IITHE HOME-COMING
Parsons knew little of the great wave of protest that swept over the Army of the Potomac when Hooker was replaced by Meade. The sad depression of the North, sick at heart since December, did not move him; he was too thoroughly occupied with his own sensations. He sat alone, when his comrades would leave him alone, brooding, his terror equally independent of victory or defeat. The horror of war appalled him. He tried to reconstruct the reasons for his enlisting, but found it impossible. The war had made of him a stranger to himself. He could scarcely visualize the little farm that he had left, or his mother. Instead of the farm, he saw corpse-strewn fields; instead of his mother, the mutilated bodies of young men. His senses seemed unable to respond to any other stimuli than those of war. He had not been conscious of the odors of the sweet Maryland spring, or of the song of mocking-birds; his nostrils were full of the smell of blood, his ears of the cries of dying men.
Worse than the recollection of what he had seen were the forebodings that filled his soul. In a day—yes, an hour, for the rumors of coming battle forced themselves to his unwilling ears—he might be as they. Presently he too would lie, staring, horrible, under the Maryland sky.
The men in his company came gradually to leave him to himself. At first they thought no less of him because he was afraid. They had all been afraid. They discussed their sensations frankly as they sat round the camp-fire, or lay prone on the soft grass of the fields.
"Scared!" laughed the oldest member of the company, who was speaking chiefly for the encouragement of Parsons, whom he liked. "My knees shook, and my chest caved in. Every bullet killed me. But by the time I'd been dead about forty times, I saw the Johnnies, and something hot got into my throat, and I got over it."
"And weren't you afraid afterwards?" asked Parsons, trying to make his voice sound natural.
"No, never."
"But I was," confessed another man. His face was bandaged, and blood oozed through from the wound that would make him leer like a satyr for the rest of his life. "I get that way every time. But I get over it. I don't get hot in my throat, but my skin prickles."
Young Parsons walked slowly away, his legs shaking visibly beneath him.
Adams turned on his side and watched him.
"Got it bad," he said shortly. Then he lay once more on his back and spread out his arms. "God, but I'm sick of it! And if Lee's gone into Pennsylvania, and we're to chase him, and old Joe's put out, the Lord knows what'll become of us. I bet you a pipeful of tobacco, there ain't one of us left by this time next week. I bet you—"
The man with the bandaged face did not answer. Then Adams saw that Parsons had come back and was staring at him.
"Ain't Hooker in command no more?" he asked.
"No; Meade."
"And we're going to Pennsylvania?"
"Guess so." Adams sat upright, the expression of kindly commiseration on his face changed to one of disgust. "Brace up, boy. What's the matter with you?"
Parsons sat down beside him. His face was gray; his blue eyes, looking out from under his little forage-cap, closed as though he were swooning.
"I CAN'T STAND IT," HE SAID THICKLY
"I CAN'T STAND IT," HE SAID THICKLY
"I CAN'T STAND IT," HE SAID THICKLY
"I can't stand it," he said thickly. "I can see them all day, and hear them all night, all the groaning—I—"
The old man pulled from his pocket a little bag. It contained his last pipeful of tobacco, the one that he had been betting.
"Take that. You got to get such things out of your head. It won't do. The trouble with you is that ever since you've enlisted, this company's been hanging round the outside. You ain't been in a battle. One battle'll cure you. You got to get over it."
"Yes," repeated the boy. "I got to get over it."
He lay down beside Adams, panting. The moon, which would be full in a few days, had risen; the sounds of the vast army were all about them—the click of tin basin against tin basin, the stamping of horses, the oaths and laughter of men. Some even sang. The boy, when he heard them, said, "Oh, God!" It was his one exclamation. It had broken from his lips a thousand times, not as a prayer or as an imprecation, but as a mixture of both. It seemed the one word that could represent the indescribable confusion of his mind. He said again, "Oh, God! Oh, God!"
It was not until two days later, when they had been for hours on the march, that he realized that they were approaching the little Pennsylvania town where he lived. He had been marching almost blindly, his eyes nearly closed, still contemplating his own misery and fear. He could not discuss with his comrades the next day's prospects, he did not know enough about the situation to speculate. Adams's hope that there would be a battle brought to his lips the familiar "Oh, God!" He had begun to think of suicide.
It was almost dark once more when they stumbled into a little town. Its streets, washed by rains, had been churned to thick red mud by thousands of feet and wheels. The mud clung to Parsons's worn shoes; it seemed to his half-crazy mind like blood. Then, suddenly, his gun dropped with a wild clatter to the ground.
"It's Taneytown!" he called wildly. "It's Taneytown."
Adams turned upon him irritably. He was almost too tired to move.
"What if it is Taneytown?" he thundered. "Pick up your gun, you young fool."
"But it's only ten miles from home!"
The shoulder of the man behind him sent Parsons sprawling. He gathered himself up and leaped into his place by Adams's side. His step was light.
"Ten miles from home! We're only ten miles from home!"—he said it as though the evil spirits which had beset him had been exorcised. He saw the little whitewashed farmhouse, the yellowing wheat-fields beside it; he saw his mother working in the garden, he heard her calling.
Presently he began to look furtively about him. If he could only get away, if he could get home, they could never find him. There were many places where he could hide, holes and caverns in the steep, rough slopes of Big Round Top, at whose foot stood his mother's little house. They could never find him. He began to speak to Adams tremulously.
"When do you think we'll camp?"
Adams answered him sharply.
"Not to-night. Don't try any running-away business, boy. 'Tain't worth while. They'll shoot you. Then you'll be food for crows."
The boy moistened his parched lips.
"I didn't say anything about running away," he muttered. But hope died in his eyes.
It did not revive when, a little later, they camped in the fields, trampling the wheat ready for harvest, crushing down the corn already waist-high, devouring their rations like wolves, then falling asleep almost on their feet.
Well indeed might they sleep heavily, dully, undisturbed by cry of picket or gallop of returning scout. The flat country lay clear and bright in the moonlight; to the north-west they could almost see the low cone of Big Round Top, to which none then gave a thought, not even Parsons himself, who lay with his tanned face turned up toward the sky. Once his sunken eyes opened, but he did not remember that now, if ever, he must steal away, over his sleeping comrades, past the picket-line, and up the long red road toward home. He thought of home no more, nor of fear; he lay like a dead man.
It was a marvelous moonlit night. All was still as though round Gettysburg lay no vast armies, seventy thousand Southerners to the north, eighty-five thousand Northerners to the south. They lay or moved quietly, like great octopi, stretching out, now and then, grim tentacles, which touched or searched vainly. They knew nothing of the quiet, academic town, lying in its peaceful valley away from the world for which it cared little. Mere chance decreed that on the morrow its name should stand beside Waterloo.
Parsons whimpered the next morning when he heard the sound of guns. He knew what would follow. In a few hours the firing would cease; then they would march, wildly seeking an enemy that seemed to have vanished, or covering the retreat of their own men; and there would be once more all the ghastly sounds and cries. But the day passed, and they were still in the red fields.
It was night when they began to march once more. All day the sounds of firing had echoed faintly from the north, bringing fierce rage to the hearts of some, fear to others, and dread unspeakable to Parsons. He did not know how the day passed. He heard the guns, he caught glimpses now and then of messengers galloping to headquarters; he sat with bent head and staring eyes. Late in the afternoon the firing ceased, and he said over and over again, "Oh, God, don't let us go that way! Oh, God, don't let us go that way!" He did not realize that the noise came from the direction of Gettysburg, he did not comprehend that "that way" meant home, he felt no anxiety for the safety of his mother; he knew only that, if he saw another dead or dying man, he himself would die. Nor would his death be simply a growing unconsciousness; he would suffer in his body all the agony of the wounds upon which he looked.
The great octopus of which he was a part did not feel in the least the spark of resistance in him, one of the smallest of the particles that made up its vast body. When the moon had risen, he was drawn in toward the centre with the great tentacle to which he belonged. The octopus suffered; other vast arms were bleeding and almost severed. It seemed to shudder with foreboding for the morrow.
Round Top grew clear before them as they marched. The night was blessedly cool and bright, and they went as though by day, but fearfully, each man's ears strained to hear. It was like marching into the crater of a volcano which, only that afternoon, had been in fierce eruption. It was all the more horrible because now they could see nothing but the clear July night, hear nothing but the soft sounds of summer. There was not even a flag of smoke to warn them.
They caught, now and again, glimpses of men hiding behind hedge-rows, then hastening swiftly away.
"Desertin'," said Adams grimly.
"What did you say?" asked Parsons.
He had heard distinctly enough, but he longed for the sound of Adams's voice. When Adams repeated the single word, Parsons did not hear. He clutched Adams by the arm.
"You see that hill, there before us?"
"Yes."
"Gettysburg is over that hill. There's the cemetery. My father's buried there."
Adams looked in under the tall pines. He could see the white stones standing stiffly in the moonlight.
"We're goin' in there," he said. "Keep your nerve up there, boy."
Adams had seen other things besides the white tombstones, things that moved faintly or lay quietly, or gave forth ghastly sounds. He was conscious, by his sense of smell, of the army about him and of the carnage that had been.
Parsons, strangely enough, had neither heard nor smelled. A sudden awe came upon him; the past returned: he remembered his father, his mother's grief at his death, his visits with her to the cemetery. It seemed to him that he was again a boy stealing home from a day's fishing in Rock Creek, a little fearful as he passed the cemetery gate. He touched Adams's arm shyly before he began to sling off his knapsack and to lie down as his comrades were doing all about him.
"That is my father's grave," he whispered.
Then, before the kindly answer sprang from Adams's lips, a gurgle came into Parsons's throat as though he were dying. One of the apparitions that Adams had seen lifted itself from the grass, leaving behind dark stains. The clear moonlight left no detail of the hideous wounds to the imagination.
"Parsons!" cried Adams sharply.
But Parsons had gone, leaping over the graves, bending low by the fences, dashing across an open field, then losing himself in the woodland. For a moment Adams's eyes followed him, then he saw that the cemetery and the outlying fields were black with ten thousand men. It would be easy for Parsons to get away.
"No hope for him," he said shortly, as he set to work to do what he could for the maimed creature at his feet. Dawn, he knew, must be almost at hand; he fancied that the moonlight was paling. He was almost crazy for sleep, sleep that he would need badly enough on the morrow, if he were any prophet of coming events.
Parsons, also, was aware of the tens of thousands of men about him, to him they were dead or dying men. He staggered as he ran, his feet following unconsciously the path that took him home from fishing, along the low ridge, past scattered farmhouses, toward the cone of Round Top. It seemed to him that dead men leaped at him and tried to stop him, and he ran ever faster. Once he shrieked, then he crouched in a fence-corner and hid. He would have been ludicrous, had the horrors from which he fled been less hideous.
He, too, felt the dawn coming, as he saw his mother's house. He sobbed like a little child, and, no longer keeping to the shade, ran across the open fields. There were no dead men here, thank God! He threw himself frantically at the door, and found it locked. Then he drew from the window the nail that held it down, and crept in. He was ravenously hungry, and his hands made havoc in the familiar cupboard. He laughed as he found cake, and the loved "drum-sticks" of his childhood.
He did not need to slip off his shoes for fear of waking his mother, for the shoes had no soles; but he stooped down and removed them with trembling hands. Then a great peace seemed to come into his soul. He crept on his hands and knees past his mother's door, and climbed to his own little room under the eaves, where, quite simply, as though he were a little boy, and not a man deserting from the army on the eve of a battle, he said his prayers and went to bed.
When he awoke, it was late afternoon. He thought at first that he had been swinging, and had fallen; then he realized that he still lay quietly in his bed. He stretched himself, reveling in the blessed softness, and wondering why he felt as though he had been brayed in a mortar. Then a roar of sound shut out possibility of thought. The little house shook with it. He covered his ears, but he might as well have spared himself his pains. That sound could never be shut out, neither then, nor for years afterward, from the ears of those who heard it. There were many who would hear no other sound forevermore. The coward began again his whining, "Oh, God! Oh, God!" His nostrils were full of smoke; he could smell already the other ghastly odors that would follow. He lifted himself from his bed, and, hiding his eyes from the window, felt his way down the steep stairway. He meant, God help him! to go and hide his face in his mother's lap. He remembered the soft, cool smoothness of her gingham apron.
Gasping, he staggered into her room. But his mother was not there. The mattress and sheets from her bed had been torn off; one sheet still trailed on the floor. He picked it up and shook it. He was imbecile enough to think she might be beneath it.
"Mother!" he shrieked "Mother! Mother!" forgetting that even in that little room she could not have heard him. He ran through the house, shouting. Everywhere it was the same—stripped beds, cupboards flung wide, the fringe of torn curtains still hanging. His mother was not there.
His terror drove him finally to the window overlooking the garden. It was here that he most vividly remembered her, bending over her flower-beds, training the tender vines, pulling weeds. She must be here. In spite of the snarl of guns, she must be here. But the garden was a waste, the fence was down. He saw only the thick smoke beyond, out of which crept slowly toward him half a dozen men with blackened faces and blood-stained clothes, again his dead men come to life. He saw that they wore his own uniform, but the fact made little impression upon him. Was his mother dead? Had she been killed yesterday, or had they taken her away last night or this morning while he slept? He saw that the men were coming nearer to the house, creeping slowly on through the thick smoke. He wondered vaguely whether they were coming for him as they had come for his mother. Then he saw, also vaguely, on the left, another group of men, stealing toward him, men who did not wear his uniform, but who walked as bravely as his own comrades.
He knew little about tactics, and his brain was too dull to realize that the little house was the prize they sought. It was marvelous that it had remained unpossessed so long, when a tiny rock or a little bush was protection for which men struggled. The battle had surged that way; the little house was to become as famous as the Peach Orchard or the Railroad Cut, it was to be the "Parsons House" in history. Of this Parsons had no idea; he only knew, as he watched them, that his mother was gone, his house despoiled.
Then, suddenly, rage seized upon him, driving out fear. It was not rage with the men in gray, creeping so steadily upon him—he thought of them as men like himself, only a thousand times more brave—it was rage with war itself, which drove women from their homes, which turned young men into groaning apparitions. And because he felt this rage, he too must kill. He knelt down before the window, his gun in his hand. He had carried it absently with him the night before, and he had twenty rounds of ammunition. He took careful aim: his hand, thanks to his mother's food and his long sleep, was quite steady; and he pulled the trigger.
At first, both groups of men halted. The shot had gone wide. They had seen the puff of smoke, but they had no way of telling whether it was friend or foe who held the little house. There was another puff, and a man in gray fell. The men in blue hastened their steps, even yet half afraid, for the field was broad, and to cross it was madness unless the holders of the house were their own comrades. Another shot went wide, another man in gray dropped, and another, and the men in blue leaped on, yelling. Not until then did Parsons see that there were more than twice as many men in gray as men in blue. The men in gray saw also, and they, too, ran. The little house was worth tremendous risks. Another man bounded into the air and rolled over, blood spurting from his mouth, and the man behind him stumbled over him. There were only twelve now. Then there were eleven. But they came on—they were nearer than the men in blue. Then another fell, and another. It seemed to Parsons that he could go on forever watching them. He smiled grimly at the queer antics that they cut, the strange postures into which they threw themselves. Then another fell, and they wavered and turned. One of the men in blue stopped at the edge of the garden to take deliberate aim, but Parsons, grinning, also leveled his gun once more. He wondered, a little jealously, which of them had killed the man in gray.
The six men, rushing in, would not believe that he was there alone. They looked at him, admiringly, grim, bronzed as they were, the veterans of a dozen battles. They did not think of him for an instant as a boy; his eyes were the eyes of a man who had suffered and who had known the hot pleasures of revenge. It was he who directed them now in fortifying the house, he who saw the first sign of the creeping Confederates making another sally from the left, he who led them into the woods when, reinforced by a hundred of their comrades, they used the little house only as a base toward which to retreat. They had never seen such fierce rage as his. The sun sank behind the Blue Ridge, and he seemed to regret that the day of blood was over. He was not satisfied that they held the little house; he must venture once more into the dark shadows of the woodland.
From there his new-found comrades dragged him helpless. His enemies, powerless against him by day, had waited until he could not see them. His comrades carried him into the house, where they had made a dim light. The smoke of battle seemed to be lifting; there was still sharp firing, but it was silence compared to what had been, peace compared to what would be on the morrow.
They laid him on the floor of the little kitchen, and looked at the wide rent in his neck, and lifted his limp arm, not seeing that a door behind them had opened quietly, and that a woman had come up from the deep cellar beneath the house. There was not a cellar within miles that did not shelter frightened women and children. Parsons's mother, warned to flee, had gone no farther. She appeared now, a ministering angel. In her cellar was food in plenty; there were blankets, bandages, even pillows for bruised and aching heads. Heaven grant that some one would thus care for her boy in the hour of his need!
The men watched Parsons's starting eyes, thinking they saw death. They would not have believed that it was Fear that had returned upon him, their brave captain. They would have said that he never could have been afraid. He put his hand up to his torn throat. His breath came in thick gasps. He muttered again, "Oh, God! Oh, God!"
Then, suddenly, incomprehensibly to the men who did not see the gracious figure behind them, peace ineffable came into his blue eyes.
"Why,mother!" he said softly.