I SAW him for the first time in 1862.
We were stationed on the coast of South Carolina, and never was there an idler set of soldiers than we.
We were in the midst of a great war, it is true, and ours was a fighting battery with dates on its battle banner; but on the coast we had literally nothing to do. The position of our camp was determined by military geography, and it could not be changed. A fight was possible any day, and now and then a fight came. But we knew in advance precisely where it must be waged, and until our foemen chose to bring it about, we had no occasion for marching or bivouacking. They were on the sea islands. We were on the mainland. We had no means of crossing to the islands. They could cross to the mainland whenever they pleased. When they came, it was our business to meet them and keep them from reaching the line of railroad along the coast.
Every little stream and every little inlet was bordered by an impassable morass, which could be crossed only by way of a high and narrow causeway. The places where the roads crossed the streams were, therefore, the predestined battlefields. We were stationed with reference to these crossings.
We idled away the time, and like all idle people near a small railroad station we knew of the comings and goings of everybody in the country round about.
Everybody, that is to say, except Russell.
His coming was a mystery. In fact, he did not come at all. He simply appeared one evening as a looker-on at roll-call.
There was no way by which he could have come to Pocotaligo except by train; and we knew that he had not come by train. The whole body of us regularly attended the incoming of every train, and promptly pumped all the news out of every arriving passenger.
Russell had not come by train. Therefore Russell had not come at all. Yet there he was.
He was a comely young fellow. So shapely were his limbs and so exact the proportions of his frame that no one, without a second look at him, would have realized his symmetry, his extraordinary strength, or his activity. His head was a study for the sculptor. In limbs, torso, features, complexion, and bearing he stood there in the Southern sunset a very model of manly beauty.
When the roll-call was ended, he came up to me, and, touching his hat gracefully, introduced himself.
“My name is William Russell. I shall be obliged if you will let me remain with your men over night. I shall probably ask to enlist to-morrow.”
His words were simple enough, and his manner was that of a modest gentleman; but there was that in his voice that fascinated me beyond measure. Had any other stranger come up to me with a like request, I should have questioned him closely, and possibly have turned him over for the night to the hospitality of one of the messes. With Russell I did nothing of the sort. He was a gentleman visiting our camp. I could do no less than invite him to sup and lodge with me. He had sought no such hospitality, but when I offered it, he frankly accepted it.
I found him to be a particularly agreeable guest. He talked fluently, but modestly, on all subjects as they arose. Before my brother officers came into my quarters for our nightly game of whist, I had discovered that Russell was not only a man of broad general education, but one thoroughly familiar with English, German, and French literature as well. We learned very indirectly that he had travelled extensively, and that travel had wrought in him its perfect work in making him an agreeable companion.
The next morning he expressed a wish to enlist with us. He persisted in this, in spite of our assurances that our rude, uncultivated mountaineers were not fit companions for him.
After his enlistment he carefully avoided everything like presumption upon our previous hospitality, or upon his own evident superiority. He knew the distinction between officers and enlisted men, and he observed it with a rigidity wholly unknown in our rather democratic service. I was glad sometimes to seek him out when I wanted a companion, and on such occasions he responded promptly to my invitations, but he never once came to my quarters, or those of any other officer, uninvited.
He was always quiet and modest, and it was only by accident that we learned little by little how many and varied his accomplishments were. It was not only that he never boasted; he was even shy of letting us find out for ourselves how many things he could do surprisingly well.
The men had built a number of gymnastic structures, and of afternoons their contests of strength and skill were attended by everybody in the neighborhood. For more than a month Russell looked on as a casually interested spectator. One afternoon, however, some of our best gymnasts were trying to accomplish a new and rather difficult feat. When they were ready to abandon the attempt as hopeless, Russell modestly said to the most persistent one among them: “I think if you will reverse the position of your hands you can do that.”
The man reversed his hands, but awkwardly.
“Not that way; let me show you,” said Russell. And going to the bars he quickly did the thing himself with no apparent exertion whatever. Then, as if in mere wantonness of strength and skill, he went rapidly through a series of gymnastic feats of the most difficult sort imaginable, ending the performance with a number of somersaults that would have done honor to an acrobat. When he had done, we all clapped hands and shouted our applause. Russell simply blushed as a woman might and went to his hut.
I never knew him to touch the bars again, so averse was he to anything like display.
When I ventured to ask him in private one day how and where he had acquired his skill, he replied: “Oh, I have no skill to speak of in the matter. It’s merely a trick or two I picked up at a German university.”
In this way we learned one thing after another about the man, though he vouchsafed us no information concerning his past history, except so much as we had discovered in mustering him into service. That consisted of but one fact: that William Russell was born in Kentucky; and that isolated fact was a falsehood, as Russell afterwards informed me.
One day, some months after his enlistment, there was an explosion in camp.
A chief of caisson had been tinkering with a shell from the enemy’s camp which had not burst. It exploded in his hands, literally blowing one of them off midway between the wrist and the elbow. When I came to the poor fellow he was lying on the ground, the blood spurting from the severed artery.
The surgeon and all my brother officers had ridden away, no one knew whither, and I was completely at a loss to know what to do. Before I had time to decide anything, Russell pushed his way through the throng, drew out his handkerchief, knotted it, and quickly tightened it around the man’s arm.
“Will you please hold that steadily?” said he in the calmest possible voice to one of the excited men. Then turning to me and touching his cap, he said: “Will you allow me to go to the surgeon’s quarters for some necessary things? I think I may help this poor fellow.”
“Certainly,” I replied, “if you can do anything for him, do it by all means.”
He walked rapidly, but without a sign of excitement, to the hospital tent, and returned almost immediately with some bottles, bandages, and a case of instruments.
Turning to me he said: “Will you do me the favor to put your finger on the corporal’s pulse and observe its beating carefully? If it sinks or becomes irregular, please let me know immediately.”
With that he saturated a handkerchief with chloroform, and using a peremptory form of speech for the first time in my experience of him, he ordered one of the men to hold it to the wounded corporal’s nose.
“What are you going to do?” I asked in astonishment.
“I am going to amputate this man’s arm, if you have no objection,” he returned, as he opened the case of instruments. And he did amputate it in a most skilful manner, as the surgeon testified on his return. The operation over, Russell gave minute directions for the care of the wounded man.
My astonishment may well be imagined. The men, however, were not surprised. Their faith in Russell was unbounded already. They had so often seen him do as an expert things that nobody had imagined him capable of doing at all, that they had come to think him equal to any emergency, as indeed it seemed that he was.
For myself, I am free to confess that my curiosity was sharply piqued. I determined to question Russell in detail about himself and his past at the first opportunity. When the opportunity came, however, the man’s modest dignity so impressed me that I could not bring myself to do anything so rude and discourteous. I contented myself with saying: “Why, Russell, I didn’t know you were a surgeon?”
“I can hardly claim to be that,” he replied, “though I gave some little attention to the subject while I was abroad.”
It then occurred to me to suggest the propriety of his asking for a surgeon’s commission, as it really seemed a pity that a man so accomplished as he should remain a private in a company made up almost entirely of illiterate mountaineers. He refused to entertain the idea for a moment, saying: “I am entirely contented with my lot and do not care to change.”
One day, not long after this occurrence, I was playing at chess with Russell. Apropos of something or other, I told him an anecdote illustrative of Japanese character.
“Pardon me,” he replied, “but you are misinformed,” and straightway he proceeded to tell me many interesting facts with regard to the Orientals, all of which were evidently the result of personal observation. I presently discovered, as I thought, that Russell had been an officer in the United States navy, and that he had gone to Japan with Commodore Perry’s expedition.
When a month or two later our battery was sent to a little place immediately on the water, and a good deal of boat service was expected of us, our first care was to train our mountaineers in the use of oars and sails. With the exception of Russell, Joe, and myself, not a man in the battery knew the difference between a mast and a keel. It was determined, therefore, to divide the company into boat’s crews for drill, and to make of Russell chief drill sergeant.
When the order providing for this was read on parade, Russell said nothing. But I had hardly reached my quarters before he came, cap in hand, asking to see me in private.
“I must beg you to excuse me from this boat-drill duty; I really can’t do it.”
“But you must,” I returned. “The men must be taught to handle the boats, and your skill and experience are quite indispensable.”
“But I have no skill or experience in the matter,” he replied. “The truth is I do not even know the nomenclature of a boat. I do know the bow from the rudder, but that is the extreme limit of my knowledge on the subject.”
This, from an ex-naval officer, was certainly rather odd, but I could not bring myself to question this modest gentleman further on the subject, or even to suspect his veracity, in which I had learned to repose the most implicit confidence.
He was not at all averse to boating duty in itself. On the contrary, when an oar was put into his hands, his supple muscles lent themselves with a will to the severe physical strain. The man seemed even to rejoice in the opportunity thus given him to bring his magnificent strength into play. When his fellows quitted the boats in utter weariness he, still fresh, would betake himself to a little shell and row her about for hours in mere wantonness of unexpended vitality.
But he knew nothing of boating. He was as awkward as possible at first. He learned rapidly, however, and soon became a graceful oarsman and an expert sailor.
I was puzzled. I could not reconcile the man’s stories of naval service with his evident ignorance of everything pertaining to a boat. Yet I could not doubt the truthfulness of any of his statements. Nobody who knew his gentleness, his modesty, and his translucent integrity as I did could possibly entertain doubt of his truthfulness. The man’s face was of itself a certificate of his entire trustworthiness. His conduct and his manners were unexceptionable always. The man himself was the embodiment of truth.
Accordingly, when I observed some tattoo marks on his arm one day, which he told me were put there while he was in the navy, it did not occur to me to question him as to the truth of that story. On the contrary, I thought at the moment of a possible explanation of the whole matter: Perhaps he had been a surgeon in the service, and if so his technical ignorance of boating was not altogether unaccountable. I was surprised, however, to see that the letters on his arm were not “W. R.” but “W. W.”—a fact of which he volunteered an explanation.
“My name is not Russell,” he said, “but Wallace. Though for a good many years I have preferred to use my mother’s rather than my father’s name.”
As a matter of course I asked him no rude questions. He was altogether too much a gentleman for me to think of such a thing. I accepted his explanation and respected his wish to be called “Russell” still. He imposed no pledge of secrecy upon me, but I kept his secret sacredly, respecting it as a confidential communication from one gentleman to another.
I had hardly settled it in my own mind that Russell’s connection with the navy had been in the capacity of a surgeon, when he came one day with the request that he might be allowed to go to Charleston for the purpose of standing an examination for admission to the navy as an officer.
This time, I confess, I was astonished. And so I went with him to Charleston and before the board. To my surprise, he passed his examination so brilliantly, that he was commissioned at once and put in command of a newly built gun-boat. Shortly afterwards he handled his vessel so well in a fight off the harbor as to secure an official compliment and a promotion.
About a week after that event I learned that he had deserted the navy and was among the missing. Apparently the poor fellow was a man running away from his past, and nothing was so disastrous to him as distinction.
I thus lost sight of Russell, and until August, 1873, I heard no more of him. I was editing a weekly family newspaper in New York at that time, and oddly enough I was just beginning to write this sketch of my singular acquaintance when Russell himself walked into my office at 245 Broadway and asked me if I remembered him. He was well dressed, in a quiet drab suit, and was scarcely at all changed. He told me that he was married and was living at a certain number in West 43d Street; that he was practising law, being senior member of the firm of Wintermute and Russell, for that his real name was Wintermute, and that his partner, Russell, was a cousin on the mother’s side.
He gave me the firm’s card, and begged me to call upon him, both at his house and at his office, which of course I promised to do.
I called first at the house. It was a well-built one of pressed brick, and seemed to wear something of Russell’s own air of quiet dignity, standing as it did in a row of more pretentious brown-stone mansions. The door-plate—for door-plates were then still in use—bore the simple word, “Wintermute.”
“Is Mr. Wintermute at home?” I asked.
“Commander Wintermute is in his library,” answered the lackey, laying special stress upon the naval title.
“Ah, certainly, Commander Wintermute,” I answered. “I had forgotten. Will you give him my card? I am an old friend.”
I was shown into the parlor,—a conspicuously tasteful apartment,—furnished exactly as I should have expected Russell to furnish it.
After a little the door opened, and an elderly gentleman, obviously English, entered, holding my card in a puzzled way before his spectacled nose.
“Pardon me,” he said. “The servant must have misunderstood you. He announced you as an old friend.”
“Yes,” I replied, “I asked for Commander Wintermute.”
“I am he,” replied the gentleman. “Though I certainly fail to recognize either your name or your face. There must be a mistake.”
“There certainly seems to be,” I answered, “unless there is another gentleman in your family. The one I am seeking is William Wintermute, whose mother’s name was Russell.”
“Then I am certainly the man,” responded my companion. “My name is William Wintermute and my mother’s name was Russell. There is no other gentleman living in the house, and so far as I have ever heard there is no other William Wintermute anywhere.”
There was nothing to be done except to apologize and take my leave, which I did as gracefully as I could under the circumstances.
At last I was angry with Russell. I had been puzzled by him often enough. This time I was filled with resentment.
I at once sought out the law office of Wintermute and Russell. The card, which I had preserved, gave me all necessary information as to its whereabouts, and I was not long in finding it. Mr. Wintermute was there. So was Mr. Russell. But neither was the man for whom I was looking. Neither had ever heard of him.
I was still left puzzling over these questions:—
Who is Russell?
Is he after all a liar?
Or is he merely a remarkable coincidence?
In June or July, 1874, I published the foregoing sketch in a little monthly magazine printed in an obscure college town in Illinois, which had a circulation of only a few hundred copies, and lived just five months in all.
It was called the Midland Monthly Magazine, and was issued by a student in the college at Monmouth, Illinois.
Everything that related to Russell was sure in some way to blossom out with all sorts of strange coincidences. This did so. In spite of the obscure way in which my account of the man was published, I had no doubt whatever that it would sooner or later result in some new revelation of or concerning him.
It did so, of course.
The obscure student’s magazine somehow found its way to Bordentown, New Jersey, and into the hands of an editor there. The editor was impressed by the story and reprinted it. It thus fell into the hands of the Reverend Lansing Burroughs, pastor of the First Baptist Church of that town, and late captain of Confederate States Artillery.
I was not surprised when I received from the Reverend Lansing Burroughs, etc., the following letter:—
BORDENTOWN, N. J., Sept. 5, 1874.
MY DEAR SIR: I have just finished reading a sketch published over your name (copied from somewhere, I suppose) in our local paper, entitled “Who is Russell?” It petrifies me with astonishment. For thirteen years past the question which has bothered me most seriously has been, “Who is Russell?” alias “Wallace,” alias “Wintermute,” for by all these and some other names have I known the mysterious individual. If you have been writing only a fancy sketch, I must tackle one of the strangest problems in mental philosophy. If your story is one of experience, then must I see you and compare notes. I fancy I can horrify you with the story of what Russell once told me had been his history....
Yours very truly,
LANSING BURROUGHS,
Pastor of the First Baptist Church, Bordentown, N. J. Late captain Confederate States Artillery.
Now it was just like Russell that an account of him, published in a short-lived magazine, of a purely local circulation, out in Illinois, should in some inscrutable way have fallen into the hands of the editor of a little country paper in New Jersey; that this editor should have copied it into his paper; and that one of his readers should happen to be the one other man in existence who was puzzling over the questions with which the sketch ended.
But this was not all. There was still another coincidence. There was that in my correspondent’s letter which revealed to me a fact of which he was apparently unconscious; namely, that this Reverend Lansing Burroughs was an old college mate of my own, whom I had not seen or heard from for sixteen years. Such a coincidence was altogether natural and proper, however, growing as it did out of matters connected with Russell.
I had some further correspondence with the Reverend Mr. Burroughs, and finally we met by appointment and went to Mouquin’s for luncheon and to compare notes. A careful analysis of dates proved beyond doubt that his Russell was my Russell. But our experiences were of a very different sort. Mr. Burroughs had never once had a meeting with the mysterious man which did not bring calamity of some sort upon himself. So far as I was concerned, no ill beyond annoyance and embarrassment had ever come of my acquaintance with him.
The Reverend Mr. Burroughs declares to me his firm conviction that the quiet, singularly shy, well-behaved, modest gentleman, so unusually gifted, especially in the way of a phenomenal genius for lying, is in plain terms THE DEVIL.
As to this, Mr. Burroughs is by profession an expert, and I am not. I therefore venture no opinion. I merely continue to ask, “Who is Russell?”