The Invincibles were stationed here, and Harry and Dalton got leave to spend Christmas day with its officers. Nothing could bring more fully home to him the appalling waste and ruin of war than the sight of Fredericksburg. Mud, ice and snow were deeper than ever in the streets. Many of the houses had been demolished by cannon balls and fire, and only fragments of them lay about the ground. Others had been wrecked but partially, with holes in the roofs and the windows shot out. The white pillars in front of colonnaded mansions had been shattered and the fallen columns lay in the icy slough. Long icicles hung from the burned portions of upper floors that still stood.
Used to war’s ruin as he had become, Harry’s eyes filled with tears at the sight. It seemed a city dead, but not yet buried. But on Christmas day his friends and he resolutely dismissed gloom, and, first making a brave pretence, finally succeeded in having real cheerfulness in a fine old brick house which had been pretty well shot up, but which had some sound rooms remaining. Its owner had sent word that, while he could not yet come back to it with his family, he would be glad if the Southern army would make use of it in his absence.
It was in this house that the little colony of friends gathered, everyone bringing to the dinner what he could. Colonel Leonidas Talbot and Lieutenant-Colonel Hector St. Hilaire occupied the great sitting room on the ground floor, and here the dinner would be spread, as a part of the dining-room had been shot away and was still wet from snow and rain.
But the sitting room gladdened the eye. A heavy imported carpet covered the central portion of the polished oaken floor. Old family portraits lined its walls and those of the parlor adjoining it. Curtains hung at the windows. They were more or less discolored by smoke and other agencies, but they were curtains. All about the chamber were signs of wealth and cultivation, and a great fire of wood was burning in a huge chimney under a beautifully carved oaken mantelpiece.
The room seemed to remain almost as it had been left by the owner, save that two one-hundred-pound cannon balls, fired by the Union guns into Fredericksburg, were lying by either side of the door.
“Tickets, sir,” said Langdon, as Harry appeared at the door.
Harry drew from under his cloak two boxes of sardines which he had taken from a deserted sutler’s wagon on the field of Fredericksburg. He handed them to Langdon, who said:
“Pass in, most welcome guest.”
Harry was the first arrival, but Dalton was next.
“Tickets double price to all Virginia Presbyterians,” said Langdon.
“Instead of a double ticket here are two singles,” said Dalton, as he drew from under his cloak two fine dressed chickens. “Don’t these take me in?”
“They certainly do. Go in on the jump, Dalton.”
The next arrival was Sherburne, who brought a five-pound bag of coffee. Then came the two colonels together, one with the half of a side of bacon, and the other with a twenty-pound bag of flour. More followed, bringing like tickets that were perfectly good, and it seemed that all the invited ticket holders were in, when a big black man on a big black horse rode up and saluted Langdon respectfully. He held out a pass.
“This pass am from Gen’ral Jackson,” he said.
“Am it?” said Langdon, looking at the pass, “Yes, it am.”
“Is you the orf’cer in command of this yere house?” asked the colored man, his wide mouth parting in an enormous grin that showed his magnificent white teeth.
“For the present I am, Sir Knight of the Dark but Kind Countenance. What wouldst thou?”
The man scratched his head and looked doubtfully at Langdon.
“Guess you’re asking me some kind of a question, sah?”
“I am. Who art thou? Whence comest thou, Sir Knight of Nubia? Bearest thou upon thy person some written token, or, as you would say in your common parlance, what’s your business?”
“Oh, I see, sah. Yes, sah, I done got a lettah from Mr. Theophilus Moncrieffe. That’s the owner of this house, and I belong to him. I’se Caesar Moncrieffe. Here’s the lettah, sah.”