Christmas gold, p.611
Christmas Gold, page 611
So opened Huldah's Christmas morning.
Days of doubt, nights of watching. Every now and then the boy knows his mother, his father, or Huldah. Then will come this heavy stupor which is so different from sleep. At last the surgeons have determined that a piece of the bone must come away. There is the quiet gathering of the most skilful at the determined hour; there is the firm table for the little fellow to lie on; here is the ether and the sponge; and, of course, here and there, and everywhere, is Huldah. She can hold the sponge, or she can fetch and carry; she can answer at once if she is spoken to; she can wait, if it is waiting; she can act, if it is acting. At last the wretched little button, which has been pressing on our poor boy's brain, is lifted safely out. It is in Morton's hand; he smiles and nods at Huldah as she looks inquiry, and she knows he is satisfied. And does not the poor child himself, even in his unconscious sleep, draw his breath more lightly than he did before? All is well.
"Who do you say that young woman is?" says Dr. Morton to Mr. Bartlett, as he draws on his coat in the doorway after all is over. "Could we not tempt her over to the General Hospital?"
"No, I think not. I do not think we can spare her."
The boy Horace is new-born that day; a New Year's gift to his mother. So pass Huldah's holidays.
II. Christmas Again
Table of Contents
Fourteen years make of the boy whose pony has been too much for him a man equal to any prank of any pony. Fourteen years will do this, even to boys of ten. Horace Bartlett is the colonel of a cavalry regiment, stationed just now in West Virginia; and, as it happens, this twenty-four-year-old boy has an older commission than anybody in that region, and is the Post Commander at Talbot C. H., and will be, most likely, for the winter. The boy has a vein of foresight in him; a good deal of system; and, what is worth while to have by the side of system, some knack of order. So soon as he finds that he is responsible, he begins to prepare for responsibility. His staff-officers are boys too; but they are all friends, and all mean to do their best. His Surgeon-in-Charge took his degree at Washington last spring; that is encouraging. Perhaps, if he has not much experience, he has, at least, the latest advices. His head is level too; he means to do his best, such as it is; and, indeed, all hands in that knot of boy counsellors will not fail for laziness or carelessness. Their very youth makes them provident and grave.
So among a hundred other letters, as October opens, Horace writes this:—
Talbot Court House, Va.,
Oct. 3, 1863.
Dear Huldah,—Here we are still, as I have been explaining to father; and, as you will see by my letter to him, here we are like to stay. Thus far we are doing sufficiently well. As I have told him, if my plans had been adopted we should have been pushed rapidly forward up the valley of the Yellow Creek; Badger's corps would have been withdrawn from before Winchester; Wilcox and Steele together would have threatened Early; and then, by a rapid flank movement, we should have pounced down on Longstreet (not the great Longstreet, but little Longstreet), and compelled him to uncover Lynchburg; we could have blown up the dams and locks on the canal, made a freshet to sweep all the obstructions out of James River, and then, if they had shown half as much spirit on the Potomac, all of us would be in Richmond for our Christmas dinner. But my plans, as usual, were not asked for, far less taken. So, as I said, here we are.
Well, I have been talking with Lawrence Worster, my Surgeon-in-Charge, who is a very good fellow. His sick-list is not bad now, and he does not mean to have it bad; but he says that he is not pleased with the ways of his ward-masters; and it was his suggestion, not mine, mark you, that I should see if one or two of the Sanitary women would not come as far as this to make things decent. So, of course, I write to you. Don't you think mother could spare you to spend the winter here? It will be rough, of course; but it is all in the good cause. Perhaps you know some nice women,—well, not like you, of course; but still, disinterested and sensible, who would come too. Think of this carefully, I beg you, and talk to father and mother. Worster says we may have three hundred boys in hospital before Christmas. If Jubal Early should come this way, I don't know how many more. Talk with mother and father.
Always yours,
Horace Bartlett.
P. S. I have shown Worster what I have written; he encloses a sort of official letter which may be of use. He says, "Show this to Dr. Hayward; get them to examine you and the others, and then the government, on his order, will pass you on." I enclose this, because, if you come, it will save time.
Of course Huldah went. Grace Starr, her married sister, went with her, and Mrs. Philbrick, and Anna Thwart. That was the way they happened to be all together in the Methodist Church that had been, of Talbot Court House, as Christmas holidays drew near, of the year of grace, 1863.
She and her friends had been there quite long enough to be wonted to the strangeness of December in the open air. On her little table in front of the desk of the church were three or four buttercups in bloom, which she had gathered in an afternoon walk, with three or four heads of hawksweed. "The beginning of one year," Huldah said, "with the end of the other." Nay, there was even a stray rose which Dr. Sprigg had found in a farmer's garden. Huldah came out from the vestry, where her own bed was, in the gray of the morning, changed the water for the poor little flowers, sat a moment at the table to look at last night's memoranda, and then beckoned to the ward-master, and asked him, in a whisper, what was the movement she had heard in the night,—"Another alarm from Early?"
"No, Miss; not an alarm. I saw the Colonel's orderly as he passed. He stopped here for Dr. Fenno's case. There had come down an express from General Mitchell, and the men were called without the bugle, each man separately; not a horse was to neigh, if they could help it. And really, Miss, they were off in twenty minutes."
"Off, who are off?"
"The whole post, Miss, except the relief for to-day. There are not fifty men in the village besides us here. The orderly thought they were to go down to Braxton's; but he did not know."
Here was news indeed! news so exciting that Huldah went back at once, and called the other women; and then all of them together began on that wretched business of waiting. They had never yet known what it was to wait for a real battle. They had had their beds filled with this and that patient from one or another post, and had some gun-shot wounds of old standing among the rest; but this was their first battle if it were a battle. So the covers were taken off that long line of beds, down on the west aisle, and from those under the singers' seat; and the sheets and pillow-cases were brought out from the linen room, and aired, and put on. Our biggest kettles are filled up with strong soup; and we have our milk-punch, and our beef-tea all in readiness; and everybody we can command is on hand to help lift patients and distribute food. But there is only too much time. Will there never be any news? Anna Thwart and Doctor Sprigg have walked down to the bend of the hill, to see if any messenger is coming. As for the other women, they sit at their table; they look at their watches; they walk down to the door; they come back to the table. I notice they have all put on fresh aprons, for the sake of doing something more in getting ready.
Here is Anna Thwart. "They are coming! they are coming! somebody is coming. A mounted man is crossing the flat, coming towards us; and the doctor told me to come back and tell." Five minutes more, ten minutes more, an eternity more, and then, rat-tat-tat, rat-tat-tat, the mounted man is here. "Wagons right behind. We bagged every man of them at Wyatt's. Got there before daylight. Colonel White's men from the Yellows came up just at the same time, and we pitched in before they knew it,—three or four regiments, thirteen hundred men, and all their guns."
"And with no fighting?"
"Oh, yes! fighting of course. The colonel has got a train of wagons down here with the men that are hurt. That's why I am here. Here is his note." Thus does the mounted man discharge his errand backward.
Dear Doctor,—We have had great success. We have surprised the whole post. The company across the brook tried hard to get away; and a good many of them, and of Sykes's men, are hit; but I cannot find that we have lost more than seven men. I have nineteen wagons here of wounded men,—some hurt pretty badly.
Ever yours, H.
So there must be more waiting. But now we know what we are waiting for; and the end will come in a finite world. Thank God, at half-past three, here they are! Tenderly, gently. "Hush, Sam! Hush, Cæsar! You talk too much." Gently, tenderly. Twenty-seven of the poor fellows, with everything the matter, from a burnt face to a heart stopping its beats for want of more blood.
"Huldah, come here. This is my old classmate, Barthow; sat next me at prayers four years. He is a major in their army, you see. His horse stumbled, and pitched him against a stone wall; and he has not spoken since. Don't tell me he is dying; but do as well for him, Huldah,"—and the handsome boy smiled,—"do as well for him as you did for me." So they carried Barthow, senseless as he was, tenderly into the church; and he became E, 27, on an iron bedstead. Not half our soup was wanted, nor our beef-tea, nor our punch. So much the better.
Then came day and night, week in and out, of army system, and womanly sensibility; that quiet, cheerful, homish, hospital life, in the quaint surroundings of the white-washed church; the pointed arches of the windows and the faded moreen of the pulpit telling that it is a church, in a reminder not unpleasant. Two or three weeks of hopes and fears, failures and success, bring us to Christmas eve.
It is the surgeon-in-chief, who happens to give our particular Christmas dinner,—I mean the one that interests you and me. Huldah and the other ladies had accepted his invitation. Horace Bartlett and his staff, and some of the other officers, were guests; and the doctor had given his own permit that Major Barthow might walk up to his quarters with the ladies. Huldah and he were in advance, he leaning, with many apologies, on her arm. Dr. Sprigg and Anna Thwart were far behind. The two married ladies, as needing no escort, were in the middle. Major Barthow enjoyed the emancipation, was delighted with his companion, could not say enough to make her praise the glimpses of Virginia, even if it were West Virginia.
"What a party it is, to be sure!" said he. "The doctor might call on us for our stories, as one of Dickens's chiefs would do at a Christmas feast. Let's see, we should have
The Surgeon's Tale;
The General's Tale;
for we may at least make believe that Hod's stars have come from Washington. Then we must call in that one-eyed servant of his; and we will have
The Orderly's Tale.
Your handsome friend from Wisconsin shall tell
The German's Tale.
I shall be encouraged to tell
The Prisoner's Tale.
And you"—
"And I?" said Huldah laughing, because he paused.
"You shall tell
The Saint's Tale."
Barthow spoke with real feeling, which he did not care to disguise. But Huldah was not there for sentiment; and without quivering in the least, nor making other acknowledgment, she laughed as she knew she ought to do, and said, "Oh, no! that is quite too grand, the story must end with
The Superintendent of Special Relief's Tale.
It is a little unromantic to the sound; but that's what it is."
"I don't see," persisted the major, "if Superintendent of Special Relief means Saint in Latin, why we should not say so."
"Because we are not talking Latin," said Huldah. "Listen to me; and, before we come to dinner, I will tell you a story pretty enough for Dickens, or any of them; and it is a story not fifteen minutes old.
"Have you noticed that black-whiskered fellow, under the gallery, by the north window?—Yes, the same. He is French, enlisted, I think, in New London. I came to him just now, managed to say étrennes and Noël to him, and a few other French words, and asked if there were nothing we could do to make him more at home. Oh, no! there was nothing; madame was too good, and everybody was too good, and so on. But I persisted. I wished I knew more about Christmas in France; and I staid by. 'No, madame, nothing; there is nothing. But, since you say it,—if there were two drops of red wine,—du vin de mon pays, madame; but you could not here in Virginia.' Could not I? A superintendent of special relief has long arms. There was a box of claret, which was the first thing I saw in the store-room the day I took my keys. The doctor was only too glad the man had thought of it; and you should have seen the pleasure that red glass, as full as I could pile it, gave him. The tears were running down his cheeks. Anna, there, had another Frenchman; and she sent some to him: and my man is now humming a little song about the vin rouge of Bourgogne. Would not Mr. Dickens make a pretty story of that for you,—'The Frenchman's Story'?"
Barthow longed to say that the great novelist would not make so pretty a story as she did. But this time he did not dare.
You are not going to hear the eight stories. Mr. Dickens was not there; nor, indeed, was I. But a jolly Christmas dinner they had; though they had not those eight stories. Quiet they were, and very, very happy. It was a strange thing,—if one could have analyzed it,—that they should have felt so much at home, and so much at ease with each other, in that queer Virginian kitchen, where the doctor and his friends of his mess had arranged the feast. It was a happy thing, that the recollections of so many other Christmas homes should come in, not sadly, but pleasantly, and should cheer, rather than shade the evening. They felt off soundings, all of them. There was, for the time, no responsibility. The strain was gone. The gentlemen were glad to be dining with ladies, I believe: the ladies, unconsciously, were probably glad to be dining with gentlemen. The officers were glad they were not on duty; and the prisoner, if glad of nothing else, was glad he was not in bed. But he was glad for many things beside. You see it was but a little post. They were far away; and they took things with the ease of a detached command.
"Shall we have any toasts?" said the doctor, when his nuts and raisins and apples at last appeared.
"Oh, no! no toasts,—nothing so stiff as that."
"Oh, yes! oh, yes!" said Grace. "I should like to know what it is to drink a toast. Something I have heard of all my life, and never saw."
"One toast, at least, then," said the doctor. "Colonel Bartlett, will you name the toast?"
"Only one toast?" said Horace; "that is a hard selection: we must vote on that."
"No, no!" said a dozen voices; and a dozen laughing assistants at the feast offered their advice.
"I might give 'The Country;' I might give 'The Cause;' I might give 'The President:' and everybody would drink," said Horace. "I might give 'Absent friends,' or 'Home, sweet home;' but then we should cry."
"Why do you not give 'The trepanned people'?" said Worster, laughing, "or 'The silver-headed gentlemen'?"
"Why don't you give 'The Staff and the Line'?" "Why don't you give 'Here's Hoping'?" "Give 'Next Christmas.'" "Give 'The Medical Department; and may they often ask us to dine!'"
"Give 'Saints and Sinners,'" said Major Barthow, after the first outcry was hushed.
"I shall give no such thing," said Horace. "We have had a lovely dinner; and we know we have; and the host, who is a good fellow, knows the first thanks are not to him. Those of us who ever had our heads knocked open, like the Major and me, do know. Fill your glasses, gentlemen; I give you 'the Special Diet Kitchen.'"
He took them all by surprise. There was a general shout; and the ladies all rose, and dropped mock courtesies.
"By Jove!" said Barthow to the Colonel, afterwards, "It was the best toast I ever drank in my life. Anyway, that little woman has saved my life. Do you say she did the same to you?"
III. Christmas Again
Table of Contents
So you think that when the war was over Major Barthow, then Major-General, remembered Huldah all the same, and came on and persuaded her to marry him, and that she is now sitting in her veranda, looking down on the Pamunkey River. You think that, do not you?
Well! you were never so mistaken in your life. If you want that story, you can go and buy yourself a dime novel. I would buy "The Rescued Rebel;" or, "The Noble Nurse," if I were you.
After the war was over, Huldah did make Colonel Barthow and his wife a visit once, at their plantation in Pocataligo County; but I was not there, and know nothing about it.
Here is a Christmas of hers, about which she wrote a letter; and, as it happens, it was a letter to Mrs. Barthow.
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