“I had a time of it to come on that freight,” he said.
“The orderly said you would.” I repeated the orderly’s remark, and Dan laughed.
“He told the truth. I had to do more swearing to the square inch than I have been called upon to do for some time. I knew you didn’t even know where you were going, and that I must get here to-night. As soon as I heard about the freight, I went to the conductor. He said passengers couldn’t be taken on the freight, it was against orders. ‘I belong to the army as you see,’ I urged, ‘I am an officer and it is important for me to rejoin my command.’ He insisted still that I couldn’t go, that it was against orders. I told him that it was a bundle for General Lee that had got me left, and I pictured your predicament in moving colors. He was obdurate. ‘If the freights begin to take passengers,’ he said, ‘there would soon be no room for any other sort of freight on them.’ I felt like kicking him. It was then that I told him that orders were not made for fools to carry out, and the swearing began. I threatened to report him. He looked uneasy and was ready to make concessions which politeness had not been able to win, but I walked off. Evidently, like a mule, he respected me more for cursing him. I had my plan laid. Just as the train moved out of the station I swung on to the engine, and politely introduced myself to the engineer. He had overheard my conversation with the conductor – the first part of it, not the part where the swearing came in – and he invited me to get off the engine. While we were debating the engine was traveling. I saw that he was about to stop it.
“Quick as a flash I had my pistol at his head.
“‘Now,’ I said, ‘drive on with this engine, or I’ll kill you and run it myself!’ I am not telling you all the words I used, Nell, you’ll forgive me this time, I had to get to you, and honest English is wasted on fools and mules. ‘Hold off!’ he said, ‘and don’t put that d – d thing so close to my head, and you can ride up here and be d – d to you.’ The invitation was not very polite, but I accepted it. I gave him some good tobacco, and we got to be friends before I got off.”
The short day was done. I was tired and warm and sleepy and went to sleep while Dan was talking. I don’t know how long I had dozed when the driver doubled up suddenly and turned head over heels backward into my lap. I struggled from under him, and Dan gave him a push that helped to free me and at the same time jumped on to the driver’s seat and caught up the lines.
“Lord-a-mussy on me!” I heard the man groaning, “dat ar d – n mu-el! she have kicked me in de pit er my stummick!”
He gathered himself together in a corner of the ambulance, and continued to express forcible opinions of the mule.
“Dan,” I said, “please get away from there! That mule might kick you.”
“Don’t be silly, Nell! Somebody’s got to drive.”
“But, Dan, if you get kicked, you can’t drive.”
“I won’t get kicked. I know how to talk to a mule. Just shut your ears, Nell, if you don’t want to hear me. I’ve got to convince this mule. She’s just like that engineer and conductor. As soon as I get through giving her my opinion in language she can understand, she’ll travel all right.”
Presently Dan called out: “You can unstop your ears now, Nell – I think she understands.”
“Dan,” I said, “are you cold out there?”
“Not a bit of it! This isn’t anything to a soldier. But a soldier’s wife, eh, Nell? Getting to be rather hard lines, isn’t it?”
“Dan,” I said, my teeth chattering, “don’t it seem that I have had more adventures in one day than I am entitled to?”
“Rather! By the way, Josh got on that same freight. How he managed it, the Lord only knows! Worked himself in with the brakeman, I suppose. But he got off – to look around, I reckon – just like him! – at some station before Milford and got left. He’ll come straggling into camp to-morrow. You see there’s another accident you can credit your account with. Josh could have driven these mules instead of that fool white man over there who don’t know what to do with a mule. Then I would have been back there entertaining you, and you would have been complimenting me by going to sleep.” He drove on singing:
“Sweet Nellie is by my side!”
We caught up with another ambulance. In it were an army friend of Dan’s with his wife, and she proved the straw that broke the back of my endurance. She played the martyr. She had rugs, and shawls, and blankets. I cross-examined her and made her show that she hadn’t been left on a car by herself without a ticket or a cent of money, and with no knowledge of where she was going, that the driver of her ambulance hadn’t been kicked in the stomach and tumbled himself backward into her lap and nearly broken her bones, and that my case was far worse than hers. But in spite of it, she complained of everything, and had Dan and her husband sympathizing so with her that they had no time to sympathize with me. I sat, almost frozen, huddled up in the one shawl that answered for shawl, blanket, and rug, and tried to keep my teeth from chattering and myself from hating that whining Mrs. Gummidge of a woman.
At last our ambulance drew up in front of the Rev. Mr. McGuire’s, where we were to stop. There was a hot supper ready, in parlor and dining-room cheerful flames leaped up from hickory logs on bright brass fire-dogs, and our welcome was as cheery as the glow of the fire. As our ambulance had driven into the gate a few minutes in advance of the other, and as Dan had also engaged board for me several days before, I had a right to the first choice of rooms. One of these was large with a bright fire burning in the fireplace, and a great downy feather-bed on the four-poster; the other was small, and had neither fireplace nor feather-bed. Of course “Mrs. Gummidge” got the best room. Dan had to go back to camp. I slept on my hard bed in my cold room and cried for Milicent and mother; and the next morning I broke the ice in my bowl when I went to take my bath. I was very, very miserable that morning. I was not out of my twenties, I had been a spoiled child, I had not seen Milicent or mother since my marriage, I had nearly lost my husband, and I had been ill unto death. Following my husband around as I did, I yet saw very little of him, and I endured hardships of every sort. I was in the land of war, and in spite of all his efforts to protect me life was full of fears and horrors. I do not mean that it was all woe. There were smiles, and music, and laughter, too; my hosts were kind, Dan came over from camp whenever he could, and life was too full of excitement ever to be dull. During the day I managed fairly well – it was at night that the horrors overwhelmed me. My room was cheerless, my bed was hard and cold – I wanted Milicent, I wanted mother. I felt that the time had come when I must see them and I couldn’t: there was no way! The longing grew upon me the more I struggled against it, until there was no risk I would not have run to see them. I was sitting in the parlor one night thinking with indescribable longing of the happy, care-free days in Norfolk, and seeing dissolving pictures of home in the hickory fire. Tears were rolling down my cheeks, for while I was living over those dear old days I was living in the present, too. Suddenly I heard a voice in the hall – Dan’s and another’s!
I sprang up. And there was Dan, and behind him in the doorway stood a graceful figure in a long wrap. And a face – Milicent’s face – pale and weary, but indescribably lovely and loving, was looking toward me with shining eyes.
“Millie!”
“Nell!”
That was one time I forgot Dan, but he didn’t mind. He stayed with us as long as he could, and after he left Milicent and I talked and talked. Milicent – she was a widow now – had come all the way from Baltimore to see me – she had left mother and Bobby to come to see me! My little bed wasn’t hard any more, my room wasn’t cheerless any more; I didn’t mind having to break the ice for my bath. Ah, me, what a night that was and how happy we were until Dan’s command was moved!
Millie and I –