My fancy--it began in a dream--pictured the face of a woman, young and sweet weeping for me. I wept for her and for myself. Who was she? Was she all fancy?
Since I had been in Company H, I had never spoken to a woman except the nurses in the hospitals. I had seen many women in Richmond and elsewhere. No face of my recollection fitted with the face of my dream. None seemed it's equal in sweetness and dignity.
I had written love letters at the dictation of one or two of the men. I had read love stories. I felt as the men had seemed to feel, and as the lovers in the stories had seemed to feel.
No one knew, since the Captain's death, even the short history of myself that I knew. I grew morose. The men avoided me, all but one--Jerry Butler. Somehow I found myself messing with him. He was a great forager, and kept us both in food. The rations were almost regular, but the fat bacon and mouldy meal turned my stomach. The other men were in good health, and ate heartily of the coarse food given them. Butler had bacon and meal to sell.
The men wondered what was the matter with me. Their wonder did not exceed my own. Butler invited my confidence, but I could not decide to say a word; one word would have made it necessary to tell him all I knew. He would have thought me insane.
I did my duty mechanically, serving on camp guard and on picket regularly, but feeling interest in nothing beyond my own inner self.
At times the battle of Manassas and the spot in the forest would recur to me with great vividness and power. Where and what was my original regiment? I pondered over the puzzle, and I had much time in which to ponder. I remembered that Dr. Frost had told me that if ever I got the smallest clew to my past, I must determine then and there to never let it go.
Sometimes instants of seeming recollection would flash by and be gone before I could define them. They left no result but doubt--sometimes fear. Doubts of the righteousness of war beset me--not of this war, but war. I had a vague notion that in some hazy past I had listened to strong reasons against war. Were they from the Captain? No; he had been against war, but he had fought for the South with relish--they did not come from him. None the less--perhaps I ought to say therefore--did they more strongly impress me, for I indistinctly knew that they came from some one who not only gave precept but also lived example.
Who was he? I might not hope to know.
Added to these doubts concerning war, there were in my mind at times strong desires for a better life--a life more mental. The men were good men--serious, religious men. Nothing could be said against them; but I felt that I was not entirely of them, that they had little thought beyond their personal duties, which they were willing always to do provided their officers clearly prescribed them, and their personal attachments, in which I could have no part. Of course there were exceptions.