Part 21 (1/2)
One day we stopped at a farm-house in a wild, lonely place. There was only an old woman there--one of the stern, resolute, hard-muscled frontier women, the daughters of mothers who had fought ”Injuns”--and a calf. And thereby hung a tale, which the three men with me fully authenticated.
The whole country thereabouts had been for four years so worried, harried, raided, raked, plundered, and foraged by Federals and Confederates--one day the former, the next the latter; blue and grey, or sky and sea--that the old lady had nothing left to live on. Hens, cows, horses, corn, all had gone save one calf, the Benjamin and idol of her heart.
One night she heard a piteous baaing, and, seizing a broom, rushed to the now henless hen-house, in which she kept the calf, to find in it a full- grown panther attacking her pet. By this time the old lady had grown desperate, and seizing the broom, she proceeded to ”lam” the wild beast with the handle, and with all her heart; and the fiend of ferocity, appalled at her attack, fled. I saw the calf with the marks of the panther's claws, not yet quite healed; I saw the broom; and, lastly, I saw the old woman, the mother in Ishmael; whose face was a perfect guarantee of the truth of the story. One of us suggested that the old lady should have the calf's hide tanned and wear it as a trophy, like an Indian, which would have been a strange reversal of Shakespeare's application of it, or to
”Hang a calf-skin on those recreant limbs.”
Then there came the great spring freshet in Elk River, which rose unusually high, fifty feet above its summer level. It had come to within an inch or two of my floor, and yet I went to bed and to sleep. By a miracle it rose no more, for I had a distinct conviction it would not, which greatly amazed everybody. But many were drowned all about us. The next day a man who professed bone-setting and doctoring, albeit not diplomaed, asked me to go with him and act as interpreter to a German patient who had a broken thigh. While felling a tree far away in the forest, it thundered down on him, and kept him down for two or three days till he was discovered. To get to him we went in a small canoe, and paddled ourselves with s.h.i.+ngles or wooden tiles, used to cover roofs. On the way I saw a man on a roof fiddling; only a bit of the roof was above water. He was waiting for deliverance. Many and strange indeed were all the scenes and incidents of that inundation, and marvellous the legends which were told of other freshets in the days of yore.
I never could learn to play cards. Destiny forbade it, and always stepped in promptly to stop all such proceedings. One night Sandford and friends sat down to teach me poker, when _bang_, _bang_, went a revolver outside, and a bullet buried itself in the door close by me. A riotous, evil-minded darkey, who attended to my was.h.i.+ng, had got into a fight, and was forthwith conveyed to the Bull-pen, or military prison. I was afraid lest I might lose my s.h.i.+rts, and so ”visited him” next day and found him in irons, but reading a newspaper at his ease. From him I learned the address of ”the coloured lady” who had my underclothing.
The Bull-pen was a picturesque place--a large log enclosure, full of strange inmates, such as wild guerillas in moccasins, grey-back Confederates and blue-coat Federals guilty of many a murder, arson, and much horse-stealing, desolate deserters, often deserving pity--the _debris_ of a four years' war, the crumbs of the great loaf fallen to the dirt.
Warm weather came on, and I sent to Philadelphia for a summer suit of clothes. It came, and it was of a _light grey colour_. At that time Oxford ”dittos,” or a suit _pareil partout_, were unknown in West Virginia. I was dressed from head to foot in Confederate grey. Such a daring defiance of public opinion, coupled with my mysterious stealing into the rebel country, made me an object of awe and suspicion--a kind of Sir Grey Steal!
There was at that time in Charleston a German artillery regiment which really held the town--that is to say, the height which commanded it. I had become acquainted with its officers. All at once they gave me the cold shoulder and cut me. My friend Sandford was very intimate with them. One evening he asked their Colonel why they scorned me. The Colonel replied--
”Pecause he's a tamned repel. Aferypody knows it.”
Sandford at once explained that I was even known at Was.h.i.+ngton as a good Union man, and had, moreover, translated Heine, adding other details.
”Gott verdammich--_heiss_!” cried the Colonel in amazement. ”Is dot der Karl Leland vot dranslate de _Reisebilder_? Herr je! I hafe got dat very pook here on mein table! Look at it. Bei Gott! here's his name!
_Dot_ is der crate Leland vot edit de _Continental Magazine_! Dot moost pe a fery deep man. Und I d.i.n.k _he_ vas a repel!”
The next morning early the Colonel sent his ambulance or army waggon to my hotel with a request that I would come and take breakfast with him. It was a bit of Heidelberg life over again. We punished Rheinwein and lager- beer in quant.i.ties. There were old German students among the officers, and I was received like a brother.
At last Sandford and I determined to return to the East. There was in the hotel a coloured waiter named Harrison. He had been a slave, but ”a gentleman's gentleman,” was rather dignified, and allowed no ordinary white man to joke with him. On the evening before my departure I said to him--
”Well, Harrison, I hope that you haven't quite so bad an opinion of me as the other people here seem to have.”
He manifested at once a really violent emotion. Das.h.i.+ng something to the ground, he cried--
”Mr. Leland, you _never_ did anything contrary to a gentleman. I always maintained it. Now please tell me the truth. Is it true that you're a great friend of Jeff Davis?”
”d.a.m.n Jeff Davis!” I replied.
”And you ain't a major in the Confederate service?”
”I'm a clear-down Abolitionist, and was born one.”
”And you ain't had no goings on with the rebels up the river to bring back the Confederacy here?”
”Devil a dealing.”
And therewith I explained how it was that I went unharmed up into the rebels' country, and great was the joy of Harrison, who, as I found, had taken my part valiantly against those who suspected me.
There was a droll comedy the next day on board the steamboat on which I departed. A certain Mr. H., who had been a rebel and recanted at the eleventh hour and become a Federal official, requested everybody on board not to notice me. Sandford learned it all, and chuckled over it. But the captain and mate and crew were all still rebels at heart. Great was my amazement at being privately informed by the steward that the captain requested as a favour that I would sit by him at dinner and share a bottle of wine. I did so, and while I remained on board was treated as an honoured guest.
And now I would here distinctly declare that, apart from my political principles, from which I never swerved, I always found the rebels--that is, Southern and Western men with whom I had had intimate dealings--without one exception _personally_ the most congenial and agreeable people whom I had ever met. There was not to be found among them what in England is known as a prig. They were natural and gentlemanly, even down to the poorest and most uneducated.