Woolson Constance Fenimore
Anne: A Novel

CHAPTER XXIII

 
"War! war! war!
A thunder-cloud in the south in the early spring —
The launch of a thunder-bolt; and then,
With one red flare, the lightning stretched its wing,
And a rolling echo roused a million men."
 

– Edmund Clarence Stedman.

April. The sound of military music; the sound of feet keeping step exactly, and overcoming by its regularity the noise of thousands of other feet hurrying on irregularly in front of them, abreast of them, and behind them. A crowd in the square so dense that no one could pass through; the tree branches above black with boys; the windows all round the four sides filled with heads. And everywhere women pressing forward, waving handkerchiefs, some pallid, some flushed, but all deeply excited, forgetful of self, with eyes fixed on the small compact lines of military caps close together, moving steadily onward in the midst of the accompanying throng. And happy the one who had a place in the front rank: how she gazed! If a girl, no matter how light of heart and frivolous, a silence and soberness came over her for a moment, and her eyes grew wistful. If a woman, one who had loved, no matter how hard and cold she had grown, a warmer heart came back to her then, and tears rose. What was it? Only a few men dressed in the holiday uniform these towns-people had often seen; men many of whom they knew well, together with their shortcomings and weaknesses, whose military airs they had laughed at; men who, taken singly, had neither importance nor interest. What was it, then, that made the women's eyes tearful, and sent the great crowd thronging round and after them as though each one had been crowned king? What made the groups on the steps and piazzas of each house keep silence after they had passed, and watch them as long as they could distinguish the moving lines? It was that these men had made the first reply of this town to the President's call. It was because these holiday soldiers were on their way to real battle-fields, where balls would plough through human flesh, and leave agony and death behind. The poorest, dullest, soldier who was in these ranks from a sense of loyalty, however dim and inarticulate it might be, gave all he had: martyr or saint never gave more. Not many of the gazing people thought of this; but they did think of death by bayonet and ball as the holiday ranks marched by.

Down through the main street went the little troop, and the crowd made a solid wall on the sidewalk, and a moving guard before and behind. From the high windows above, the handkerchiefs of the work-girls fluttered, while underneath from the law offices, and below from the door-ways, men looked out soberly, realizing that this meant War indeed – real and near War.

By another way, down the hill toward the railway-station, rattled the wheels of an artillery company; also a little holiday troop, with holiday guns shining brightly. The men sat in their places with folded arms; the crowd, seeing them, knew them all. They were only Miller, and Sieberling, and Wagner, and others as familiar; six months ago – a month ago – they would have laughed inexhaustibly at the idea of calling Tom Miller a hero, or elevating Fritz Wagner to any other pedestal than the top of a beer barrel. But now, as they saw them, they gave a mighty cheer, which rang through the air splendidly, and raised a hue of pride upon the faces of the artillerymen, and perhaps the first feeling in some of their hearts higher than the determination not to "back out," which had been until then their actuating motive. The two shining little guns rattled down the hill; the infantry company marched down behind them. The line of cars, with locomotive attached, was in waiting, and, breaking ranks, helter-skelter, in any way and every way, hindered by hand-shaking, by all sorts of incongruous parting gifts thrust upon them at the last moment by people they never saw before, blessed by excited, tearful women, made heart-sick themselves by the sight of the grief of their mothers and wives, the soldiers took their places in the cars, and the train moved out from the station, followed by a long cheer, taken up and repeated again and again, until nothing but a dark speck on the straight track remained for the shouters to look at, when they stopped suddenly, hoarse and tired, and went silently homeward, pondering upon this new thing which had come into their lives. The petty cares of the day were forgotten. "War is hideous; but it banishes littleness from daily life."

Anne, brought up as she had been in a remote little community, isolated and half foreign, was in a measure ignorant of the causes and questions of the great struggle which began in America in April, 1861. Not hers the prayerful ardor of the New England girl who that day willingly gave her lover, saw him brought home later dead, buried him, and lived on, because she believed that he had died to free his brother man, as Christ had died for her. Not hers the proud loyalty of the Southern girl to her blood and to her State, when that day she bade her lover go forth and sweep their fanatical assailants back, as the old Cavaliers, from whom they were descended, swept back the crop-eared Puritans into the sea.

Jeanne-Armande was not especially stirred; save by impatience – impatience over this interference with the prosperity of the country. It might injure property (the half-house), and break up music classes and schools! What sympathy she felt, too, was with the South; but she was wise enough to conceal this from all save Anne, since the school was burning with zeal, and the principal already engaged in teaching the pupils to make lint. But if Jeanne-Armande was lukewarm, Miss Lois was at fever heat; the old New England spirit rose within her like a giant when she read the tidings. Far away as she was from all the influences of the time, she yet wrote long letters to Anne which sounded like the clash of spears, the call of the trumpet, and the roll of drums, so fervid were the sentences which fell of themselves into the warlike phraseology of the Old Testament, learned by heart in her youth. But duty, as well as charity, begins at home, and even the most burning zeal must give way before the daily needs of children. Little André was not strong; his spine was becoming curved, they feared. In his languor he had fallen into the habit of asking Miss Lois to hold him in her arms, rock with him in the old rocking-chair, and sing. Miss Lois had not thought that she could ever love "those children"; but there was a soft spot in her heart now for little André.

In June two unexpected changes came. Little André grew suddenly worse; and Jeanne-Armande went to Europe. A rich merchant of Weston, wishing to take his family abroad, engaged mademoiselle as governess for his two daughters, and French speaker for the party, at what she herself termed "the salary of a princess." The two announcements came on the same day. Jeanne-Armande, excited and tremulous, covered a sheet of paper with figures to show to herself and Anne the amount of the expected gain. As she could not retain her place in the school without the magic power of being in two places at once, the next best course was to obtain it for Anne, with the understanding that the successor was to relinquish it immediately whenever called upon to do so. As they were in the middle of a term, the principal accepted Miss Douglas, who, although young, had proved herself competent and faithful. And thus Anne found herself unexpectedly possessed of a higher salary, heavier duties, and alone. For Jeanne-Armande, in the helmet bonnet, sailed on the twentieth of the month for England, in company with her charges, who, with all their beauty and bird-like activity, would find it impossible to elude mademoiselle, who would guard them with unflinching vigilance, and, it is but fair to add, would earn every cent of even that "salary of a princess" (whatever that may be) which had attracted her.

Before mademoiselle departed it had been decided that in consequence of little André's illness Miss Lois should close the church-house, and take the child to the hot springs not far distant, in Michigan, and that Louis and Gabriel should come to their elder sister for a time. The boys were to travel to Weston alone, Père Michaux putting them in charge of the captain of the steamer, while Anne was to meet them upon their arrival. Miss Lois wrote that they were wild with excitement, and had begged all sorts of farewell presents from everybody, and packed them in the two chests which Père Michaux had given them – knives, cord, hammers, nails, the last being "a box-stove, old and rusty, which they had actually taken to pieces and hidden among their clothes." Jeanne-Armande went away on Monday; the boys were to arrive on Saturday. Anne spent all her leisure time in preparing for them. Two of the little black-eyed fellows were coming at last, the children who had clung to her skirts, called her "Annet," and now and then, when they felt like it, swarmed up all together to kiss her, like so many affectionate young bears. They were very dear to her – part of her childhood and of the island. The day arrived; full of expectation, she went down to meet the steamer. Slowly the long narrow craft threaded its way up the crooked river; the great ropes were made fast, the plank laid in place; out poured the passengers, men, women, and children, but no Louis, no Gabriel. Anne watched until the last man had passed, and the deck hands were beginning to roll out the freight; then a voice spoke above, "Is that Miss Douglas?"

She looked up, and saw the captain, who asked her to come on board for a moment. "I am very much troubled, Miss Douglas," he began, wiping his red but friendly face. "The two boys – your half-brothers, I believe – placed in my care by Père Michaux, have run away."

Anne gazed at him in silence.

"They must have slipped off the boat at Hennepin, which is the first point where we strike a railroad. It seems to have been a plan, too, for they managed to have their chests put off also."

"You have no idea where they have gone?"

"No; I sent letters back to Hennepin and to Père Michaux immediately, making inquiries. The only clew I have is that they asked a number of questions about the plains of one of our hands, who has been out that way."

"The plains!"

"Yes; they said they had a sister living out there."

A pain darted through Anne's heart. Could they have deserted her for Tita? She went home desolate and disheartened; the empty rooms, where all her loving preparations were useless now, seemed to watch her satirically. Even the boys did not care enough for her to think of her pain and disappointment.

Père Michaux had had no suspicion of the plan: but he knew of one dark fact which might have, he wrote to Anne, a bearing upon it. Miss Lois had mysteriously lost, in spite of all her care, a sum of money, upon which she had depended for a part of the summer's expenses, and concerning which she had made great lamentation; it had been made up by the renting of the church-house; but the mystery remained. If the boys had taken it, bad as the action was, it insured for a time at least their safety. The priest thought they had started westward to join Rast and Tita, having been fascinated by what they had overheard of Rast's letters.

The surmise was correct. After what seemed to Anne very long delay, a letter came; it was from Rast. The night before, two dirty little tramps, tired and hungry, with clothes soiled and torn, had opened the door and walked in, announcing that they were Louis and Gabriel, and that they meant to stay. They had asked for food, but had fallen asleep almost before they could eat it. With their first breath that morning they had again declared that nothing should induce them to return eastward, either to the island or to Anne. And Rast added that he thought they might as well remain; he and Tita would take charge of them. After a few days came a letter from the boys themselves, printed by Louis. In this document, brief but explicit, they sent their love, but declined to return. If Père Michaux came after them, they would run away again, and this time no one should ever know where they were, "exsep, purhaps, the Mormons." With this dark threat the letter ended.

Père Michaux, as in the case of Tita, took the matter into his own hands. He wrote to Rast to keep the boys, and find some regular occupation for them as soon as possible. Anne's ideas about them had always been rather Quixotic; he doubted whether they could ever have been induced to attend school regularly. But now they would grow to manhood in a region where such natural gifts as they possessed would be an advantage to them, and where, also, their deficiencies would not be especially apparent. The old priest rather enjoyed this escapade. He considered that three of the Douglas children were now, on the whole, well placed, and that Anne was freed from the hampering responsibility which her father's ill-advised course had imposed upon her. He sailed round his water parish with brisker zeal than ever, although in truth he was very lonely. The little white fort was empty; even Miss Lois was gone; but he kept himself busy, and read his old classics on stormy evenings when the rain poured down on his low roof.

But Anne grieved.

As several of her pupils wished to continue their music lessons during the vacation, it was decided by Miss Lois and herself that she should remain where she was for the present; the only cheer she had was in the hope that in autumn Miss Lois and the little boy would come to her. But in spite of all her efforts, the long weeks of summer stretched before her like a desert; in her lonely rooms without the boys, without mademoiselle, she was pursued by a silent depression unlike anything she had felt before. She fell into the habit of allowing herself to sit alone in the darkness through the evening brooding upon the past. The kind-hearted woman who kept the house, in whose charge she had been left by mademoiselle, said that she was "homesick."

"How can one be homesick who has no home?" answered the girl, smiling sadly.

One day the principal of the school asked her if she would go on Saturdays for a while, and assist those who were at work in the Aid Rooms for the soldiers' hospitals. Anne consented languidly; but once within the dingy walls, languor vanished. There personal sorrow seemed small in the presence of ghastly lists of articles required for the wounded and dying. At least those she loved were not confronting cannon. Those in charge of the rooms soon learned to expect her, this young teacher, a stranger in Weston, who with a settled look of sadness on her fair face had become the most diligent worker there. She came more regularly after a time, for the school had closed, the long vacation begun.

On Sunday, the 21st of July, Anne was in church; it was a warm day; fans waved, soft air came in and played around the heads of the people, who, indolent with summer ease, leaned back comfortably, and listened with drowsy peacefulness to the peaceful sermon. At that very moment, on a little mill-stream near Washington, men were desperately fighting the first great battle of the war, the Sunday battle of Bull Run. The remnant of the Northern army poured over Long Bridge into the capital during all that night, a routed, panic-stricken mob.

The North had suffered a great defeat; the South had gained a great victory. And both sides paused.

The news flashed over the wires and into Weston, and the town was appalled. Never in the four long years that followed was there again a day so filled with stern astonishment to the entire North as that Monday after Bull Run. The Aid Rooms, where Anne worked during her leisure hours, were filled with helpers now; all hearts were excited and in earnest. West Virginia was the field to which their aid was sent, a mountain region whose streams were raised in an hour into torrents, and whose roads were often long sloughs of despond, through which the soldiers of each side gloomily pursued each other by turns, the slowness of the advancing force only equalled by that of the pursued, which was encountering in front the same disheartening difficulties. The men in hospital on the edges of this region, worn out with wearying marches, wounded in skirmishes, stricken down by the insidious fever which haunts the river valleys, suffered as much as those who had the names of great battles wherewith to identify themselves; but they lacked the glory.

One sultry evening, when the day's various labor was ended, Anne, having made a pretense of eating in her lonely room, went across to the bank of the lake to watch the sun set in the hazy blue water, and look northward toward the island. She was weary and sad: where were now the resolution and the patience with which she had meant to crown her life? You did not know, poor Anne, when you framed those lofty purposes, that suffering is just as hard to bear whether one is noble or ignoble, good or bad. In the face of danger the heart is roused, and in the exaltation of determination forgets its pain; it is the long monotony of dangerless days that tries the spirit hardest.

A letter had come to her that morning, bearing a Boston postmark; the address was in the neat, small handwriting of Jeanne-Armande's friend. Anne, remembering that it was this Boston address which she had sent to her grandaunt, opened the envelope eagerly. But it was only the formal letter of a lawyer. Miss Vanhorn had died, on the nineteenth of June, in Switzerland, and the lawyer wrote to inform "Miss Anne Douglas" that a certain portrait, said in the will to be that of "Alida Clanssen," had been bequeathed to her by his late client, and would be forwarded to her address, whenever she requested it. Anne had expected nothing, not even this. But an increased solitariness came upon her as she thought of that cold rigid face lying under the turf far away in Switzerland – the face of the only relative left to her.

The sun had disappeared; it was twilight. The few loiterers on the bank were departing. The sound of carriage wheels roused her, and turning she saw that a carriage had approached, and that three persons had alighted and were coming toward her. They proved to be the principal of the school and the president of the Aid Society, accompanied by one of her associates. They had been to Anne's home, and learning where she was, had followed her. It seemed that one of the city physicians had gone southward a few days before to assist in the regimental hospitals on the border; a telegraphic dispatch had just been received from him, urging the Aid Society to send without delay three or four nurses to that fever-cursed district, where men were dying in delirium for want of proper care. It was the first personal appeal which had come to Weston; the young Aid Society felt that it must be answered. But who could go? Among the many workers at the Aid Rooms, few were free; wives, mothers, and daughters, they could give an hour or two daily to the work of love, but they could not leave their homes. One useful woman, a nurse by profession, was already engaged; another, a lady educated and refined, whose hair had been silvered as much by affliction as by age, had offered to go. There were two, then; but they ought to send four. Many had been asked during that afternoon, but without success. The society was at its wits' end. Then some one thought of Miss Douglas.

She was young, but she was also self-controlled and physically strong. Her inexperience would not be awkwardness; she would obey with intelligence and firmness the directions given her. Under the charge of the two older women, she could go – if she would!

It would be but for a short time – two weeks only; at the end of that period the society expected to relieve these first volunteers with regularly engaged and paid nurses. The long vacation had begun; as teacher, she would lose nothing; her expenses would be paid by the society. She had seemed so interested; it would not be much more to go for a few days in person; perhaps she would even be glad to go. All this they told her eagerly, while she stood before them in silence. Then, when at last their voices ceased, and they waited for answer, she said, slowly, looking from one to the other: "I could go, if it were not for one obstacle. I have music scholars, and I can not afford to lose them. I am very poor."

"They will gladly wait until you return, Miss Douglas," said the principal. "When it is known where you have gone, you will not only retain all your old scholars, but gain many new ones. They will be proud of their teacher."

"Yes, proud!" echoed the associate. Again Anne remained silent; she was thinking. In her loneliness she was almost glad to go. Perhaps, by the side of the suffering and the dying, she could learn to be ashamed of being so down-hearted and miserable. It was but a short absence. "Yes, I will go," she said, quietly. And then the three ladies kissed her, and the associate, who was of a tearful habit, took out her handkerchief. "It is so sweet, and so – so martial!" she sobbed.

The next morning they started. Early as it was, a little company had gathered to see them off. The school-girls were there, half in grief, half in pride, over what they were pleased to call the "heroism" of their dear Miss Douglas. Mrs. Green, Anne's landlady, was there in her Sunday bonnet, which was, however, but a poor one. These, with the principal of the school and the other teachers, and the ladies belonging to the Aid Society, made quite a snowy shower of white handkerchiefs as the train moved out from the station, Anne's young face contrasting with the strong features and coarse complexion of Mary Crane, the professional nurse, on one side, and with the thin cheeks and silver hair of Mrs. Barstow on the other, as they stood together at the rear door of the last car. "Good-by! good-by!" called the school-girls in tears, and the ladies of the Aid Society gave a shrill little feminine cheer. They were away.