9 The Penetration of Shaftoe

Shaftoe and I were two among the thousands who obeyed the call of the drum, and we went together to Kentucky, I finding again on the journey that I had chosen wisely when I resolved to make him my comrade. I was grateful, too, that he saw fit to help me out of the store of his experience and wisdom, falling in with my plan, for I felt that I was the one who received benefits and gave but little in return. He began now to instruct me in the arts of the campaigner.

“You are to be a soldier soon,” he said, “and so you will have to begin life over again. You really know nothing about taking care of yourself. No man does until he has served at least two years as a private. Unless I watch over you you are sure to have shoes either too tight or too loose, and inside of a week you will be so lame you can’t walk. You will go to sleep on the damp ground just because you are so tired that you stop thinking, and the next day you will have chills and fever. In short, you will be dead before you hear the whistle of an enemy’s bullet if you don’t take good advice, which, of course, is mine.”

I promised him that I would obey all his instructions, and his pleasure at my assurance was obvious. Where his military knowledge was concerned he showed a fine strain of egotism, but it proceeded from such good cause that it seemed logical and natural. Moreover, he took no credit to himself for anything else, and I like to see a man proud of the work that he can do best. I found that he was not an easy master at first. His discipline was severe, and if I failed to tell what I ought to do in any military emergency, his criticism was instant and emphatic. “This little West Point of mine must be carried on right,” he said. “I haven’t had a chance to lecture anybody for a long time before, and don’t you think that I’m going to let it pass.”

Yet I knew that he liked me, as otherwise he would not have taken so much trouble to make me a good soldier.

We went by rail to Cincinnati, where I received a letter from Elinor. I had asked her to write to me there, and tell me of her safe arrival. Her letter was brief:

“We reached here without trouble or long delay,” she said. “We heard of nothing on our way but war, and the talk of great battles soon to come. Colonel Varian—he is a colonel now, his commission came from Mr. Davis himself, and he is esteemed highly in the South—was most kind and assisted us in many ways. But he was rather silent and reserved, and we have seen little of him since our arrival here. Henry, I trust that you will come to no harm in this war, and that the war itself will soon be ended, for it seems a cruel thing.”

I thought over the letter for a while, not being able to tell from it Elinor’s feelings toward Varian. Shaftoe was close by when I received it, smoking, and presently I saw him take his pipe out of his mouth and look fixedly at me. Being so much older and more experienced than I, he felt that he could take liberties. At length he said:

“A girl?”

Silence.

“Not a girl, but the girl.”

Silence.

Private Thomas Shaftoe, U. S. A., relighted his pipe and smoked for a minute or two with great deliberation, but did not take his translating eye off me.

“I was sure it was the girl and not a girl,” he said presently.

Still silence.

“A mighty soldier such as you are to become would never be disturbed so much by anything except the girl.”

I stirred a little, for I was uneasy under his gaze.

“That’s confirmation,” said Shaftoe. “Now, I want to ask you one thing. Aren’t you afraid the war will lag through a division of your attention? Perhaps it may cause the North to suffer several great defeats.”

The veteran pulled calmly at his pipe and looked with seeming laziness through the rising smoke. But his keen eyes were on me, and I believe that they read every thought passing in my mind. It had become Shaftoe’s opinion lately that I was taking life with a seriousness and intensity bordering upon strain, and I felt that he wished to indulge his humour a little at my expense.

“You wonder why I know about the girl—that is, the particular girl and not a girl,” he resumed. “It’s easy enough to know; I didn’t have to hunt up the fact; you advertised it to me in billboard letters a yard high, all in red ink. The only way for me not to see it was to shut my eyes tight, and I can’t keep that up twenty-four hours a day.”

He laughed silently, but with enjoyment.

“Oughtn’t I to know the signs?” he resumed. “Haven’t I been through it all? Yes, sir, every stage of the disease from catch to cure! There she stands now, nineteen years old, as spry as a deer and as wild, black eyes and black hair, cream on her brow and roses on her cheeks and mischief in her soul. I was sure I’d die or kill somebody if I didn’t marry her. Neither happened.”

“Why didn’t you marry her?”

“Asked her, but she preferred to marry some one else. That was long ago. I got over it, as you will get over your attack, my son.”

Private Thomas Shaftoe, U. S. A., laughed again, and blew a smoke ring high above his head. Then he added:

“At least the United States got a first-class soldier by it, if I do say it myself.”

Then he seemed to sigh, but so softly that I could not hear him; I doubt if he heard himself.

It was our intention to continue the journey by rail from Cincinnati to Louisville, but we found the trains from the former place choked with volunteers and material of war, and so we secured passage on the packet steamer Island Queen down the Ohio, arriving at Louisville the next day in safety.

I was more or less acquainted in Louisville, and I beheld here for the first time and on a large scale the painful division of families, which I believe that all acknowledge to be the saddest feature of a civil war. Shaftoe left me on the second day, going to Indiana, where he was to assist in the organization and drill of a new regiment. Some Indiana troops were already in Louisville, tall, gawky young countrymen, and the Kentuckians, with that contempt which they always feel for the Indianians—a contempt which has nothing to do with the respective merits of the two—hooted them as they walked through the streets and asked them what they were. I shall not forget the reply. “We are free citizens of the State of Indiana,” answered the Hoosiers proudly, remembering that the Kentuckians were slaveholders and they were not. And yet, by another of the contradictions of human nature, those Indianians came from a county which to this day will not allow a negro to remain twenty-four hours on its soil.

I was in a state of uncertainty. I wished to visit my grandmother before entering upon active service, but I could not yet learn whether a man known to be a volunteer for the Northern army having visited that part of the State would be able to return to his duty. I took, meanwhile, a room at the Gait House, and on the second day when I went to breakfast I met Varian. He saw me first, and came to my table, offering his hand with a cheerful good morning.

“I had heard that you were here, Mr. Kingsford,” he said. “Our careers, or rather our wishes, seem to take us along the same path.”

I was forced to return his greeting in kind, although surprised and not wholly pleased to see him there. Elinor had written that he was already a colonel in the Confederate service, and surely he must know his risk in coming to Louisville.

He invited me to join Mr. Blanchard and himself at his table, and I found Mr. Blanchard there, silent and lowering as ever. Varian, talking freely, gave me much news, and despite the gaiety of his manner, I noticed a thread of irony which seemed to me at times to become marvellously like bitterness.

The southern part of the State, he said, was swarming with the Confederate forces. Mrs. Maynard and her niece were at their house, and my respected grandmother, so he said, was quietly at hers, very anxious about me and hoping to see me soon. Miss Maynard was still of divided feelings, loving the South and yet sure that the North was right and would win. He had sought in vain to convert her to sounder political and military beliefs, but women were guided in these matters as in all others by their emotions, or by that instinct which usually leads them wrong, rather than by their reason. I was not sure that a woman’s instinct usually led her wrong, and I said so.

“At any rate,” he replied lightly, “a man can not depend upon them. Just when he thinks he has convinced them, he is sure to find that they think the very opposite. Perhaps it is the fine contrariety of the sex that makes them so beautiful to us.”

I watched his face with new interest, but it expressed no emotion, and he began to talk of other subjects. I asked him why he had come to Louisville, and was he not afraid of detention.

“It is necessary in this life to have strong friends,” he replied, shrugging his shoulders, “and perhaps I have them. At all events, I feel no apprehensions. The war has not really begun, although all of us know that it will begin.” Then he discussed the military situation, talking to me quite frankly, telling me that Kentucky was a pivotal State, and whichever side could hold it would drive a wedge into the heart of the other. Possession, he said, would be the prize of swiftness and decision, and so far the South had shown herself superior in those qualities. He described the campaign as he would conduct it for the South if he were in chief command, and it seemed to me that his was a true military genius, since his tone had the ring of knowledge and confidence, and one was convinced in spite of himself.

“I could wish, Mr. Varian,” I said, “that you would choose our side.”

“Not so much as I wish you to take ours,” he replied.

I thanked him for the compliment, and presently tried to engage his companion, the sullen Mr. Blanchard, in conversation. But if Mr. Blanchard had any ideas worth the telling, he was pleased to consider them better worth the keeping, as he made but brief replies to all my questions and suggestions, and Varian resuming the thread of the conversation, he was left to his original silence.

Varian asked me if I intended a visit to my home, and I said that I would surely go if I found the way to be open. He made no comment, but left the room a few moments later with Blanchard.

I inquired the next morning for him, but I found that he and his familiar were gone, and I learned from others that his flight was hastened by the danger of arrest. The rumour was spreading that a man, already a colonel in the Southern service, was in the city, possibly as a spy, and while one might tolerate much before active hostilities, this was going too far.

I decided the next day that I would visit my home, taking the chances of detention and capture, and an hour after forming this resolution I started.

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