Unhindered now, amid the cheers, across ground which seemed no longer to stir beneath her feet, Mary Bowman went back to her house. There, opening the shutters, she bent and solemnly kissed her little children, saying to herself that henceforth they must have more than food and raiment; they must be given some joy in life.
V
GUNNER CRISWELL
On an afternoon in late September, 1910, a shifting crowd, sometimes numbering a few score, sometimes a few hundred, stared at a massive monument on the battle-field of Gettysburg. The monument was not yet finished, sundry statues were lacking, and the ground about it was trampled and bare. But the main edifice was complete, the plates, on which were cast the names of all the soldiers from Pennsylvania who had fought in the battle, were in place, and near at hand the platform, erected for the dedicatory services on the morrow, was being draped with flags. The field of Gettysburg lacks no tribute which can be paid its martyrs.
The shifting crowd was part of the great army of veterans and their friends who had begun to gather for the dedication; these had come early to seek out their names, fixed firmly in enduring bronze on the great monument. Among them were two old men. The name of one was Criswell; he had been a gunner in Battery B, and was now blind. The explosion which had paralyzed the optic nerve had not disfigured him; his smooth-shaven face in its frame of thick, white hair was unmarred, and with his erect carriage and his strong frame he was extraordinarily handsome. The name of his friend, bearded, untidy, loquacious, was Carolus Depew.
Gettysburg opens wide not only its hospitable arms, but its heart, to the old soldier. Even now, after almost fifty years, the shadow of war is not yet fled away, the roaring of the guns of battle is not stilled. The old soldier finds himself appreciated, admired, cared for, beyond a merely adequate return for the money he brings into the town. Here he can talk of the battle with the proprietor of the hotel at which he stays, with the college professor, with the urchin on the street. Any citizen will leave his work to help find a certain house where wounds were dressed, or where women gave out bread, fresh and hot from the oven; or a certain well, from which life-saving, delicious drinks were quaffed. When there are great excursions or dedications such as this, the town is decorated, there is waving of flags, there are bursts of song.
No stretching of hospitable arms could shelter the vast crowd which gathered upon this occasion. The boarding-houses which accommodated ten guests during the ordinary summer traffic now took thirty, the hotels set up as many cot-beds as their halls would hold, the students of the college and the theological seminary shared their rooms or gave them up entirely, in faculty houses every room was filled, and all church doors were thrown wide. Yet many men—and old men—spent the night upon the street.
Gunner Criswell wondered often whether many lives ran like his, up and up to a sharp peak of happiness, then plunged down, down to inexpressible misery. As a boy he had been intensely happy, eager, ambitious, alive to all the glory of the world. He had married the girl whom he loved, and had afterward enlisted, scorning any fears that he might not return. On the second day of July, 1863, on his twenty-third birthday, he had lost his sight in an explosion on the battle-field of Gettysburg; on the same day his young wife had died in their faraway corner of the state, leaving a helpless baby to a blind and sick father.
To-day the daughter was middle-aged, the father old. They lived together on their little farm in Greene County, Ellen managing the farm and doing much of the work, Gunner Criswell making baskets. War had taken his sight, his wife, all his prospects for life; it had left him, he said, Ellen, and the fresh, clear mountain air, a strong pair of hands, and his own soul. Life had settled at last to a quiet level of peace. He had learned to read the raised language of the blind, but he could not afford many books. He was poor; owing to an irregularity in his enlistment the Government had not given him a pension, nor had any one taken the trouble to have the matter straightened out. The community was small and scattered, few persons knew him, and no Congressman needed his vote in that solidly Republican district. Nor was he entirely certain that the giving of pensions to those who could work was not a form of pauperization. He, for instance, had been pretty well handicapped, yet he had got on. He said to himself often that when one went to war one offered everything. If there was in his heart any faint, lingering bitterness because his country had done nothing for him, who had given her so much, he checked it sternly.
And, besides, he said often to himself with amusement, he had Carolus Depew!
It was Carolus who had told him, one evening in July, about the Pennsylvania monument. Carolus had served in a different regiment, without injury and with a thousand brave adventures. He was talking about them now.