第42章 Little Darby(8)

The next morning Mrs.Mills paid Mrs.Stanley the first visit she had paid on that side the branch since the day, three years before, when Cove and the boys had the row with Little Darby.It might have seemed accidental, but Mrs.Stanley was the first person in the district to know that all the Mills men were gone to the army.She went over again, from time to time, for it was not a period to keep up open hostilities, and she was younger than Mrs.Stanley and better off; but Vashti never went, and Mrs.Stanley never asked after her or came.

II

The company in which Little Darby and the Millses had enlisted was one of the many hundred infantry companies which joined and were merged in the Confederate army.It was in no way particularly signalized by anything that it did.It was commanded by the gentleman who did most toward getting it up; and the officers were gentlemen.

The seventy odd men who made the rank and file were of all classes, from the sons of the oldest and wealthiest planters in the neighborhood to Little Darby and the dwellers in the district.The war was very different from what those who went into it expected it to be.Until it had gone on some time it seemed mainly marching and camping and staying in camp, quite uselessly as seemed to many, and drilling and doing nothing.

Much of the time -- especially later on -- was given to marching and getting food; but drilling and camp duties at first took up most of it.

This was especially hard on the poorer men, no one knew what it was to them.

Some moped, some fell sick.Of the former class was Little Darby.

He was too strong to be sickly as one of the Mills boys was, who died of fever in hospital only three months after they went in, and too silent to be as the other, who was jolly and could dance and sing a good song and was soon very popular in the company;more popular even than Old Cove, who was popular in several rights, as being about the oldest man in the company and as having a sort of dry wit when he was in a good humor, which he generally was.Little Darby was hardly distinguished at all, unless by the fact that he was somewhat taller than most of his comrades and somewhat more taciturn.He was only a common soldier of a common class in an ordinary infantry company, such a company as was common in the army.He still had the little wallet which he had picked up in the path that morning he left home.

He had asked both of the Mills boys vaguely if they ever had owned such a piece of property, but they had not, and when old Cove told him that he had not either, he had contented himself and carried it about with him somewhat elaborately wrapped up and tied in an old piece of oilcloth and in his inside jacket pocket for safety, with a vague feeling that some day he might find the owner or return it.He was never on specially good terms with the Millses.Indeed, there was always a trace of coolness between them and him.He could not give it to them.Now and then he untied and unwrapped it in a secret place and read a little in the Testament, but that was all.He never touched a needle or so much as a pin, and when he untied the parcel he generally counted them to see that they were all there.

So the war went on, with battles coming a little oftener and food growing ever a little scarcer; but the company was about as before, nothing particular -- what with killing and fever a little thinned, a good deal faded; and Little Darby just one in a crowd, marching with the rest, sleeping with the rest, fighting with the rest, starving with the rest.He was hardly known for a long time, except for his silence, outside of his mess.Men were fighting and getting killed or wounded constantly; as for him, he was never touched;and as he did what he was ordered silently and was silent when he got through, there was no one to sing his praise.Even when he was sent out on the skirmish line as a sharp-shooter, if he did anything no one knew it.

He would disappear over a crest, or in a wood, and reappear as silent as if he were hunting in the swamps of the district; clean his gun;cut up wood; eat what he could get, and sit by the fire and listen to the talk, as silent awake as asleep.

One other thing distinguished him, he could handle an axe better than any man in the company; but no one thought much of that -- least of all, Little Darby;it only brought him a little more work occasionally.

One day, in the heat of a battle which the men knew was being won, if shooting and cheering and rapid advancing could tell anything, the advance which had been going on with spirit was suddenly checked by a murderous artillery fire which swept the top of a slope, along the crest of which ran a road a little raised between two deep ditches topped by the remains of heavy fences.The infantry, after a gallant and hopeless charge, were ordered to lie down in the ditch behind the pike, and were sheltered from the leaden sleet which swept the crest.

Artillery was needed to clear the field beyond, by silencing the batteries which swept it, but no artillery could get into position for the ditches, and the day seemed about to be lost.The only way was up the pike, and the only break was a gate opening into the field right on top of the hill.

The gate was gone, but two huge wooden gate-posts, each a tree-trunk, still stood and barred the way.No cannon had room to turn in between them;a battery had tried and a pile of dead men, horses, and debris marked its failure.A general officer galloped up with two or three of his staff to try to start the advance again.He saw the impossibility.

"If we could get a couple of batteries into that field for three minutes,"he said, "it would do the work, but in ten minutes it will be too late."The company from the old county was lying behind the bank almost exactly opposite the gate, and every word could be heard.