Watchfires

by Louis Auchincloss

  It was as if the bowels of the earth had moved to eject dust and darkness over the somber fields. All that had been green and fresh was brown and spent. The war seemed to have reached into the very afternoon sky to cover it with murky clouds. What was the chairman of the Union Defense Committee now but a poor old King Lear, stripped of his crown and knights, seeking with his poor fool of a son-in-law the warmth of some wretched hut against the horror of a pounding storm?

  Oh, they had talked and talked, of freedom, of union, of sacraments, of duties, but what were those things when the real wind blew but the big floppy hats and parasols of the ladies of their excursion lost in the muds of Virginia? There had been tongues, silver tongues, in the North, in the South, the tongues of Mr. Handy, of Garrison, of Sumner, of Phillips, of Webster, of Calhoun, of Davis, but what were they all but the dangerous whistles that could only, in the end, shiver the giant ice bank and deluge the land in avalanche?

  "Mr. Handy, is that you, sir?" A young cavalry officer had pulled up beside the carriage. "I'm adjutant to General Miles of the Seventh. He told me to keep an eye out for you. Are you all right?"

  "I am fine!" Mr. Handy exclaimed sharply. "Kindly tell your general that he should not be wasting his concern on civilians. It's very kind and polite, I'm sure, but I'd rather have you after Beauregard!"

  "We'll take care of him, sir. Never fear."

  "The day is not lost, then?"

  "The day may be lost, sir. But it's only a day."

  "God bless you, my boy! Give 'em hell!"

  The adjutant cantered off towards the sound of gunfire, and Mr. Handy waved after him.

  "Your spirit is wonderful, sir," Dexter observed.

  "I trust that you don't mean yours isn't?" Mr. Handy demanded, aggressive from his encounter with the adjutant.

  "I confess I feel a bit down."

  "It's only a battle, you know. It only means that the war will be longer. For we're going to win, my boy. By God, we are going to win!"

  Dexter regarded his father-in-law with a faint surprise. Had none of the old spirit of compromise been revived by the day's events? Apparently not. Wotan with his spear had thrust Talleyrand to the side. Charles Handy would fight rebellion to the death.

  It was after midnight when they recrossed the Long Bridge. Rosalie was waiting in the throng before the door of the Willard. She hurried to the carriage as soon as she spotted it, and she and Joanna, without a word, supported their father into the hotel.

  Upstairs in Mr. Handy's suite, when he had been put to bed and Joanna had retired, Rosalie, pale and tired, joined her husband in the little parlor. She left the door of her father's room ajar.

  "Well! You had a memorable day!"

  "Don't mock me, Rosalie. It was hell."

  "And what will happen now? Will Beauregard take the capital?"

  "General Scott has two regiments. He should be able to hold the city."

  "And if he can't? Could the South afford to capture him? Would even the rebels be stupid enough to deprive us of our beloved chief?"

  "You seem to take it very lightly."

  "How else do you expect me to take it?" she demanded in a sudden, startling burst of anger. "How do you think you've been taking it?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Traipsing over the countryside with bottles of champagne! Making a fête champêtre out of a bloody war! It's like your attitude about the slaves. All fine gestures and phrases!"

  "Don't kick a man when he's down, Rosalie."

  "Down? You should see yourself!"

  "I've changed. Today has changed me."

  "And how many boys in blue had to bite the dust to accomplish that?"

  "You're very cruel."

  "Am I very unfair?"

  "I guess not. But is it ever too late to change? Won't you help me to stay changed?" He could see now that she was really very tired, as much as he was, but he couldn't let her go to her room quite yet. "Oh, stay for two minutes! Maybe Beauregard will take the town, and then it will be too late. All I want to say is..."

  There was a snort from the other room. "Ah, you've awakened him!" she whispered in distress.

  "Is that you, Rosalie?" came her father's voice.

  They both went in and stood at the end of his bed.

  "Go to sleep, Daddy. Dexter thinks even General Scott can hold the city."

  "Of course, he can. Don't be disrespectful! What happened today only means that the war's going to be a little longer." He stretched his arms, yawned and then closed his eyes serenely. "That's all, my children. A little longer."

  21

  ROSALIE could hardly bring herself to speak to Dexter on the train ride back to New York. The more she thought of his ridiculous expedition, with the champagne and turkey sandwiches, the more it seemed to her that he was making as much of a travesty out of war as he had out of peace. But the god of battles, she reflected grimly, whom he had invoked with such pompous solemnity before the outbreak of hostilities, had looked as foolish in Virginia as in Union Square. At least it might be possible now for him to learn to face a few facts.

  She realized that she was not being fair in putting it all on him. Her father had been the true inspirer of that jaunt to Manassas. But her father was an old man, and Dexter should have talked him out of it. Charles Handy in his day, after all, had been a hardheaded and realistic man. He had not suffered all his life from the memory of a libidinous parent whom he had ended by imitating!

  One resolution that she had firmly made by the time she set foot on the station pavement in New York, was that she was going to accept the offer of the Sanitary Commission to serve on board the hospital ship, Franklin Pierce. This vessel would travel between the port of New York and the Chesapeake Bay area to transport the wounded to Northern hospitals. Most of the ship's nurses would be males, but the great Doctor Gurdon Buck wanted six matrons, or nurses-at-large, as he called them, to supply a note of feminine attention and consolation on what would be for many poor wretches a long, painful and perhaps fatal voyage. Rosalie had mentioned the possibility of this job to her sons, who had thoroughly approved of it, and then to Dexter, who had simply declined to believe that she was serious, and she had temporarily dropped the idea. But now she had the ammunition she needed. Now she was steeled.

  At family breakfast the next morning in Union Square, Fred and Selby were in a great state of excitement. They wanted every detail from their father about the disaster at Bull Run. Dexter, before their mother's glacial silence, was obviously embarrassed.

  "Was it really a rout, Dad?" Selby asked. "Would you call it a stampede?"

  "Close to it, I'm afraid."

  "Are the Rebs really that much better fighters than we are?"

  "Let's put it that they were last Sunday."

  "What I can't see," Fred contributed, "is why old Scott didn't send relief from Washington."

  "He didn't want to lose the capital!"

  "Well, I think it's an outrage. Their running away like that! I hope it won't be over before I have a chance to get in. I'd like to see how my friends behave. They couldn't do much worse, I guess."

  "Oh, Fred, darling, don't say that!" Rosalie cried in dismay. "You couldn't possibly get in before you're eighteen. Can anyone imagine the war lasting that long?"

  "Not at this rate," Fred retorted. "Jeff Davis should be sleeping in the White House in a few weeks' time!"

  "Did you see many people getting killed, Dad? I mean, actual corpses?"

  "I really don't want to talk about it, Selby. It's a national tragedy. Let us mourn it in silence."

  Rosalie decided that she could not let this pass. "It's all very well for you to say that, Dexter. But you were there and saw it all. It's only natural for the boys to ask questions. Even if it was, as you say, a national tragedy."

  But Dexter disarmed her with immediate capitulation. "You're quite right, my dear. Boys, ask me anything you want."

  Both, however, were embarrassed by the sudden passage between their pare
nts, and in two more minutes they were off to school.

  Rosalie contemplated her husband over her newspaper. If she were going to speak, she would have to do it now. He was folding his newspaper. In another minute he would raise his almost empty coffee cup for a final sip. Then he would cough, rise and carefully brush any bread crumbs from his waistcoat and say, "I'll be off now, dear." She spoke up quickly.

  "Dexter, wait. You remember our talk about the hospital ship? I've told them I'll go!"

  He stared down the table, his lips parted, the perpendicular line of his frown bisecting his smooth forehead. "Are you telling me that you're going to leave me?"

  "Leave you? Don't be melodramatic. It's only for a tour of duty. Dexter! Don't look at me that way."

  "I'm sorry. I suppose I'm hopelessly old-fashioned. I thought a wife's and mother's place was in her home."

  "Normally it is. But there's too much at stake now. You were perfectly willing to join up and sacrifice your own life, if necessary, until Father persuaded you it was your duty to help him with the regiments. If you can give a life, surely you can loan a wife. For a few months, anyway."

  "Is that what it will be? A few months?"

  "Of course, it's hard to say. I'd be going back and forth. I'd be in New York some of the time. And naturally, if you or the boys were ill, or anything like that, I could always get leave. Or even quit, if necessary. I wouldn't be enlisting, after all."

  "The boys need more than a nurse. They need a mother."

  "But it isn't as if I were never going to see them! And they're in school all day, anyway. Actually, they're very keen about the idea. They think it would be wonderful to have a member of the family where the fighting is."

  "A fighting mother," he said bitterly. "While their father stays home. What sort of position do you think that puts me in?"

  "Oh, Dexter, don't take it like that!"

  "How else can I take it? I'd much better sign up right away. Even if it's too late for me to get a commission."

  "Please, dear, don't be self-pitying. You're a million times more important to the Union than a silly old nurse. The boys know that. Everyone knows that!"

  "I don't know it. The job with your father is about done, anyway."

  "But there'll be any number of others! You're going to be needed here desperately. And I've arranged to have that nice Mrs. Lindley—the one you liked so much when I was sick two years ago—live in and keep house for you and the boys. You'll be perfectly comfortable." But she saw by his deepening frown that this was not the position to take. It would be better to emphasize his sacrifice and inconvenience. "Oh, I know it will be difficult for you. But we all have to give up something to win this war. I expect you to be generous enough to let me do my tiny bit while you do your big one."

  "War is a man's job."

  "It's everyone's! Didn't Bull Run convince you of that?"

  He was still watching her with that steady, thoughtful gaze of his. He had hardly moved a muscle since she had told him her news. "You'll never forgive me that little episode, will you?"

  "You must think me very petty."

  "You haven't forgiven me Annie, anyway."

  "Oh, forgiven. What does it really mean? I've put it aside. It doesn't exist for me anymore."

  "But I find it hard to believe that you'd be doing what you're going to do if I'd never been unfaithful."

  "How do we know? Let's not go back into the past. Maybe some day, if this terrible war is ever over, we'll sit down and hash it all out. What I'm trying to tell you now, darling, is that I need your help. To do the things I know I ought to be doing!"

  She was instantly ashamed of her "darling." It had been meant to have the appearance of falling without premeditation from her lips; it was the purest guile. Dexter's eyes cross-examined her. But his tongue did not. What he said was mild enough.

  "You're right about other jobs turning up. They want me on your Sanitary Commission."

  She hit the table with her palm in surprise and delight. "Oh, Dexter, how wonderful! It's just the kind of work you'll be best at. Pulling order out of chaos. You'll be the most important man in the whole business of health care! And here was I, thinking I was so grand with my silly old boat!"

  "I haven't decided about it yet. But let me tell you what I've been thinking. The army wasn't the only thing that took a licking at Bull Run. Your husband did. I've felt such an ass ever since, Rosalie! I've seen the scorn in your eyes and known it was wholly deserved!"

  She was startled at his sudden change of tone. "But that was all just foolishness. You mustn't dwell on it. You..."

  "Oh, but I must!" he insisted. "It's the only way to redeem myself. If I can be clear in your eyes, I'll be on the right track. So tell me one thing—in all honesty. If I take the Sanitary Commission job and make a go of it, and if I look after the boys while you're gone, have I a chance of regaining your respect? I don't ask for your love. That would be too much, in view of all that's happened. But if you can respect me, I think I can live with myself."

  "But I've always respected you!" she almost wailed.

  "I'm sorry, dear. That is simply not so."

  Oh, he still had his old power of turning the tables on her! She, who had yearned for the high seriousness of a role of her own in the war, basing the shedding of domestic duties on the seemingly solid ground of his inconsequence, was now faced with a situation where the sacrifice was all on his part and her mission turned into a kind of joy ride.

  "I shall most certainly respect you as a commissioner," she said in a low voice from which she attempted to strip the bitterness. "You shall have all the respect at my disposal. All the respect and admiration."

  "Then that is settled. Well tell the boys tonight. But, no, you've already told them of your plans. Is that right?"

  "I'm afraid so."

  "Then I suggest you get in touch with Mrs. Lindley today, so that she may learn her new job as soon as possible." He rose at last. "And one other thing, my dear. I suggest you take Joanna with you. She's pining to serve."

  "And Father? What about Father?"

  "Oh, I'll manage to keep an eye on him. Never fear."

  When he had gone, she simply burst into tears. Was it conceivable that his gallantry had been cruelly intended? But no, she was not even to have that comfort. He had meant every word of it. The only thing to do now was her duty. She would go to sea. What did it matter if it was not going to give her all the satisfaction she had so foolishly anticipated?

  22

  ROSALIE thought of the voyages of the Franklin Pierce to the South and to the North as a preparation and an actuality. Preparation was in the sailing from New York to the Chesapeake on the big, throbbing paddle-wheeler, cleaned and scrubbed and sometimes even freshly painted, with its huge saloon full of neatly made empty camp beds and its decks bare except for the few sailors on duty and the doctors and male nurses lounging in the long chairs, watching the blue Atlantic and the whitecaps and the wheeling gulls. Preparation was efficient, even cheerful: counting stores, filing records, with time to pace the deck, facing the exhilarating breeze. She thought of it as somehow akin to her own protected girlhood, neat, compartmental, guarded snugly by the ship's sides and bottom from monsters of the deep and by the sea itself from the ravening shores with their forests and beasts and wild men. Even after she knew what to expect on their arrival at Virginia shores, Rosalie still loved the voyage out.

  Actuality was the trip back, with every available square foot of deck space covered with stretchers and mattresses and cots, occupied by bearded, bandaged young men, most silent, some at times groaning, and every now and then one poor soul hideously shrieking at an amputation that could not be postponed till docking. The six matrons, including herself and Joanna, worked on watches, three at a time, four hours on and four off, doing everything that was asked of them. They stood by the doctors in operations; they assisted the male nurses in changing bandages and linen; they served food on trays; they talked to the men and helpe
d the disabled with their correspondence; they circulated among the beds to answer queries or receive complaints.

  Rosalie was surprised at how valuable the discipline of her background proved. She had anticipated just the opposite. She had feared that she might seem remote, awkward, "standoffish." But she discovered that the habit of deference enabled her to fit easily into a military hierarchy, and that it did not surprise her, as much as it did others, to find idiots in high rungs of the ladder of power. She also learned, although she had always been one to deprecate invidious class distinctions, that she had been brought up in so rooted a conviction of her family's superior position that she had no fear of "demeaning" tasks. She and Joanna would cheerfully help the black boys in the galley when the other matrons wouldn't.

  But there was also a more personal preparation, afforded by her own sentimental history. She wondered if she were not at last beginning to find that elusive "life of her own" that she had so long assumed would be provided, if at all, only by a husband. She had not, God knew, been a warmonger, and she had been revolted by the cheers and grandstanding that had accompanied the war's outbreak, but was it wrong to feel elevated—even purified—by ministering to the casualties of Armageddon? Was that, too, a kind of false patriotism?

  She had always speculated that, when Christ had bade his disciples to give up all—family, friends, property—to follow him, there might have been an actual relief to some in letting go the domestic packs so firmly strapped to their shoulders; that what was being given up might have provided as much motivation as what was to be striven for. Was she now in danger of that kind of backward approach to the light? How little she thought of Union Square and Fifth Avenue. How little she even thought of her own two boys! She was guilty, perhaps, of the hypocrisy of exaltation at her own sacrifice—when that sacrifice had really been a kind of cheerful bonfire.

  Work was the obvious answer to such doubts and questions. They occurred only when the hospital had been emptied. When it was full, there was little time for self-evaluation. Even when she sat with the dying, with no duty but to hold a hand, she trained herself to step outside of Rosalie Fair child and be only a calm, consoling presence. She had learned that at the end men hated any show of tears or pity.