THE MOONLIT RIVER
Betty Winter was quick to answer the hurry call for more nurses in the
field hospital at Chancellorsville. The results at the end of three
days' carnage had paralyzed the service.
She left the Carver Hospital on receipt of the first cry for help and
hurried to her home to complete her preparations to leave for the front.
Her father was at breakfast alone.
She called her greeting from the hall, rushed to her room, packed a bag,
and quickly came down.
She slipped her arm around his neck, bent and kissed him good-bye. He
held her a moment:
"You must leave so early, dear?"
"I must catch the first bout for Aquia. The news from the front is
hideous. The force there is utterly inadequate. They've asked for every
nurse that can be spared for a week. The wounded lay on the ground for
three days and nights, and hundreds of them can't be moved to
Washington. The woods took fire dozens of times and many of the poor
boys were terribly burned. The suffering, they say, is indescribable."
The old man suddenly rose, with a fierce light flashing in his eyes:
"Oh, the miserable blunderer in the White House--this war has been one
grim and awful succession of his mistakes!"
Betty placed her hand on his arm in tender protest:
"Father, dear, how can you be so unreasonable--so insanely unjust? Your
hatred of the President is a positive mania----"
"I'm not alone in my affliction, child; Arnold is his only friend in
Congress to-day----"
"Then it's a shame--a disgrace to the Nation. Every disaster is laid at
his door. In his big heart he is carrying the burden of millions--their
suffering, their sorrows, their despair. You blamed him at first for
trifling with the war. Now you blame him for the bloody results when the
army really fights. You ask for an effective campaign and when you get
these tragic battles you heap on his head greater curses. It isn't
right. It isn't fair. I can't understand how a man with your deep sense
of justice can be so cruelly inconsistent----"
The Senator shook his grey head in protest:
"There! there! dear--we won't discuss it. You're a woman and you can't
understand my point of view. We'll just agree to disagree. You like the
man in the White House. God knows he's lonely--I shouldn't begrudge him
that little consolation. His whole attitude in this war is loathsome to
me. To him the Southerners are erring brethren to be brought back as
prodigal sons in the end. To me they are criminal outlaws to be hanged
and quartered--their property confiscated, the foundations of their
society destroyed, and every trace of their States blotted from the
map----"
"Father!"
"Until we understand that such is the purpose of the war we can get
nowhere--accomplish nothing. But there, dear--I didn't mean to say so
much. There is always one thing about which there can be no dispute--I
love my little girl----"
He slipped his arm about her tenderly again.
"I'm proud of the work you're doing for our soldiers. They tell me in
the big hospital that you're an angel. I've always known it, but I'm
glad other people are beginning to find it out. In all the horrors of
this tragedy there's one ray of sunshine for me--the light that shines
from your eyes!"
He bent and kissed her again:
"Run now, and don't miss your boat."
In the five swift days of tender service which followed, Betty Winter
forgot her own heartache and loneliness in the pity, pathos, and horror
of the scenes she witnessed--the drawn white faces--the charred flesh,
the scream of pain from the young, the sigh of brave men, the last
messages of love--the gasp and the solemn silences of eternity.
When the strain of the first rush had ended and the time to follow the
lines of ambulance wagons back to Washington drew near, the old anguish
returned to torture her soul. She told herself it was all over, and yet
she knew that somewhere in that vast city of tents, stretching for miles
over the hills and valleys about Falmouth Heights, was John Vaughan. She
had put him resolutely out of her life. She said this a hundred
times--yet she was quietly rejoicing that his name was not on that black
roll of seventeen thousand. All doubt had been removed by the
announcement in the _Republican_ of his promotion to the rank of
Captain for gallantry on the field of Chancellorsville.
She hoped that he had freed himself at last from evil associates. She
couldn't be sure--there were ugly rumors flying about the hospital of
the use of whiskey in the army. These rumors were particularly busy with
Hooker's name.
Seated alone in the quiet moonlight before the field hospital, the balmy
air of the South which she drew in deep breaths was bringing back the
memory of another now. The pickets had been at their usual friendly
tricks of trading tobacco and coffee and exchanging newspapers. From a
Richmond paper she had just learned that Ned Vaughan had fought in Lee's
army at Chancellorsville. Somewhere beyond the silver mirror of the
Rappahannock he was with the men in grey to-night. Her heart in its
loneliness went out to him in a wave of tender sympathy. Again she lived
over the tragic hours when she had fought the battle for his life and
won at last at the risk of her own.
A soldier saluted and handed her a piece of brown wrapping paper, neatly
folded. Its corner was turned down in the old-fashioned way of a
schoolboy's note to his sweetheart.
She went to the light and saw with a start it was in Ned Vaughan's
handwriting. She read, with eager, sparkling eyes.
"DEAREST: I've just seen in a Washington paper which our boys
traded for that you are here. I must see you, and to-night. I can't
wait. There will be no danger to either of us. Our pickets are on
friendly terms. I've arranged everything with some good tobacco
for your fellows. Follow the man who hands you this note to the
river. A boat will be ready for you there with one of my men to row
you across. I will be waiting for you at the old mill beside the
burned pier of the railroad bridge.
"NED."
Betty's heart gave a bound of joy, and in half an hour she was standing
on the shining shore of the river before the old mill. Its great wheel
was slowly turning, the water falling in broken crystals sparkling in
the moonlight. Through the windows of the brick walls peered the
black-mouthed guns trained across the water.
She looked about timidly for a moment while the man in grey who had
rowed her over made fast his boat.
He tipped his old slouch hat:
"This way, Miss."
He led her down close, to the big wheel, crossed the stream of water
which poured from its moss-covered buckets, and there, beneath an apple
tree in bloom, stood a straight, soldierly figure in the full blue
uniform of a Federal Captain, exactly as she had seen Ned Vaughan that
night in the Old Capitol Prison.
The soldier saluted and Ned said:
"Wait, Sergeant, at the water's edge with your boat."
He was gone and Ned grasped both Betty's hands and kissed them tenderly:
"My glorious little heroine! I just had to tell you again that the life
you saved is all, all yours. You are glad to see me--aren't you?"
"I can't tell you how glad, Boy! How brown and well you look!"
"Yes, the hard life somehow agrees with me. It's a queer thing, this
army business. It makes some men strong and clean, and others into
beasts."
"And why did you wear that dangerous uniform, sir?" she asked, with a
smile.
"In honor of a beautiful Yankee girl, my guest. I've not worn it since
that night, Betty, until now----"
His voice dropped to a whisper:
"It has been a holy thing to me, this blue uniform that cost me the life
which you gave back at the risk of your own----"
"I was in no danger. I had powerful friends."
"They might not have been powerful enough--but it's sacred for another
reason--as precious to me as the seamless robe for which the Roman
soldiers cast lots on Calvary--I wore it in the one glorious moment in
which I held you in my arms, dearest."
"O Ned, Boy, you shouldn't be so foolish!"
"I'm not. I'm sensible. I've done no more scout work since. I said that
my life was yours and I had no right to place it again in such mad
danger----"
"And so you face death on the field!"
"Yes, come sit here, dearest, I've made a seat for you of the broken
timbers from the bridge. We can see the moonlit river and the lazy turn
of the old wheel while we talk."
He led her to the seat in the edge of the moonlight and Betty drew a
deep breath of joy as she drank in the beauty of the entrancing scene.
The shadows of night had hidden the scars of war. Only the tall stone
piers standing, lone sentinels in the river, marked its ravages where
the bridge had fallen. The moon had flung her sparkling silver veil over
the blood-stained world.
"You know," Ned went on eagerly, "those big pillars won't stand there
naked long. We'll put the timbers back on them soon and run our trains
through to Washington----"
"Sh, Ned," Betty whispered, touching his arm lightly, "be still a
moment, I want to feel this wonderful scene!"
The air was sweet with the perfume of apple blossoms, the water from the
old wheel fell with silvery echo and ran rippling over the stones into
the river. Somewhere above the cliff a negro was playing a banjo and far
down the river, beside a little cottage torn with shot and shell, but
still standing, a mocking-bird was singing in the lilac bushes.
The girl looked at Ned with curious tenderness, and wondered if she had
known her own heart after all--wondered if the fierce blinding passion
she had once felt for his brother had been the divine thing that links
the soul to the eternal? A strange spiritual beauty enveloped this
younger man and drew her to-night with new power. There was something
restful in its mystery. She wondered vaguely if it were possible to love
two men at the same moment. She could almost swear it were. If she had
never really loved John Vaughan at all! Why had his powerful, brutal
personality drawn her with such terrible power? Was such a force love?
It was something different from the tender charm which enveloped the
slender straight young figure by her side now. She felt this with
increasing certainty.
Ned took her hand and kissed the tips of her fingers.
The touch of his lips sent a thrill through her heart. It was sweet to
be worshipped in this old-fashioned, foolish way. Whatever her own
feeling's might be, this was love--in its divinest flowering. It drew
her to-night with all but resistless tug.
"May I break the silence now, dearest, to ask you something?" he said
softly.
"Yes."
"Haven't you realized yet that you are going to be mine?"
"Not in the way you mean----"
"But you are, dearest, you are!" he whispered rapturously. "You love me.
You just haven't really faced the thing yet and put it to the test in
your heart. War has separated us, that's all. But there's never been a
moment's doubt in my soul since I looked into your eyes that night in
the old prison. Their light made the cell shine with the glory of
heaven! And when you kissed me, dearest----"
"You know why I did that, Ned," she murmured.
"You're fooling yourself, darling! You couldn't have done what you did,
if you hadn't loved me. It came to me in a flash as I held you in my
arms and pressed you to my heart. There can be no other woman on earth
for me after that moment. I lived a life time with it. Say you'll be
mine, dearest?"
"But I don't love you, Ned, as you love me----"
"I don't ask it now. I can wait. The revelation will come to you at last
in the fullness of time--promise me, dearest--promise me!"
For an hour he poured into her ears his passionate tender plea, until
the rapture of his love, the perfumed air of the spring night, and the
shimmer of moonlit waters stole into her lonely heart with resistless
charm.
She lifted her lips to his at last and whispered:
"Yes."