4
The recruiting officer got us uniforms--or somebody did; and during the nice weather--it was October when I enlisted--our company did some drilling. We had no arms, but used shotguns, squirrel rifles, and even sticks. Will Lockwood tried to drill us, but made a bad mess of it. Then one day Buckner Gowdy, who had also enlisted, took charge of a squad of men and in ten minutes showed that he knew more about drill than any one else in the county. He had been educated at a military school in Virginia.
All the skill in drill that we ever got, we owed to him. The sharp word of command; the quick swing to the proper position; the snappy step; everything that we knew more than a lot of yokels might be expected to know, we got from Buck Gowdy. Magnus admitted it, even; but he turned pale whenever he was in a squad under Gowdy's command. It was gall and wormwood for me, and worse for him; but when it came to electing a captain of our company, I voted for Gowdy, and under the same conditions would do it again. It was better to have a real captain who was a scoundrel, than a man who knew nothing but kept the Commandments. War is hell in more than one respect. I felt that Gowdy would be more likely to bring us safe out of any bad hole in which we might find ourselves, than any one else. But I was glad, sometimes, when he was rawhiding us into shape, that Magnus Thorkelson was drilling with a wooden gun. I wondered how the new captain himself felt about this.
Governor Wade gave us a great entertainment at his farm just before we marched--still without guns--to the railroad to take the cars for Dubuque, where boats were supposed to be waiting to take us down the river--if we could make it before navigation was closed by the ice. His great barns were cleared out for tables, and the house was open, and there were flags and transparencies expressing the heroism of those who were willing to do anything to get us into the fight.
Everybody was there--except Judge Stone. I remember looking through the open door at the great iron safe into which he had put the county satchel--I am careful not to commit myself as to the money part of it--and all the events of the previous visit came back through my mind; but mainly how angry I had been with Virginia for being kissed by Bob Wade. And Bob was there, too, all spick and span in his new lieutenant's uniform with Kittie Fleming hanging on his arm, her eyes drinking him in with every glance. The governor was in no position to make a row about this. The occasion had caused an armistice to be signed as to all our neighborhood quarrels, and Bob Wade was emancipated from the stern paternal control, as Jack had been when he went off with the first flight in the original seventy-five thousand--emancipated by the uniform. Bob and Kittie sailed along in the face and eyes of the governor and his wife in spite of the fact that such association was forbidden--and sailed down to Waterloo where they were married before we went off hurrahing for the cause.
Virginia was there with the elder and grandma. The old preacher and his wife looked more shabby than I had ever seen them, grandma's gloves more extensively darned, the elder's clothes shinier, his cuffs in all their whiteness more frayed, and there were beautifully darned places in the stiff starched bosom of his shirt. He pressed my hand warmly as he said, "God bless you, Jacob, and bring you safe back to us, my boy!" Grandma's eyes glistened as she echoed his sentiments and began asking me about my underwear and especially my socks. Virginia looked the other way; but when I went off by myself, Will Lockwood came and drew me away into a corner to talk with me about old times along the canal; and suddenly we found Virginia there, and Will all at once thought of some one he wanted to speak to and left us together.
"I didn't mean that I thought you ought not to go to the war, Teunis," said she. "You must go, of course."
"Maybe your friends," I said after standing dumb for a while, "will be on the Union side."
"No," said she. "I have no relations--and few friends there; but all I have will be on the other side, I reckon. It makes no difference. They've forgotten me by this time. Everybody has forgotten me that once liked me--everybody but Elder Thorndyke and Mrs. Thorndyke. They love me, but nobody else does."
"I thought some others acted as if they did," I said.
"You thought a lot about it!" she scoffed. Then we sat quite a while silent. "I shall think every day," said she at last, "about the only happy time I have had since Ann took sick--and long before that. The only happy time, and the happiest, I reckon, that I ever'll have. I'll think of it every day while you're at the front. I want you to know when you are suffering and in danger that some one thinks of the kindest thing you ever did--and maybe the kindest thing any boy ever did. You don't care about it now, maybe; but the time may come when you will."
"What time was that?" I asked.
"You know, Teunis," the tears were falling in her lap now. "Those days when we were together alone on the wide prairie--when you took me in and was so good to me--and saved me from going wild, if not from anything else bad. I remember that for the first few days, I was not quite easy in my feelings--I reckon your goodness hadn't come to me yet; but one day, after you had been away for a while, there in the grove where we stayed so long, you looked so pale and sorry that I began talking to you more intimately, you remember, and we suddenly drew close to each other, and for the first time, I felt so safe, so safe! Something has come between us lately, Teunis. I partly know what; and partly I don't; but something--"
She stopped in the middle of what she seemed to be saying. At first I thought she had choked up with grief, but when I looked her in the face, except for her eyes shining very bright, I could not see that she was at all worked up in her feelings. She spoke quite calmly to some one that passed by. I was abashed by the thought that she was giving me credit for something I was not entitled to. She spoke of the day when I was in my heart the meanest: but how could I explain? So I said nothing, much, but hummed and hawed, with "I--" and "Yes, I--," and nothing to the point. Finally, I bogged down, and quit.
"We are very poor," said she, nodding toward the elder and grandma. "So, ignorant as I am, I kept a school last summer--did you know that?"
"Yes," I said, "I knew about it. Over in the Hoosier settlement."
"I ain't a good teacher," she said, "only with the little children; but sometimes we shouldn't have had the necessaries of life, if it hadn't been for what I earned. I can't do too much for them. They have been father and mother to me, and I shall be a daughter to them. If--if they want me to go with--with--in circles which I--I--don't care half so much about as for--for the birds, and flowers--and the people back in our grove--and for people who don't care for me any more--why, I don't think I ought to disobey Mrs. Thorndyke. But I don't believe as she does--or did--about things that have happened to you since--since we parted and got to be strangers, Teunis. And neither does any one else, nor she herself any more. People respect you, Teunis. I wanted to say that to you, too, before you go away--maybe forever, Teunis!"
She touched on so many things--sore things and sacred things--in this speech, that I only looked at her with tears in my eyes; and she saw them. It was the only answer I could make, and before she could say any more, the elder and his wife came and took her home. I had got half-way to Cairo, Illinois, before I worked it out that by "the people back in our grove," she must have meant me; for the only others there had been that gang of horse-thieves: and if so she must have meant me when she spoke of "people who don't care for me any more"--but it was too late to do anything in the way of correcting this mistake then. All I could pride myself on was having a good memory as to what she said. I guess this proves my relationship to that other Dutchman who took so long to build the church. Remember, though, that he finally built it.