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Kathie's Soldiers
Amanda Douglas
Douglas Amanda M.
Kathie's Soldiers
CHAPTER I
ENLISTING IN THE GRAND ARMY
"HURRAH!" exclaimed Robert Alston, swinging his hat in the air, as he came up the path; "hurrah! there's going to be a draft at Brookside! Won't it be jolly?"
The group assembled glanced up at him, – a fair, fresh, rosy boy, without any cowardly blood in his veins, as you could easily tell, but given, as such natures often are, to underrating the silent bravery of others.
"What will there be so jolly about it, Rob?" asked his uncle, with a peculiar light in his eye.
"Why, – the whole thing," – and Rob made a little pause to think, though it did not seem half so funny now as out on the street with a crowd of boys, who had been singing at the top of their lungs, "John Brown's Body," and "My Johnny has gone for a Soldier," – "the surprise, Uncle Robert, when some of the fellows who have been skulking back and afraid to go find themselves compelled."
"So you think it rather funny to be forced to do what you would not choose of your free-will?" and Uncle Robert gave a queer little smile.
"But – " and Rob looked around considerably perplexed at not finding his argument at hand, and overwhelming. "O, you know what I mean!" throwing himself down upon the grass. "If men haven't patriotism enough to volunteer when their country needs them, why, I think they ought – I just wish I was old enough! I'd go in a moment. I'd like the fun of 'marching on'!"
"There is something beside marching," said Kathie, in her soft voice, thinking in a vague way of General Mackenzie.
"Well, I'd like all of it!"
"The being drafted as well?"
It was Uncle Robert who spoke.
"No, I'd never be drafted!" and Rob's fair face flushed with a boy's impulsive indignation; "I'd go at once, – at the first call."
"But if you were a man and had a wife, as well as bairnies, three or four, or half a dozen, and were compelled to leave them to poverty?"
"There is the bounty, and the pay."
"Neither of which would be as much as a man could earn in a year at home. And if he never came back – "
"But, Uncle Robert, don't you think it right for a man to be patriotic?" asked his nephew, in a little amaze.
"Yes. One can never approve of cowardice in any act of life. Still, I fancy there may be a great many brave and good men who have not volunteered, and who, if they are drafted, will do their country loyal service. It may not look quite so heroic, but God, who can see all sides of the question, will judge differently."
"The soldiers don't feel so, Uncle Robert. It seems to me that the men who volunteer do deserve a good deal of credit."
"A great many of them do; but still numbers go for the novelty, or, as you say, the fun. They like a rambling, restless life, and care little for danger, little for death; but is it an intelligent courage, – the highest and noblest kind? Does not the man who says, 'If my country in her sorest strait needs me, I will go and do my duty to the utmost,' deserve some credit, especially if he gives up what most men hold most dear?"
"I believe I didn't look at it in that light altogether. It seemed to me that it was only the cowards and the selfish men who waited to be drafted."
"Then you think I ought to volunteer?" said Uncle Robert, with a dry but good-natured smile.
There was a very general exclamation.
"You!" exclaimed Rob, aghast at the unlooked-for application.
"I have neither wife nor children. I am young, strong, in good health, and though I do not fancy a military life above all others, I still think I could endure the hardships like a good soldier, and if I stood in the front ranks to face the enemy I do not believe that I should run away."
He rose as he said this, and, folding his arms across his chest, leaned against the vine-covered column of the porch, looking every inch a soldier without the uniform.
It would break his mother's heart to have Uncle Robert go, and there was Aunt Ruth, and Kathie, and Freddy; but – what a handsome soldier he would make! Major Alston, or Colonel Alston, – how grand it would sound! So you see Rob was quite taken with military glory.
Kathie came and slipped her hand within Uncle Robert's. "We could not spare you," she whispered, softly.
"But if I were drafted?"
"Well," exclaimed Rob, stubbornly clinging to his point, "the boys over in the village think it will make some fun. There's a queer little recruiting shanty on the green, and a fifer and a drummer. If our quota isn't filled by next Wednesday, – and they all say it won't be, – the draft is to commence. I'm glad I'm not going away until the first of October. I only wish – "
"I wish you were, if that will do you any good," answered Mr. Meredith, glancing up from his book which he had been pretending to read.
"I'd rather enlist than go to school."
"Maybe enlisting in the home-guard will prove a wise step for the first one."
"Home-guard?" and Rob looked a bit perplexed.
"Yes. We all do considerable soldiering in our lives unconsciously; and if it comes hard to obey our captains here, I am not sure that we should always find it so easy out on the field. There are some things that take more courage than to march down to the valley of death as did the 'Six Hundred.'"
"O," said Rob, fired again with a boy's enthusiasm, "that's just the grandest thing that ever was written! I don't like poetry as a general thing, it always sounds so girlish to me; but Marco Bozzaris and that are so fine, especially the lines, —
'Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.'"
"After all, dying is not the grandest thing," said Aunt Ruth, quietly; "and the detached instances of heroism in one's life have not always required the most courage."
"No, indeed," answered Mr. Meredith, warmly. "I know men who have acquitted themselves bravely under fire, who at home possessed so small an amount of moral courage that they really could not resist temptations which were to their mental and physical detriment."
"But it is the fighting that interests me," said Robert.
"One may be a brave soldier with purely physical courage, but to be a good soldier one needs moral courage as well."
Just then Ada Meredith came down on the porch. She was Kathie's little New York friend, and her uncle had brought her to Cedarwood for a few days. She was growing tall rapidly, and considered herself quite a young lady, especially as she had been to Saratoga with her mother.
So this made a little break in the conversation. Rob somehow didn't get on very well with her; but then he admitted that he didn't like girls anyhow, except Miss Jessie. He was rather glad, therefore, to see Dick Grayson coming up the path, taking it for an excuse to get away.
Ada looked after them with secret mortification. Dick was quite a young man in her estimation, and only that morning he had been very gallant. She hated to have Rob take him off to the lake or any other haunt, so she bethought herself of a little stratagem.
"You promised me a game of croquet," she said to Kathie, with great earnestness.
Kathie glanced up in surprise. When she had proposed it that morning Ada declared it stupid, and said she had grown tired of it. Uncle Robert, knowing nothing of this, answered for her. "Of course," he said; "there are the boys. Rob, don't go away, you are wanted."
Rob made an impatient gesture with his hand, as if he would wave them all out of sight. Uncle Robert walked down to the boys. "Ada would like to play croquet," he remarked, pleasantly.
"I'm just in the humor for a game myself," answered Dick; but Rob's brow knit itself into a little frown.
"Come, girls!"
Mr. Meredith accompanied them. "We will be umpires," he declared.
Ada chose Dick for a partner. Rob thought it wasn't much fun playing with Kathie. He was rather careless, and in the first game they were badly beaten, which made Rob altogether out of humor. Why couldn't the girls have stayed on the balcony and talked?
"I can't play!" he said, throwing down his mallet.
Uncle Edward picked it up. "Now, Kathie, let us beat them all to ribbons and fragments!" he exclaimed, gayly, taking her brother's place.
Rob fell out of the ranks to where his uncle stood in the shade of a great tulip-tree.
"Soldiers!" he said, in a low, half-laughing tone.
Rob colored. "I didn't want to play a bit! I wish girls – "
"But a brave soldier goes off of the field after a defeat in good order. If he has done his best, that is all that is required of him."
Rob knew that he had not done his best at all, although he was angry with the mortification of losing the game.
"Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die,"
said Uncle Robert, using his quotation against him.
"But that doesn't mean paltry little matters like this!" – with all a boy's disdain in his voice.
"It means everything when one is right. As Mr. Meredith said a few moments ago, there is a good deal of soldiering in life which must be all voluntary. That ought to suit your ideas. And I think the great Captain is often very patient with us, Rob. He bought us all with a price, you know, whether we serve him or not."
"But it is so hard for me to be" – Rob made a great effort and said, frankly – "good-tempered."
"I do not think that is it altogether."
"What then?" and Rob looked up in a little astonishment.
"We will put it on a military basis, – shirking one's duty because it is not pleasant."
"There was no particular duty about playing croquet!" – in the same surprised tone.
"Why did you do it at all then?"
"Because – "
"Courtesy to a guest becomes a duty in a host."
"But there was Kathie. Dick and I were going down to take a row."
"I have a fancy Dick likes the croqueting as well as he would have liked the rowing."
Dick Grayson's pleasant laugh floated over to them as he said, "Not so bad a beat, after all, Mr. Meredith."
"The life soldiering is not quite so arbitrary. A good deal of it is left to conscience. But if a sentinel at some outpost followed his own devices and let a spy pass the line – "
"He would be shot, of course."
"It seems hard, doesn't it, just for one little thing? Yet if one or two men escaped punishment the army would soon be in a state of insubordination. Then when a captain came to lead them in battle each man might consider his way and opinion best. Would it answer?"
"No, it wouldn't," replied the boy. "But, Uncle Robert, if God had made us – stronger."
"He offers us his strength daily."
"But it is so – I mean you never can think of it at the right moment."
"That is the secret of our duty to him, – to think of his wishes at the right time. He means, in this life, that we shall not seek to please ourselves altogether; but there is no guard-house, no bread-and-water rations, only a still, small voice to remind us."
Rob was silent for some moments, watching the players, and wondering why everything fretted him so easily. Were all the rest of the world to have their own way and pleasures, and he never? "Uncle Robert," he began, presently, "don't you think it fair that I should follow out my own wishes sometimes? Is it not unjust to ask me to give up always?"
"Are you asked to give up always?" – and the elder smiled.
"Well – " Rob grew rather red and confused.
"Which would give you the most satisfaction, – to know that you had made two or three people happy, or to enjoy some pleasure alone by yourself? This is the chief thing the Captain asks of us voluntary soldiers; and did not a wise man say that 'he who ruleth his own spirit is greater than he who taketh a city'?"
"There is more in volunteering than I thought," Rob said, gravely, after a long pause; "I am afraid, after all, that I am one of the kind waiting for a draft."
"And, if you wait for that, you may be left out altogether. Rob, it is not very easy work to march and countermarch, to dig trenches, throw up earthworks, keep your eyes open and your senses keen through dreary night-watches and the many other duties that fill up a soldier's life. It is harder for some men to keep faithful to these than to go into battle and die covered with glory. But on the other side there will be a few questions asked. What was the man's life? I often think of what the Saviour said, – not be faithful in death, but be 'faithful unto death.' There, we have had quite a sermon. Next month you will be a new recruit, you know."
"Two games!" exclaimed Dick, as they advanced. "Each party has won one."
"And I am tired," said Ada, languidly.
"Just one more," pleaded Dick; "I know that I shall have better luck."
"I can't," Ada replied.
Rob's first impulse was to say, "I'll take her place"; but he felt that would leave Ada to her own resources again. He did not care anything about Ada's noticing him, – indeed, she rather ignored him when Dick was around; but he had a fancy that Dick was his friend, and did not belong so exclusively to the girls.
"Rob, I'll try you," Mr. Meredith exclaimed, remarking the wistful face.
So Ada and Dick had a ramble about the grounds, as Kathie, feeling she was not very earnestly desired, lingered to watch the players. It was a pretty sharp game, but Robert beat.
"Though I do not think you played your best at the last," the boy said.
Uncle Edward gave a queer little smile that set Rob to musing. What if people sometimes acted a little differently, for the sake of sparing his unlucky temper!
"I shall have to fight giants," he confessed to himself, understanding, as he never had before, how serious a warfare life really is.
