it was in this same may, not more than a week after the momentous episode of the field hospital and nurse fund fair, that marsena pulford went off to the war.
there was no ostentation about his departure. he had indeed been gone for a day or two before it became known in octavius that his absence from town meant that he had enlisted down at tecumseh. we learned that he had started as a common private, but everybody made sure that a man of his distinguished appearance and deportment would speedily get a commission. everybody, too, had a theory of some sort as to the motives for this sudden and strange behavior of his. these theories agreed in linking miss parmalee with the affair, but there were hopeless divergencies as to the exact part she played in it. one party held that marsena had been driven to seek death on the tented field by despair at having been given the “mitten.” others insisted that he had not been given the “mitten” at all, but had gone because her well-known martial ardor made the sacrifice of her betrothed necessary to her peace of mind. a minority took the view which homer sage promulgated from his tilted-back chair on the stoop of the excelsior hotel.
“they ain’t nothin’ settled betwixt ’em,” this student of human nature declared. “she jest dared him to go, and he went. and if you only give her time, she’ll have the whole male unmarried population of octavius, between the ages of sixteen and sixty, down there wallerin’ around in the virginny swamps, feedin’ the muskeeters and makin’ a bid for glory.”
but in a few days there came the terribly exciting news of seven pines and fair oaks—that first great combat of the revived war in the east—and we ceased to bother our heads about the photographer and his love. the enlisting fever sprang up again, and our young men began to make their way by dozens and scores to the recruiting office at tecumseh. there were more farewells, more tears and prayers, not to mention several funerals of soldiers killed at hanover court house, where that fifth corps, which contained most of our volunteers, had its first spring smell of blood. and soon thereafter burst upon us the awful sustained carnage of the seven days’ fighting, which drove out of our minds even the recollection that miss julia parmalee herself had volunteered for active service in the sanitary commission, and gone south to take up her work.
and so july 3d came, bringing with it the bare tidings of that closing desperate battle of the week at malvern hill, and the movement of what was left of the army of the potomac to a safe resting place on the james river. we were beginning to get the details of local interest by the slow single wire from thessaly, and sickening enough they were. the village streets were filled with silent, horror-stricken crowds. the whole community seemed to have but a single face, repeated upon the mental vision at every step—a terrible face with distended, empty eyes, riven brows, and an open drawn mouth like the old greek mask of tragedy.
“i swan! i don’t know whether to keep open to-morrow or not,” said mr. newton shull, for perhaps the twentieth time, as he wandered once again from the reception-room into the little workshop behind. “in some ways it’s kind of agin my principles to work on independence day—but, then again, if i thought there was likely to be a good many farmers comin’ into town—”
“they’ll be plenty of ’em cornin’ in,” said the boy, over his shoulder, “but they’ll steer clear of here.”
“i’m ’fraid so,” sighed mr. shull. he advanced a listless step or two and gazed with dejected apathy at the newspaper map tacked to the wall, on which the boy was making red and blue crosses with a colored pencil. “i don’t see much good o’ that,” he said. “still, of course, if it eases your mind any—”
“that’s where the fightin’ finished,” observed the boy, pointing to a big mark on the map. “that’s malvern hill there, and here—down where the river takes the big bend—that’s harrison’s landing, where the army’s movin’ to. see them seven rings? them are the battles, one each day, as our men forced their way down through the chickahominy swamps, beginnin’ up in the corner with beaver dam creek. if the map was a little higher it ’ud show the pamunkey, where they started from. my uncle says that the whole mistake was in ever abandoning the pamunkey.”
“pa-monkey or ma-monkey,” said newton shull, gloomily, “it wouldn’t be no comfort to me to see it, even on a map. it’s jest taken and busted me and my business here clean as a whistle. we ain’t paid expenses two days in a week sence marseny went. here i’ve got now so ’t i kin take a plain, everyday sort o’ picture jest about as well as he did—a little streakid sometimes, perhaps, and more or less pinholes—but still pretty middlin’ fair on an average, and then, darn my buttons if they don’t all stop comin’. it positively don’t seem to me as if there was a single human bein’ in dearborn county that ’ud have his picture took as a gift. all they want now is to have enlargements thrown up from little likenesses of their men folks that have been killed, and them i don’t know how to do no more’n a babe unborn.”
“you knew well enough how to make that stere-opticon slide,” remarked the boy with severity.
“yes,” mused mr. shull, “that darned thing—that made a peck o’ trouble, didn’t it? i dunno what on earth possessed me; i kind o’ seemed to git the notion o’ doin’ it into my head all to once ’t, and somehow i never dreamt of its rilin’ marseny so; you couldn’t tell that a man ’ud be so blamed touchy as all that, could you?—and i dunno, like as not he’d ’a’ enlisted anyhow. but i do wish he’d showed me how to make them pesky enlargements afore he went. if i’d only seen him do one, even once, i could ’a’ picked the thing up, but i never did. it’s just my luck!”
“say,” said the boy, looking up with a sudden thought, “do you know what my mother heard yesterday? it’s all over the place that before marseny left he went to squire schermerhorn’s and made his will, and left everything he’s got to the parmalee girl, in case he gits killed. so, if anything happens she’d be your partner, wouldn’t she?”
newton shull stared with surprise. “well, now, that beats creation,” he said, after a little. “somehow you know that never occurred to me, and yet, of course, that ’ud be jest his style.”
“yes, sir,” repeated the other, “they say he’s left her every identical thing.”
“it’s allus that way in this world,” reflected mr. shull, sadly. “them that don’t need it one solitary atom, they’re eternally gettin’ every mortal thing left to ’em. why, that girl’s so rich already she don’t know what to do with her money. if i was her, i bet a cooky i wouldn’t go pikin’ off to the battlefield, doin’ nursin’ and tyin’ on bandages, and fannin’ men while they were gittin’ their legs cut off. no, sirree; i’d let the sanitary commission scuffle along without me, i can tell you! a hoss and buggy and a fust-class two-dollar-a-day hotel, and goin’ to the theatre jest when i took the notion—that’d be good enough for me.”
“i suppose the sign then ’ud be ‘shull & parmalee,’ wouldn’t it?” queried the boy.
“well, now, i ain’t so sure about that,” said mr. shull, thoughtfully. “it might be that, bein’ a woman, her name ’ud come first, out o’ politeness. but then, of course, most prob’ly she’d want to sell out instid, and then i’d make the valuation, and she could give me time. or she might want to stay in, only on the quiet, you know—what they call a silent partner.”
“nobody’d ever call her a silent partner,” observed the boy. “she couldn’t keep still if she tried.”
“i wouldn’t care how much she talked,” said mr. shull, “if she only put enough more money into the business. i didn’t take much to her, somehow, along at fust, but the more i’ve seen of her the more i like the cut of her jib. she’s got ‘go’ in her, that gal has; she jest figures out what she wants, and then she sails in and gits it. it don’t matter who the man is, she jest takes and winds him round her little finger. why, marseny, here, he wasn’t no more than so much putty in her hands. i lost all patience with him. you wouldn’t catch me being run by a woman that way.”
“so far’s i could see,” suggested the other, “she seemed to git pretty much all she wanted out of you, too. you were dancin’ round, helpin’ her at the fair there, like a hen on a hot griddle.”
“it was all on his account,” put in the partner, with emphasis. “jest to please him; he seemed so much sot on her bein’ humored in everything. i did feel kind o’ foolish about it at the time—i never somehow believed much in doin’ work for nothin’—but maybe it was all for the best. if what they say about his makin’ a will is true, why it won’t do me no harm to be on good terms with her—in case—in case—”
mr. shull was standing at the window, and his idle gaze had been vaguely taking in the general; prospect of the street below the while he spoke. at this moment he discovered that some one on the opposite sidewalk was making vehement gestures to attract his attention. he lifted the sash and put his head out to listen, but the message came across loud enough for even the boy inside to hear.
“you’d better hurry round to the telegraph office!” this hoarse, anonymous voice cried. “malvern hill list is a-comin’ in—and they say your pardner’s been shot—shot bad, too!”
newton shull drew in his head and stood for some moments staring blankly at the map on the wall. “well, i swan!” he began, with confused hesitation, “i dunno—it seems to me—well, yes, i guess prob’ly the best thing ’ll be for her to put more money into the business—yes, that’s the plan—and we kin hire an operator up from tecumseh.”
but there was no one to pass an opinion on his project. the boy had snatched his hat, and could be heard even now dashing his way furiously down the outer stairs.
the summer dusk had begun to gather before octavius heard all that was to be learned of the frightful calamity which had befallen its absent sons. the local roll of death and disaster from gaines’s mill earlier in the week had seemed incredibly awful. this new budget of horrors from malvern was far worse.
“wa’n’t the rest of the north doin’ anything at all?” a wild-eyed, dishevelled old farmer cried out in a shaking, half-frenzied shriek from the press of the crowd round the telegraph office. “do they think dearborn county’s got to suppress this whole damned rebellion single-handed?”
it seemed to the dazed and horrified throng as if some such idea must be in the minds of the rest of the union. surely no other little community—or big community, either—could have had such a hideous blow dealt to it as this under which octavius reeled. the list of the week for the county, including gaines’s mill, showed one hundred and eight dead outright, and very nearly five hundred more wounded in battle. it was too shocking for comprehension.
as evening drew on, men gathered the nerve to say to one another that there was something very glorious in the way the two regiments had been thrust into the front, and had shown themselves heroically fit for that grim honor. they tried, too, to extract solace from the news that the regiments in question had been mentioned by name in the general despatches as having distinguished themselves and their county above all the rest—but it was an empty and heart-sickened pretence at best, and when, about dark, the women folks, who had waited in vain for them to come home to supper, began to appear on the skirts of the crowd, it was given up altogether. in after years octavius got so that it could cheer those sinister names of gaines’s mill and malvern hill, and swell with pride at the memories they evoked. but that evening no one cheered. it was too terrible.
there was, indeed, a single partial exception to this rule. the regular service of news had ceased—in those days, before the duplex invention, the single wire had most melancholy limitations—but the throng still lingered; and when, in the failing light, the postmaster was seen to step up again on the chair by the door with a bit of paper in his hand, a solemn hush ran over the assemblage.
“it is a private telegram sent to me personally,” he explained, in the loud clear tones of one who had earned his office by years of stump speaking; “but it is intended for you all, i should presume.”
the silent crowd pushed nearer, and listened with strained attention as this despatch was read:=
```headquarters sanitary commission,
````harrison’s landing, va., wednesday morning.=
to postmaster octavius, n. y.:
no words can describe magnificent record soldiers of dearborn county, especially starbuck, made past week. i bless fate which identified my poor services with such superb heroism. after second sleepless night, col. starbuck now reposing peacefully; doctor says crisis past; he surely recover, though process be slow. you will learn with pride he been brevetted brigadier, fact which it was my privilege to announce to him last evening. he feebly thanked me, murmuring, “tell them at home.”
julia parmalee.
in the silence which ensued the postmaster held the paper up and scanned it narrowly by the waning light. “there is something else,” he said—“oh, yes, i see; ‘franked despatch sanitary commission.’ that’s all.”
another figure was seen suddenly clambering upon the chair, with an arm around the postmaster for support. it was the teller of the bank. he waved his free arm excitedly, as he faced the crowd, and cried:
“our women are as brave as our men! three cheers for miss julia parmalee! hip-hip!”
the loyal teller’s first “hurrah!” fell upon the air quite by itself. perhaps a dozen voices helped him half-heartedly with the second. the third died off again miserably, and he stepped down off the chair amid a general consciousness of failure.
“who the hell is starbuck?” was to be heard in whispered interrogatory passed along through the throng. hardly anybody could answer. boyce we knew, and mcintyre, and many others, but star-buck was a mystery. then it was explained that it must be the son of old alanson starbuck, of juno mills, who had gone away to philadelphia seven or eight years before. he had not enlisted with any dearborn county regiment, but held a staff appointment of some kind, presumably in a pennsylvania command. we were quite unable to work up any emotion over him.
in fact, the more we thought it over, the more we were disposed to resent this planting of starbuck upon us, in the very van of dearborn county’s heroes. his father was a rich old curmudgeon, whom no one liked. the son was nothing to us whatever.
as at last, in the deepening twilight, the people reluctantly began moving toward home, such conversation as they had the heart for seemed to be exclusively centred upon miss parmalee, and this queer despatch of hers. slow-paced, strolling groups wended their way along the main street, and then up this side thoroughfare and that, passing in every block some dark and close-shuttered house of mourning, and instinctively sinking still lower their muffled tones as they passed, and carrying in their breasts, heaven only knows what torturing loads of anguish and stricken despair—but finding a certain relief in dwelling, instead, upon this lighter topic.
one of these groups—an elderly lady in black attire and two younger women of sober mien—walked apart from the others and exchanged no words at all until, turning a corner, their way led them past the parmalee house. the looming bulk of the old mansion and the fragrant spaciousness of the garden about it seemed to attract the attention of mrs. ransom and her daughters. they halted as by a common impulse, and fastened a hostile gaze upon the shadowy outlines of the house and its surrounding foliage.
“if dwight dies of his wound,” the mother said, in a voice all chilled to calmness, “his murderess will live in there.”
“i always hated her!” said one of the daughters, with a shudder.
“but he isn’t going to die, mamma,” put in the other. “you mustn’t think of such a thing! you know how healthy he always has been, and this is only his shoulder. for my part, we may think ourselves very fortunate. remember how many have been killed or mortally wounded. it seems as if half the people we know are in mourning. we get off very lightly with dwight only wounded. did you happen to hear the details about mr. pulford?—you know, the photographer—some one was saying that he was mortally wounded.”
“she sent him to his death, then, too,” said the elder miss ransom, raising her clenched hand against the black shadow of the house.
“i don’t care about that man,” broke in the mother, icily. “nobody knows anything of him, or where he came from. people ran after him because he was good-looking, but he never seemed to me to know enough to come in when it rained. if she made a fool of him, it was his own lookout. but dwight—my dwight—!”
the mother’s mannered voice broke into a gasp, and she bent her head helplessly. the daughters went to her side, and the group passed on into the darkness.