The Deserter

by Jane Langton

  They gave up on the picture in which Captain Thomas Rodman Robeson stood gazing at the horizon and First Lieutenant Seth Morgan looked cheerfully straight into the lens of the camera, his hat in his hand.

  Nor did they recognize Private Otis Mathias Pike, hilariously tickled by Lemuel and Rufus Scopes as he lay grinning on the ground in the very forefront of the fighting men of Company E, Second Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry.

  GLORIOUS LIBRARIES

  The next step was libraries.

  “You take the Archives department this time,” said Mary. “I’ll try the Theatre Collection.”

  Mary Morgan and Homer Kelly had spent their honeymoon in the Concord Library—well, part of it anyway. Libraries were their saloons. They had visited these intoxicating pothouses all over their native New England and in far-flung cities across the Atlantic.

  None of these grogshops was more inebriating than the small and sequestered storehouses in the Pusey Library, where the bartender librarians served up precious vintages from days gone by.

  Homer liked everything about the Archives library. He fell in love at first sight with the pretty slips one filled out to ask for things in the HUP category (Harvard University Picture collection) or HUG (texts relating to Harvard University graduates). Once you had filled out your slip and placed it reverently on the counter, Angelica Doyle picked it up and glided silently away. A moment later, lo! the thing appeared like magic on your table.

  Each of the HUP photographs came in its own slipcase. Homer was moved every time he reached his hand into an envelope and pulled out the face of a young man who had served in the Civil War. Perhaps it had been hidden from view for 140 years, or at least since the invention of these charming acid-free envelopes.

  Otis Pike, class of 1860, was the first to emerge from the dark. Homer stared at the amiable young face. Pike’s suit was jaunty and his mustache and sideburns were neatly trimmed. He was clearly a younger version of the man in the top hat.

  Only three years after this picture was taken, he had been killed in the Battle of Gettysburg.

  Homer thrust back his chair and returned to the desk to ask a question. “Is there any record of the battlefield experiences of the men whose names are on the tablets in Memorial Hall?”

  “Of course there is.” Angelica whisked around the counter and plucked a pair of books from a shelf. “Harvard Memorial Biographies. They’re in here, all of them.”

  The two volumes were a gold mine. Homer found the entry for Otis Pike at once among the memoirs for the class of 1860. The writer of this one must have cudgeled his brain and chosen his words with tactful care—

  OTIS MATHIAS PIKE

  Pvt. 2d Massachusetts Vols. (Infantry) July 12, 1862.

  Killed at Gettysburg, Penn., 3 July, 1863.

  Otis Pike’s life is an inspiring study in the overcoming of obstacles. It is an example of the triumphant achievements that can sometimes arise from unpromising beginnings.

  Private Pike was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, September 2, 1839. Orphaned when a small boy, he was taken into the household of a bachelor uncle. Entering Harvard as a freshman in 1856, he soon became one of the most popular members of his class.

  Though several times admonished for inattention to his studies, and once in danger of suspension in consequence of a practical joke at the expense of the college steward, he was permitted to continue his undergraduate career. Thereafter, his less-than-perfect record as a scholar was offset by his brilliant participation in the dramatic society known as the Hasty Pudding Club. Pike’s unique contribution was the authorship of witty farces and songs, many of which are still remembered.

  On the death of his uncle, Pike found himself without family, but as the heir to his uncle’s estate he was able to graduate in 1860 with his class. His enlistment in the army was somewhat clouded by circumstance, but his friends in that celebrated regiment, the Second Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, were pleased to accept him into their distinguished ranks as a private.

  In the Army of the Potomac, Pike once again wrested glory from doubtful beginnings. Although three times chastised for leaving the ranks, he was in the very forefront among his gallant classmates as the regiment surged over the breastworks on the morning of July 3, 1863, in an attack on Culp’s Hill during the Battle of Gettysburg. Next day, his body was found farthest forward in the field, in company with that of his heroic classmate, Lt. Col. Charles Redington Mudge, his regimental commander.

  Another classmate, Capt. Thomas Bayley Fox, was mortally wounded in the same attack, as was the commander of Private Pike’s company, Capt. Thomas Rodman Robeson, class of 1861.

  Their memorials will be found in these pages.

  Well, good for Otis Pike. But what about Seth Morgan?

  Homer looked for Seth’s name in the table of contents, but it was not there. Well, of course it wasn’t there. These were the histories of men who had given their lives for the Union cause. In the elegiac biographies written by their friends and comrades, every dead soldier had been gallant, stalwart, chivalrous, heroic.

  Seth Morgan had served in the same regiment, but Mary had found only a blank page for him in the album for the class of 1860. Had there been something shamefully wrong with his army career? In contrast to the gallant sacrifice of Private Otis Pike?

  PART XIV

  THE MARBLE HEART

  NO WIFELY CLAIM

  When Ida woke from her nap, she heaved herself out of bed and poured water from the pitcher into the bowl on the washstand. Then she scrubbed her face with soapy fingers and unpinned her hair.

  Her baby was awake too, thumping and bumping inside her. Ida smiled, because surely no girl would kick like that. Seth would be pleased to have a boy. And surely he’d be glad to see her, and if he were not—but Ida could not bear to think what she would do if he were not.

  It occurred to her as she brushed her hair how odd it was that Seth’s new lady friend would permit his wife to see him. Perhaps in all her alluring splendor as an actress on the stage, “the cynosure of all eyes,” Lily had no fear of competition from a plain little fustian wife. And perhaps—Ida winced—perhaps Seth would be mortified by the public display of his wife’s condition, angry at her for interfering in his thrilling new life.

  Miserably Ida remembered a day of pouring rain last spring when Seth had been spending his furlough catching up on chores left undone by the women and children. Ida had popped open her mother’s umbrella, splashed out to the barn and found Seth and Eben forking up the manure pack, breaking through the dry crust to shovel the foul-smelling mess into a tipcart. Oh, yes, perhaps she’d been a fool to follow him. Perhaps he would be justified in telling her to go away and let him alone.

  But when she heard Lily’s key in the door, her heart bounded up again, and she ran to pull the door open. Eagerly she said, “I’ll get my shawl.”

  “Oh, my dear,” said Lily, “just let me catch my breath.” She scurried past Ida, pulling off her bonnet. To Ida’s surprise a yellow braid came with it. Lily saw her astonishment and laughed. “A diadem plait, it’s all the rage. Just wait till you see what a fair charmer I’m going to make of you, with those raven tresses and that pretty face.”

  “Please, Lily, oh, please may we go now?”

  “Ida dear, there’s no point in going to the theater now. I’ve just heard the news. He’s gone out of town. They say he needs a change of air.”

  “A change of air?”

  The scream of the rolling mill had begun again. “Oh, you know, dear, away from the stench and noise of the city. Just listen to that.” Lily bustled to the window and slammed it down.

  “But where?” cried Ida. “Where did he go?”

  “Dear me, I don’t know. It’s just for a few days.”

  “A few days!”

  “His battle wound,” babbled Lily. “It was bothering him.”

  “Oh,” cried Ida, “he was wounded? Seth was wounded?”

  “On his neck,” decided Lily qu
ickly, rejecting leg, arm, shoulder, chest and back. “It’s flared up again.”

  “Oh, but he needs me,” burst out Ida. Then in her distress, she said, “Please forgive me, Lily,” because in this new shape of things, it might be discourteous to make any wifely claim. Perhaps it was Lily, only Lily, whom Seth needed in his time of suffering.

  But Lily was still scurrying around the room, plucking up pieces of clothing. A corset with crisscrossed lacing sailed into the air. She threw open her trunk, tumbling the contents, holding things up for inspection, dropping them and then tugging at something else. Finally she pulled out a gossamer scarf and ran across the room to drape it over Ida’s shoulders.

  “Oh, how perfect,” she said, clapping her hands. “And, my dear, it hides your—come see how sweet you look.”

  She swept Ida across the room to the looking glass and they stood side by side in front of it, Ida’s drawn face pale in the mirror beside the rosiness of Lily.

  “We’ll go shopping tomorrow,” said Lily firmly. “There’s crinolines on Broad Street. Just wait till you see.”

  “But I don’t wear crinolines,” said Ida. She was desperately confused. “Hardly anybody in Concord wears crinolines.”

  Lily laughed. “Oh, praise be to Concord, the Paris of the North.”

  A LETTER FROM

  EUDOCIA

  My dear Ida,

  Eben has set off & should arrive in city of Bait, by the time you read this. I have told him to ask for you at hotel so please look out for him. He has strict instructions to bring you home. Now Ida I know that at 19 you are a grown woman but I request nay order you to come home at once. Mother Morgan although somewhat enfeebled as you know joins me in this entreaty. Think of the child’s welfare if not of self.

  I send photograph of Alice taken in Watertown. Eben’s is from a gallery in Brighton while selling Mr. Hosmer’s horse.

  Yr devoted mother,

  Eudocia Flint

  Alice has made you a penwiper.

  BABIES THAT

  GET STUCK

  The uncertainty was hard to bear. Ida waited day after day for the arrival of her brother Eben and for news of Seth’s return from the fresh air of the country.

  At night she slept on a settee in Lily’s hotel room. By day she walked out on the streets of Baltimore looking for Seth, studying the faces of the companies of soldiers as their regiments marched to the depot and searching among the crowds gathered around the food tables of the Christian Commission. On the back streets of the city the colored people of Baltimore looked at her and smiled and called out, “Bless you, missus. When’s that chile acomin’?”

  But Lily LeBeau kept saying she had heard nothing from Seth. Sick at heart, Ida pleaded, “Lily, he may be very ill. Doesn’t anyone know where he is?”

  “No, dear, I’m afraid not.” Lily was weary of Ida’s questions, weary of repeating the same old fable. Impulsively one day she changed her story. She sat down beside Ida and looked at her gravely. “Now dear, I have something hurtful to tell you. The fact is, your husband skedaddled.”

  Ida looked blank.

  “You know, dear, from the battle. He skedaddled from the battle.”

  Hastily Ida said, “Oh, yes, I know, but I don’t care about that.”

  “Good gracious, child, surely you can understand that your dear boy don’t dare take a chance. They’ll shoot him if they find him. That’s what they tell me.”

  “But Lily—”

  Whenever Lily’s logic failed her, she had ways of skipping aside. The first way was a change of subject.

  Boldly she patted Ida’s bulging skirt and told her she really must go home. Didn’t she know the truth about babies? Hadn’t she been told there was often trouble with the first? Lily had heard such terrible things about babies that came out in pieces and mothers who died shrieking with pain. “I told you about my off cousin, how her baby got stuck.”

  When Ida merely set her jaw and said nothing, Lily tried another fib. “The hotel, Ida dear. Mr. Kenney knows you’re here but his wife don’t, and it’s against the rules. If she finds out there’s two of us, she’ll throw the both of us out.”

  Quickly Ida said, “I’ll pay you more, Lily.” She patted the place where her money was tightly pinned under her dress.

  Lily softened. “No, no, my honey, never mind. I’ll talk to Jesse. He’s sweet on me.”

  Her other resource was vivacious action. Failing in argument, Lily jumped up in a swirl of ruffles and feathers and bounced across the room to attack her trunk. Flouncing back with a sash, a fichu, a mantilla and a bonnet, she thrust them at Ida. “Now dear, just help me dress.”

  In a miserable state of agitation, Ida tied the sash around Lily’s corseted waist, hooked the fichu, adjusted the mantilla and straightened the bonnet.

  “Your turn now,” said Lily. Once again she plunged her arms into the tumbled clothing in her trunk. “Because this evening you’re coming with me. I won’t take no for an answer. Remember, dear? It’s the last performance. There ain’t gonna be no more, no more.”

  She hauled out an enormous shawl and draped it around Ida. Then, standing back, she laughed at Ida’s hugeness and sashayed around her, swishing her skirts from side to side. A curl came loose and fluffy bits of swansdown escaped from her bonnet and drifted to the ceiling, buoyed by a warm breeze from the blowing curtain.

  Gloomily Ida stood stock-still, admitting to herself that Lily was bewitching. Her arms and bosom were plump with girlish chub, and most of her fair hair was real. Her eyes were blue and sparkling and her manner adorably coquettish, even with clumsy Ida, even with Mr. Kenney at the desk, even with the colored man who swept the stairs and the pretty dark-skinned chambermaid, even with the half-starved cat in the alley. Ruefully Ida told herself that Seth could not be blamed for being swept off his feet.

  Obediently she accompanied Lily to the Holliday Street Theatre to witness her performance in The Marble Heart. Of course Ida already knew the tragic story of Phidias, the noble sculptor, and the three beautiful statues that came alive. Although Lily seemed to think of Ida’s hometown as a far Northern outpost of civilization, the people of Concord were not completely out of touch with the dramatic arts. Ida herself had taken part in swashbuckling homespun performances in the Alcotts’ dining room. Some of the productions of Seth’s Pudding Club had been burlesques of famous dramas like The Lady of Lyons and Shakespeare’s Othello. No one in the family had heard Jenny Lind or seen Edwin Forrest, but the newspapers carried daily intelligence of the theaters and music halls of Boston.

  This evening the living statues in The Marble Heart were astonishing. It was wonderful how still they stood on their pedestals and how thrillingly they melted at last and spoke. But how strange! The play was not tragic at all, not here in Baltimore, it was hilarious.

  Ida was in no mood to laugh. She applauded when Lily sang her slave girl’s song, but she was grateful when the curtain came down for the last time. Wearily she moved up the aisle in a crush of other people, the women in their ballooning skirts, the men adjusting their silk hats. In the lobby of the theater she waited, but it was a full half hour before Lily appeared, flushed and glowing, to walk back with Ida to the hotel.

  The letter about Eben had been a milestone. Ida read it over and over, homesick for the first time. Oh, yes, it would be a relief to go back with Eben as her mother had requested—nay, ordered—her to do.

  But she couldn’t. She could not possibly go back with him now, not with Seth somewhere nearby, perhaps sick unto death.

  AROUND THE PIANO

  Mother Morgan sat in the corner, her head down.

  Ida’s mother sat at the piano, with Alice in her lap. Sally and Josh leaned on either side.

  Eudocia flipped a page, poised her fingers over the keys, and said, “Ready?”

  They were a singing family, and they launched into it with gusto. Even Alice pretended to sing.

  Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;

>   He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

  He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword;

  His truth is marching on.

  I have seen Him in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps;

  They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;

  I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps;

  His day is marching on.

  He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;

  He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgement seat;

  O be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!

  Our God is marching on.

  Glory ,glory, hallelujah!

  Glory ,glory, hallelujah!

  Glory ,glory, hallelujah!

  His truth is marching on.

  They were starting the fourth verse when Sally nudged her mother. Still singing, Eudocia swiveled around on the stool to look at Mother Morgan, who was weeping.

  “Stupid,” sobbed Mother Morgan. “Stupid, stupid.”

  “There now, Augusta,” said Eudocia, springing up. “It’s just a song. Here, why don’t you put in the new pictures?” She opened the album to an empty page and showed Augusta how to tuck in the cards.

  Augusta glowered at the young faces of Alice and Eben and muttered, “Stupid,” again, but she bent to the task while they sang the last verse.

  In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,

  With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me;

  As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free!

  While God is marching on.

  Later on, with Mother Morgan napping in her room, Eudocia talked about the song in the kitchen. Standing at the stove with a long fork, extracting peaches from a boiling kettle, she said it was all very well for Julia Ward Howe to say they should all die, but was Mrs. Howe about to die in the war? She was not. Did she have a son in the army? She did not. So she had no right to talk about dying. Eudocia pierced a floating peach. “Well, never mind. It’s a good song anyway.”