At the door-way of the building on the hill, where the aged invalid was
yielding her last breath amid the roar of battle, a wounded officer sat
among the dying and the dead, while the conflict swept a little away
from that quarter of the field. The blood was streaming from the
shattered bosom, and feebly he strove to staunch it with his silken
scarf. He had dragged himself through gore and dust until he reached
that spot, and now, rising again with a convulsive effort, he leaned his
red hands against the wall, and entered over the fragments of the door,
which had been shivered by a shell. With tottering steps he passed along
the hall and up the little stairway, as one who had been familiar with
the place. Before the door of the aged lady's chamber he paused a moment
and listened; all was still there, although the terrible tumult of the
battle was sounding all around. He entered; he advanced to the
bed-side; the dying woman was murmuring a prayer. A random shot had torn
the shrivelled flesh upon her bosom and the white counterpane was
stained with blood. She did not see him--her thoughts were away from
earth, she was already seeking communion with the spirits of the blest.
The soldier knelt by that strange death-bed and leaned his pale brow
upon the pillow.
"Mother!"
How strangely the word sounded amid the shouts of combatants and the din
of war. It was like a good angel's voice drowning the discords of hell.
"Mother!"
She heard not the cannon's roar, but that one word, scarce louder than
the murmur of a dreaming infant, reached her ear. The palsied head was
turned upon the pillow and the light of life returned to her glazing
eyes.
"Who speaks?" she gasped, while her thin hands were tremulously clasped
together with emotion.
"'Tis I, mother. Philip, your son."
"Philip, my son!" and the nerveless form, that had scarce moved for
years, was raised upon the bed by the last yearning effort of a mother's
love.
"Is it you, Philip, is it you, indeed? I can scarce see your form, but
surely I have heard the voice of my boy;--my long absent boy. Oh!
Philip! why have I not heard it oftener to comfort my old age?"
"I am dying, mother. I have been a bad son and a guilty man. But I am
dying, mother. Oh! I am punished for my sin! The avenging bullet struck
me down at the gate of the home I had deserted--the home I have made
desolate to you. Mother, I have crawled here to die."
"To die! O God! your hand is cold--or is it but the chill of death upon
my own? Oh! I had thought to have said farewell to earth forever, but
yet let me linger but a little while, O Lord! if but to bless my son."
She sank exhausted upon the pillow, but yet clasped the gory fingers of
the dying man.
"Philip, are you there? Let me hear your voice. I hear strange murmurs
afar off; but not the voice of my son. Are you there, Philip, are you
there?"
Philip Searle was crouching lower and lower by the bed-side, and his
forehead, upon which the dews of death were starting, lay languidly
beside the thin, white locks that rested on the pillow.
"Look, mother!" he said, raising his head and glaring into the corner of
the room. "Do you see that form in white?--there--she with the pale
cheeks and golden hair! I saw her once before to-day, when she lay
stretched upon the bed, with a lily in her white fingers. And once again
I saw her in that last desperate charge, when the bullet struck my side.
And now she is there again, pale, motionless, but smiling. Does she
smile in mockery or forgiveness? I could rather bear a frown than that
terrible--that frozen smile. O God! she is coming to me, mother, she is
coming to me--she will lay her cold hand upon me. No--it is not she! it
is Moll--look, mother, it is Moll, all blackened with smoke and seared
with living fire. O God! how terrible! But, mother, I did not do that.
When I saw the flames afar off, I shuddered, for I knew how it must be.
But I did not do it, Moll, by my lost soul, I did not!" He started to
his feet with a convulsive effort. The hot blood spurted from his wound
with the exertion and spattered upon the face and breast of his
mother--but she felt it not, for she was dead. The last glimmering ray
of reason seemed to drive away the phantoms. He turned toward those
sharp and withered features, he saw the fallen jaw and lustreless glazed
eye. A shudder shook his frame at every point, and with a groan of pain
and terror, he fell forward upon the corpse--a corpse himself.