The Burial of the Guns

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"But you cannot get them there."

"Oh! yes, I can; the fact is, I own the place." She looked interested.
"Oh! it is not worth anything as land," he said, "but I love the association.
My mother was brought up there, and I keep up the garden just as it was.
You shall have the roses. Some day I want to see you among them."
Just then there was a step behind him. She rose.

"Is it ours?" she asked someone over her shoulder.

"Yes, come along."

Floyd glanced around. It was the "son of the great Router".

She turned to Floyd, and said, in an earnest undertone, "I am very sorry;
but I had an engagement. Good-by." She held out her hand.
Floyd took it and pressed it.

"Good-by," he said, tenderly. "That is all right."

She took the-son-of-the-great-Router's arm.

. . . . .

One afternoon, a month after Miss Dangerlie's reception,
Henry Floyd was packing his trunk. He had just looked at his watch,
when there was a ring at the bell. He knew it was the postman,
and a soft look came over his face as he reflected that
even if he got no letter he would see her within a few hours.
A large box of glorious old-fashioned roses was on the floor near him,
and a roll of money and a time-table lay beside it. He had ridden
thirty miles that morning to get and bring the roses himself
for one whom he always thought of in connection with them.

A letter was brought in, and a pleased smile lit up the young man's face
as he saw the handwriting. He laid on the side of the trunk
a coat that he held, and then sat down on the arm of a chair
and opened the letter. His hand stroked it softly as if it were of velvet.
He wore a pleased smile as he began to read. Then the smile died away
and a startled look took its place. The color faded out of his face,
and his mouth closed firmly. When he was through he turned back
and read the letter all over again, slowly. It seemed hard to understand;
for after a pause he read it over a third time. Then he looked
straight before him for a moment, and then slowly tore it up into thin shreds
and crumpled them up in his hand. Ten minutes later he rose from his seat
and dropped the torn pieces into the fireplace. He walked over
and put on his hat and coat, and going out, pulled the door firmly to
behind him. The trunk, partly packed, stood open with the half-folded coat
hanging over its edge and with the roses lying by its side.

Floyd walked into the Club and, returning quietly the salutations
of a group of friends, went over to a rack and drew out a newspaper file,
with which he passed into another room.

"Announcement of Engagement: Router and Dangerlie," was the heading
on which his eye rested. "It is stated," ran the paragraph,
"that they have been engaged some time, but no announcement
has been made until now, on the eve of the wedding, owing to
the young lady's delicacy of feeling."

That night Henry Floyd wrote a letter. This was the close of it:

"Possibly your recollection may hereafter trouble you. I wish to say
that I do not hold you accountable in any way."

That night a wretched creature, half beggar, half worse, was standing
on the street under a lamp. A man came along. She glanced at him timidly.
He was looking at her, but it would not do to speak to him,
he was a gentleman going somewhere. His hands were full of roses.
He posted a letter in the box, then to her astonishment he stopped at her side
and spoke to her.

"Here are some roses for you," he said, "and here is some money.
Go home to-night."

He pushed the roses and money into her hands, and turning,
went back up the dim street.

How the Captain made Christmas

It was just a few days before Christmas, and the men around
the large fireplace at the club had, not unnaturally,
fallen to talking of Christmas. They were all men in the prime of life,
and all or nearly all of them were from other parts of the country;
men who had come to the great city to make their way in life,
and who had, on the whole, made it in one degree or another,
achieving sufficient success in different fields to allow of all
being called successful men. Yet, as the conversation had proceeded,
it had taken a reminiscent turn. When it began, only three persons
were engaged in it, two of whom, McPheeters and Lesponts,
were in lounging-chairs, with their feet stretched out towards the log fire,
while the third, Newton, stood with his back to the great hearth,
and his coat-tails well divided. The other men were scattered about the room,
one or two writing at tables, three or four reading the evening papers,
and the rest talking and sipping whiskey and water, or only talking
or only sipping whiskey and water. As the conversation proceeded
around the fireplace, however, one after another joined the group there,
until the circle included every man in the room.

It had begun by Lesponts, who had been looking intently at Newton
for some moments as he stood before the fire with his legs well apart
and his eyes fastened on the carpet, breaking the silence by asking, suddenly:
"Are you going home?"

"I don't know," said Newton, doubtfully, recalled from somewhere in dreamland,
but so slowly that a part of his thoughts were still lingering there.
"I haven't made up my mind -- I'm not sure that I can go so far as Virginia,
and I have an invitation to a delightful place -- a house-party near here."

"Newton, anybody would know that you were a Virginian," said McPheeters,
"by the way you stand before that fire."

Newton said, "Yes," and then, as the half smile the charge had brought up
died away, he said, slowly, "I was just thinking how good it felt,
and I had gone back and was standing in the old parlor at home the first time
I ever noticed my father doing it; I remember getting up and standing by him,
a little scrap of a fellow, trying to stand just as he did,
and I was feeling the fire, just now, just as I did that night.
That was -- thirty-three years ago," said Newton, slowly,
as if he were doling the years from his memory.

"Newton, is your father living?" asked Lesponts. "No, but my mother is,"
he said; "she still lives at the old home in the country."

From this the talk had gone on, and nearly all had contributed to it,
even the most reticent of them, drawn out by the universal sympathy
which the subject had called forth. The great city,
with all its manifold interests, was forgotten, and the men of the world
went back to their childhood and early life in little villages
or on old plantations, and told incidents of the time when the outer world
was unknown, and all things had those strange and large proportions
which the mind of childhood gives. Old times were ransacked
and Christmas experiences in them were given without stint,
and the season was voted, without dissent, to have been far ahead
of Christmas now. Presently, one of the party said: "Did any of you
ever spend a Christmas on the cars? If you have not, thank Heaven,
and pray to be preserved from it henceforth, for I've done it, and I tell you
it's next to purgatory. I spent one once, stuck in a snow-drift,
or almost stuck, for we were ten hours late, and missed all connections,
and the Christmas I had expected to spend with friends,
I passed in a nasty car with a surly Pullman conductor,
an impudent mulatto porter, and a lot of fools, all of whom could have
murdered each other, not to speak of a crying baby whose murder was perhaps
the only thing all would have united on."

This harsh speech showed that the subject was about exhausted, and someone,
a man who had come in only in time to hear the last speaker,
had just hazarded the remark, in a faint imitation of an English accent,
that the sub-officials in this country were a surly, ill-conditioned lot,
anyhow, and always were as rude as they dared to be, when Lesponts,
who had looked at the speaker lazily, said:

"Yes, I have spent a Christmas on a sleeping-car, and, strange to say,
I have a most delightful recollection of it."

This was surprising enough to have gained him a hearing anyhow,
but the memory of the occasion was evidently sufficiently strong
to carry Lesponts over obstacles, and he went ahead.

"Has any of you ever taken the night train that goes from here South
through the Cumberland and Shenandoah Valleys, or from Washington
to strike that train?"

No one seemed to have done so, and he went on:

"Well, do it, and you can even do it Christmas, if you get
the right conductor. It's well worth doing the first chance you get,
for it's almost the prettiest country in the world that you go through;
there is nothing that I've ever seen lovelier than parts of the Cumberland
and Shenandoah Valleys, and the New River Valley is just as pretty, --
that background of blue beyond those rolling hills, and all, --
you know, McPheeters?" McPheeters nodded, and he proceeded:

"I always go that way now when I go South. Well, I went South one winter
just at Christmas, and I took that train by accident. I was going
to New Orleans to spend Christmas, and had expected to have gotten off
to be there several days beforehand, but an unlooked-for matter had turned up
and prevented my getting away, and I had given up the idea of going, when I
changed my mind: the fact is, I was in a row with a friend of mine there.
I decided, on the spur of the moment, to go, anyhow, and thus got off
on the afternoon train for Washington, intending to run my luck
for getting a sleeper there. This was the day before Christmas-eve
and I was due to arrive in New Orleans Christmas-day, some time. Well,
when I got to Washington there was not a berth to be had for love or money,
and I was in a pickle. I fumed and fussed; abused the railroad companies
and got mad with the ticket agent, who seemed, I thought,
to be very indifferent as to whether I went to New Orleans or not,
and I had just decided to turn around and come back to New York,
when the agent, who was making change for someone else, said:
`I'm not positive, but I think there's a train on such and such a road,
and you may be able to get a berth on that. It leaves about this time,
and if you hurry you may be able to catch it.' He looked at his watch:
`Yes, you've just about time to stand a chance; everything is late to-day,
there are such crowds, and the snow and all.' I thanked him,
feeling like a dog over my ill-temper and rudeness to him, and decided to try.
Anything was better than New York, Christmas-day. So I jumped into a carriage
and told the driver to drive like the -- the wind, and he did.
When we arrived at the station the ticket agent could not tell me
whether I could get a berth or not, the conductor had the diagram out
at the train, but he thought there was not the slightest chance.
I had gotten warmed up, however, by my friend's civility at the other station,
and I meant to go if there was any way to do it, so I grabbed up my bags
and rushed out of the warm depot into the cold air again. I found the car
and the conductor standing outside of it by the steps. The first thing
that struck me was his appearance. Instead of being the dapper young
naval-officerish-looking fellow I was accustomed to, he was a stout,
elderly man, with bushy, gray hair and a heavy, grizzled mustache,
who looked like an old field-marshal. He was surrounded by quite a number
of people all crowding about him and asking him questions at once,
some of whose questions he was answering slowly as he pored over his diagram,
and others of which he seemed to be ignoring. Some were querulous,
some good-natured, and all impatient, but he answered them all
with imperturbable good humor. It was very cold, so I pushed my way
into the crowd. As I did so I heard him say to someone:
`You asked me if the lower berths were all taken, did you not?' `Yes,
five minutes ago!' snapped the fellow, whom I had already heard swearing,
on the edge of the circle. `Well, they are all taken, just as they were
the first time I told you they were,' he said, and opened a despatch
given him by his porter, a tall, black, elderly negro with gray hair.
I pushed my way in and asked him, in my most dulcet tone,
if I could get an upper berth to New Orleans. I called him `Captain',
thinking him a pompous old fellow. He was just beginning to speak
to someone else, but I caught him and he looked across the crowd
and said `New Orleans!' My heart sank at the tone, and he went on
talking to some other man. `I told you that I would give you a lower berth,
sir, I can give you one now, I have just got a message that the person
who had "lower two" will not want it.' `Hold on, then, I'll take that lower,'
called the man who had spoken before, over the crowd, `I spoke for it first.'
`No you won't,' said the Captain, who went on writing.
The man pushed his way in angrily, a big, self-assertive fellow;
he was evidently smarting from his first repulse. `What's that? I did,
I say. I was here before that man got here, and asked you for a lower berth,
and you said they were all taken.' The Captain stopped and looked at him.
`My dear sir, I know you did; but this gentleman has a lady along.'
But the fellow was angry. `I don't care,' he said, `I engaged the berth
and I know my rights; I mean to have that lower berth, or I'll see
which is bigger, you or Mr. Pullman.' Just then a lady, who had come out
on the steps, spoke to the Captain about her seat in the car.
He turned to her: `My dear madam, you are all right, just go in there
and take your seat anywhere; when I come in I will fix everything.
Go straight into that car and don't come out in this cold air any more.'
The lady went back and the old fellow said, `Nick, go in there
and seat that lady, if you have to turn every man out of his seat.'
Then, as the porter went in, he turned back to his irate friend.
`Now, my dear sir, you don't mean that: you'd be the first man to give up
your berth; this gentleman has his sick wife with him and has been ordered
to take her South immediately, and she's going to have a lower berth
if I turn every man in that car out, and if you were Mr. Pullman himself
I'd tell you the same thing.' The man fell back, baffled and humbled,
and we all enjoyed it. Still, I was without a berth, so, with some misgiving,
I began: `Captain?' He turned to me. `Oh! you want to go to New Orleans?'
`Yes, to spend Christmas; any chance for me?' He looked at his watch.
`My dear young sir,' he said, `go into the car and take a seat,
and I'll do the best I can with you.' I went in, not at all sure
that I should get a berth.

"This, of course, was only a part of what went on, but the crowd had gotten
into a good humor and was joking, and I had fallen into the same spirit.
The first person I looked for when I entered the car was, of course,
the sick woman. I soon picked her out: a sweet, frail-looking lady,
with that fatal, transparent hue of skin and fine complexion.
She was all muffled up, although the car was very warm.
Every seat was either occupied or piled high with bags.
Well, the train started, and in a little while the Captain came in,
and the way that old fellow straightened things out was a revelation.
He took charge of the car and ran it as if he had been the Captain of a boat.
At first some of the passengers were inclined to grumble,
but in a little while they gave in. As for me, I had gotten an upper berth
and felt satisfied. When I waked up next morning, however, we were only
a hundred and fifty miles from Washington, and were standing still.
The next day was Christmas, and every passenger on the train,
except the sick lady and her husband, and the Captain,
had an engagement for Christmas dinner somewhere a thousand miles away.
There had been an accident on the road. The train which was coming north
had jumped the track at a trestle and torn a part of it away.
Two or three of the trainmen had been hurt. There was no chance of getting by
for several hours more. It was a blue party that assembled
in the dressing-room, and more than one cursed his luck.
One man was talking of suing the company. I was feeling pretty gloomy myself,
when the Captain came in. `Well, gentlemen, `Christmas-gift';
it's a fine morning, you must go out and taste it,' he said,
in a cheery voice, which made me feel fresher and better at once,
and which brought a response from every man in the dressing-room.
Someone asked promptly how long we should be there. `I can't tell you, sir,
but some little time; several hours.' There was a groan. `You'll have time
to go over the battle-field,' said the Captain, still cheerily.
`We are close to the field of one of the bitterest battles of the war.'
And then he proceeded to tell us about it briefly. He said, in answer to
a question, that he had been in it. `On which side, Captain?' asked someone.
`Sir!' with some surprise in his voice. `On which side?' `On our side, sir,
of course.' We decided to go over the field, and after breakfast we did.

"The Captain walked with us over the ground and showed us
the lines of attack and defence; pointed out where the heaviest fighting
was done, and gave a graphic account of the whole campaign.
It was the only battle-field I had ever been over, and I was
so much interested that when I got home I read up the campaign,
and that set me to reading up on the whole subject of the war.
We walked back over the hills, and I never enjoyed a walk more.
I felt as if I had got new strength from the cold air.
The old fellow stopped at a little house on our way back,
and went in whilst we waited. When he came out he had a little bouquet
of geranium leaves and lemon verbena which he had got. I had noticed them
in the window as we went by, and when I saw the way the sick lady looked
when he gave them to her, I wished I had brought them instead of him.
Some one intent on knowledge asked him how much he paid for them?

"He said, `Paid for them! Nothing.'

"`Did you know them before?' he asked.

"`No, sir.' That was all.

"A little while afterwards I saw him asleep in a seat,
but when the train started he got up.

"The old Captain by this time owned the car. He was not only an official,
he was a host, and he did the honors as if he were in his own house
and we were his guests; all was done so quietly and unobtrusively, too;
he pulled up a blind here, and drew one down there, just a few inches,
`to give you a little more light on your book, sir'; -- `to shut out a little
of the glare, madam -- reading on the cars is a little more trying to the eyes
than one is apt to fancy.' He stopped to lean over and tell you
that if you looked out of your window you would see what he thought
one of the prettiest views in the world; or to mention the fact
that on the right was one of the most celebrated old places in the State,
a plantation which had once belonged to Colonel So-and-So,
`one of the most remarkable men of his day, sir.'

"His porter, Nicholas, was his admirable second; not a porter at all,
but a body-servant; as different from the ordinary Pullman-car porter
as light from darkness. In fact, it turned out that he had been
an old servant of the Captain's. I happened to speak of him to the Captain,
and he said: `Yes, sir, he's a very good boy; I raised him, or rather,
my father did; he comes of a good stock; plenty of sense and know
their places. When I came on the road they gave me a mulatto fellow
whom I couldn't stand, one of these young, new, "free-issue" some call them,
sir, I believe; I couldn't stand him, I got rid of him.' I asked him
what was the trouble. `Oh! no trouble at all, sir; he just didn't know
his place, and I taught him. He could read and write a little --
a negro is very apt to think, sir, that if he can write he is educated --
he could write, and thought he was educated; he chewed a toothpick
and thought he was a gentleman. I soon taught him better.
He was impertinent, and I put him off the train. After that I told them
that I must have my own servant if I was to remain with them, and I got Nick.
He is an excellent boy (he was about fifty-five). The black is
a capital servant, sir, when he has sense, far better than the mulatto.'

"I became very intimate with the old fellow. You could not help it.
He had a way about him that drew you out. I told him I was going
to New Orleans to pay a visit to friends there. He said,
`Got a sweetheart there?' I was rather taken aback; but I told him, `Yes.'
He said he knew it as soon as I spoke to him on the platform.
He asked me who she was, and I told him her name. He said to me,
`Ah! you lucky dog.' I told him I did not know that I was not most unlucky,
for I had no reason to think she was going to marry me. He said,
`You tell her I say you'll be all right.' I felt better,
especially when the old chap said, `I'll tell her so myself.' He knew her.
She always travelled with him when she came North, he said.

"I did not know at all that I was all right; in fact,
I was rather low down just then about my chances, which was the only reason
I was so anxious to go to New Orleans, and I wanted just that encouragement
and it helped me mightily. I began to think Christmas on the cars
wasn't quite so bad after all. He drew me on, and before I knew it
I had told him all about myself. It was the queerest thing;
I had no idea in the world of talking about my matters.
I had hardly ever spoken of her to a soul; but the old chap had a way
of making you feel that he would be certain to understand you,
and could help you. He told me about his own case, and it wasn't
so different from mine. He lived in Virginia before the war;
came from up near Lynchburg somewhere; belonged to an old family there,
and had been in love with his sweetheart for years, but could never
make any impression on her. She was a beautiful girl, he said,
and the greatest belle in the country round. Her father was one
of the big lawyers there, and had a fine old place, and the stable was always
full of horses of the young fellows who used to be coming to see her,
and `she used to make me sick, I tell you,' he said, `I used to hate 'em all;
I wasn't afraid of 'em; but I used to hate a man to look at her; it seemed
so impudent in him; and I'd have been jealous if she had looked at the sun.
Well, I didn't know what to do. I'd have been ready to fight 'em all for her,
if that would have done any good, but it wouldn't; I didn't have any right
to get mad with 'em for loving her, and if I had got into a row
she'd have sent me off in a jiffy. But just then the war came on,
and it was a Godsend to me. I went in first thing. I made up my mind
to go in and fight like five thousand furies, and I thought maybe that
would win her, and it did; it worked first-rate. I went in as a private,
and I got a bullet through me in about six months, through my right lung,
that laid me off for a year or so; then I went back and the boys made me
a lieutenant, and when the captain was made a major, I was made captain.
I was offered something higher once or twice, but I thought I'd rather stay
with my company; I knew the boys, and they knew me, and we had got
sort of used to each other -- to depending on each other, as it were.
The war fixed me all right, though. When I went home that first time
my wife had come right around, and as soon as I was well enough
we were married. I always said if I could find that Yankee that shot me
I'd like to make him a present. I found out that the great trouble with me
had been that I had not been bold enough; I used to let her go her own way
too much, and seemed to be afraid of her. I WAS afraid of her, too.
I bet that's your trouble, sir: are you afraid of her?'
I told him I thought I was. `Well, sir,' he said, `it will never do;
you mustn't let her think that -- never. You cannot help being afraid of her,
for every man is that; but it is fatal to let her know it. Stand up, sir,
stand up for your rights. If you are bound to get down on your knees --
and every man feels that he is -- don't do it; get up and run out
and roll in the dust outside somewhere where she can't see you. Why, sir,'
he said, `it doesn't do to even let her think she's having her own way;
half the time she's only testing you, and she doesn't really want
what she pretends to want. Of course, I'm speaking of before marriage;
after marriage she always wants it, and she's going to have it, anyway,
and the sooner you find that out and give in, the better.
You must consider this, however, that her way after marriage
is always laid down to her with reference to your good.
She thinks about you a great deal more than you do about her,
and she's always working out something that is for your advantage;
she'll let you do some things as you wish, just to make you believe you are
having your own way, but she's just been pretending to think otherwise,
to make you feel good.'

"This sounded so much like sense that I asked him how much
a man ought to stand from a woman. `Stand, sir?' he said;
`why, everything, everything that does not take away his self-respect.'
I said I believed if he'd let a woman do it she'd wipe her shoes on him.
`Why, of course she will,' he said, `and why shouldn't she?
A man is not good enough for a good woman to wipe her shoes on.
But if she's the right sort of a woman she won't do it in company,
and she won't let others do it at all; she'll keep you for her own wiping.'"

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