The Red Acorn
by John McElroy
Preface
The name given this story is that made glorious by the valor and
achievements of the splendid First Division of the Fourteenth Army
Corps, the cognizance of which was a crimson acorn, worn on the
breasts of its gallant soldiers, and borne upon their battle flags.
There are few gatherings of men into which one can go to-day
without finding some one wearing, as his most cherished ornament,
a red acorn, frequently wrought in gold and studded with precious
stones, and which tells that its wearer is a veteran of Mill
Springs, Perryville, Shiloh, Corinth, Stone River, Chickamauga,
Mission Ridge, Atlanta, Jonesville, March to the Sea, and Bentonville.
The Fourteenth Corps was the heart of the grand old Army of the
Cumberland--an army that never new defeat. Its nucleus was a few
scattered regiments in Eastern Kentucky, in 1861, which had the
good fortune to be commanded by Gen. George H. Thomas. With them
he won the first real victory that blessed our arms. It grew as
he grew, and under his superb leadership it was shaped and welded
and tempered into one of the mightiest military weapons the world
ever saw. With it Thomas wrung victory from defeat on the bloody
fields of Stone River and Chickamauga; with it he dealt the final
crushing blow of the Atlanta campaign, and with it defeat was again
turned to victory at Bentonville.
The characters introduced into the story all belonged to or
co-operated with the First Division of the Fourteenth Corps. The
Corps' badge was the Acorn. As was the custom in the army, the
divisions in each Corps were distinguished by the color of the
badges--the First's being red, the Second's white, and the Third's
blue. There was a time when this explanation was hardly necessary,
but now eighteen years have elapsed since the Acorn flags fluttered
victoriously over the last field of battle, and a generation has
grown up to which they are but a tradition. J. M.
Chapter I. A Declaration.
O, what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries the Earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays."
--Lowell.
Of all human teachers they were the grandest who gave us the New
Testament, and made it a textbook for Man in every age. Transcendent
benefactors of the race, they opened in it a never-failing well-spring
of the sweet waters of Consolation and Hope, which have flowed
over, fertilized, and made blossom as a rose the twenty-century
wide desert of the ills of human existence.
But they were not poets, as most of the authors of the Old Testament
were.
They were too much in earnest in their great work of carrying the
glad evangel of Redemption to all the earth--they so burned with
eagerness to pour their joyful tidings into every ear, that they
recked little of the FORM in which the saving intelligence was
conveyed.
Had they been poets would they have conceived Heaven as a place
with foundations of jasper, sapphires and emeralds, gates of pearl,
and streets of burnished gold that shone like glass? Never.
That showed them to be practical men, of a Semitic cast of mind,
who addressed hearers that agreed with them in regarding gold and
precious stones as the finest things of which the heart could dream.
Had they been such lovers of God's handiwork in Nature as the Greek
religious teachers--who were also poets--they would have painted
us a Heaven vaulted by the breath of opening flowers, and made
musical by the sweet songs of birds in the first rapture of finding
their young mates.
In other words they would have given us a picture of earth on a
perfect June day.
On the afternoon of such a day as this Rachel Bond sat beneath an
apple-tree at the crest of a moderate hill, and looked dreamily
away to where, beyond the village of Sardis at the foot of the hill,
the Miami River marked the beautiful valley like a silver ribbon
carelessly flung upon a web of green velvet. Rather she seemed
to be looking there, for the light that usually shown outward in
those luminous eyes was turned inward. The little volume of poems
had dropped unheeded from the white hand. It had done its office:
the passion of its lines had keyed her thoughts to a harmony that
suffused her whole being, until all seemed as naturally a part
of the glorious day as the fleecy clouds in the sapphire sky, the
cheerful hum of the bees, and the apple-blossoms' luxurious scent.
Her love--and, quite as much, her girlish ambition--had been crowned
with violets and bays some weeks before, when the fever-heat of
patriotism seemed to bring another passion in Harry Glen's bosom
to the eruptive point, and there came the long-waited-for avowal of
his love, which was made on the evening before his company departed
to respond to the call for troops which followed the fall of Fort
Sumter.
Does it seem harsh to say that she had sought to bring about this
DENOUEMENT? Rather, it seems that her efforts were commendable.
She was a young woman of marriageable age. She believed her her
mission in life was marriage to some man who would make her a good
husband, and whom she would in turn love, honor, and strive to
make happy. Harry Glen's family was the equal of her's in social
station, and a little above it in wealth. to this he added educational
and personal advantages that made him the most desirable match in
Sardis. Starting with the premises given above, her first conclusion
was the natural one that she should marry the best man available,
and the next that that man was Harry Glen.
Her efforts had been bounded by the strictest code of maidenly
ethics, and so artistically developed that the only persons who
penetrated their skillful veiling, and detected her as a "designing
creature," were two or three maiden friends, whose maneuvers toward
the same objective were brought to naught by her success.
It must be admitted that refining causists may find room for censure
in this making Ambition the advance guard to spy out the ground
that Love is to occupy. But, after all, is there not a great deal
of mistake about the way that true love begins? If we had the data
before us we should be pained by the enlightenment that, in the
vast majority of cases the regard of young people for each other
is fixed in the first instance by motives that will bear quite as
little scrutiny as Miss Rachel Bond's.
We can afford to be careless how the germ of love is planted. The
main thing is how it is watered and tended, and brought to a lasting
and beautiful growth. Rachel's ambition gratified, there had been
a steady rise toward flood in the tide of her affections. She
was not long in growing to love Harry with all the intensity of a
really ardent nature.
After the meeting at which Harry had signed the recruiting roll,
he had taken her home up the long, sloping hill, through moonlight
as soft, as inspiring, as glorifying as that which had melted even
the frosty Goddess of Maidenhood, so that she stooped from her
heavenly unapproachableness, and kissed the handsome Endymion as
he slept.
Though little and that commonplace was said as they walked, subtle
womanly instinct prepared Rachel's mind for what was coming, and
her grasp upon Harry's arm assumed a new feeling that hurried him
on to the crisis.
They stopped beneath the old apple-tree, at the crest of the hill,
and in front of the house. Its gnarled and twisted limbs had been
but freshly clothed in a suit of fragrant green leaves.
The ruddy bonfires, lighted for the war-meeting, still burned in
the village below. The hum of supplementary speeches to the excited
crowds that still lingered about came to their ears, mingled with
cheers from throat rapidly growing hoarse, and the throb and wail
of fife and drum. Then, uplifted on the voices of hundreds who sang
it as only men, and men swayed by powerful emotions can, rose the
ever-glorious "Star-Spangled Banner," loftiest and most inspiring
of national hymns. Through its long, forceful measures, which have
the sweep and ring of marching battalions, swung the singers, with
a passionate earnestness that made every note and word glow with
meaning. The swelling paean told of the heroism and sacrifice
with which the foundations of the Nation were laid, of the glory
to which the land had risen, and then its mood changing to one of
direness and wrath, it foretold the just punishment of those who
broke the peace of a happy land.
The mood of the Sardis people was that patriotic exaltation which
reigned in every city and village of the North on that memorable
night of April, 1861.
But Rachel and Harry had left far behind them this passion of the
multitude, which had set their own to throbbing, even as the roar
of a cannon will waken the vibrations of harp-strings. Around where
they stood was the peace of the night and sleep. The perfume of
violets and hyacinths, and of myriads of opening buds seemed shed
by the moon with her silvery rays through the soft, dewy air; a few
nocturnal insects droned hither and thither, and "drowsy tinklings
lulled the distant folds."
As their steps were arrested Rachel released her grasp from Harry's
arm, but he caught her hand before it fell to her side, and held it
fast. She turned her face frankly toward him, and he looked down
with anxious eyes upon the broad white forehead, framed in silken
black hair, upon great eyes, flaming with a meaning that he feared
to interpret, upon the eloquent lines about the mobile, sensitive
mouth, all now lifted into almost supernatural beauty by the
moonlight's spiritualizing magic.
What he said he could never afterward recall. His first memory
was that of a pause in his speech, when he saw the ripe, red lips
turned toward him with a gesture of the proud head that was both
an assent and invitation. The kiss that he pressed there thrilled
him with the intoxication of unexpectedly rewarded love, and Rachel
with the gladness of triumph.
What they afterward said was as incoherent as the conversations of
those rapturous moments ever are.
"You know we leave in the morning?" he said, when at last it became
necessary for him to go.
"Yes," she answered calmly. "And perhaps it is better that it
should be so--that we be apart for a little while to consider this
new-found happiness and understand it. I shall be sustained with
the thought that in giving you to the country I have given more
than any one else. I know that you will do something that will
make me still prouder of you, and my presentiments, which never
fail me, assure me that you will return to me safely."
His face showed a little disappointment with the answer.
She reached above her head, and breaking off a bud handed it to
him, saying in the words of Juliet:
"Sweet, good-night:
This bud of love, by Summer's ripening breath,
May prove a beauteous flower, when next we meet."
He kissed the bud, and put it in his bosom; kissed her again
passionately, and descended the hill to prepare for his departure
in the morning.
She was with the rest of the village at the depot to bid the company
good-bye, and was amazed to find how far the process of developing
the bud into the flower had gone in her heart since parting with
her lover. Her previous partiality and admiration for him appeared
now very tame and colorless, beside the emotions that stirred her
at the sight of him marching with erect grace at the head of his
company. But while all about her were tears and sobs, and modest
girls revealing unsuspecting attachments in the agitation of parting,
her eyes were undimmed. She was proud and serene, a heightening
of the color in her cheeks being the only sign of unusual feeling.
Harry came to her for a moment, held her hand tightly in his, took
the bud from his bosom, touched it significantly with his lips,
and sprang upon the train which was beginning to move away.
The days that followed were halcyon for her. While the other women
of Sardis, whose loved ones were gone, were bewailing the dangers
they would encounter, her proud spirit only contemplated the chances
that Harry would have for winning fame. Battles meant bright
laurels for him in which she would have a rightful share.
Her mental food became the poetry of love, chivalry and glorious
war. The lyric had a vivid personal interest. Tales of romantic
daring and achievement were suggestions of possibilities in Harry's
career. Her waking hours were mainly spent, book in hand, under
the old apple-tree that daily grew dearer to her.
The exalted mood in which we found her was broken in upon by the
sound of some one shutting the gate below very emphatically. Looking
down she saw her father approaching with such visible signs in face
and demeanor of strong excitement that she arose and went to him.
"Why, father, what can be the matter?" she said, stopping in front
of him, with the open book pressed to her breast.
"Matter enough, I'm afraid, Rachel. There's been a battle near a
place called Rich Mountain, in Western Virginia, and Harry Glen's---"
"O, father," she said, growing very white, "Harry's killed."
"No; not killed." The old man's lip curled with scorn. "It's
worse. He seems to've suddenly discovered he wasn't prepared to
die; he didn't want to rush all at once into the presence of his
Maker. Mebbe he didn't think it'd be good manners. You know he
was always stronger on etikwet than anything else. In short, he's
showed the white feather. A dozen or more letters have come from
the boys telling all about it, and the town's talking of nothing
else. There's one of the letters. It's from Jake Alspaugh, who
quite working for me to enlist. Read it yourself."
The old gentleman threw the letter upon the grass, and strode on
angrily into the house. Rachel smoothed out the crumpled sheet,
and read with a growing sickness at heart:
Mr. Bond--Deer Sur:
i taik my pen in hand to lett you no that with the exception of an
occashunal tuch of roomaticks, an boonions all over my fete from
hard marchin, ime all rite, an i hope you ar injoin the saim blessin.
Weve jest had an awful big fite, and the way we warmed it to the
secshers jest beat the jews. i doant expect theyve stopt runnin
yit. All the Sardis boys done bully except Lieutenant Harry Glen.
The smell of burnt powder seamed to onsettle his narves. He tuk
powerful sick all at wunst, jest as the trail was gittin rather
fresh, and he lay groanin wen the rest of the company marched off
into the fite. He doant find the klime-it here as healthy as it
is in Sardis. i 'stinguished myself and have bin promoted, and
ive got a Rebel gun for you with a bore big enuff to put a walnut
in, and it'll jest nock your hole darned shoulder off every time
you shoot it. No more yours til deth send me some finecut tobacker
for heavens sake.
Jacob Alspaugh.
Rachel tore the letter into a thousand fragments, and flung the
volume of poems into the ditch below. She hastened to her room,
and no one saw her again until the next morning, when she came
down dressed in somber black, her face pale, and her colorless lips
tightly compressed.
