Читать книгу Who Goes There? - B. K. Benson - Страница 16

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"Great lords, wise men ne'er sit and wail their loss,

But cheerly seek how to redress their harms."

--SHAKESPEARE.

When I awoke in Dr. Khayme's tent toward four o'clock of the afternoon of July 22, I felt that my mind was clear; I had slept dreamlessly.

On the cover of my bed an envelope was lying--a telegram. I hastily tore it open, and read: "Dr. Khayme tells me you are safe. Continue to do your duty." My heart swelled,

I rose, and dressed, and went out. The Doctor was standing under a tree, near a fire; a negro was cooking at the fire. Under an awning, or fly, beneath which a small eating table was dressed, a woman was sitting in a chair, reading. I thought I had seen her before, and looking more closely I recognized the woman who had given the Doctor a cup of coffee on Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Doctor stepped forward to meet me, "Ah, I see you have rested well," said he; then, "Lydia, here is Mr. Berwick."

I was becoming accustomed to surprises from the Doctor, so that I was not greatly astonished, although I had received no intimation of the young lady's identity. The feeling that was uppermost was shame that I had not even, once thought of asking the Doctor about her.

"I should, never have recognized you," I said. She replied with, a smile, and the Doctor relieved the situation by cheerfully crying out "Dinner!" and leading the way to the table.

"Now, Jones," said the Doctor, "you are expected to eat; you have had nothing since yesterday afternoon, when you choked yourself while bandaging--"

"What do you know about that?" I asked.

"You talked about it in your sleep last night on the road. As for Lydia and me, we have had our breakfast and our luncheon, and you must not expect us to eat like a starving fantassin. Fall to, my boy. I know that you have eaten nothing to-day."

There were fruit, bread and butter, lettuce, rice, and coffee. I did not wonder at the absence of meat; I remembered some of the talks of my friend. The Doctor and his daughter seemed to eat merely for the purpose of keeping me in countenance.

"Lydia, would you have known Mr. Berwick?"

"Why, of course, Father; I should have known him anywhere; it is not four years since we saw him."

These four years had made a great change in Miss Khayme. I had left her a girl in the awkward period of a girl's life; now she was a woman of fine presence, wholesome, good to look at. She did not resemble her father, except perhaps in a certain intellectual cast of feature. Her dark wavy tresses were in contrast with his straight black hair; her eyes were not his; her stature was greater than his. Yet there were points of resemblance. Her manner was certainly very like the Doctor's, and many times a fleeting expression was identical with, the Doctor's habitually perfect repose.

She must have been clad very simply; at any rate, I cannot remember anything of her dress. I only know that it was unpretentious and charming.

Her eyes were of that shade of gray which is supposed to indicate great intelligence; her complexion was between dark and fair, and betokened health. Her face was oval; her mouth a little large perhaps. She had an air of seriousness--her only striking peculiarity. One might have charged her with masculinity, but in this respect only: she was far above the average woman in dignity of manner and in consciousness of attainment. She could talk seriously of men and things.

I was wishing to say something pleasant to Miss Lydia, but could only manage to tell her that she had changed wonderfully and that she had a great advantage over me in that I was the same ungainly boy she had known in Charleston.

She did not reply to this, covering her silence by making me my third cup of coffee.

"Lydia," said the Doctor, "you must tell Mr. Berwick something about our life in the East. You know how I dislike to speak three sentences."

"With great pleasure, Father; Mr. Berwick will find that I can speak four."

"Not now, my dear. I warn you, Jones, that I shall watch over you very carefully while you are with us. I am responsible to the hospital surgeon for your health, and I cannot be a party to your extinction."

"How many sentences did you speak then, Father?"

"It depends on how you punctuate," he replied.

"Mr. Berwick," said Lydia, "Father pretends that he is not talkative, but don't you believe him. He can easily talk you to sleep."

The Doctor was almost gay, that is, for the Doctor. His eyes shone. He did not cease to look at me, except when he looked at Lydia. For the time, Lydia had a severer countenance than her father's. I ate. I thanked my stars for the conversation that was covering my ignoble performance.

"Doctor," I asked, pausing for breath, "is there any news of Willis?"

"Willis is doing well enough. The ball has been extracted; it was only a buck-shot, as you rightly surmised."

"How do you know what I surmised, Doctor?"

"Willis told the surgeon of your supposition, giving you full credit for the origin of it. By the way, that was a famous bandage you gave him."

"Was it the correct practice?"

"Well, I can hardly go as far as to say it was scientific, but under the circumstances we must pardon you."

"How long will the sergeant be down?"

"From three to six weeks, I think, according to the weather and his state of mind."

"What's the matter with his mind?"

"Impatience," said the Doctor; "the evil of the whole Western world."

I had finished eating. The Doctor got his pipe: the idol's head was the same old idol's head. Lydia disappeared into one of the tents.

"Jones," said Dr. Khayme, "I have been thinking that yesterday will prove to be the crisis of the war."

"You alarm me more than ever; do you mean to say that the South will win?"

"My words do not imply that belief; but what does it matter which side shall win?"

"Doctor, you are a strange man!"

"I have been told so very frequently; but that is not to the point. I ask what difference it would make whether the North or South should succeed."

"Then why go to war? Why not let the South, secede peaceably? What are we doing here?"

"Indeed, Jones, you may well ask such questions. War is always wrong; going to war is necessarily a phase of a shortsighted policy; every wrong act is, of course, an unwise act."

"Even when war is forced upon us?"

"War cannot be forced upon you; it takes two nations to make war; if one refuses, the other cannot make war."

"I have known, for a long time, Doctor, that you are opposed to war on the whole; but what was left for the North to do? Acknowledge the right of secession? Submit to insult? Submit to the loss of all Federal property in the Southern States? Tamely endure without resentment the attack on Sumter?"

"Yes, endure everything rather than commit a worse crime than that you resist."

Here Lydia, reappeared, charming in a simple white dress without ornament. "Good-by, Father," she said; "Mr. Berwick, I must bid you good night."

"Yes, you are on duty to-night," said her father. "Jones, you must know that Lydia is a volunteer also; she attaches herself to the Commission, and insists on serving the sick and wounded. She is on duty to-night at the College Hospital. I think she will have her hands full."

"Why, you will see Willis; will you be in his ward?" I asked, looking my admiration.

"I don't know that I am in his ward," she replied, "but I can easily see him if you wish."

"Then please be so good as to tell him that I shall come to see him--to-morrow, if possible."

Lydia started off down the hill.

"She will find a buggy at our stable-camp," said Dr. Khayme; "it is but a short distance down there."

The Doctor smoked. I thought of many things. His view of war was not new, by any means; of course, in the abstract he was right: war is wrong, and that which is wrong is unwise; but how to prevent war? A nation that will not preserve itself, how can it exist? I could not doubt that secession is destruction. If the Union should now or ever see itself broken up, then farewell to American liberties; farewell to the hopes of peoples against despotism. To refuse war, to tamely allow the South to withdraw and set up a government of her own, would be but the beginning of the end; at the first grievance California, Massachusetts, any State, could and would become independent. No; war must come; the Union must be preserved; the nation was at the forks of the road; for my part, I could not hesitate; we must take one road or the other; war was forced upon us. But why reason thus, as though we still had choice? War already exists; we must make the best of it; we are down to-day, but Bull Run is not the whole of the war; one field is lost, but all is not lost.

"Doctor," I asked, "why do you say that yesterday will prove to be the crisis of the war?"

"Because," he answered, "yesterday's lesson was well taught and will be well learned; it was a rude lesson, but it will prove a wholesome one. Your government now knows the enormous work it has to do. We shall now see preparation commensurate with the greatness of the work. Three months' volunteers are already a thing of the past. This war might have been avoided; all war might be avoided; but this war has not been avoided; America will be at war for years to come."

I was silent.

"We shall have a new general, Jones; General McClellan is ordered to report immediately in person to the war department."

"Why a new general? McClellan is well enough, I suppose; but what has McDowell done to deserve this?"

"He has failed. Failure in war is unpardonable; every general that fails finds it so; McClellan may find it so."

"You are not much of a comforter, Doctor."

"The North does not need false comforters; she needs to look things squarely in the face. Mind you, I did not say that McClellan will fail. I think, however, that there will be many failures, and much injustice done to those who fail. In war injustice is easily tolerated--any injustice that will bring success; success is demanded--not justice. Wholesale murder was committed yesterday and brought failure; wholesale murder that brings success is what is demanded by this superstitious people."

"Why do you say superstitious?"

"A nation at war believes in luck; if it has not good luck, it changes; it is like the gambler who bets high when he thinks he has what he calls a run in his favor. If the cards go against him, he changes his policy, and very frequently changes just as the cards change to suit his former play. You are now changing to McClellan, simply because McDowell has had bad luck and McClellan good luck. I do not know that McClellan's good luck will continue. War and cards are alike, and they are unlike."

"How alike and unlike?"

"Games of chance, so called, lose everything like chance in the long run; they equalize 'chances' and nobody wins. War also destroys chance, and nobody wins; both sides lose, only one side loses less than the other. In games, the result of one play cannot be foretold; in war, the result of one battle cannot be foretold. In games and in war the general result can be foretold; in the one there will be a balance and in the other there will be destruction. Even the winner in war is ruined morally, just as is the gambler."

"And can you foretell the result of this war?"

"Conditionally."

"How conditionally?"

"If the North is in earnest, or becomes in earnest, and her people become determined, there is no mystery in a prediction of her nominal success; still, she will suffer for her crime. She must suffer largely, just as she is suffering to-day in a small way for the crime of yesterday."

"It is terrible to think of yesterday's useless sacrifice."

"Not useless, Jones, regarded in its relation to this war, but certainly useless in relation to civilization. Bull Bun will prove salutary for your cause, or I woefully mistake. Nations that go to war must learn from misfortune."

"But, then, does not the misfortune of yesterday justify a change in generals?"

"Not unless the misfortune was caused by your bad generalship, and that is not shown--at least, so far as McDowell is concerned. The advance should not have been made, but he was ordered to make it. We now know that Beauregard's army was reënforced by Johnston's; it was impossible not to see that it could be so reënforced, as the Confederates had the interior line. The real fault in the campaign is not McDowell's. His plan was scientific; his battle was better planned than was his antagonist's; he outgeneralled Beauregard clearly, and failed only because of a fact that is going to be impressed frequently upon the Northern mind in this war; that fact is that the Southern troops do not know when they are beaten. McDowell defeated Beauregard, so far as those two are concerned; but his army failed, and he must be sacrificed; the North ought, however, to sacrifice the army."

"What do you mean by that, Doctor?"

"I mean that war is wrong; it is always so. It is essentially unjust and narrow. You have given up your power to be just; you cannot do what you know to be just. You act under compulsion, having yielded your freedom. A losing general is sacrificed, regardless of his real merit."

"Was it so in Washington's case?"

"Washington's first efforts were successful; had he been, defeated at Boston, he would have been superseded--unless, indeed, the colonies had given up the struggle."

"And independence would have been lost?"

"No; I do not say that. The world had need of American independence."

For half an hour we sat thus talking, the Doctor doing the most of it, and giving full rein to his philosophically impersonal views of the immediate questions involved in the national struggle. He rose at last, and left me thinking of his strange personality and wondering why, holding such views, be should throw his energies into either side.

He returned presently, bringing me a letter from my father. He waited as I opened it, and when I asked leave to read it, he said for answer, as if still thinking of our conversation:--

"Jones, my boy, there is a future for you. I can imagine circumstances in which your peculiar powers of memory would accomplish more genuine good than could a thousand bayonets; good night."

Before I went to bed I had written my father a long letter. Then, I lay down, oppressed with thought.