Chapter II: The Veteran’s Return

SIWARD—Had he his hurts before?
ROSSE—Aye, in the front.
SIWARD—Why, then, God’s soldier be he!—SHAKSPEARE.

While Erminie and Britomarte talked together, there came a rush of feet upon the stairs, followed by the flinging open of the chamber door, and the sudden appearance of Elfie. She sprang at once towards Britomarte, threw herself upon her bosom, and hugged and kissed her, and laughed and cried over her.

“But, dear Elfie, how soon you have returned. In twenty-four hours. Why, you could scarcely have reached your journey’s end. And how did you find your father? Doing well, I hope, from your joyous looks,” said Erminie, as soon as she could put in a word.

“Oh! yes, the old boy’s all right! He’s got his right arm in a sling, and a plaster on both cheeks, and a patch over his left eye—that’s all. He’s not fit for duty, but he needn’t go to bed before a healthy Christian’s usual hour of retiring,” answered Elfie, as she recovered her breath, and threw herself into a chair.

“But how soon you have got back; I don’t understand it,” said Erminie, returning to the ‘previous question.’

“Don’t you? Well neither do I. All I know is that I came very near passing my awful old responsibility on the road. When the train stopped at the Relay House—which you know used to be a comfortable hotel, but is now turned into something between military headquarters and a beer garden—I looked out of the window, and there, as sure as you live, stood my pap, with a lot of dilapidated heroes of the rank and file, on the platform. I had just time to jump off the car before the train started again.”

“Oh! Elfie, dear, how rash to jump off the cars just as the train was about to start!” exclaimed Erminie.

“‘Rash!’ Well, I like that. How could it have been rash?”

“You might have been killed.”

“But I wasn’t, so it couldn’t have been rash. If I had been hurt, then you might have called it rash; but as I wasn’t, you can only call it fearless. But I don’t want to talk of myself, but of my ferocious old governor, who stood there on the platform, bloody, dusty, smoky, bound, bandaged and plastered, and looking, for all the world, like a disreputable old prize-fighter that had been considerably damaged in the ring.”

“But you met him—oh, you met him as the daughter of a hero should meet her wounded father!” exclaimed Erminie with enthusiasm.

“Which means that I wept over the old boy, and set him to weeping, and made a melting scene among all those soldiers. Not _much_ I didn’t. I took him by his whole arm, and turned him round and round until I had inspected him well, and then I said:

“Oh, you miserable looking old pap. I don’t believe you came from Gettysburg or any other gallant battle-field. I believe you are fresh from a fireman’s free fight, or an election riot, where the pretensions of rival candidates are canvassed with cudgels. Where have you been, and what doing, to get yourself so dirty, and knocked into such an old cocked hat?”

“And my old governor laughed, and said that he had been in a dusty place; that it was very dusty at Gettysburg; and that shot and shell were flying thick and fast.

“I begged him to have the largest bath-tub in the house filled with hot water, and to rub himself down from head to foot with soft soap and hard towels, and put himself in soak for three hours; and I gave him the suit of clean under-clothes that I had brought along in my carpet bag.

“And though in general paps are very disobedient persons, yet he promised to obey me, and he kept his word so far as to take a good bath, while I got up a good dinner for him; and I must confess that he didn’t look half so badly when he joined me at the dinner table, freshly washed and newly clothed, with all the smuts and stains I had taken for bruises and gashes cleansed away. But if all heroes have such heroic appetites as my heroic pap, I don’t wonder famine so often follows war.”

Britomarte laughed, but Erminie said:

“Men who are fighting cannot stop to feed. He must have fasted long.”

“Long! I should think he had fasted forty days and nights. I told him so; and he answered that he felt ‘hollow.’ And I couldn’t help saying as I carved the second fowl for him:

“Pap, I know next to nothing about anatomy and physiology, but from certain indications I should judge you to be hollow all the way down to the soles of your boots.”

“Oh, Elfie! how could you?” exclaimed Erminie. “Have you no veneration at all?”

“Not much. I’m afraid there’s a hole where that bump ought to be. But, as I said before, I don’t want to talk of myself, but of my glorious old governor. Well, at that dinner we had a sort of explanation; for you may be sure, not knowing that I was going on to fetch him, he was as much astonished at seeing me there as I was at seeing him. So in answer to his questions, I told him that, knowing very well he wasn’t able to take care of himself even in the best of times, I had started out with the intention of bringing him home. And then I demanded to know how it happened that he should be loafing about the Relay House in such a disrespectable way; and he told me that, feeling stiff and sore, and hungry and tired, he had got off at the Relay House with the intention of resting for the night before going on to Washington. And then the old fellow got sentimental, and called me his darling child and his brave girl; but I stopped all that by firing off at him the news of Britomarte’s and Justin’s resurrection from a ‘watery grave.’ Girls, it did him more good than all the surgeon’s plasters, and even the bath and dinner. He felt better immediately, and proposed that we should start for Washington by the evening train to welcome you back. But of course I wouldn’t allow that. Instead of letting him go to Washington, I made him go to bed, and carried him a cup of tea, and read to him all the evening. It was the full account of the battle of Gettysburg in the morning paper.”

“But he must have know all about that,” put in Erminie.

“Must he, then? I tell you he was in the thick of the fighting, and yet he knew nothing or next to nothing of it; at least not one-tenth part as much as we know, who were not there, yet who read the papers. ‘It was a dusty place. It was a noisy place. Shot and shell were a flying thick and fast. I was struck several times, but we whipped the rebels!’ That was the sum and substance of all the information I could gain from my warlike pap about the battle; but he listened to the Republican’s long account of it with the deepest interest, and fell asleep in the midst of it. I let him sleep, seeing that he was tired out, and knowing that we would have to continue our journey in the morning.”

“But, Elfie, dear, what have you done with your father now? Let me go to him; he must feel neglected.”

“Oh, no, he don’t. I took him at once to his bed-room and made him lie down and rest; and I asked Catherine to take him up a glass of wine and some biscuits. He’s all right, and will join us at dinner. And now, with your good leave, I will go to my room and get a little of this dust and smoke out of my eyes and nose before presenting myself to the Reverend Justin Rosenthal,” said Elfie, rising.

“Then come to us in the drawing-room, for we are going down there,” said Erminie.

Elfie nodded assent, and then flew out of the room, singing:

“We are coming, Father Abraham,
Three hundred thousand more.”

And Erminie and Britomarte went down stairs to the drawing-room, where, in the course of an hour, they were joined by Elfie, who had renovated herself with a fresh toilet.

When the three friends were seated together, Britomarte said:

“Here are three of our school quartette; but where is the fourth? Where is Alberta Goldsborough?”

“Alberta Corsoni, you mean; for she has changed herself from a planter’s daughter into a bandit’s bride, or a guerrilla’s bride, which amounts to the same thing,” said Elfie.

“She made her escape from the convent, and eloped with Vittorio Corsoni, who married her the same night,” said Erminie.

“Yes; and he was a good fellow enough until he married her. He had embraced the cause of the Union against the rebels. Some people said, however, that he did so only in opposition to old Mr. Goldsborough, who had opposed his union with Alberta. However that may be, he certainly _was_ a Unionist before his marriage. But it seems that Alberta is one of the most determined female rebels that ever lived; and possessing immense influence over her lovesick young husband, she won him to the cause of rebellion; so that now he is one of the most formidable of those brigand leaders who ravage with fire and sword the shores of the Potomac and its tributaries,” said Elfie.

“His Italian nature took readily to guerrilla warfare,” sighed Erminie.

“And now he and my traitor are brother bandits, and the best friends in the world. When either has made a successful raid, he divides the spoils with the other,” laughed Elfie.

“But what a condition to come back and find my native country in! It seems to me as if in dream or trance I had lost my footing in the nineteenth century, and slipped down into the tenth; or as if I had died, and my spirit had passed into another state of existence. This change has come gradually upon you, but upon me it has burst like a thunderbolt. I left the country in smiling peace; I return to find it groaning under all the horrors of civil war,” said Britomarte, bowing her head upon her hand in deep thought.

“Britty, stop that! If people go to musing now, they go mad! It is a time to act, not think!” said Elfie, sharply.

“I know it—I know it—and I shall act!” exclaimed the beautiful amazon.

“Britty, there is one piece of forbearance for which I thank you,” said Elfie, by way of changing the subject.

“What is that?” inquired Miss Conyers.

“Well, although three years ago you warned Erminie and myself that if we should have anything to do with the ‘natural enemy’ we should inevitably come to grief, and although you see that through disregarding your warning we _have_ come to grief, you magnanimously forbear to say—‘I told you so!’”

“I do not think that you _have_. I call the treason that divided your betrothed lovers from your side a very providential thing, so far as _you_ are concerned. I can mourn over _their_ sins, but not over _your_ escape,” said the man-hater, firmly.

“Yet it hurt some, at the time,” said Elfie, raising her eyebrows; “though I wouldn’t admit that to anybody else but yourself, Britty, it _did_ hurt, didn’t it, Minie?”

Erminie covered her face with her hands, and wept softly.

“It hurts still, you see,” whispered Elfie. “Oh, I hope—I do hope—the next shell that flies into Charleston will cut that fellow in two! As for my traitor, being a guerrilla, I trust that neither shell nor shot will cheat the gallows of its dues.” And Elfie indignantly dashed away the tears that dared to sparkle in her own eyes.

“I am a very weak woman. I must get up and go to the hospital. I should have gone an hour ago. Britomarte, will you come with me?” said Erminie, rising, and wiping her eyes.

“Yes, with pleasure,” said Miss Conyers. “Do you go every day?”

“Twice every day, in order to visit as many as I can. I go in the forenoon, return to dinner, and then go again in the afternoon. And, after all, so many are the hospitals, and so thickly are they crowded, that I can only visit each patient about twice a week, and then how I wish I could be in twenty wards at the same time. You must help me in the hospitals, Britomarte dear. _There is so much to do._ And when one has devoted all her time and strength and means to the work, and happily eased the sufferings of some scores, there are hundreds of others needing the same help.”

“I hope all our women are doing their duty in this crisis,” said Miss Conyers.

“They are doing what they can; but wives and mothers have very little time, and very little means either, in these war days, to bestow upon the poor soldiers; and young girls are generally inadmissible to the hospitals except at certain stated hours. Me—for some reason or other, perhaps for my respectable black dress and sedate aspect—the surgeons admit at any hour. And heaven has blessed me with ample means and ample leisure to devote to the sick and wounded soldiers.”

“Yours is an angel’s mission, my Minie; and you are worthy to be entrusted with it. You have been weighed in the balance, and not found wanting; you have passed through the fiery furnace of affliction, and come forth pure gold; you have been tried and found faithful; and you have been called to a much higher and holier destiny than would have been yours as the wife of——”

“Oh, don’t! don’t, Britomarte!” exclaimed Erminie, shrinking even from this light touch upon her unhealed wound.

Then reverting to the subject which they had first spoken, she said:

“It is a great school for the spirit—this to which I go. Volumes, libraries could not contain its lessons. Let one give all her time, strength and means to the sufferers there, and she will still _receive_ more—infinitely more—than she gives.”

“In——”

“In the examples of almost superhuman patience, cheerfulness and fortitude among those brave men, who, wounded, mutilated, agonized, will never utter a complaint, will give you smile for smile, and receive with thankfulness any little gift the surgeons will allow you to offer them. Oh! how light seem my own troubles when I look upon theirs!”

“We may judge what their courage in the fields must have been by their fortitude in the hospital,” said Miss Conyers.

“Oh, Britomarte, yes! Ah! if you were to go with me on my rounds among these true heroes, from a man-hater you would become a man-worshipper, Britomarte. And then the extremes of youth and age that we find there! The law has limited compulsory military service to the men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five; but true patriotism draws no such line. My dear father was sixty-one years old when he fell in front of his men on the field of Manassas. In one regiment that I know of there was a grandfather of sixty-three, his two sons of forty and forty-two, and four grandsons between the ages of thirteen and seventeen.”

“That was glorious!” exclaimed Miss Conyers, with enthusiasm.

“And Britomarte, as I live, I found in the Water’s Ware-House Hospital of Georgetown, a boy about twelve years old, who had been brought in among the last lot of wounded from the battle-field of Manassas! When I expressed astonishment and pity, I was told that there were boys of twelve who were soldiers of the line! And since then I have learned beyond all question that such is the fact!”

“Oh, Erminie! if what you tell me is true, as I have no doubt that it is, what a race of heroes the women of America have brought forth!” exclaimed Miss Conyers, with all the enthusiasm of her soul shining in her eyes.

“I thought you would grow into a man-worshipper, Britomarte,” said Erminie, smiling.

“And _I_ thought she would contrive to turn over all the glory to the women, where, of course, it justly belongs, as she has done!” exclaimed Elfie, saucily, quoting—“What a race of heroes the women of America have brought forth!”

“Come, let us put on our bonnets and go to the Douglas Hospital,” said Erminie.

But just at that moment the bell rang, and the next instant the door opened and Justin entered the drawing-room, accompanied by Lieutenant Ethel.

Elfie sprang up to greet her old acquaintance, but dropped into her seat again on seeing a stranger.

Justin advanced and warmly shook hands with his little friend, and with Britomarte, and then he brought up Lieutenant Ethel and presented him to the party.

“I am very glad to see you, sir; and I have to thank you very earnestly for your great kindness to my brother and friends in their extremity,” said Erminie.

The young officer bowed lowly before the beautiful, pale girl, who thus addressed him, and he replied:

“It will now be a much greater pleasure to me than ever, to remember that I was able to be of some slight service to your friends, Miss Rosenthal.”

“I trust that you will give us some opportunity of proving our gratitude to you, Mr. Ethel. My brother informs me that your duties will detain you here in Washington for some days or weeks. I hope that you will gratify us by making our quiet house your home during the period of your stay,” said Erminie.

“A thousand thanks, Miss Rosenthal! But my domestication in this lovely home would be much too great a tax upon your kindness, and very much too great a happiness for my merits,” said the young officer.

“I assure you it would give us sincere pleasure to have you,” urged Erminie.

“Ethel shall stay just where he is, Erminie. Give yourself no further trouble to press him. I was his guest for many weeks, and he shall be mine for many days, at least. Oh, I haven’t consulted him on the subject. I knew it would be useless. I ordered his man Martin to pack up his effects and bring them over here this afternoon. So, sister, you may have a room made ready for the lieutenant, and a hammock swung somewhere for the seaman—or lacking a hammock, an ordinary cot and mattress will do,” said Justin.

“Oh, Rosenthal,” began the young officer.

“Hold your tongue, Ethel! You’re not on your quarterdeck now! I’m commander of _this_ ship, and I mean to be obeyed!” exclaimed Justin.

“But you will allow me to say——”

“Not a syllable against dropping your anchor in this harbor.”

“Well, I won’t! I was only about to observe that I used to hear Judith threaten her ‘gay Tom’ to make him do as he liked! You are only making me do as I like,” said the young lieutenant, with a bow to Erminie.

“And now let us talk about something else! Young ladies, this is a great holiday! To-night there is to be a brilliant illumination, in honor of the two great victories of Gettysburg and Vicksburg. I have ordered in several pounds of wax-candles, which, when they come, you will have cut into the proper lengths. I have also spoken to a carpenter to come and fix holders for the lights at the windows. You can send a servant with him through the rooms,” said Justin.