Across Five Aprils (20 page)

The news, however, that overshadowed everything else during that June was the activity of Robert E. Lee. He had turned away from Richmond, and now, for the first time during the war, a Confederate army was penetrating into the North, into Shadrach’s home state of Pennsylvania. There were many speculations: if Lee should take the cities of Harrisburg and Philadelphia, might he not go on to Baltimore and then to Washington? Did Lee plan to let Richmond fall and in its stead to seize Washington-wouldn’t the exchange of capitals be worth his while? And weren’t the chances for his success a good deal more than fair? This man, Lee, had become a legend, a fearful one for the North. Would it ever be possible to defeat him? The results of some battles had been a draw, but were they ever a real defeat? The new general, Meade, had never had the experience of planning a campaign or of handling a huge army drawn up into battle; Robert E. Lee had little to fear as he maneuvered his army into Pennsylvania.

Out of the gloom of these predictions came the news during early July of Gettysburg, a spot of ground in Pennsylvania that Jethro had never heard of before. The news of the battle was confused at first, incoherent, sometimes contradictory, but one thing was certain: here was a clash that roared with a violence and terror such as the country had never known. It was a battle of unbelievable bravery and unbelievable ruthlessness; it was a clash of agonizing errors checkered with moves of brilliant strategy that lasted through three hot July days, after which the news of victory came: a Union victory and a great one, but still not a complete one. With broken young bodies piled high at Gettysburg and thousands of homes rocked in agony over their loss, the beaten army was allowed to withdraw and prepare for still more bloodshed, while the victorious army licked its wounds and made no effort to pursue its opportunities.

All over the North people were beginning to say, “What is it—what does it mean? Is there bad blood somewhere? Is there a conspiracy among Northern generals that prevents their following up an opportunity for crushing Lee’s army?”

Then in the midst of the pandemonium over Gettysburg another Union victory was announced: Vicksburg had fallen! General Pemberton, completely surrounded by Grant’s army, had been cut off from all supplies and had been starved into surrender. Grant was a hero once again in the papers that had printed no good word of him in months; Ulysses S. Grant was the man of the hour, and some people with short memories said, “I told you so-old Unconditional Surrender Grant is the man who will win this war. Abe Lincoln was right; they’d better send a barrel of the liquor Grant drinks to some of his other generals. God bless old U. S. Grant!”

Of the fall of Vicksburg the President said, “The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the Sea.” Jethro smiled as he read that. What he would give to talk to Shad about those words of Mr. Lincoln’s, to remember with him that night when they had looked at the long wavy line on a roughly drawn map and had wondered how long the fighting would go on.

Shadrach, however, was very far away and was a part of the price which the battle of Gettysburg had cost. A letter came addressed to Matt from a spinster aunt of Shadrach’s who lived in Washington, a woman of whom Shad had often spoken. The letter ran in part:

Ross Milton had driven up to the farm the day the letter came. The editor was often a visitor, spending hours talking to Matt, staying overnight now and then, and testing Jethro’s progress in the book on English usage. Sometimes Jenny would join in taking the tests, and Ross Milton would tease her a little: “The wife of a schoolmaster must learn to speak correctly, mustn’t she, Jenny?” The family was always glad to see him; he enlivened for a short time the passing of one monotonous day after another.

Later, on the day the news came from Shadrach’s aunt, Jethro sat with his father and the editor in the yard just outside the cabin door. The hot summer night was velvet black across the fields and in the dooryard too, except for a ray of lamplight that came from the room where Ellen and Nancy sat beside Jenny and tried to comfort her. The three who sat in the dooryard did not speak; there was no sound in the night except for the deep, tired sobs within the cabin.

Finally Ross Milton leaned forward in his chair. “Matt,” he said in a low voice, “if you will let her go to him, I’ll take her to Washington and see that she is safe.”

For a while Jethro thought that his father was never going to reply. The old man sat turning his cane between his hands and staring down in the darkness at his feet.

Finally he said, “Ain’t it ten to one that it’s too late?”

“As I see it, you’d better gamble, Matt. It will be better for the girl to have tried to get to him even if it is too late. And if it’s not too late-I’m a hard-bitten bachelor, Matt, but I don’t underestimate the possibilities of young love in a situation like this.”

“I kin pay my own girl’s expense; I’ll not hev her beholden to a stranger. But what about you, Milton? You ain’t in health fer the likes of that journey, air you?”

“I can clench my teeth against pain in a railway car as well as at home. I’ll go with her if you say the word.”

“I wouldn’t let them marry,” Matt said slowly. “I thought she was too young—and so she is. Still, a man don’t allus know what’s best. I only know I can’t stand to see her suffer this way if there be one chance fer her to see him alive.” He reached out to Jethro then for aid in helping him to rise. “I’ll hev to talk with Ellen,” he said. “Let’s go inside.”

It was all arranged that night, and the next morning, when Jethro awoke and went downstairs at dawn, he found Jenny already dressed in her best clothes, her face wan and pale, but her weeping stopped by excitement and a thin hope. She put her arms around her brother, and Jethro returned her embrace. They didn’t say anything; there was too much danger of a breakdown if they talked.

An hour later Jenny and Ross Milton were gone in the buggy he had driven up from Newton. They would go to Olney, take the train to St. Louis, and from there go on to Washington.

Jethro did not go to the fields that day; instead he roamed about and finally, as if drawn to it, went up to the room adjoining the schoolhouse—the room Matt Creighton had allowed to be built because “a man has the right to his own fireside after a hard day’s work.”

The room had been used the winter before by a teacher who had been hired for the three winter months, a term during which Jethro had gone to school for only a few days. The elderly teacher was a man without learning, without the wisdom that some unlearned men acquire with their years, without even the saving grace of kindness. Remembering the wonder and pleasure of learning when Shadrach taught, Jethro walked away from the classroom with fierce resentment.

“I get more out of staying home and reading the newspapers—the way Shad told me to do—and working out the exercises in Mr. Milton’s book,” he told his father.

There had been a time when Matt Creighton brooked no criticism of a teacher from his children; they went to school when it was in session, the teacher’s word was law, and their father wanted to hear no complaints concerning either discipline or the quality of instruction. But Matt had changed in his later years. He talked to the teacher for a while one afternoon; that night he gave Jethro permission to remain at home.

“The man is not only without book-larnin’, as I am, but he has a mean and pinched-in mind,” Matt told Ellen. “The boy is right; he’ll larn more by tenfold on his own.”

As Jethro looked about the room that morning of Jenny’s departure, he felt a dull anger at sight of the cluttered filth the old teacher had left. The room had once been a place of beauty for Jethro, a room of color and firelight, of books and singing and a sense of deep friendship, which he was sure he would never have again if Shadrach died in the Washington hospital. He touched the rough-hewn bookshelves, the mantel above the fireplace, the wall where the guitar had hung.

“Maybe I’ll ask Nancy for soap and water; maybe she’ll help me clean the place,” he whispered to himself. “If Shad ever comes back, I’d like for this room to be clean and nice for him.”

Then he shook his head at his own dreaming. He had heard Ross Milton warning Jenny the night before, “We must remember, girl, that there’s only one chance in a hundred that this trip will have a happy ending. But we’re going to concentrate on that one chance.”

Jethro sat down on a bench in the hot, dusty room; there was no comfort in being there, but he could think of no other place where he wished to be.

They lived through many dreary days of waiting. Every day someone—Nancy and Jethro, Ed Turner, even Matt when the others were too busy—would drive into town to see if there was a letter. For many days there wasn’t, and the only slim comfort they could find was to remember that there was one chance—one in maybe a hundred.

Then finally there came a letter from Ross Milton.

There were many letters from both Jenny and Ross Milton that summer, letters that brought hope and comfort to the family at home.

Later there came a request from the young couple, a request written and subscribed to by a hard-bitten bachelor, Ross Milton. Matt dictated his answer to Jethro and then signed his own trembling signature.

The envelope carrying Jenny’s next letter bore a self-conscious return address in the upper left-hand corner, a return to
Mrs.
Shadrach Yale of Washington, D. C. The first paragraph of the letter within that envelope was addressed to Jethro:

She told of her life as a young bride in Washington in another letter:

Jethro took the letters after the others had finished reading them and kept them in his room, where he could read and reread them to himself. He felt a great sense of peace within him as he read. Shad was going to live! Over and over he repeated those words, and in the morning when he woke with a feeling of happiness and wondered at the cause of it, he would remember—Shad was going to live! He felt as if somehow he had been granted a gift in escaping a sorrow that would have scarred his life.