|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 74
I was up in the cedar closet one day, looking for an old parade cap of
mine, which I thought, though it was my third best, might look better
than my second best, which I had worn ever since my best was lost at the
Seven Pines. I say I was standing on the lower shelf of the cedar
closet, when, as I stepped along in the darkness, my right foot caught
in a bit of wire, my left did not give way in time, and I fell, with a
small wooden hat-box in my hand, full on the floor. The corner of the
hat-box struck me just below the second frontal sinus, and I fainted
away.
When I came to myself I was in the blue chamber; I had vinegar on a
brown paper on my forehead; the room was dark, and I found mother
sitting by me, glad enough indeed to hear my voice, and to know that I
knew her. It was some time before I fully understood what had happened.
Then she brought me a cup of tea, and I, quite refreshed, said I must go
to the office.
"Office, my child!" said she. "Your leg is broken above the ankle; you
will not move these six weeks. Where do you suppose you are?"
Till then I had no notion that it was five minutes since I went into the
closet. When she told me the time, five in the afternoon, I groaned in
the lowest depths. For, in my breast pocket in that innocent coat, which
I could now see lying on the window-seat, were the duplicate despatches
to Mr. Mason, for which, late the night before, I had got the
Secretary's signature. They were to go at ten that morning to
Wilmington, by the Navy Department's special messenger. I had taken them
to insure care and certainty. I had worked on them till midnight, and
they had not been signed till near one o'clock. Heavens and earth, and
here it was five o'clock! The man must be half-way to Wilmington by this
time. I sent the doctor for Lafarge, my clerk. Lafarge did his prettiest
in rushing to the telegraph. But no! A freshet on the Chowan River, or a
raid by Foster, or something, or nothing, had smashed the telegraph wire
for that night. And before that despatch ever reached Wilmington the
navy agent was in the offing in the Sea Maid.
"But perhaps the duplicate got through?" No, breathless reader, the
duplicate did not get through. The duplicate was taken by Faucon, in the
Ino. I saw it last week in Dr. Lieber's hands, in Washington. Well, all
I know is, that if the duplicate had got through, the Confederate
government would have had in March a chance at eighty-three thousand two
hundred and eleven muskets, which, as it was, never left Belgium. So
much for my treading into that blessed piece of wire on the shelf of the
cedar closet, up stairs.
"What was the bit of wire?"
Well, it was not telegraph wire. If it had been, it would have broken
when it was not wanted to. Don't you know what it was? Go up in your own
cedar closet, and step about in the dark, and see what brings up round
your ankles. Julia, poor child, cried her eyes out about it. When I got
well enough to sit up, and as soon as I could talk and plan with her,
she brought down seven of these old things, antiquated Belmontes and
Simplex Elliptics, and horrors without a name, and she made a pile of
them in the bedroom, and asked me in the most penitent way what she
should do with them.
"You can't burn them" said she; "fire won't touch them. If you bury them
in the garden, they come up at the second raking. If you give them to
the servants, they say, 'Thank-e, missus,' and throw them in the back
passage. If you give them to the poor, they throw them into the street
in front, and do not say, 'Thank-e,' Sarah sent seventeen over to the
sword factory, and the foreman swore at the boy, and told him he would
flog him within an inch of his life if he brought any more of his sauce
there; and so--and so," sobbed the poor child, "I just rolled up these
wretched things, and laid them in the cedar closet, hoping, you know,
that some day the government would want something, and would advertise
for them. You know what a good thing; I made out of the bottle corks."
In fact, she had sold our bottle corks for four thousand two hundred and
sixteen dollars of the first issue. We afterward bought two umbrellas
and a corkscrew with the money.
Well, I did not scold Julia. It was certainly no fault of hers that I
was walking on the lower shelf of her cedar closet. I told her to make
a parcel of the things, and the first time we went to drive I hove the
whole shapeless heap into the river, without saying mass for them.
But let no man think, or no woman, that this was the end of troubles. As
I look back on that winter, and on the spring of 1865 (I do not mean the
steel spring), it seems to me only the beginning. I got out on crutches
at last; I had the office transferred to my house, so that Lafarge and
Hepburn could work there nights, and communicate with me when I could
not go out; but mornings I hobbled up to the Department, and sat with
the Chief, and took his orders. Ah me! shall I soon forget that damp
winter morning, when we all had such hope at the office. One or two of
the army fellows looked in at the window as they ran by, and we knew
that they felt well; and though I would not ask Old Wick, as we had
nick-named the Chief, what was in the wind, I knew the time had come,
and that the lion meant to break the net this time. I made an excuse to
go home earlier than usual; rode down to the house in the Major's
ambulance, I remember; and hopped in, to surprise Julia with the good
news, only to find that the whole house was in that quiet uproar which
shows that something bad has happened of a sudden.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|