and turn to the newspapers strewn about the room. Unlike a letter from a friend, a newspaper account need not alarm us. Journalism is like a minstrel show, with every feature exaggerated and morality relaxed for entertainment.

  The newspaper of the day only worsened my humor. Hardly had I opened the pages of The Daily Picayune when I met an advertisement posted by Dr. Fielding, who had done his best to devastate my jaw. Thereafter, the contents worsened. The Rebel commerce raider, the Alabama, which I had failed to prevent from leaving the yards, had been active off Cuba. She had taken a number of Union ships
as prizes and had sunk our gunboat, the Hatteras. Whenever I read of the triumphs of Captain Semmes, I blamed myself for failing to do my duty.

  I scanned on past advertisements for a show at the opera house, which promised English, French and German airs, along with a comedy by Kotzebue and two vaudevilles. I took a bit of solace in discovering that the French consul had been dismissed by his own minister for “complicity with the Rebels.” The fellow must have been caught at something awful for the French to be embarrassed by his activities. I read that General Halleck had reversed an order of General Grant’s expelling the Israelites from his department. And our ironclad, the Monitor, had foundered in a storm.

  Twas not a happy time for Mr. Lincoln.

  The Daily Picayune played up to both sides. While the columns described the Rebels as “our” troops, the scribblers did not gloat over Union losses and sought to please our occupation authorities. Whichever side won, the newspaper meant to be on it.

  I read that incendiaries had been active, which I feared referred to my fuss of two days past. The port was busy as the world cried out for cotton. Ever more ships crowded into the wharves or waited along the levees. An Irishwoman had been arrested for drunkenness by the provost marshal’s men and patriotic citizens had staged a meeting in support of our Union.

  There was not a word written about the murders of the past few days, nor was there a hint of negroes going missing.

  A queer place New Orleans was. Everyone had his secret reasons for doing what seemed unreasonable.

  The last of the coffee was cold in my cup. I rose up with a sigh. My splendid mood had been picked apart and I slogged back to my room.

  The guard was no longer in front of my door, which did not help my temper.

  He reappeared before I could enter my room, hurrying down the hallway and banging a lonesome chair with the butt of his musket. He knew he had been caught out.