VGUNNER CRISWELL
On an afternoon in late September, 1910, a shifting crowd, sometimes numbering a few score, sometimes a few hundred, stared at a massive monument on the battle-field of Gettysburg. The monument was not yet finished, sundry statues were lacking, and the ground about it was trampled and bare. But the main edifice was complete, the plates, on which were cast the names of all the soldiers from Pennsylvania who had fought in the battle, were in place, and near at hand the platform, erected for the dedicatory services on the morrow, was being draped with flags. The field of Gettysburg lacks no tribute which can be paid its martyrs.
The shifting crowd was part of the great army of veterans and their friends who had begun to gather for the dedication; these had come early to seek out their names, fixed firmly in enduring bronze on the great monument. Among them were two old men. The name of one was Criswell; he had been a gunner in Battery B, and was now blind. The explosion which had paralyzed the optic nerve had not disfigured him; his smooth-shaven face in its frame of thick, white hair was unmarred, and with his erect carriage and his strong frame he was extraordinarily handsome. The name of his friend, bearded, untidy, loquacious, was Carolus Depew.
Gettysburg opens wide not only its hospitable arms, but its heart, to the old soldier. Even now, after almost fifty years, the shadow of war is not yet fled away, the roaring of the guns of battle is not stilled. The old soldier finds himself appreciated, admired, cared for, beyond a merely adequate return for the money he brings into the town. Here he can talk of the battle with the proprietor of the hotel at which he stays, with the college professor, with the urchin on the street. Any citizen will leave his work to help find a certain house where wounds were dressed, or where women gave out bread, fresh and hot from the oven; or a certain well, from which life-saving, delicious drinks were quaffed. When there are great excursions or dedications such as this, the town is decorated, there is waving of flags, there are bursts of song.
No stretching of hospitable arms could shelter the vast crowd which gathered upon this occasion. The boarding-houses which accommodated ten guests during the ordinary summer traffic now took thirty, the hotels set up as many cot-beds as their halls would hold, the students of the college and the theological seminary shared their rooms or gave them up entirely, in faculty houses every room was filled, and all church doors were thrown wide. Yet many men—and old men—spent the night upon the street.
Gunner Criswell wondered often whether many lives ran like his, up and up to a sharp peak of happiness, then plunged down, down to inexpressible misery. As a boy he had been intensely happy, eager, ambitious, alive to all the glory of the world. He had married the girl whom he loved, and had afterward enlisted, scorning any fears that he might not return. On the second day of July, 1863, on his twenty-third birthday, he had lost his sight in an explosion on the battle-field of Gettysburg; on the same day his young wife had died in their faraway corner of the state, leaving a helpless baby to a blind and sick father.
To-day the daughter was middle-aged, the father old. They lived together on their little farm in Greene County, Ellen managing the farm and doing much of the work, Gunner Criswell making baskets. War had taken his sight, his wife, all his prospects for life; it had left him, he said, Ellen, and the fresh, clear mountain air, a strong pair of hands, and his own soul. Life had settled at last to a quiet level of peace. He had learned to read the raised language of the blind, but he could not afford many books. He was poor; owing to an irregularity in his enlistment the Government had not given him a pension, nor had any one taken the trouble to have the matter straightened out. The community was small and scattered, few persons knew him, and no Congressman needed his vote in that solidly Republican district. Nor was he entirely certain that the giving of pensions to those who could work was not a form of pauperization. He, for instance, had been pretty well handicapped, yet he had got on. He said to himself often that when one went to war one offered everything. If there was in his heart any faint, lingering bitterness because his country had done nothing for him, who had given her so much, he checked it sternly.
And, besides, he said often to himself with amusement, he had Carolus Depew!
It was Carolus who had told him, one evening in July, about the Pennsylvania monument. Carolus had served in a different regiment, without injury and with a thousand brave adventures. He was talking about them now.
"I'm going! I'm going back to that place. I could find it. I know where I knocked that feller down with the butt of my gun when my ammunition gave out. I know exactly where I stood when the captain said, 'Give 'em hell, Carolus!' The captain and me, we was pretty intimate."
The blind man smiled, his busy hands going on with their unending work. When he smiled, his face was indescribably beautiful; one's heart ached for the woman who fifty years ago had had to die and leave him.
"Ellen!" he called.
Ellen appeared in the doorway, in her short, unbecoming gingham dress. She had inherited none of her father's beauty, and the freshness of her youth was gone. She looked at her father kindly enough, but her voice was harsh. Ellen's life, too, had suffered from war.
"Ellen, Carolus wants me to go with him to Gettysburg in September. A great monument is to be dedicated, and Carolus says our names are to be on it. May I go?"
Ellen turned swiftly away. Sometimes her father's cheerfulness nearly broke her heart.
"I guess you can go if you want to."
"Thank you, Ellen."
"I've reckoned it all out," said Carolus. "We can do it for twenty dollars. We ought to get transportation. Somebody ought to make a present to the veterans, the Government ought to, or the trusts, or the railroads."
"Where will we stay?" asked Gunner Criswell. His hands trembled suddenly and he laid down the stiff reeds.
"They'll have places. I bet they'll skin us for board, though. The minute I get there I'm going straight to that monument to hunt for my name. They'll have us all arranged by regiments and companies. I'll find yours for you."
The hand of the blind man opened and closed. He could find his own name, thank Heaven! he could touch it, could press his palm upon it, know that it was there, feel it in his own soul—Adam Criswell. His calm vanished, his passive philosophy melted in the heat of old desires relit, desire for fame, for power, for life. He was excited, discontented, happy yet unhappy. Such an experience would crown his life; it would be all the more wonderful because it had never been dreamed of. That night he could not sleep. He saw his name, Adam Criswell, written where it would stand for generations to come. From that time on he counted the days, almost the hours, until he should start for Gettysburg.
Carolus Depew was a selfish person, for all his apparent devotion to his friend. Having arrived at Gettysburg, he had found the monument, and he had impatiently hunted for the place of Gunner Criswell's Battery B, and guided his hand to the raised letters, and then had left him alone.
"I've found it!" he shouted, a moment later. "'Carolus Depew, Corporal,' big as life. 'Carolus Depew, Corporal'! What do you think of that, say! It'll be here in a hundred years, 'Carolus Depew, Corporal'!"
Then Carolus wandered a little farther along the line of tablets and round to the other side of the great monument. Gunner Criswell called to him lightly, as though measuring the distance he had gone. When Carolus did not answer, Gunner Criswell spoke to a boy who had offered him souvenir postal cards. It was like him to take his joy quietly, intensely.
"Will you read the names of this battery for me?" he asked.
The boy sprang as though he had received a command. It was not only the man's blindness which won men and women and children; his blindness was seldom apparent; it was his air of power and strength.
The boy read the list slowly and distinctly, and then refused the nickel which Criswell offered him. In a moment Carolus returned, still thrilled by his own greatness, as excited as a child.
"We must hunt a place to stay now," he said. "This is a grand spot. There's monuments as far as the eye can reach. Come on. Ain't you glad to walk with 'Carolus Depew, Corporal'?"
It was three o'clock in the afternoon when Carolus left Gunner Criswell on a doorstep in Gettysburg and went in search of rooms. At a quarter to six the blind man still sat on the same spot. He was seventy years old and he was tired, and the cold step chilled him through. He did not dare to move; it seemed to him that thousands of persons passed and repassed. If he went away, Carolus could not find him. And where should he go? He felt tired and hungry and worn and old; his great experience of the afternoon neither warmed nor fed him; he wished himself back in his own place with his work and his peace of mind and Ellen.
Then, suddenly, he realized that some one was speaking to him. The voice was a woman's, low-pitched, a little imperious, the voice of one not accustomed to be kept waiting.
"Will you please move and let me ring this door-bell?"
Gunner Criswell sprang to his feet. He did not like to acknowledge his infirmity; it seemed always like bidding for sympathy. But now the words rushed from him, words than which there are none more heartrending.
"Madam, forgive me! I am blind."
A perceptible interval passed before the woman answered. Once Gunner Criswell thought she had gone away.
Instead she was staring at him, her heart throbbing. She laid her hand on his arm.
"Why do you sit here on the steps? Have you no place to stay?"
Gunner Criswell told her about Carolus.
"You must come to my house," she invited.
Gunner Criswell explained that he could not leave his friend. "He would be worried if he couldn't find me. He"—Gunner Criswell turned his head, then he smiled—"he is coming now. I can hear him."
Protesting, scolding, Carolus came down the street. He was with several other veterans, and all were complaining bitterly about the lack of accommodations. The lady looked at Carolus's untidiness, then back at the blind man.
"I can take you both," she said. "My name is Mrs. James, and I live on the college campus. Anybody can direct you. Tell the maid I sent you."
Mrs. James's house was large, and in it the two old men found a comfortable room, distinguished and delightful company, and a heart-warming dinner. There were five other guests, who like themselves had neglected to engage rooms beforehand—a famous general of the Civil War and four lesser officers. Professor James made them all welcome, and the two small boys made it plain that this was the greatest occasion of their lives. The dinner-table was arranged in a way which Carolus Depew had never seen; it was lit by candles and decked with the best of the asters from Mrs. James's garden. The officers wore their uniforms, Mrs. James her prettiest dress. Carolus appreciated all the grandeur, but he insisted to the blind man that it was only their due. It was paying a debt which society owed the veteran.
"This professor didn't fight," argued Carolus. "Why shouldn't he do this for us? They oughtn't to charge us a cent. But I bet they will."
Gunner Criswell, refreshed and restored, was wholly grateful. He listened to the pleasant talk, he heard with delight the lovely voice of his hostess, he felt beside him the fresh young body of his hostess's little son. Even the touch of the silver and china pleased him. His wife had brought from her home a few plates as delicate, a few spoons as heavy, and they had had long since to be sold.
Carolus helped the blind man constantly during the meal; he guided his hand to the bread-plate and gave him portions of food, all of which was entirely unnecessary. The blind man was much more deft than Carolus, and the maid was careful and interested and kind. All the guests except the general watched the blind man with admiration. The general talked busily and constantly at the other end of the table; it was not to be expected that he should notice a private soldier.
It was the general who had first proposed inscribing the names of all the soldiers on the great monument; the monument, though he was not a member of the building committee, was his dearest enterprise. Since the war the general had become a statistician; he was interested in lists and tabulations, he enjoyed making due return for value received, he liked to provide pensions, to place old soldiers comfortably in Soldiers' Homes. The war was long past; his memory had begun to grow dim; to his mind the lives of the soldiers would be completed, rounded, by this tribute, as his own would be by the statue of himself which should some day rise upon this field. It was he who had compiled the lists for this last and greatest roster; about it he talked constantly.
Presently, as the guests finished their coffee, one of the lesser officers asked the man next him a question about a charge, and then Professor James asked another, and the war changed suddenly from a thing of statistics and lists and pensions to what it actually was, a thing of horror, of infinite sacrifice, of heroism. Men drilled and marched and fought and suffered and prayed and were slain. The faces of theraconteursglowed, the eager voices of the questioners trembled. Once one of the officers made an effort to draw Gunner Criswell into speech, but Gunner Criswell was shy. He sat with his arm round the little boy, the candle-light shining on his beautiful face, listening with his whole soul. With Carolus it was different. Carolus had several times firmly to be interrupted.
In the morning Mrs. James took the blind man for a drive. The air was as fresh and clear as the air of his own mountains; the little boy sat on a stool between his feet and rested his shoulder against his knee. Mrs. James knew the field thoroughly; she made as plain as possible its topography, the main lines, the great charges, the open fields between the two ridges, the mighty rocks of Devil's Den, the almost impenetrable thickets. To Gunner Criswell, Gettysburg had been a little smoke-o'erlaid town seen faintly at the end of a long march, its recollection dimmed afterward by terrible physical pain. He realized now for the first time the great territory which the battle-lines inclosed, he understood the titanic grandeur of the event of which he had been a part, he breathed in also the present and enduring peace. He touched the old muzzle-loading cannon; the little boy guided his hand to the tiny tombstones in the long lines of graves of the unknown; he stood where Lincoln had stood, weary, heart-sick, despairing, in the fall of '63.
HE STOOD WHERE LINCOLN HAD STOOD
HE STOOD WHERE LINCOLN HAD STOOD
HE STOOD WHERE LINCOLN HAD STOOD
Then, strangely for him, Gunner Criswell began to talk. Something within him seemed to have broken, hidden springs of feeling seemed to well up in his heart. It was the talk of a man at peace with himself, reconciled, happy, conscious of his own value, sure of his place in the scheme of things. He talked as he had never talked in his life—of his youth, of his hopes, of his wife, of Ellen. It was almost more than Mrs. James could endure.
"It is coming back here that makes you feel like this," she said brokenly. "You realize how tremendous it was, and you know that you did your part and that you haven't been forgotten, that you were important in a great cause."
"Yes, ma'am," answered Gunner Criswell, in his old-fashioned way. "It is that exactly."
Mrs. James had little respect for rank as such. She and the great general, the four lesser officers, her husband and her two boys, were to drive together to the dedication that afternoon and to have seats on the platform, and thither she took Private Criswell. Carolus Depew was not sorry to be relieved of the care of the blind man; he had found some old comrades and was crazy with excitement.
"It is a good thing that she invited you," said Carolus, "because we are going to march, just like we used to, and you couldn't very well."
The dedication exercises were not long. To the blind man there was the singing which stirred his heart, there was the cool air in his face, there was the touch of the little boy's hand, there was Mrs. James's voice in explanation or description.
"There is the Governor!" cried Mrs. James. "He will pass right beside you. There is the Secretary of War. You can hear him talking to the Governor if you listen carefully. That deep voice is his.Canyou hear?"
"Oh, yes," answered the blind man happily.
He heard the speeches, he heard the music, he could tell by the wild shouting when the great enveloping flag drifted to the ground and the monument stood wholly unveiled; he could feel presently the vast crowd beginning to depart. He stood quietly while the great general near him laughed and talked, receiving the congratulations of great men, presenting the great men to Mrs. James; he heard other bursts of cheering, other songs. He was unspeakably happy.
Then suddenly he felt a strange hand on his arm. The general was close to him, was speaking to him; there was a silence all about them. The general turned him a little as he spoke toward the great bronze tablets with their record of the brave.
"You were in the army?" asked the general.
"Yes, sir."
"In what regiment?"
"I was in Battery B, sir."
"Then," said the general, "let us find your name."
Mrs. James came forward to the blind man's side. The general wished to make visible, actual, the rewarding of the soldier, and she was passionately thankful that it was upon this man that the general's eye had fallen.
But Gunner Criswell, to her astonishment, held back. Then he said an extraordinary thing for one who hesitated always to make his infirmity plain, and for one who could read the raised letters, who had read them, here on this very spot. He said again those three words, only a little less dreadful than the other three terrible words, "He is dead."
"Oh, sir," he cried, "I cannot read! I am blind!"
The general flung his arm across the blind man's shoulder. He was a tall man also, and magnificently made. It gave one a thrill to see them stand together.
"I will read for you."
"But, sir—" Still Gunner Criswell hung back, his hand clutching the little boy's, his beautiful, sightless eyes turned toward Mrs. James, as though he would have given anything to save her, to save any of them, pain. "It is not a question of reward, sir. I would endure it all again, gladly—everything. I don't count it, sir. But do not look for my name. It is chance, accident. It might have happened to any one, sir. It is not your fault. But my name has been omitted."