VIITHE RETREAT
Grandfather Myers rose stiffly from his knees. He had been weeding Henrietta's nasturtium bed, which, thanks to him, was always the finest in the neighborhood of Gettysburg. As yet, the plants were not more than three inches high, and the old man tended them as carefully as though they were children. He was thankful now that his morning's work was done, the wood-box filled, the children escorted part of the way to school, and the nasturtium bed weeded, for he saw the buggy of the mail-carrier of Route 4 come slowly down the hill. It was grandfather's privilege to bring the mail in from the box. This time he reached it before the postman, and waited smilingly for him. It always reminded him a little of his youth, when the old stone house behind him had been a tavern, and the stage drew up before it each morning with flourish of horn and proud curveting of horses.
The postman waved something white at him as he approached.
"Great news for Gettysburg," he called. "The state militia's coming to camp in July."
"You don't say so!" exclaimed Grandfather Myers.
"Yes, they'll be here a week."
"How many'll there be?"
"About ten thousand."
Grandfather started away in such excitement that the postman had to call him back to receive the newspaper. The old man took it and hobbled up the yard, his trembling hands scarcely able to unfold it. He paused twice to read a paragraph, and when he reached the porch he sat down on the upper step, the paper quivering in his hands.
"Henrietta!" he called.
His son's wife appeared in the doorway, a large, strong, young woman with snapping eyes. She was drying a platter and her arms moved vigorously.
"What is it, grandfather?" she asked impatiently.
The old man was so excited he could scarcely answer.
"There's going to be an encampment at Gettysburg, Henrietta. All the state troops is going to be here. It'll be like war-time again. It says here—"
"I like to read the paper my own self, father," said Henrietta, moving briskly away from the door. She felt a sudden anger that it was grandfather who had this great piece of news to tell. "You ain't taken your weeds away from the grass yet, and it's most dinner-time."
Grandfather laid down the paper and went to finish his task. He was accustomed to Henrietta's surliness, and nothing made him unhappy very long. He threw the weeds over the fence and then went back to the porch. So willing was he to forgive Henrietta, and so anxious to tell her more of the exciting news in the paper, that, sitting on the steps, he read her extracts.
"Ten thousand of 'em, Henrietta. They're going to camp around Pickett's Charge, and near the Codori Farm, and they're going to put the cavalry and artillery near Reynolds Woods, and some regulars are coming, Henrietta. It'll be like war-time. And they're going to have a grand review with the soldiers marchin' before the Governor. The Governor'll be there, Henrietta! And—"
"I don't believe it's true," remarked Henrietta coldly. "I believe it's just newspaper talk."
"Oh, no, Henrietta!" Grandfather spoke with deep conviction. "There wouldn't be no cheatin' about such a big thing as this. The Government'd settle them if they'd publish lies. And—" grandfather rose in his excitement—"there'll be cannons a-boomin' and guns a-firin' and oh, my!" He waved the paper above his head. "And the review! I guess you ain't ever seen so many men together. But I have. I tell you I have. When I laid upstairs here, with the bullet in here"—he laid his hand upon his chest—"I seen 'em goin'." Grandfather's voice choked as the voice of one who speaks of some tremendous experience of his past. "I seen 'em goin'. Men and men and men and horses and horses and wagons. They was millions, Henrietta."
Henrietta did not answer. She said to herself that she had heard the account of grandfather's millions of men millions of times. Wounded at Chancellorsville, and sent home on furlough, he had watched the Confederate retreat from an upper window of the old stone house.
"I woke up in the night, and I looked out," he would say. "Everybody was sleepin' and I crept over to the window. It was raining like"—here grandfather's long list of comparisons failed, and he described it simply—"it was just rain and storm and marchin'. They kept going and going. It was tramp, tramp all night."
"Didn't anybody speak, grandfather?" the children would ask.
"You couldn't hear 'em for the rain," he would answer. "Once in a while you could hear 'em cryin'. But most of the time it was just rain and storm, rain and storm. They couldn't go fast, they—"
"Why didn't our boys catch them?" little Caleb always asked. "I'd 'a' run after them."
"Our boys was tired." Grandfather dismissed the Union army with one short sentence. "The rebels kept droppin' in their tracks. There was two dead front of the porch in the morning, and three across the bridge. I tried to sneak out in the night and give 'em something to eat, or ask some of 'em to come in, but the folks said I was too sick. They wouldn't let me go. I—"
"It would 'a' been a nice thing to help the enemies of your country that you'd been fightin' against!" Henrietta would sometimes say scornfully.
"You didn't see 'em marchin' and hear the sick ones cryin' when the rain held up a little," he reminded Henrietta. "Oh, I wish I'd sneaked out and done something for 'em!"
Then he would lapse into silence, his eyes on the long, red road which led to Hagerstown. It lay now clear and hot and treeless in the sunshine; to his vision, however, the dust was whipped into deep mud by a beating rain, beneath which Lee and his army "marched and marched." He leaned forward as though straining to see.
"I saw some flags once when it lightened," he said; "and once I thought I saw General Lee."
"Oh, I guess not!" Henrietta would answer with scornful indulgence to which grandfather was deaf.
He read the newspaper announcement of the encampment again and again, then he went to meet the children on their way from school, stopping to tell their father, who was at work in the field.
"There'll be a grand review," grandfather said. "Ten thousand soldiers in line. We'll go to it, John. It'll be a great day for the young ones."
"We'll see," answered John.
He was a brisk, energetic man, too busy to be always patient.
In the children grandfather had his first attentive listeners.
"Will it be like the war?" they asked, eagerly.
"Oh, something. There won't be near so many, and they won't kill nobody. But it'll be a great time. They'll drill all day long."
"Will their horses' hoofs sound like dry leaves rustlin'?" asked little Mary, who always remembered most clearly what the old man had said.
"Yes, like leaves a-rustlin'," repeated the old man. "You must be good children, now, so you don't miss the grand review."
All through the early summer they talked of the encampment. Because of it the annual Memorial Day visit to the battle-field was omitted. Each night the children heard the story of the battle and the retreat, until they listened for commands, faintly given, and the sound of thousands of weary feet. Grandfather often got up in the night and looked out across the yard to the road. Sometimes they heard him whispering to himself as he went back to bed. He got down his old sword and spent many hours trying to polish away the rust which had been gathering for forty years.
"You expect to wear the sword, father?" asked Henrietta, laughing.
News of the encampment reached them constantly. Three weeks before it opened, they were visited by a man who wished to hire horses for the use of the cavalry and the artillery. John debated for a moment. The wheat was in, the oats could wait until the encampment was over, the price paid for horse hire was good. He told the man that he might have Dick, one of the heavy draft horses.
Grandfather ran to meet the children as they came from a neighbor's.
"Dick's going to the war," he cried excitedly.
"To the war?" repeated the children.
"I mean to the encampment. He's been hired. He's going to help pull one of the cannons for the artill'ry."
The next week John drove into town with a load of early apples. He was offered work at a dozen different places. Supplies were being sent in, details of soldiers were beginning to lay out the camp and put up tents, Gettysburg was already crowded with visitors. Grandfather made him tell it all the second time; then he explained the formation of an army to the children.
"First comes a company, that's the smallest, then a regiment, then a brigade. A quartermaster looks after supplies, a sutler is a fellow who sells things to the soldiers. But, children, you should 'a' seen 'em marching by that night!" Grandfather always came back to the retreat. "They hadn't any sutlers to sell 'em anything to eat. I wish—I wish I'd sneaked out and given 'em something."
After grandfather went upstairs that night he realized that he was thirsty, and he came down again. The children were asleep, but their father and mother still sat talking on the porch. Grandfather had taken off his shoes and came upon them before they were aware.
"I don't see no use in his going," Henrietta was saying. "There ain't no room for him in the buggy with us and the children. Where'd we put him? And he saw the real war."
"But he's looked forward to it, Henrietta, he—"
"Well, would you have me stay at home, or would you have the children stay at home, or what?" Henrietta felt the burden of Grandfather Myers more every day. "He'll forget it anyhow in a few days. He forgets everything."
"Do you—do you—" They turned to see grandfather behind them. He held weakly to the side of the door. "Do you mean I ain't to go, Henrietta?"
It did not occur to him to appeal to his son.
"I don't see how you can," answered Henrietta. She was sorry he had heard. She meant to have John tell him gently the next day. "There is only the buggy, and if John goes and I and the children—it's you have made them so anxious to go."
She spoke as though she blamed him.
"But—" Grandfather ignored the meanness of the excuse. "But couldn't we take the wagon?"
"The wagon? To Gettysburg? With the whole country looking on? I guess they'd think John was getting along fine if we went in the wagon." Henrietta was glad to have so foolish a speech to answer as it deserved. "Why, grandfather!"
"Then"—grandfather's brain, which had of late moved more and more slowly, was suddenly quickened—"then let me drive the wagon and you can go in the buggy. I can drive Harry and nobody'll know I belong to you, and—"
"Let you drive round with all them horses and the shooting and everything!" exclaimed Henrietta.
Her husband turned toward her.
"You might drive the buggy and take grandfather, and I could go in the wagon," he said.
"I don't go to Gettysburg without a man on such a day," said Henrietta firmly.
"But—" Grandfather interrupted his own sentence with a quavering laugh. Henrietta did not consider him a man!
Then he turned and went upstairs, forgetting his drink of water. He heard Henrietta's voice long afterward, and John's low answers. John wanted him to go, he did not blame John.
The next day he made a final plea. He followed John to the barn.
"Seems as if I might ride Harry," he said tentatively.
"O father, you couldn't," John answered gently. "You know how it will be, noise and confusion and excitement. Harry isn't used to it. You couldn't manage him."
"Seems as though if Dick goes, Harry ought to go, too. 'Tain't fair for Dick to go, and not Harry," he whispered childishly.
"I'm sorry, father," said John.
It was better that his father should be disappointed than that Henrietta should be opposed. His father would forget in a few days and Henrietta would remember for weeks.
The next day when the man came for Dick they found grandfather in the stable patting the horse and talking about the war. He watched Dick out of sight, and then sat down in his armchair on the porch whispering to himself.
The children protested vigorously when they found that the old man was not going, but they were soon silenced by their mother. Grandfather was old, it was much better that he should not go.
"You can tell him all about it when you come home," she said.
"You can guard the place while we're gone, Grandfather," suggested little Caleb. "Perhaps the Confederates will come back."
"They wouldn't hurt nothing," answered the old man. "They was tired—tired—tired."
When the family drove away he sat on the porch. He waved his hand until he could see little Mary's fluttering handkerchief no more, then he fell asleep. As Henrietta said, he soon forgot. When he woke up a little later, he went down to the barn and patted Harry, then he went out to the mail-box to see whether by any chance he had missed a letter. He looked at the nasturtium bed, now aglow with yellow and orange and deep crimson blossoms, then he went back to the porch. He was lonely. He missed the sound of John's voice calling to the horses down in the south meadow or across the road in the wheat-field, he missed the chatter of the children, he missed even their mother's curt answers to his questions. For an instant he wondered where they had gone, then he sighed heavily as he remembered. Instead of sitting down again in his chair, he went into the house and upstairs. There he tiptoed warily up to the garret as if he were afraid that some one would follow him, and drew from a hiding-place which he fancied no one knew but himself an old coat, blue, with buttons of dull, tarnished brass. He thrust his arms into it, still whispering to himself, and smoothed it down. His fingers hesitated as they touched a jagged rent just in front of the shoulder.
"What— Oh, yes, I remember!"
Grandfather had never been quite so forgetful as this. On his way downstairs he took from its hook his old sword.
"Caleb says I must guard the house," he said smilingly.
When he reached the porch, he turned his chair so that it no longer faced toward Gettysburg, whither John and Henrietta and the children had gone, but toward the blue hills and Hagerstown. Once he picked up the sword and pointed with it, steadying it with both hands. "Through that gap they went," he said.
Then he dozed again. The old clock, which had stood on the kitchen mantelpiece since before he was born, struck ten, but he did not hear. Henrietta had told him where he could find some lunch, but he did not remember nor care. His dinner was set out beneath a white cloth on the kitchen table, but he had not curiosity enough to lift it and see what good things Henrietta had left for him. When he woke again, he began to sing in a shrill voice:—
"Away down South in Dixie,Look away, look away."
"Away down South in Dixie,Look away, look away."
"Away down South in Dixie,Look away, look away."
"Away down South in Dixie,
Look away, look away."
"They didn't sing that when they was marching home," he said solemnly. "They only tramped along in the dark and rain."
Then suddenly he straightened up. Like an echo from his own lips, there came from the distance toward Gettysburg the same tune, played by fifes, with the dull accompaniment of drums. He bent forward, listening, then stood up, looking off toward the blue hills. At once he realized that the sound came from the other direction.
"I thought they was all past, long ago," he said. "And they never played. I guess I was asleep and dreaming."
He sat down once more, his head on his breast. When he lifted it, it was in response to a sharp "Halt!" He stared about him. The road before him was filled with soldiers, in dusty yellow uniforms. Then he was not dreaming, then—He tottered to the edge of the porch.
The men of the Third Regiment of the National Guard of Pennsylvania did not approve of the march, in their parlance a "hike," which their colonel had decided to give them along the line of Lee's retreat. They felt that just before the grand review in the afternoon, it was an imposition. They were glad to halt, while the captain of each company explained that upon the night of the third of July, 1863, Lee had traversed this road on his way to recross the Potomac.
When his explanation was over, the captain of Company I moved his men a little to the right under the shade of the maples. From there he saw the moving figure behind the vines.
"Sergeant, go in and ask whether we may have water."
THEY SAW THE STRANGE OLD FIGURE ON THE PORCH.
THEY SAW THE STRANGE OLD FIGURE ON THE PORCH.
THEY SAW THE STRANGE OLD FIGURE ON THE PORCH.
The sergeant entered the gate, and the thirsty men, hearing the order, looked after him. They saw the strange old figure on the porch, the torn blue jacket belted at the waist, the sword, the smiling, eager face. The captain saw, too.
"Three cheers for the old soldier," he cried, and hats were swung in the air.
"May we have a drink?" the sergeant asked, and grandfather pointed the way to the well.
He tried to go down the steps to help them pump, but his knees trembled, and he stayed where he was. He watched them, still smiling. He did not realize that the cheers were for him, he could not quite understand why suits which should be gray were so yellow, but he supposed it was the mud.
"Poor chaps," he sighed. "They're goin' back to Dixie."
One by one the companies drew up before the gate, and one by one they cheered. They had been cheering ever since the beginning of the encampment—for Meade, for Hancock, for Reynolds, among the dead; for the Governor, the colonel, the leader of the regiment band, among the living. They had enlisted for a good time, for a trip to Gettysburg, for a taste of camp-life, from almost any other motive than that which had moved this old man to enlist in '61. They suddenly realized how little this encampment was like war. All the drill, all the pomp of this tin soldiering, even all the graves of the battle-field, had not moved them as did this old man in his tattered coat. Here was love of country. Would any of them care to don in fifty years their khaki blouses? Then, before the momentary enthusiasm or the momentary seriousness had time to wear away, the order was given to march back to camp.
The old man did not turn to watch them go. He sat still with his eyes upon the distant hills. After a while his sword fell clattering to the floor.
"I'm glad I sneaked out and gave 'em something," he said, smiling with a great content.
The long leaves of the corn in the next field rustled in the wind, the sun rose higher, then declined, and still he sat there smilingly unheeding, his eyes toward the west. Once he said, "Poor chaps, it's dark for 'em."
The cows waited at the pasture gate for the master and mistress, who were late. Henrietta had wished that morning that grandfather could milk, so that they would not have to hurry home. Presently they came, tired and hungry, the children eager to tell of the wonders they had seen. At their mother's command, they ran to let down the pasture bars while their father led the horses to the barn, and she herself went on to the porch.
"Grandfather," she said kindly, "we're here." She even laid her hand on his shoulder. "Wake up, grandfather!" She spoke sharply, angry at his failure to respond to her unaccustomed gentleness of speech. Her hand fell upon his shoulder once more, this time heavily, and her finger-tips touched a jagged edge of cloth. "What—" she began. She remembered the old coat, which she had long since made up her mind to burn. She felt for the buttons down the front, the belt with its broad plate. Yes, it was—Then suddenly she touched his hands, and screamed and ran, crying, toward the barn.
"John!" she called. "John! Grandfather is dead."