I'd Die For You

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

  “Who is it wishes to see Sir John Burgoyne?” he inquired.

  “He wouldn’t know me,” said Tib.

  “I am sorry, sir, but Sir John is having his kippers and can’t be disturbed until later in the forenoon.”

  “It’s all right,” said Josie, “I’m his niece.”

  The sailor looked at her suspiciously. At this point Sir John Burgoyne appeared upon the deck.

  “This lady says she’s your niece, sir,” said the sailor.

  The old captain came to the rail.

  “Now I don’t happen to have a niece,” he remarked.

  Josie spoke quickly to him in French. “The Empress Eugenie is in Trouville. She is trying to get to England.”

  In a few minutes they had convinced him of the truth of their story; he left his kippered herring and toast to cool and discussed plans with them. After it was decided that the Empress had best not come aboard until twilight he beckoned to his boatswain.

  “Pipe all hands on deck.”

  Following the whistle two dozen men formed themselves into attendant statues on three sides of a square, and after a gruff “All present, sir” there was no sound on board.

  “I don’t want any of you men to go ashore today. The Empress of the French people is coming on board this evening. I count on every one of you to give no indication or signal as to why you were kept on board. Dismiss.”

  . . . It was dark when oars again disturbed the water beside the yacht and Dr. Evans assisted the Empress up the accommodation ladder.

  “You have no waiting women with you?” Sir John asked. “I suppose this young American lady will be along.”

  “I’ll go gladly,” said Josie.

  “And Dr. Evans will come also?”

  “If the Empress likes I will be glad to. Dr. Pilgrim will take care of my affairs in Paris.”

  “I am afraid there is slight accommodation on board,” he said politely to Tib.

  “I must go back,” Tib said, but the others could not help noticing the slight expression of regret in his and Josie’s faces.

  “When will you be back in Paris?” Tib said to her quickly. “I expect to be there for several months representing the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Danville News and the Lynchburg Courier.”

  “I’ll be back soon if you keep the peace,” said Josie.

  When they left the quays there had been a restive curious crowd gathering.

  “We are putting to sea immediately though I look for a rough crossing,” Sir John said.

  The Empress Eugenie, distraught and grief-stricken, was distributing louis d’or to the sailors.

  “And these two young Americans must have a souvenir also.”

  She took two matched bracelets from her wrists, handing one to Tib and one to Dr. Pilgrim.

  “You two men have looked at each other sometimes as though you had some quarrel. In memory of your great help to me and for the sake of the pretty Josie will you not forget it all forever? I should like to feel that I had done some good during these days when you have been so good to me.”

  “Our quarrel is over so far as I’m concerned,” said Tib.

  The two younger men started back toward shore in the dinghy and the hands that waved to them from the yacht as they gradually lost sight of it in the growing dark were like a symbol that the cruelty of a distant time was receding with every stroke of the oars into a dimmer and dimmer past.

  FSF as a Confederate officer in his play [The] Coward, 1913.

  Dentist Appointment

  The buggy progressed at a tired trot and its two occupants, up since dawn, were as weary as their horses when they turned down the pike toward Washington. The girl was tawny and lovely—despite July she wore a light blue dress of bombazine cloth and because of this she had listened politely to her brother’s strictures during the drive down: nurses in Washington hospitals did not dress like women of the world. Josie was saddened for it was the first really grown-up costume she had ever owned. She came of strict stock, but many youths at home had observed the charming glow of her person since she turned twelve and she had prepared for this trip as if she were going to a party.

  “Is it still Maryland, brother?” She dug him with the handle of the buggy whip, and Captain Doctor Pilgrim came alive.

  “Why—we’re approaching the District of Columbia—unless you’ve turned us around. We’ll stop and get water at this farmhouse just ahead. And, Josie, don’t be too sweet with these people down here—They’re almost all secesh, and if you’re nice to them they take advantage of it and get haughty.”

  The Pilgrims were possibly the only people in the vicinity who did not know that this part of Maryland was suddenly in Confederate hands. To ease the pressure on Lee’s army at Petersburg, General Early had marched his corps up the Shenandoah Valley to make a last desperate threat at the Capitol. After throwing a few shells into the suburbs, he learned of Federal rein for cements and turned his weary columns about for the march back into Virginia. His last infantry had scarcely slogged along this very pike, leaving a stubborn dust, and Josie was rather puzzled by a number of what seemed to be armed tramps who limped past them. Also there was something about the two men galloping toward the carriage that made her ask with a certain alarm, “What are those men, brother? Secesh?”

  To Josie, or anyone who had not been to the front, it would have been difficult to place these men as soldiers—soldiers—Tib Dulany, who had once contributed occasional verse to the Lynchburg Courier, wore a hat that had been white, a butternut coat, blue pants that had been issued to a Union trooper, and a cartridge belt stamped C.S.A. All that the two riders had in common were their fine new carbines captured last week from Pleasanton’s cavalry. They came up beside the buggy in a whirl of dust and Tib saluted the doctor.

  “Hi there, Yank!”

  “We want to get some water,” said Josie haughtily to the handsomest young man. Then suddenly she saw that Captain Doctor Pilgrim’s hand was at his holster, but immobile—the second rider was holding a carbine three feet from his heart.

  Almost painfully, Captain Pilgrim raised his arms.

  “What is this—a raid?” he demanded.

  Josie felt a hand reaching about her and shrank forward; Tib was taking her brother’s revolver.

  “What is this?” repeated Dr. Pilgrim. “Are you guerrillas?”

  “Who are you?” the riders demanded. Without waiting for an answer Tib said, “Young lady, turn in yonder at the farmhouse. You can get water there.”

  He realized suddenly that she was lovely, that she was frightened and brave, and he added: “Nobody’s going to hurt you. We just aiming to detain you a little.”

  “Will you tell me who you are?” Captain Pilgrim demanded.

  “Cultivate calm!” Tib advised him. “You’re inside Lee’s lines now.”

  “Lee’s lines!” Captain Pilgrim cried. “You think every time you Mosby murderers come out of your hills and cut a telegraph—”

  The team, barely started, jolted to a stop—the second trooper had grabbed the reins, and turned black eyes upon the northerner.

  “One word more about Mosby and I’ll clean your little old face with dandelions.”

  “The officer isn’t informed of the news, Wash,” said Tib. “He doesn’t know he’s a prisoner of the Army of Northern Virginia.”

  Captain Pilgrim looked at them incredulously; Wash released the reins and they drove to the farmhouse. Only as the foliage parted and he saw two dozen horses attended by grey-clad orderlies, did he realize that his information was indeed several days behind.

  “Is Lee’s army here?”

  “You didn’t know? Why, right now Abe Lincoln’s in the kitchen washing dishes—and General Grant’s upstairs making the beds.”

  “Ah-h-h!” grunted Captain Pilgrim.

  “Say, Wash, I sure would like to be in Washington tonight when Jeff Davis rides in. That Yankee rebellion didn’t last long, did it?”

  Josie suddenly believed it
and her world was crashing around her. The Boys in Blue, the Union forever—Mine eyes have seen the Glory of the Coming of the Lord. Her eyes filled with hot tears.

  “You can’t take my brother prisoner—he’s not really an officer, he’s a doctor. He was wounded at Cold Harbor—”

  “Doctor, eh? Don’t know anything about teeth, does he?” asked Tib, dismounting at the porch.

  “Oh yes—that’s his specialty.”

  “So you’re a tooth doctor? That’s what we been looking for all over Maryland-My-Maryland. If you’ll be so kind as to come in here you can pull a tooth of a real Bonaparte, a cousin of Emperor Napoleon III. No joke—he’s attached to General Early’s staff. He’s been bawling his head off for an hour but the medical men went on with the ambulances.”

  An officer came out on the porch, gave a nervous ear to a crackling of rifles in the distance, and bent an eye upon the buggy.

  “We found a tooth specialist, Lieutenant,” said Tib. “Providence sent him into our lines and if Napoleon is still—”

  “Thank God!” the officer exclaimed. “Bring him in. We didn’t know whether to take the Prince along or leave him.”

  Suddenly a glimpse of the Confederacy was staged for Josie on the vine-covered veranda. There was a sudden egress: a spidery man in a shabby riding coat with faded stars, followed by two younger men cramming papers into a canvas sack. Then a miscellany of officers, one on a single crutch, one stripped to an undershirt with the gold star of a general pinned to a bandage on his shoulder. The general air was of nervous gaiety but Josie saw the reflection of disappointment in their tired eyes. Perceiving her, they made a single gesture: their dozen right hands rose to their dozen hats and they bowed in her direction.

  Josie bowed back stiffly, trying unsuccessfully to bring hauteur and pious reproach into her face. In a moment they swung into their saddles. General Early looked for a moment at the city that he could not conquer, a city that another Virginian had conceived arbitrarily out of a swamp eighty years before.

  “No change in orders,” he said to the aide at his stirrup. “Tell Mosby that I want couriers every half hour up to Harper’s Ferry.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The aide spoke to him in a low voice and his sun-strained eyes focused on Dr. Pilgrim in the buggy.

  “I understand you’re a dentist,” he said. “Prince Napoleon has been with us as an observer. Pull out his tooth or whatever he needs. These two troopers will stay with you. Do well by him and they’ll let you go without parole when you’ve finished.”

  There was the clop and crunch of mounted men moving down a lane, and in a minute the last sally of the Army of Northern Virginia faded swiftly into the distance.

  “We got a dentist here for Prince Napoleon,” said Tib to a French aide-de-camp who came out of the farmhouse.

  “That’s excellent news.” He led the way inside. “The Prince is in such agony.”

  “The doctor is a Yankee,” Tib continued. “One of us will have to stay while he’s operating.”

  The stout invalid across the room, a gross miniature of his world-shaking uncle, tore his hand from a groaning mouth and sat upright in an armchair.

  “Operating!” he cried. “My God! Is he going to operate?”

  Dr. Pilgrim looked suspiciously at Tib.

  “My sister—where will she be?”

  “I’ve put her into the parlor, Doctor. Wash, you stay here.”

  “I’ll need hot water,” said Dr. Pilgrim, “and my instrument case from the buggy.”

  Prince Napoleon groaned again.

  “Will you cut my head off of my neck? Ah, cette vie barbare!”

  Tib consoled him politely.

  “This doctor is a demon for teeth, Prince Napoleon.”

  “I am a trained surgeon,” said Dr. Pilgrim stiffly. “Now, sir, will you take off that hat?”

  The Prince removed the wide white Cordoba which topped a miscellaneous costume of red tail-coat, French uniform breeches and dragoon boots.

  “Can we trust this medicin if he is a Yankee? How can I know he will not cut to kill? Does he know I am a French citizen?”

  “Prince, if he doesn’t do well by you we got some apple trees outside and plenty rope.”

  Tib went into the parlor where Miss Josie sat on the edge of a horsehair sofa.

  “What are you going to do to my brother?”

  Sorry for her lovely, anxious face, Tib said: “I’m more worried what he’s about to do to the Prince.”

  An anguished howl arose from the library.

  “You hear that?” Tib said. “The Prince is the one to worry about.”

  “Are you going to send us to that Libby Prison?”

  “Most certainly not, Madame. You’re going to be here till your brother fixes up the Prince; then as soon as our cavalry pickets come past you can continue your journey.”

  Josie relaxed.

  “I thought all the fighting was down in Virginia.”

  “It is. That’s where we’re heading, I reckon—this is the third time I’ve ridden into Maryland with the army and it’s the third time I’m heading back with it.”

  She looked at him for the first time with a certain human interest.

  “What did my brother mean when he said you were a gorilla?”

  “I reckon because I didn’t shave since yesterday.” He laughed. “It’s ‘guerrilla,’ not ‘gorilla.’ When it’s a Yankee on detached service they call him a scout but when it’s one of us they call us spies and string us up.”

  “Any soldier not in uniform is a spy, isn’t he?”

  “I’m in uniform—look at my buckle. Believe it or not, Miss Pilgrim, I was a smart-looking trooper when I rode out of Lynchburg four years ago.”

  He told her how he had been dressed that day and Josie listened, thinking it was not unlike when the first young volunteers had got on the train at Chillicothe, Ohio.

  “—with a big red ribbon of my mother’s for a sash. One of the girls got out in front of the troop and read a poem I wrote.”

  “Say the poem,” Josie exclaimed, “I would so enjoy hearing it.”

  Tib considered. “Reckon I’ve forgot it. All I remember is ‘Lynchburg, thy guardsmen bid thy hills farewell.’ ”

  “I love it.” Forgetting the errand on which Lynchburg’s guardsmen were bent she added, “I certainly wish you remembered the rest of it.”

  Came a scream from across the hall and a medley of French. The distraught face of the aide-de-camp appeared at the door.

  “He has pulled out not just the tooth but the estomac—He has done him to the death!”

  A face pushed over his shoulder.

  “Say, Tib—the Yank got the tooth.”

  “Did he?” said Tib absently. As Wash withdrew he turned back to Josie.

  “I certainly would like to write a few lines to express my admiration of you.”

  “This is so sudden,” she said lightly.

  She might have spoken for herself too—nothing is much more sudden than first sight.

  II

  A minute later Wash looked back in.

  “Say, Tib, we oughtn’t to stay here. A patrol just skinned by shootin back from the saddle. Ain’t we fixin to leave? This here Doctor knows we’re Mosby’s men.”

  “Will you leave without us?” the aide demanded suspiciously.

  “We sure will,” said Tib. “The Prince can observe the war from the Yankee angle for a while. Miss Pilgrim, I bid you a sad, I may say, a most unwilling goodbye.”

  Peering hastily into the library Tib found the Prince so far recovered as to be sitting upright, panting and gasping.

  “You are an artiste,” he was assuring Dr. Pilgrim. “After all the terror I still live! In Paris sometimes if they take the tooth from you you have hemorrhage and die.”

  Wash called from the door.

  “Come on, Tib!”

  There were shots very near now. The two scouts had scarcely unhitched their horses when Wash exclaime
d: “Hell fire!” and pointed down the drive where half a dozen Federal troopers had come into view behind the foliage of the far gate. Wash swung his carbine one-handed to his right shoulder and reached for a cartridge in his pouch.

  “I’ll take the two on the left,” he said.

  Standing concealed by their horses they waited.

  “Maybe we could run for it,” Tib suggested.

  “The place has got seven-rail fences.”

  “Don’t fire till they get nearer.”

  Leisurely the file of cavalry trotted up the drive. Even after four years on detached service, Tib hated to shoot from ambush, but he concentrated on the business and the front sight of his carbine came into line with the center of the Yankee corporal’s tunic.

  “Got your mark, Wash?”

  “Think so.”

  “When they break we’ll ride through ’em.”

  But the ill luck of Southern arms that day was with them before they could loose a shot. A heavy body flung against Tib and pinioned him. A voice shouted beside his ear.

  “Men, they’re rebels here!”

  Even as Tib turned, wrestling desperately with Dr. Pilgrim, the Northern patrol stopped, drew pistols. Wash was bobbing desperately from side to side to get a shot at Pilgrim, but the Doctor maneuvered Tib’s body in between.

  In a few seconds it was over. Wash loosed a single shot but the Federals were around them before he was in his saddle. Furious, the two young men faced their captors. Dr. Pilgrim spoke sharply to the Federal corporal:

  “These are Mosby’s men.”

  Those years were bitter on the border. The Federals slew Wash when he made an attempt to get away by grabbing at the corporal’s revolver. Tib, still struggling, was trussed up at the porch rail.

  “There’s a good tree,” one of the Federals said, “and there’s a rope on the swing.”

  The corporal glanced at Dr. Pilgrim.

  “You say he’s one of Mosby’s men?”

  “I’m in the Seventh Virginia Cavalry,” said Tib.

  “Are you one of Mosby’s men?”