Hattie Corbin and Helen Brooks sat by the fire in the living room. But
yesterday the news had come of the sinking of the _Housatonic_ and of the
submarine torpedo with terrible loss of life on one and total loss on the
other. After the first heartrendings of grief, Helen had sunk into stolid
indifference to everything and everybody. The last scene between them,
and her note with the hastily scribbled “It is too late,” on the back,
crushed her anew at each remembrance. Only one thing had anyone dared to
say to her. It was Hattie who had spoken.
“Now, Helen, dear, you know how much we love the Great Cause, who give
our all.”
So each day only found her face more deeply lined with pain, and her
sympathy with the poor, wounded fellows at the hospital more tender.
One day she was in the hospital and passed by the bed of a poor patient
who had just been brought in from Morris’ Island. His face was thin and
haggard, and the flesh had all gone away from his bones. His right arm
was shattered and one eye had been attacked by cancer. The poor fellow
called weakly:
“Miss, a favor, please ma’am.”
“Certainly, sir. What may I do for you?”
“Could you write a letter for me, Miss?”
“Indeed I shall. Wait until I get the paper and ink.”
A few minutes later he was telling her what to write.
“It’s to Miss Annie Little—I mean Mrs. Tait Preston, at Dunvegan, North
Carolina,” and at the mention of his loved one’s name, the sick man
groaned.
Helen was quick with attention at the mention of Dunvegan.
“Dear Annie: I—am—sick——. Can’t you—come to me? I was—captured
in—Virginia. About ten left. Poor Ervin—”
“Ervin,” she said—“Ervin—”
“Ervin McArthur, ma’am.”
“Did you know him?”
“Yes, ma’am, I did—poor fellow. He was the dearest comrade of us all.”
“Now, what did—did you say?” She controlled herself with a great effort.
“Poor Ervin,” he confirmed, “built a submarine tor—.” She stopped and her
eyes were full of tears.
“I can get some one else to write it, ma’am—”
“I am ashamed of myself, sir, but his death was so sad—he—”
“Good God! Is he dead?” The sick man almost leaped from his bed. She
looked up sadly and replied:
“Yes, sir, he—is—dead!”
The poor fellow leaned back with a groan and turned his face to the wall,
saying in a moan:
“Ervin, dear old boy, my comrade! Ervin dead!” Then suddenly his eyes
flashed through the cancer.
“Damn them, the blasted fiends! Starving a man on worms, shooting them
like dogs. Poor fellow, poor Ervin. God have mercy on his mother! Don’t
tell Annie, Miss—don’t tell her he’s dead. It would kill his mother. He
loved his mother—and now he’s dead!”
Death—Love.
Love and Death are brothers, and we would tell them so, could we but
persuade them to forget their mutual hatred long enough to come and
listen to our words. For Love is life, and Death is death, and they never
meet. Love never dies. There is a third brother, the youngest of the
three, and his name is Fancy, who closely resembles the oldest. Death
often crosses his pathway. His body, they say, too, is often found stiff
and cold in human hearts, and cast out upon the public highway, where
those who hate his elder brother, may see and scorn, and say that Death
is stronger than Love. But it is not Love, it is only the fickle one that
resembles him. Love never dies. Between him and his grim brother the
great gulf is fixed. It is with the weak one that Death walks arm in arm,
for he seems to meet often the dalliance of Fancy, and plays daily with
the infatuations of youth, whom he can never call aright, not knowing
whether it is the ghost of Love or the phantom of Death.
Love and death! We can hardly distinguish between them as we meet them
upon the street. And so they are ever strangers to us, though they are
often the guests of our hearts and homes.
They treat us to the same, so that one never knows whether it is Love
or Death who knocks at the door until the latch is lifted, for their
footsteps are not heard. They are not alike again after they have crossed
the threshold, not alike at all, ever. Each knocks but once at the door
of our hearts, and if we do not answer, but sit still and wait and there
comes no sound, not even the sound of his retreating footsteps, it was
Love. If you do not answer, but sit still in the gloom and silence, and
there is no other knock and the latch lifts, it is Death.
And so we sit expectantly in our humble homes, because we never know when
the latch is raised—never know when that single knock will come, nor
which of the three faces will appear when the door is opened. We tremble
as we open to the visitor, lest he be Death, and glance furtively about
the apartments of our life, lest it be God. But those of us who are wiser
than any others, always lift the latch, for God and Death will enter
anyway, their knock being only a warning that they are coming; and while
it might have been Love, the latch must be lifted before he turns away
into the night, for he never enters unless the door is opened.
The pathos of our lives and their tragedies are dependent upon the order
of the coming of God and Love and Death. If God comes first, we are happy
then, for he seems to know when Love approaches, and so he is never
turned away. Sometimes Love leaves the heart, but never if God comes
first, for he is truer in the presence of the King, and the King is happy
when Love is near. Sometimes Love comes first, and while he sits waiting,
Death knocks; then he flees from the soul, for he fears the face of his
brother, unless God is there, for Death always smiles when he sees God.
Sometimes Death comes first, and then neither Love nor God can enter.
This and this only is Tragedy with us in Dunvegan. Our children never
pass his home at night, and we scarce dare breathe his name at midday—the
home, the name of the man who died and saw neither Love nor God.
About a week after the writing of Tait’s letter, a pretty, girlish figure
entered the hospital, and finding no one near, began searching the beds
for the face of some loved one. On the way down she had been trying to
prepare herself for the meeting and tried to make the bright eyes she
remembered grow dim, the strong muscles flabby, and the hale glow of
health on the cheeks fade to pallor, but she could not.
All the way from Dunvegan she had been planning how she would see him,
among the others, on his white bed, and the old, familiar face would look
as ever into hers. Now when she turned into the wards and saw the ghastly
sights around her, she was stunned for a moment. Men were there looking
ruefully at their stubs of arms and fingers, men with every imaginable
part of their bodies shot off, and one man who lay just beside her, with
his face turned away—Great God!—suppose Tait should be like him—. One eye
was eaten out with cancer; disease had laid hold of his very vitals, and
his right arm had been amputated. The thought of him made her sick, and
she leaned against the bedstead. Then, not daring to look around, she
went back to find a nurse for directions. She had hardly staggered a yard
when she heard a weak voice:
“Annie, Annie!”
Stopping at the sound of her name, she paused to locate the sound.
“Annie, Annie, don’t you hear me? Here I am.”
The voice was weak and husky and unfamiliar, but the name was Annie. She
turned. It was the man whose arm was gone, whose eye was eaten out by
cancer.
“Annie, Annie, I am Tait! Oh, God, don’t you know me?”
The thin wasted hand held out in entreaty. She knew that it was her
husband.
“Tait, darling boy! Oh, what have they done to you? My darling, my
darling!”
Love—and—Death—a woman’s love, a soldier’s death.
* * * * *
A few days later, women were gathering in little groups about their homes
and the boys and old men left in the city were congregated in the street.
Suddenly, as from a clear sky, the news has come—Sherman was coming.
Mrs. Corbin and Helen and Hattie were at breakfast when the morning
_Chronicle_ came in and the news was read.
Sherman coming! Flee, hide your valuables, bury your silver! The
few soldiers in the city had been ordered north to try to save the
Confederacy there. The city was defenseless. Even the bells of St.
Michael’s had been sent to Columbia for safety.
“I am glad Bessie is in Columbia,” Mrs. Corbin said, when it was read.
“The little babe will be born in peace at least.” Bessie was the young
bride of Jack Corbin.
“Mother,” said Hattie, “you and Helen must leave immediately.”
As though to emphasize her words, a cannon ball crashed through the
house, whizzed by the speakers and penetrated into the cellar. In an
instant they realized that it would have exploded if it were going to,
and so sat quietly talking on, so used had Charleston grown to her
sorrows.
“You must go immediately. I will get everything in order and follow later
on.”
So they left in a few days, for Mrs. Corbin must needs be by Bessie, and
Helen would go with her aunt.
As they entered the car set apart for ladies and their escorts, as was
the custom now, a woman in front of them with a little baby, heard a
voice outside:
“Madam, please lend me your baby.”
Her eyes were red and swollen with weeping. She had been pressing her
child closely to her breast. She looked down. It was a poor soldier with
a wounded arm who was going home. Without a word she handed her baby
through the window, and in a few minutes it bobbed up serenely at the car
door. The guard thinking it was the man’s child, let him pass into the
more comfortable car.
“Thank you,” he said, seating himself wearily and handing the baby back.
Soon another soldier borrowed it, and another also, before the train
started on its long, slow ride to Columbia. The rolling stock had fairly
given out during the four years in which nothing could be done to
replenish or repair it.
“Madam, will you give another lady a seat?” she heard the conductor say
to the woman with the baby, who was leaning on a package that lay on two
seats and was covered with a faded shawl. The woman looked up and moved
and they saw that it was a rude wooden coffin.
Her eyes were red and inflamed with much weeping, and she spoke softly in
the accents of the hills.
“It is my husband; I am taking him home.”
Nor did Helen know who the sweet sufferer was, though she heard her ask,
when she left the train at Columbia, when the next train went north to
Dunvegan.