Another coughing fit had, during their absence, intervened, and as the two cautiously untied the flaps and entered the stifling atmosphere of the crowded tent, the Surgeon and a friend or two were bending anxiously about the cot. Their entry attracted the attention of the dying Lieutenant; for that condition his faint hurried breathing, interrupted by occasional gasps, and the rolling, fast glazing eye, too plainly denoted. A look of anxious inquiry,--a faint shake of the head from the Captain--for strong-voiced as he was, his tongue refused the duty of informing the dying man of what had become daily, unwelcome news.
"Oh, my G.o.d! must I,--must I die without again seeing Mary and the babies!" with clasped hands he gasped, half rising, and casting at the same time an imploring look at the Surgeon.
But the effort was too much. His head fell back upon the blankets. A gurgling sound was heard in his throat. With bowed heads to catch the latest whisper, his friends raised him up; and muttering indistinctly amid his efforts to hold the rapidly failing breath, "Mary and the babies. The babies,--Ma----" the Lieutenant left the Grand Army of the Potomac on an everlasting furlough.
Mary was busily engaged with the duties of her little household a week later, enjoying, as best she might, the lively prattle of the boys, when there was the noise of a wagon at the door, and closely following it a knock. "Papa! papa!" exclaimed the children, as with eager haste they preceded the mother. With scarcely less eagerness, Mary opened the door.
Merciful G.o.d! "Temper the wind to the shorn lambs." Earthly consolation is of little avail at a time like this. It was "Papa;"--but Mary was a widow, and the babies fatherless.
By some unfortunate accident the telegram had been delayed, and the sight of the black pine coffin was Mary"s first intimation of her loss.
Her worst antic.i.p.ations thus roughly realized, she sank at the door, a worthy subject for the kind offices of her neighbors.
A fortnight pa.s.sed, and the Adjutant was disturbed in his slumbers, almost at the solemn hour of midnight, to receive from an Orderly some papers from Division Head-Quarters. Among them, was the application of the Lieutenant, returned "approved."
Measured by poor Mary"s loss, how insignificant the sigh of the monied man over increased taxes! how beggarly the boast of patriotic investments! how contemptibly cruel, in her by no means unusual case, the workings of Red Tape!
Occurrences such as these, may sadden for the moment the soldier, but they produce no lasting depression.
"Don"t you think I had oughter Be a going down to Washington To fight for Abraham"s Daughter?"
sang our ex-news-boy Birdy, on one of those cold damp evenings in early December, when the smoke of the fires hung like a pall over the camp ground, and the eyes suffered terribly if their owner made any attempt at standing erect.
"And who is Abraham"s Daughter?" queried one of a prostrate group around a camp fire.
"Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean," continued Birdy, to another popular air, until he was joined by a manly swell of voices in the closing line--
"Three cheers for the Red, White, and Blue!"
"Not much life here," continued Birdy, seating himself. "I have just left the 2--th. There is a high old time over there. They have got the dead wood on old Pigey nice."
"In what way?" inquired the crowd.
"You know that long, slim fellow of Co. E, in that Regiment, who is always lounging about the Hospital, and never on duty."
"What! The fellow that has been going along nearly double, with both hands over the pit of his stomach, for a week past?"
"The same," resumed Birdy. "He has been going it on diarrhoea lately; before that he was running on rheumatism. Well, you know he has been figuring for a discharge ever since he heard the cannonading at the second Bull Run, but couldn"t make it before yesterday."
"How did he make it?" inquired several, earnestly.
"Fished for it," quietly remarked Birdy.
"Come, Birdy, this is too old a crowd for any jokes of yours. Whose canteen have you been sucking Commissary out of?" broke in one of his hearers.
"Nary time; I"m honest, fellows. He fished for it, and I"ll tell you how," resumed Birdy, adjusting the rubber blanket upon which he had seated himself.
"You see old Pigey was riding along the path that winds around the hill to Corps Head-Quarters, when he spied this fellow, Long Tom, as they call him, sitting on a stump, and alongside of the big sink, that some of our mess helped to dig when on police duty last. Tom held in both hands a long pole, over the sink, with a twine string hanging from it--for all the world as if he was fishing. On came old Pigey; but Tom never budged.
""What are you doing there, sir?" said the General.
""Fishing," said Tom, without turning his head.
""Fishing! h--l and d--n! Must be crazy; no fish there."
""I"ve caught them in smaller streams than this," drawled out Tom, turning at the same time his eyes upon the General, with a vacant stare.
"But then I had better bait. The ground about here is too mean for good red worms. Just look," and Tom lifted up an old sardine box, half full of grubs, for the General to look at.
""Crazy, by G--d, sir," said the General, turning to his Aid, "Demented!
Demented! Might be a dangerous man in camp; must be attended to,"
continued the General; striking, as he spoke, vigorous blows across his saddle-bow, with his gauntlet; Tom all the while waiting for a bite, with the patience of an old fisherman.
"It was after three in the afternoon, and the General took the bait.
""Must be attended to. Dangerous man! dangerous man!" said he, adjusting his spectacles.
""Your name and Regiment, sir?"
"Tom drawled them out, and the General directed his Aid to take them down.
""Go to your Quarters, sir," said the General.
""Havn"t caught anything yet, and hard tack is played out," replied Tom.
"At this the General put spurs to his horse, and left. Half an hour afterward, a Corporal"s Guard came after Tom. They took him up to the marquee of the Surgeon of the Division. Tom played it just as well there, and yesterday his discharge came down, all O.K., and they"ve got the Commissary on the strength of it, and are having a high old time generally."
"Bully boy with a gla.s.s eye! How are _you_, discharge!" and like slang exclamations broke rapidly and rapturously from the crowd.
"But," said one of the more thoughtful of the crowd, as the condition of a brother then lying hopelessly ill, with no prospect of a discharge,--although it had been promised repeatedly for months past,--pressed itself upon his attention, "how shameful that this able-bodied coward and idler should get off in this way, when so many better men are dying by inches in the hospitals. A General who understood his command and had more knowledge of human nature, could not be deceived in that way."
"Tom had lounged about Divisions Head-Quarters so much, that he knew old Pigey thoroughly, and just when to take him," said a comrade.
"All the greater shame that our Generals can be taken off their guard at any time," retorted the other.
"Oh, well," continued he, "about what might be expected of one educated exclusively as a Topographical Engineer, and having no acquaintance with active field service, and with no talent for command; for it is a talent that West Point may educate, but cannot create."
"And what is a Tippo, Typo, or Toppographical Engineer, Sergeant?" broke in the little Irish Corporal, who chanced to be one of the group, rather seriously. "Isn"t it something like a land surveyor; and be Jabers, wasn"t the great Washington himself a land surveyor? Eh? Maybe that"s the rayson these Tippos, Typos, or Toppographical Engineers ride such high horses."
"Not badly thought of, Corporal," replied the Sergeant, amid laughter at Terence"s discovery, and his attempt at p.r.o.nunciation; "but Washington was a man of earnestness and ability, and not a guzzler of whiskey, and a mouther of indecent profanity. There are good officers in that Corps.
There is Meade, the fighter of the n.o.ble Pennsylvania Reserves; Warren, a gentleman as well as a soldier. Others might be named. Meritorious men, but kept in the background while the place-men, c.u.mberers of the service, refused by Jeff. Davis when making his selections from among our regular officers, as too cheap an article, are kept in position at such enormous sacrifices of men, money, and time. I have heard it said, upon good authority, that there is a nest of these old place-men in Washington, who keep their heads above water in the service, through the studied intimacy of their families with families of Members of the Cabinet--a toadyism that often elevates them to the depression of more meritorious men, and always at the expense of the country,--but--
"Dark shall be light."
Keep up your spirits, boys."
"Keep up your spirits," echoed Birdy; "that is what they are doing all the time at Division Head-Quarters,--by pouring spirits down, Jim,"
continued he, turning suddenly to a comrade, who lounged lazily alongside of him, holding, at the same time at the end of a stick, a tin cup with a wire handle, over the fire, "tell the crowd about that whisky barrel."
Some of the crowd had heard the story, from the manner in which they welcomed the suggestion, and insisted upon its reproduction.