The Final Propositions
A Drama of the Civil War
“Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?”
Shakespeare
I — At the Top of the Hill
There wasn’t a harder body of fighters in the army of the United States than “Kirke’s Lambs.” The only resemblance between this modern regiment and the famous body of horse which divided dishonors with Jeffreys after Sedgemoor, nearly two hundred years before, was in the name of their commander, for they were held under too iron a rule to degenerate into brutal and ferocious excesses. Besides, Kirke and the generals he served under always gave that body of hard riders plenty to do, so that they found an easy vent for their superfluous energies in legitimate fighting,—if any can be so called.
Kirke had grown up with the regiment from a subaltern to the colonel. Drafts had restored its depleted members from time to time, but in the spring of 1865 the Civil War was about over, and it was not considered necessary to complete its quota by an infusion of new blood then. There was but a handful of them left, therefore. The others—well, they said the bodies of “Kirke’s Lambs” blazed a pathway from the Mississippi to the sea.
Kirke was an iron man everywhere and in everything,—in his business, in his regiment, and in his family, which now consisted of one solitary woman. The single child who had blessed the union had died before the war. The woman had been left alone for over four years. Kirke had never left the front and what he conceived to be his duty. He was a reticent, self-contained, undemonstrative man, whose affection made no show on the surface, though the current of it ran very still and deep. He actually idolized the woman who bore his name and had borne his son. On the death of that son he had made no great display of grief, though it cut him to the heart; and in general he gave little outward evidence of any strong affection to the poor, weak wife left so much alone and pining, like every woman in a like case.
She was a nervous, high-strung little body, utterly unable to see beneath the outward show; not strong enough to fathom Kirke’s depths,—her heart was too light a plummet,—and it was a wonder to Jack Broadhead, who was Kirke’s dearest friend and the second in command of the “Lambs,” how she ever inspired the devotion that he, with better insight, divined that Kirke cherished for her.
Well, what was left of the regiment was out scouting. It had been ordered to clear up the remains of a Carolina brigade of Confederates which had been making things pleasant for the left flank of Sherman’s army all the way to the sea and afterwards. One morning in February a party of some two hundred and fifty troopers, all that was left of the “Lambs,” galloped over a rough road up a narrow valley toward the base of a buttress-like, tree-clad hill, upon the top of which lay ensconced the remains of that brigade.
They called it a brigade in the Confederate army, but it was really no more of a brigade than were some of Washington’s during the Revolution: it was a handful of perhaps one hundred and fifty desperate, half-starved, ragged men, whose rifles and the bronzed, tense look of the hunted veteran at bay alone proclaimed them soldiers. They lay snug behind a hastily improvised breastwork on the crest of the hill. And they had retreated just as far as they intended to go. This was the limit.
Above them from an impromptu tree-trunk staff flapped and fluttered a ragged and tattered Confederate flag,—their last. They might have retreated farther, but to have gone northward would have thrown them into the arms of a division ranging the country, which would mean their annihilation or, if they scattered, their disintegration. Kirke had been pursuing them for a day or two. They knew his detachment, and in a spirit of reckless pugnacity they determined to have one good, square, stand-up fight before they quit the game, which everybody now knew was a losing one from the Confederate stand-point, with the inevitable end in plain sight. They had fought together during four years; they would fight together once more, let the end be what it would. A dangerous crowd to tackle.
With a skill which should have been manipulating an army, Hoyle, the brigadier-general in command of the remains, had disposed his men so that there was only one practicable way to attack them, and that was straight up the mountain. Their flanks were protected by ravines, and their rear could not be come at save by a détour of many miles over the mountains.
Kirke, halting his men at the foot of the hill, realized the situation as soon as he saw it. Could they take the hill by a direct front attack in the face of such a body of men, desperate old soldiers, who could shoot as straight and as fast as the remnants of that brigade could? Yet what else was there to do? He could not retire; he had been directed to put that brigade out of action, capture, or destroy it. He could not besiege it and starve it out. It was a problem.
While he was hesitating, Jack Broadhead, who had been left behind at head-quarters for a day, came galloping up with a few troopers as his escort. His quick, soldierly eye took in the desperate situation. After the necessary salutes had been exchanged a little conversation took place.
“That is a strong position, Bob.”
“It is that, Jack.”
“That fellow is a soldier, every inch of him.”
“We knew that before.”
“Yes. Well, what are you going to do about it?”
“I hardly know. Think we can take it?”
“Well, I don’t know. Looks dubious. But we’ve got a crowd here that will storm hell itself, if somebody leads, you know.”
“I’ll lead, but this is worse than hell.”
“Oh, by the way,” Broadhead burst out, as a flash of recollection came to him, “I have a letter for you. It came just as I was leaving head-quarters.”
He fumbled in the breast of his jacket, and as Kirke stretched out his hand indifferently he gave him the letter. The man’s face changed slightly. A look of softness mitigated the iron aspect of his visage.
“Ah,” he said, in a rarely communicative moment, “from my wife.”
He tore it open. A glance put him in possession of its contents. Again his face changed. It was hard and grim at best, but never, thought Broadhead, as he watched him, had he exhibited a grimmer and harder look than at this moment. And there was a gleam almost of agony in the man’s eyes. His lips trembled,—and for Kirke’s lips to tremble was a thing unheard of! Broadhead saw him clench his teeth together and by a mighty effort regain his self-control. During the struggle he had crushed the letter in his hand.
After a minute he unclosed his fingers, smoothed out the paper, took out his pencil, and wrote a brief endorsement upon the bottom of it, signed his name, folded it up, and thrust it in the pocket of his coat.
“If anything happens to me, Broadhead,”—and there was a harsher ring than usual in his voice,—“this letter is to go back—to—to my—the writer.”
“Very good,” said Broadhead, who knew his superior too well to question him as to what had occurred. “I take it that you have decided to attack?”
“Yes. Men,” said Kirke, wheeling his horse and facing the iron veterans who had come to love him as few soldiers were ever loved by their men, “there is that rebel brigade on the top of that hill,—what’s left of them. You know what they are. We have tested their mettle in a dozen fights. Now we have to wipe them out. It is probable that a large part of us will be wiped out in the process, but that’s no matter. Dismount and tie the horses. We want every man in action. Leave your sabres. We’ll depend upon carbines and revolvers. We’ll go up and pull that flag off that hill. The trees will cover us till we get near the crest. Halt there, form up, and make a rush for it. Save your fire until you get to the top.”
The cheer that came in response was more like the growl of an angry animal. The men instantly followed the example of their leader and dismounted. Their horses were tied to the trees and saplings in the valley, and the men, circling the hill in a long line with Kirke in the centre and well in the lead, followed by Broadhead a short distance after, began to move up the slope through the trees.
It was still as death at the top. There was no sign of life there save the flag which rippled and fluttered gayly in the breeze. It was a bright, sunny morning. The cool touch of spring in the air made life sweet to all that possessed it. In the grim silence the men clambered up the steep slope and slowly neared the crest. Suddenly there was a puff of white smoke from the little log breastwork on the top. A moment later the crack of a rifle rolled down the hill, and the man nearest Kirke fell on the slope, rolled against a tree, and lay still. He had rashly exposed himself, and he was gone. They were good shots, those Johnnies.
The men as they advanced sought instinctively such cover as they could, skipping from tree to tree. Every once in a while, however, one of them would expose himself in the open, and the exposure was always followed by a shot which more than once caught its mark. The crest was bare of trees, and the command arrived at the edge of the clearing with some loss, and cautiously concentrated, hesitating a moment before breaking out into the open and rushing the hill.
“Now, men,” said Kirke, “you see what we have to do. The quicker we do it the better for us. Give me that flag,” he added, turning to the color-bearer. “Gibson,”—to his bugler,—“stand by to sound the charge when I give the signal.”
There was nothing dramatic about Kirke, it was all a matter of pure business with him; but the men thought they had never seen so splendid a figure as he when he tore off his cap, jerked his revolver from his belt, seized the flag with his left hand, and stepped out in the open.
He nodded his head to the alert Gibson, and the shrill notes of the charge echoed through the hills. Ere it had died away the men heard their colonel say, “Come on!”
It was always Kirke’s way to say “Come” rather than “Go.”
With a mighty roar they sprang from the shelter of the trees and dashed for the ridge. A terrific volley greeted them. With a crash like thunder, which echoed and re-echoed through the hills, the Confederate fire was poured upon them. Had it not been that most of the men, firing down the hill, overshot the mark, the “Lambs” would have been blown into eternity. As it was, many of them fell, but the rest plunged dauntlessly into the smoke through which the red of the flag could dimly be discerned waving in the advance.
Again the rifles of the brigade cracked out, and this time sent their messengers of death crashing full into the face of Kirke’s men. This time the carnage was terrible; there were many dead, but the blood of the living was up: they would have charged a moving express train. They tore recklessly through the smoke toward the top, following the flag.
Before the rifles could be reloaded the “Lambs” were at the breastwork, Kirke still in the lead. To leap the log walls was the work of a moment. The brigade was ready for them. The carbines cracked again and again; there was a grim, ghastly, awful struggle on the top of that hill around the foot of the Confederate flag-staff—then silence.
When the fighting stopped the few “Lambs” who were left leaned panting on their carbines, blood dripping from the gunstocks, surveying the tangled mass of dead and dying. The brigade had been annihilated.
Broadhead sprang to the staff to haul down the flag. He was nonplussed to find that there were no halliards, and that some one had evidently climbed a tree, which had been denuded of its limbs for the purpose, and nailed the flag there. He turned to look for Kirke, when, in the smoke that yet covered the field, he distinctly saw the man lift his revolver, pull its trigger, and blow out his brains.
In the confusion after the little battle, fortunately, no one noticed the action but himself. He was utterly at a loss to fathom the meaning of the suicide, but he quickly resolved that no one should know of it.
They buried the brigade with the dead “Lambs” around the foot of the staff, and Broadhead left the flag flying above them. He might have chopped down the tree and taken it, but it seemed fitting that the men who had defended it should have that last honor. The wind would whip it out in a day or two at best. Taking their wounded, they retraced their steps as they could, thinking that Kirke had been killed in the action, an opinion which Broadhead’s report sedulously fostered. Broadhead carefully preserved Kirke’s revolver, which he took from his dead hand, the letter, which he found in his breast pocket, his watch and sword, and a lock of his black curly hair.
II — In the Room in the Night
When the war was over, and they were mustered out soon afterwards, Broadhead hastened to Philadelphia and drove immediately to Kirke’s house. It was empty. There was no sign of life about it. As he stopped on the doorstep in the late afternoon, wondering vaguely what had happened and what he should do next, the door of the adjoining house opened and a woman came out, of whom he made inquiry for Mrs. Kirke.
“Mrs. Kirke!” said the woman, in surprise. “And who may you be, may I ask?”
“I am—I was—Colonel Kirke’s dearest friend.”
“Is Colonel Kirke dead?”
“Yes.”
“And a good thing, too,” said the woman.
“Madam,” cried Broadhead, indignantly, “do you realize what you say?”
“Certainly I do. Don’t you know about Mrs. Kirke?”
“No. Is she dead?”
“It would be better if she were,” she answered. “She ran away two months ago with a man named Allen, and after she left she sent me a letter enclosing the key of her house and requesting that I give it to Colonel Kirke when he returned from the war. So long as he is gone, I guess you might as well have it. Wait; I’ll fetch it.”
The woman turned back into the house as she spoke. This, thought Broadhead, sadly, was the explanation of it all. That letter. He had never examined it. He had held it sacred, but now he felt that he must open it. It might give him some clew as to the whereabouts of the woman. Yet he hesitated.
When the woman gave him the key he entered the lonely house. He went upstairs and sat down in Kirke’s study, and there, overcoming his hesitation, he read the letter. It was the letter of a weak, hysterical woman, reproaching her husband for his lack of love, his seeming neglect, for her loneliness, and ended by saying that she had gone off with a man who loved her, and that he should never see her again. Kirke’s endorsement was brief and as terse as the man’s character.
“I have been to blame,” he had written. “I did love you. I do. God only knows how much. I hope you may be happy. We are about to attack a strong position. I feel sure that after it is over I shall trouble you no more. You can marry the man—damn him!—and be happy.”
How characteristic that was, thought Jack Broadhead, as he read,—that last touch! He cursed the man yet spared the woman. For a long time Broadhead sat there in that house, thinking, thinking, thinking. He wondered if he were the only mourner for poor Kirke. The twilight and then the darkness came stealing over the town, and still he sat there. By and by he heard a step—a hesitant, faltering step—in the hallway. He remembered now that he had left the street door open. He sat still and listened. The step mounted the stairs. It came along the short hall and stopped at the entrance of the library. He sat by the open window. The wandering figure was that of a woman. She saw the soldier silhouetted in the darkness against the light from the street lamp outside.
“Robert! Robert!” she cried. “You have come back! Thank God!”
Broadhead rose to his feet.
“No,” he said, quietly, “it is not Colonel Kirke.”
“Mr. Broadhead!” exclaimed the woman.
“Yes, Mrs.—Mrs.—er—Allen, is it not?”
“No, no!” she shrieked, shrinking back. “My—my husband?”
“Do you mean Colonel Kirke?”
“Yes. I have no other.”
“And Allen?”
“He has cast me off, turned me away.”
“Haven’t you heard?”
“I have heard nothing. I have been blind—in hell—since——”
“Yes, I know.”
“But Robert?”
“He is dead.”
The woman sank into a chair, shuddering.
“When? How? Did he get my letter?”
“Yes. He was killed at the capture of a little hill in North Carolina on the day he received your letter. Here it is.”
“Did he say anything before——”
“There is a message written in it.”
“Give it me.”
Striking a light at the gas-bracket, Broadhead handed her the letter. She read it through dry-eyed while he watched her. She had been a pretty, sweet, dainty, attractive-looking little woman, now she was a haggard, broken wreck.
“And he was killed by the enemy?” she asked at last.
“Madam,” said Broadhead, sternly, “you shall hear the truth. He shot himself on the top of the hill the day of the battle with this revolver,” laying the weapon on the table. “Here is his sword and his watch and a lock of his hair. I suppose you don’t care for them.”
“I care for everything that belonged to him more than Heaven itself.”
“You are free now,” said Broadhead; “you can marry your—your—friend.”
“Never! He has driven me away, cast me off, and I hate him! I hated him from the very moment—I shall be free, anyway. He said nothing before he died?”
“Nothing.”
“And this is all you can tell me?”
“All.”
“Will you leave me now?”
“What? Alone in this empty house?”
“It’s my house, isn’t it? I am still Mrs. Kirke, am I not?”
“Yes, of course, but—I——”
“Will you go, please? You have discharged your errand. You have told me the dreadful truth. For God’s sake, leave me!”
“May I not do something——”
“Nothing,—nothing. You may come back to-morrow morning and advise what to do. I am alone now, you see.”
Broadhead stood uncertainly before her.
“Go, go!” she pleaded. “Don’t you see that I wish to be alone for a little? You have been very good to me. I thank you.”
She hesitatingly put out her hand to him.
“Won’t you shake hands with me?” she pleaded. “I did very wrong. I fell very low. But I am very sorry.”
Upon an impulse for which he rejoiced ever after, Broadhead clasped the thin, tiny hand in his own, held it a moment, bent low over it, and, with old-fashioned gallantry, kissed it,—that soiled, wasted hand!
“I forgive you,” he said, and the voice of the dead seemed to speak to the woman through his lips.
He turned and left her alone,—alone in the darkness, alone with her memories, alone with her sorrow, alone with her repentance, alone with the weapon.
She lifted the heavy revolver with trembling hand. There was a single cartridge left in the chamber.
The next morning, in great anxiety, Broadhead came back to the house. He found the woman sitting quite white and still where he had left her, and the revolver was empty!