The day came. The dispatches in the morning papers stated that the
armies would probably be engaged from an early hour.
Who that does not remember those battle-summers can realize from
any telling how the fathers and mothers, the wives and sisters and
sweethearts at home, lived through the days when it was known that a
great battle was going on at the front in which their loved ones were
engaged? It was very quiet in the house on those days of battle. All
spoke in hushed voices and stepped lightly. The children, too small to
understand the meaning of the shadow on the home, felt it and took their
noisy sports elsewhere. There was little conversation, except as to when
definite news might be expected. The household work dragged sadly, for
though the women sought refuge from thought in occupation, they were
constantly dropping whatever they had in hand to rush away to their
chambers to face the presentiment, perhaps suddenly borne in upon them
with the force of a conviction, that they might be called on to bear
the worst. The table was set for the regular meals, but there was little
pretense of eating. The eyes of all had a far-off expression, and they
seemed barely to see one another. There was an intent, listening look
upon their faces, as if they were hearkening to the roar of the battle a
thousand miles away.
Many pictures of battles have been painted, but no true one yet, for
the pictures contain only men. The women are unaccountably left out.
We ought to see not alone the opposing lines of battle writhing and
twisting in a death, embrace, the batteries smoking and flaming, the
hurricanes of cavalry, but innumerable women also, spectral forms of
mothers, wives, sweethearts, clinging about the necks of the advancing
soldiers, vainly trying to shield them with their bosoms, extending
supplicating hands to the foe, raising eyes of anguish to Heaven. The
soldiers, grim-faced, with battle-lighted eyes, do not see the ghostly
forms that throng them, but shoot and cut and stab across and through
them as if they were not there,--yes, through them, for few are the
balls and bayonets that reach their marks without traversing some of
these devoted breasts. Spectral, alas, is their guardianship, but real
are their wounds and deadly as any the combatants receive.
Soon after breakfast on the day of the battle Grace came across to
the parsonage, her swollen eyes and pallid face telling of a sleepless
night. She could not bear her mother's company that day, for she knew
that she had never greatly liked Philip. Miss Morton was very tender and
sympathetic. Grace was a little comforted by Mr. Morton's saying that
commonly great battles did not open much before noon. It was a respite
to be able to think that probably up to that moment at least no harm
had come to Philip. In the early afternoon the minister drove into
Waterville to get the earliest bulletins at the “Banner” office, leaving
the two women alone.
The latter part of the afternoon a neighbor who had been in Waterville
drove by the house, and Miss Morton called to him to know if there were
any news yet. He drew a piece of paper from his pocket, on which he had
scribbled the latest bulletin before the “Banner” office, and read as
follows: “The battle opened with a vigorous attack by our right. The
enemy was forced back, stubbornly contesting every inch of ground.
General ------'s division is now bearing the brunt of the fight and is
suffering heavily. The result is yet uncertain.”
The division mentioned was the one in which Philip's regiment was
included. “Is suffering heavily,”--those were the words. There was
something fearful in the way the present tense brought home to Grace a
sense of the battle as then actually in progress. It meant that while
she sat there on the shady piazza with the drowsy hum of the bees in her
ears, looking out on the quiet lawn where the house cat, stretched
on the grass, kept a sleepy eye on the birds as they flitted in the
branches of the apple-trees, Philip might be facing a storm of lead
and iron, or, maybe, blent in some desperate hand-to-hand struggle, was
defending his life--her life--against murderous cut and thrust.
To begin to pray for his safety was not to dare to cease, for to cease
would be to withdraw a sort of protection--all, alas I she could give
--and abandon him to his enemies. If she had been watching over him
from above the battle, an actual witness of the carnage going on that
afternoon on the far-off field, she could scarcely have endured a more
harrowing suspense from moment to moment. Overcome with the agony, she
threw herself on the sofa in the sitting-room and lay quivering,
with her face buried in the pillow, while Miss Morton sat beside her,
stroking her hair and saying such feeble, soothing words as she might.
It is always hard, and for ardent temperaments almost impossible, to
hold the mind balanced in a state of suspense, yielding overmuch neither
to hope nor to fear, under circumstances like these. As a relief to
the torture which such a state of tension ends in causing, the mind
at length, if it cannot abandon itself to hope, embraces even despair.
About five o'clock Miss Morton was startled by an exceeding bitter cry.
Grace was sitting upon the sofa. “Oh, Miss Morton!” she cried, bursting
into tears which before she had not been able to shed, “he is dead!”
“Grace! Grace! what do you mean?”
“He is dead, I know he is dead!” wailed the girl; and then she explained
that while from moment to moment she had sent up prayers for him, every
breath a cry to God, she suddenly had been unable to pray more, and this
she felt was a sign that petition for his life was now vain. Miss
Morton strove to convince her that this was but an effect of overwrought
nerves, but with slight success.
In the early evening Mr. Morton returned with the latest news the
telegraph had brought. The full scope of the result was not yet known.
The advantage had probably remained with the National forces, although
the struggle had been one of those close and stubborn ones, with scanty
laurels for the victors, to be expected when men of one race meet in
battle. The losses on both sides had been enormous, and the report was
confirmed that Philip's division had been badly cut up.
The parsonage was but one of thousands of homes in the land where no
lamps were lighted that evening, the members of the household sitting
together in the dark,--silent, or talking in low tones of the far-away
star-lighted battlefield, the anguish of the wounded, the still heaps of
the dead.
Nevertheless, when at last Grace went home she was less entirely
despairing than in the afternoon. Mr. Morton, in his calm, convincing
way, had shown her the groundlessness of her impression that Philip
was certainly dead, and had enabled her again to entertain hope. It
no longer rose, indeed, to the height of a belief that he had escaped
wholly scathless. In face of the terrible tidings, that would have been
too presumptuous. But perhaps he had been only wounded. Yesterday the
thought would have been insupportable, but now she was eager to make
this compromise with Providence. She was distinctly affected by the
curious superstition that if we voluntarily concede something to fate,
while yet the facts are not known, we gain a sort of equitable assurance
against a worse thing. It was settled, she told herself, that she
was not to be overcome or even surprised to hear that Philip was
wounded,--slightly wounded. She was no better than other women, that he
should be wholly spared.
The paper next morning gave many names of officers who had fallen,
but Philip's was not among them. The list was confessedly incomplete;
nevertheless, the absence of his name was reassuring. Grace went across
the garden after breakfast to talk with Miss Morton about the news and
the auspicious lack of news. Her friend's cheerful tone infused her with
fresh courage. To one who has despaired, a very little hope goes to
the head Eke wine to the brain of a faster, and, though still very
tremulous, Grace could even smile a little now and was almost cheerful.
Secretly already she was beginning to play false with fate, and, in flat
repudiation of her last night's compact, to indulge the hope that her
soldier had not been even wounded. But this was only at the bottom of
her heart. She did not own to herself that she really did it. She felt a
little safer not to break the bargain yet.
About eleven o'clock in the forenoon Mr. Morton came in. His start and
look of dismay on seeing Grace indicated that he had expected to find
his sister alone. He hastily attempted to conceal an open telegram which
he held in his hand, but it was too late. Grace had already seen it, and
whatever the tidings it might contain, there was no longer any question
of holding them back or extenuating them. Miss Morton, after one look
at her brother's face, silently came to the girl's side and put her arms
around her waist. “Christ, our Saviour,” she murmured, “for thy name's
sake, help her now.” Then the minister said:--
“Try to be brave, try to bear it worthily of him; for, my poor little
girl, your sacrifice has been accepted. He fell in a charge at the head
of his men.”
V
Philip's body was brought home for burial, and the funeral was a great
event in the village. Business of all kinds was suspended, and all the
people united in making of the day a solemn patriotic festival. Mr.
Morton preached the funeral sermon.
“Oh, talk about the country,” sobbed Grace, when he asked her if there
was anything in particular she would like him to speak of.
“For pity's sake don't let me feel sorry now that I gave him up for the
Union. Don't leave me now to think it would have been better if I had
not let him go.”
So he preached of the country, as ministers sometimes did preach in
those days, making it very plain that in a righteous cause men did well
to die for their native land and their women did well to give them up.
Expounding the lofty wisdom of self-sacrifice, he showed how truly it
was said that “whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever
will lose his life... shall find it,” and how none make such rich profit
out of their lives as the heroes who seem to throw them away.
They had come, he told the assembled people, to mourn no misadventure,
no misfortune; this dead soldier was not pitiable. He was no victim of a
tear-compelling fate. No broken shaft typified his career. He was rather
one who had done well for himself, a wise young merchant of his blood,
who having seen a way to barter his life at incredible advantage, at
no less a rate indeed than a man's for a nation's, had not let slip so
great an opportunity.
So he went on, still likening the life of a man to the wares of a
shopkeeper, worth to him only what they can be sold for and a loss if
overkept, till those who listened began to grow ill at ease in presence
of that flag-draped coffin, and were vaguely troubled because they still
lived.
Then he spoke of those who had been bereaved. This soldier, he said,
like his comrades, had staked for his country not only his own life but
the earthly happiness of others also, having been fully empowered by
them to do so. Some had staked with their own lives the happiness of
parents, some that of wives and children, others maybe the hopes of
maidens pledged to them. In offering up their lives to their country
they had laid with them upon the altar these other lives which were
bound up with theirs, and the same fire of sacrifice had consumed them
both. A few days before, in the storm of battle, those who had gone
forth had fulfilled their share of the joint sacrifice. In a thousand
homes, with tears and the anguish of breaking hearts, those who had
sent them forth were that day fulfilling theirs. Let them now in their
extremity seek support in the same spirit of patriotic devotion which
had upheld their heroes in the hour of death. As they had been lifted
above fear by the thought that it was for their country they were dying,
not less should those who mourned them find inspiration in remembering
it was for the nation's sake that their tears were shed, and for the
country that their hearts were broken. It had been appointed that half
in blood of men and half in women's tears the ransom of the people
should be paid, so that their sorrow was not in vain, but for the
healing of the nation.
It behooved these, therefore, to prove worthy of their high calling of
martyrdom, and while they must needs weep, not to weep as other women
wept, with hearts bowed down, but rather with uplifted faces, adopting
and ratifying, though it might be with breaking hearts, this exchange
they had made of earthly happiness for the life of their native land. So
should they honor those they mourned, and be joined with them not only
in sacrifice but in the spirit of sacrifice.
So it was in response to the appeal of this stricken girl before him
that the minister talked of the country, and to such purpose was it that
the piteous thing she had dreaded, the feeling, now when it was forever
too late, that it would have been better if she had kept her lover back,
found no place in her heart. There was, indeed, had she known it, no
danger at all that she would be left to endure that, so long as she
dreaded it, for the only prayer that never is unanswered is the prayer
to be lifted above self. So to pray and so to wish is but to cease to
resist the divine gravitations ever pulling at the soul. As the minister
discoursed of the mystic gain of self-sacrifice, the mystery of which
he spoke was fulfilled in her heart. She appeared to stand in some
place overarching life t and death, and there was made partaker of an
exultation whereof if religion and philosophy might but catch and hold
the secret, their ancient quest were over.
Grazing through streaming eyes upon the coffin of her lover, she was
able freely to consent to the sacrifice of her own life which he had
made in giving up his own.