Protesting, scolding, Carolus came down the street. He was with several other veterans, and all were complaining bitterly about the lack of accommodations. The lady looked at Carolus's untidiness, then back at the blind man.
"I can take you both," she said. "My name is Mrs. James, and I live on the college campus. Anybody can direct you. Tell the maid I sent you."
Mrs. James's house was large, and in it the two old men found a comfortable room, distinguished and delightful company, and a heart-warming dinner. There were five other guests, who like themselves had neglected to engage rooms beforehand—a famous general of the Civil War and four lesser officers. Professor James made them all welcome, and the two small boys made it plain that this was the greatest occasion of their lives. The dinner-table was arranged in a way which Carolus Depew had never seen; it was lit by candles and decked with the best of the asters from Mrs. James's garden. The officers wore their uniforms, Mrs. James her prettiest dress. Carolus appreciated all the grandeur, but he insisted to the blind man that it was only their due. It was paying a debt which society owed the veteran.
"This professor didn't fight," argued Carolus. "Why shouldn't he do this for us? They oughtn't to charge us a cent. But I bet they will."
Gunner Criswell, refreshed and restored, was wholly grateful. He listened to the pleasant talk, he heard with delight the lovely voice of his hostess, he felt beside him the fresh young body of his hostess's little son. Even the touch of the silver and china pleased him. His wife had brought from her home a few plates as delicate, a few spoons as heavy, and they had had long since to be sold.
Carolus helped the blind man constantly during the meal; he guided his hand to the bread-plate and gave him portions of food, all of which was entirely unnecessary. The blind man was much more deft than Carolus, and the maid was careful and interested and kind. All the guests except the general watched the blind man with admiration. The general talked busily and constantly at the other end of the table; it was not to be expected that he should notice a private soldier.
It was the general who had first proposed inscribing the names of all the soldiers on the great monument; the monument, though he was not a member of the building committee, was his dearest enterprise. Since the war the general had become a statistician; he was interested in lists and tabulations, he enjoyed making due return for value received, he liked to provide pensions, to place old soldiers comfortably in Soldiers' Homes. The war was long past; his memory had begun to grow dim; to his mind the lives of the soldiers would be completed, rounded, by this tribute, as his own would be by the statue of himself which should some day rise upon this field. It was he who had compiled the lists for this last and greatest roster; about it he talked constantly.
Presently, as the guests finished their coffee, one of the lesser officers asked the man next him a question about a charge, and then Professor James asked another, and the war changed suddenly from a thing of statistics and lists and pensions to what it actually was, a thing of horror, of infinite sacrifice, of heroism. Men drilled and marched and fought and suffered and prayed and were slain. The faces of the raconteurs glowed, the eager voices of the questioners trembled. Once one of the officers made an effort to draw Gunner Criswell into speech, but Gunner Criswell was shy. He sat with his arm round the little boy, the candle-light shining on his beautiful face, listening with his whole soul. With Carolus it was different. Carolus had several times firmly to be interrupted.
In the morning Mrs. James took the blind man for a drive. The air was as fresh and clear as the air of his own mountains; the little boy sat on a stool between his feet and rested his shoulder against his knee. Mrs. James knew the field thoroughly; she made as plain as possible its topography, the main lines, the great charges, the open fields between the two ridges, the mighty rocks of Devil's Den, the almost impenetrable thickets. To Gunner Criswell, Gettysburg had been a little smoke-o'erlaid town seen faintly at the end of a long march, its recollection dimmed afterward by terrible physical pain. He realized now for the first time the great territory which the battle-lines inclosed, he understood the titanic grandeur of the event of which he had been a part, he breathed in also the present and enduring peace. He touched the old muzzle-loading cannon; the little boy guided his hand to the tiny tombstones in the long lines of graves of the unknown; he stood where Lincoln had stood, weary, heart-sick, despairing, in the fall of '63.
