19 When My Eyes Opened

When I opened my eyes again I was lying in a comfortable bed, and, except a mental languor, I felt as well as usual. I sought to move, but a sharp pain from my right leg shot upward through my body and bade me keep quiet. Then I looked around and saw that I was in my own room, the room that had been mine for more than fifteen years. Every familiar object was in its place, and there in the chair by the window was Madam Arlington, my grandmother, quite unchanged, wearing a dark gray dress, a white cap drawn tightly over her gray curls. She was sitting with the side of her face turned to me, and once more, as I had often done, I admired the strength of her features, the courage and resolution shown in every curve.

My first emotion, bewildered and vague though it was, expressed devout gratitude and thankfulness. My eyes had closed on the bloody wilderness of Shiloh, and they opened here on this peaceful scene.

I must have made a slight movement, one that could be heard, as my grandmother rose from her chair and came to my bedside. Her eyes met mine and I saw the joy in them, but otherwise she repressed all emotion. In truth, Madam Arlington was never a demonstrative woman.

“You are in your right mind again, Henry, and I can give thanks,” she said. “You have talked of strange scenes and awful battlefields, but, please God, you shall now rest.”

“How did I come here, grandmother?” I asked, and I was surprised to find how weak was my voice.

“It was William Penn. You owe your life to him. After he took you that message he returned to follow again behind the army. He wished to go, and I—a foolish old woman I thought myself then—told him that he might. He saw part of the great battle, and he says that it was the most terrible scene in all the world—he is right, I know. When they grew tired of killing each other he went to your regiment and asked for you, but you were not there. Then he hunted over the field until he found you in a little hollow, and they say you would have died if he had not come. A big soldier—Steptoe, or something like that was his name—who seemed to care very much for you, helped William Penn, and he came away with you. He travelled slowly, but he brought you in two days from Shiloh to your own home.”

I wished to ask questions, but Madam Arlington, with that old, stern air that she had often worn when I was a lad of ten or twelve, bade me be silent. Then she brought me food which I ate with a good appetite, and after that I was ordered to remain quiet and sleep if I could, while she resumed her seat by the window.

I felt happy somehow. I think it was the contrast between the scene on which my eyes closed and that on which they awakened. My bed lay where I could see the flowers on the lawn through an angle of the window, and presently William Penn, in his shirt sleeves, a small garden hoe on his shoulder, passed my line of vision. The old hero! A great bar of sunlight entering the window lay across the floor. A fly hummed peacefully against the curtain. Shiloh seemed far away, vague and unreal, and this was like my boyhood.

I fell asleep presently and when I awoke again the sunlight was fading before the misty gray of twilight. I heard the rustle of a skirt and a light step; when I turned my head I saw no one. My grandmother came back presently, carrying a lamp in her hand, but the step that I had heard seemed to me more elastic than that of any woman of sixty-five.

Madam Arlington must have read my look of inquiry, as she raised her finger prohibitively. Nevertheless, I asked:

“Was not some one here, grandmother?”

“Undoubtedly,” she replied, a gleam of humour appearing in her eyes. “You were here. I don’t think you could have left.”

“But some one, neither you nor I,” I insisted.

“Yes,” replied my grandmother. “She asked me not to tell and I promised. It was Elinor Maynard. It is not the first time that she has been in this house since you arrived. In fact she has been here nearly all the time, and she came with you.”

“Came with me!” I exclaimed in wonder.

“Yes, came with you. When William Penn found you and started home with you he sent word for her. Ah, that William Penn is a wiser man than you or perhaps I ever thought he was. She met you on the way: and if you owe your life to William Penn, you owe it to her too. But I always knew that she was the best girl in all this world. Now, not another word, you have enough to think over, perhaps too much.”

I could have smiled any other time at Madam Arlington’s calling Elinor the best girl in the world, when years ago she had forbidden me to know the terrible little Yankee, the representative of strange and uncouth doctrines. Yet my good grandmother would have denied all charges of inconsistency.

She left the room presently and I obeyed her order to think over what I had heard. She had spoken truly when she said that it was enough. My thoughts were more pleasant than ever, and I confess that they were more of Elinor than of William Penn or Madam Arlington.

It was William Penn who brought me my supper, and when I told him how grateful I was for his saving my life he shook his head again and again with great emphasis.

“I was glad enough to get away from that dreadful field,” he said. “I saw the battle, Henry, at a safe distance, I am thankful to say! and may the Lord save me from another such sight. I hope that I shall never become of such little use that they will think of making a soldier of me.”

I did not see Elinor for a day, but my grandmother told me more of her the next morning. Her aunt, Mrs. Maynard, forbade her visits to our house, but Elinor came nevertheless. The strange prejudice of Mrs. Maynard against me seemed to be growing. She had resolved that her niece should marry Colonel Varian. She seemed to be completely under his spell, and he fed her ambition too, because she thought that he would be one of the greatest men in the new Southern republic. She was furious when Elinor came to help bring me back home, but she could not prevent it, and only Elinor’s courage and will enabled her to defy her aunt’s threats. All these things Madam Arlington told me in a voice in which anger and indignation always appeared, and I knew that Elinor had at least one warlike friend.

It was in the afternoon that Elinor came to me, pale and quiet. She gave me her hand very simply and did not seek to withdraw it.

“Elinor,” I said, “I know that you helped William Penn to bring me here.”

“Should I not have done so?” she asked, the red creeping into her cheeks.

“Would you have gone thus for Varian?”

“You ask too many questions. Tell me of the battle. We have had little true news of it.”

Yet I believed now that she would not have gone for Varian, that from the first she had feared and not liked him. And I was happy in the thought. Then I talked of Shiloh. I told of the surprise in the great woods; the apparition of the Southern army springing from the thickets; the long fight of the day when we were steadily pushed backward; the drunken squad’s last stand; the passage of the second army over the river in the night; the battle of the second day, and my own misadventure. She listened to it all with a flushed cheek, and when I described the drunken squad’s last stand, she said:

“At least they had courage and devotion, if nothing else.”

Madam Arlington entered at this moment and was properly indignant.

“Too much talking,” she said; “and talking is not good for a wounded man.”

Then she sent Elinor out of the room and bade me go to sleep. Thus several days passed and my injuries healed rapidly. They were attended by a good doctor, the man who had piloted me through most of my youthful ailments, and I was helped by a strong constitution and the best of nursing. Elinor came to see me three times, and I learned now what a help it is to a young man in love to be wounded in battle. My grandmother was constitutionally a woman of even temperament, but I had not seen her so happy in years, and I soon discovered the cause. She was conducting a furious epistolary correspondence with Mrs. Maynard on the subject of Elinor, who had been forbidden repeatedly to come to our house, but who came nevertheless. As Madam Arlington was having her way, she enjoyed the controversy to the utmost. Yet I was remorseful. I could not bear the thought that Elinor should be made unhappy at her home on my account, and once I approached the subject, but she warned me away.

“My aunt has intentions which are not mine,” she said. “I shall be compelled to disobey her in more than one respect.”

I could not say more; but I remained troubled about her, although feeling a secret delight at her disobedience.

The day after this I heard a heavy step at the door, and a thickset man entered the room. It was Shaftoe.

“Still on your back when you ought to be chasing armies!” he said, with unconcealed joy. “How do you expect Grant to win battles when he hasn’t got you with him?”

He was redolent of strength and life in the open air, and I listened eagerly to his budget of news. Grant had been following the Southern army since Shiloh, he said, and gathering reinforcements for other combats. He really thought that Grant knew something about commanding troops and was not a mere political general. Affairs were going badly in the East, but they were in our favour in the West. The one was a set-off to the other, and nothing was sure except that it would be a huge war.

“I got a short leave of absence,” said Shaftoe; “and as it isn’t far up here, I’ve slipped across the country to see you. I met two women before I came in here. One was young, and she has the prettiest face that I’ve ever seen. I remember her in Washington, but I did not notice her so closely then. I’m thinking she’s the girl, Henry. The other was old—and I want to give you a piece of advice right now, Henry—never argue politics with a woman. She doesn’t keep to the rules at all, and proof that might convince the most reasonable man in the world is nothing to her. The old lady saw my blue uniform, and she didn’t like it—flew into a tantrum—said I was a robber and a murderer, coming down here to kill good Southerners and take away their property. I said that my uniform was of the same colour that you wore, and that I was your particular friend. Then she relented and let me come in, though I’m not sure that she’s not watching somewhere to see that I don’t kill you.”

I laughed, and subsequently had the pleasure, when I introduced Shaftoe to my grandmother, to see that they got along well together. He was wise enough to accede in silence to all her opinions, and to take his rebukes with a contrite spirit. I think that he would have risen high in her good graces—she even had hope of converting him—but he would stay only a few hours, being compelled to leave on the afternoon of the same day.

“However, I shall send a friend to represent me,” he said, with a twinkling eye.

“Who is it?” I asked with curiosity.

“The Rev. Elkanah Armstrong,” he replied. “The Rev. Elkanah became too zealous for the conversion of the rebels in some of the recent skirmishing and got a bullet in his left shoulder. It was not a serious wound, but he will have to rest, and I recommended this neighbourhood to him, thinking it would be pleasant to you both. He is at the little hotel down at the village, and, wound or no wound, he is ready to preach to anybody who will listen.”

Shaftoe left an hour later, and Mr. Armstrong came the next day, his shoulder in a bandage, but as eager and zealous as ever. I found him good company, and through respect for his cloth my grandmother refrained from criticising his position in the war.

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