AMONG THE WOUNDED.
At nearly noon the day after the battle of Peach Creek the searchers for
wounded came upon Manson, still alive, but delirious. Of that ghastly
battlefield, or the long agony of that wounded boy, I hesitate to speak.
No pen can describe, either, and to even faintly portray them is but to
add gloom to a narrative already replete with it. The twenty-four hours
of his indescribable pain and torturing thirst were only broken by a few
hours of merciful delirium, when he was once more a boy and living his
simple, care-free life on the farm, or happy with Liddy. When found he
knew it not. When examined by a surgeon that stern man shook his head
and remarked: "Slim chance for you, poor devil--too much blood gone
already!"
For two weeks he was delirious most of the time, but his rugged
constitution saved him, and when he showed signs of gaining and could
be moved, he was taken to the hospital at Washington. Once there, he
began to fail again, for the long journey had been too much for him.
"He won't last long," said the doctor in charge to the nurse. "Better
ask him if there is any one he wishes to see."
When he made his rounds the next morning Manson was worse and again out
of his head. "He has been wandering in his mind all night," was the
nurse's report, "and he talks about fishing and catching things in
traps, and there is a girl mixed in it all. Case of sweetheart, I
guess."
That day the wounded boy rallied a little and began to think, and bit by
bit the sane hours of the past few weeks came back to him. How near to
the shores of eternal silence his bark had drifted, he little knew! The
long hours of agony on the battlefield since the moment he had
instinctively crawled behind a rock had been a delirium of despair
broken only by visions of vague and shadowy import that he could not
grasp. All that he thought was that death must soon end his misery, and
he hoped it might come soon. At times he had bitten and torn the sleeves
of his coat, soaked with blood from his shattered arm, or beaten his
head against the dry earth in his agony.
How long it had lasted he could not tell, and the last that he
remembered was looking at the moon, and then he seemed to be drifting
away and all pain ceased. Then all around him he could hear voices and
over his head a roof, and he felt as if awakened from some horrible
dream. With his well arm he felt of the other and found it was bound
with splints. The faces he could see were all strange, but the men wore
the familiar blue uniform and he knew they were not enemies. He was
carried to a freight-car and laid in it, where he took a long, jolting
ride that was all a torture, at the end of which he was taken in an open
wagon to a long, low building, and laid on one of many narrow cots which
were ranged in double rows. He could not raise his head or turn his
body. He could only rest utterly helpless and inert, and indifferent to
either life or death.
Of Liddy he thought many times, and of his mother and father as well,
and he wondered what they would say and how they would feel when the
tidings reached them. Then a kind-faced woman came and lifted his head
and held it while he took medicine or sipped broth, and then he was
wandering beside a brook again, or in green meadows. Later he could see
the white cots all about and the unceiled roof over his head and the
same motherly face, and he was asked who his friends were and whom he
would like to send for, and from that time on he began to hope.
Would the one human being on earth he cared most to see come so far, and
could she if she would? And would life still be left in him when she
reached his side; or would he have been carried out of the long, low
room, dead, as he had seen others carried? He wondered what she would
say or do when she came, and oh! if he could only know whether she was
coming! He could see the door at one corner of the room where she must
enter, and it was a little comfort to look at that. Then a resolution
and a feeling that he must live and be there when she came began to grow
upon him. He knew four days had passed since she had been sent for and
he could now count the hours, and from that time on his eyes were seldom
turned away from that door while he was awake. Did ever hours pass more
slowly than those? Could it be possible? I think not. He had no means of
knowing the time except to ask the nurse, and when night came he knew
that sleep might bridge a few hours more speedily.
Six days passed, and then in the gray light of the next morning he
opened his weary waiting eyes and saw bending over him the fair face
that for two long years, and all through his hopeless agony he had
longed for, and as he reached his hand to her in mute gratitude, unable
to speak, he felt it clasped, and the next instant she was on her knees
beside him and pressing a tear-wet face upon it, and he was listening to
the first prayer she ever uttered!
Gone now like a flash of light were all those weary months of
heart-hunger! Gone all the agony and despair of that day and night on
the battlefield! Gone all the hours of pain through which he counted the
moments one by one as he watched the door! No more was he lying upon a
narrow cot listening to the moans of the wounded as he saw the dead
carried out! Instead was he resting on a bed of violets and listening to
the heart throbs of thankfulness and supplication murmured by an angel!
And if ever a prayer reached the heavenly throne it was that one! When
it was finished, and her loving blue eyes were looking into his, he
whispered:
"Liddy, God bless you! Now I shall live."
Such is the power of love!
I feel that here and now I must beg the kind reader's pardon for
introducing so much that is painful and sad in the lives of these two,
fitted by birth and education for peace and simple home happiness. War
and all its horrors is not akin to them and was never meant to be.
Rather should their footsteps lead them where the bobolink sings as he
circles over a green meadow, and the blue water lilies stoop to kiss the
brook that ripples through it; or where the fields of grain bend and
billow in the summer breeze; or the old mill-wheel splashes, while the
white flowers in the pond above smile in the sunlight. If the patient
reader will but follow their lives a little further, only peace and
happiness and all the gentle voices of nature shall be their companions.
For a month, while cheered by the presence of her devoted father, Liddy
nursed that feeble spark of life back to health and strength as only a
tender and heroic woman could. All the dread aftermath of war that daily
assailed her every sense, did not make her falter, but through all those
scenes of misery and death she bravely stood by her post and her
love-imposed duty. How hard a task it was, no one unaccustomed to such
surroundings can even faintly realize, and it need not be dwelt upon.
When she had fulfilled the most God-like mission ever confided to
woman's hands--that of caring for the sick and dying--and when returning
strength made it possible to remove her charge, those three devoted ones
returned to the hills of old New England.
How fair the peaceful valley of Southton seemed once more, and how clear
and distinct the Blue Hills were outlined in the pure September air! The
trees were just gaining the annual glory of autumn color; but to Liddy
they brought no tinge of melancholy, for her heart was full of sweetest
joy. She had saved the one life dearest on earth to her, and now the
voices of nature were but sounds of heavenly music. And how dear to her
was her home once more, and all about it! The brook that rippled near
sounded like the low tinkle of sweet bells, and the maple by the gate
whispered once again the tender thoughts of the love that had first come
to her beneath them. She was like a child in her happiness, and every
thought and every impulse was touched by the mystic, magic wand of love.
Few ever know the supreme joy that came to her and none can except they
walk with bleeding hearts and weary feet through the valley of despair,
bearing the burden of a loved one's life.
The first evening she was alone with her father, she came as a child
would, to sit upon his knee, and putting her arms around his neck
whispered:
"Father, I never knew until now what it means to be happy, and how good
and kind you could be to me, and how little it is in my power to pay it
all back. I can only love and care for you as long as I live, or as long
as God spares your life."
And be it said, she kept her promise.