The Shades of the Wilderness Part 27

"Close, George," said Harry at length.

"Yes, a bit hard to breathe."

"When fellows get used to a thing it's hard to change."

"Fine room, though, and those are splendid beds."

"Great on a winter night."

"You've noticed how the commander-in-chief himself seldom sleeps under a tent, but takes his blankets to the open?"

"Wonder how an Indian who has roamed the forest all his life feels when he's shut up between four walls for the first time."

"Fancy it's like a prison cell to him."

"Think so too. But the Lanhams are fine people and they're doing their best for us."

"Do you think they'd be offended if I were to take my blankets, and sleep on the gra.s.s in the back yard?"

"Of course they would. You mustn't think of such a thing. After this war is over you've got to emerge slowly from barbarism. Do you remember whether at supper we cut our food with our knives and lifted it to our mouths with forks, or just tore and lifted with our fingers?"

"We used knife and fork, each in its proper place. I happened to think of it and watched myself. You, I suppose, did it through the force of an ancient habit, recalled by civilized surroundings."

"I'm glad you remember about it. Now I'm going to bed, and maybe I'll sleep. I suppose there's no hope of seeing the stars through the roof."

"None on earth! But my bed is fine and soft. We'd be all right if we could only lift the roof off the house. I'd like to hear the wind rubbing the boughs together."

"Stop it! You make me homesick! We've got no right to be pining for blankets and the open, when these good people are doing so much for us!"

Each stretched himself upon his bed, and closed his eyes. They had not been jesting altogether. So long a life in the open made summer skies at night welcome, and roofs and walls almost took from them the power of breathing.

But the feeling wore away after a while and amid pleasurable thoughts of the coming ball both fell asleep.

CHAPTER X

THE MISSING PAPER

Harry and Dalton did not awake until late the next morning and they found they had not suffered at all from sleeping between four walls and under a roof. Their lungs were full of fresh air, and youth with all its joyous irresponsibility had come back. Harry sprang out of bed.

"Up! up! old boy!" Harry cried to Dalton. "Don't you hear the bugles calling? not to battle but to pleasure! There is no enemy in our front!

We don't have to cross a river with an overwhelming army pressing down upon us! We don't have to ride before the dawn on a scout which may lead us into a thicket full of hostile riflemen. We're in a city, boy, and our business now is beauty and pleasure!"

"Harry," said Dalton, "you ought to go far."

"Why, George? What induces you to a.s.sume the role of a prophet concerning me?"

"Because you're so full of life. You're so keen about everything.

You must have a heart and lungs of extra steam power."

"But I notice you don't say anything about brain power. Maybe you think it's the quiet, rather silent fellows like yourself, George, who have an excess of that."

"None of your irony. Am I not looking forward to this ball as much as you are? I was a boy when I entered the war, Harry, but two years of fighting day and night age one terribly. I feel as if I could patronize any woman under twenty-five, and treat her as quite a simple young thing."

"Try it, George, and see what happens to you."

"Oh, no! I merely said I felt that way. I've too much sense to put it into action."

"Do you know, George, that when this war is over it will be really time for us to be thinking about girls. We'll be quite old enough. They say that many of the Yankee maidens in Philadelphia and New York are fine for looks. I wonder if they'll cast a favoring eye on young Southern officers as our conquering armies go marching down their streets!"

"It's too remote. Don't think about it, Harry. Richmond will do us for the present."

"But you can let a fellow project his mind into the future."

"Not so far that we'll be marching as conquerors through Philadelphia and New York. Let's deal with realities."

"I've always thought there was something of the Yankee about you, George, not in political principles--I never question your devotion to the cause-- but in calculating, weighing everything and deciding in favor of the one that weighs an ounce the most."

"Are you about through dressing? You've taken a minute longer than the regular time."

There was a knock at the door, and, when Dalton opened it a few inches, a black head announced through the crack that breakfast was ready.

"See what a disgrace you're bringing upon us," said Dalton. "Delaying everything. Mrs. Lanham will say that we're two impostors, that such malingerers cannot possibly belong to the Army of Northern Virginia."

"Lead on," said Harry. "I'm ready, and I'm hungry as every soldier in the Southern army always is."

They had a warm greeting from their hospitable hosts, followed by an abundant breakfast. Then at Mrs. Lanham's earnest solicitation they turned over their dress uniforms to her to be repaired and pressed.

Then they went out into the streets again, and spent the whole day rambling about, enjoying everything with the keen and intense delight that can come only to the young, and after long abstinence. Richmond was not depressed. Far from it. There had been a wonderful transformation since those dark days when the army of McClellan was near enough to see the spires of its churches. The flood of battle had rolled far away since then, and it had never come back. It could never come back.

It was true that the Army of Northern Virginia had failed at Gettysburg, but it was returning to the South una.s.sailed, and was ready to repeat its former splendid achievements.

Harry went to the post office, and found there, to his great surprise and delight, a letter from his father, written three or four days after Vicksburg.

My dear son: [he wrote]

The news has just come to us that the Army of Northern Virginia, while performing prodigies of valor, has failed to carry all the Northern positions at Gettysburg. Only complete success could warrant a further advance. I a.s.sume therefore that General Lee is retreating and I a.s.sume also that you, Harry, my beloved son, are alive, that you came unharmed out of that terrible battle. It does not seem possible to me that it could be otherwise. I cannot conceive of you fallen. It may be that it's because you are my son. The sons of others may fall, but not mine, just as we know that all others are doomed to die, but get into the habit of thinking ourselves immortal. So, I address this letter to you in the full belief that it will reach you somewhere, and that you will read it.

You know, of course, of our great loss at Vicksburg. It is disastrous but not irreparable. We still have a powerful army in the West, hardy, indomitable, one with which the enemy will have to reckon. As for myself I have been spared in many battles and I am well. It seems the sport of chance that you and I, while fighting on the same side, should have been separated in this war, you in the East and I in the West. But it has been done by One who knows best, and after all I am glad that you have been in such close contact with two of the greatest and highest-minded soldiers of the ages, Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee. I do not think of them merely as soldiers, but as knights and champions with flaming swords. One of them, alas! is gone, but we have the other, and if man can conquer he will. Here in the West we repose our faith in Lee, as surely as do you in the East, you who see his face and hear his voice every day.

I have had two or three letters from Pendleton. That part of the State is for the present outside the area of conflict, though I hear that the guerilla bands to the east in the mountains still vex and annoy, and that Skelly is growing bolder. I foresee the time when we shall have to reckon with this man, who is a mere brigand.

I hear that the prospects for fruit in our orchards were never finer.

You will remember how you prowled in them when you were a little boy, Harry, and what a pirate you were among the apples and peaches and pears and good things that grew on tree and bush and briar in that beautiful old commonwealth of ours. I often upbraided you then, but I should like to see you now, far out on a bough as of old, reaching for a big yellow pear, or a red, red bunch of cherries! Alas! there are many lads who will never return, who will never see the pear trees and the cherry trees again, but I repeat I cannot feel that you will be among them. Who would ever have dreamed when this war began that it could go so far? More than two years of fierce and deadly battles and I can see no end. A deadlock and neither side willing to yield! How glad would be the men who made the war to see both sections back where they were two and a half years ago! and that's no treason.