heart common to people who, by some morbid action within themselves, are
set ajar with the world, Septimius continued still to come round to that
strange idea of undyingness which had recently taken possession of him.
And yet he was wrong in thinking himself cold, and that he felt no
sympathy in the fever of patriotism that was throbbing through his
countrymen. He was restless as a flame; he could not fix his thoughts upon
his book; he could not sit in his chair, but kept pacing to and fro, while
through the open window came noises to which his imagination gave diverse
interpretation. Now it was a distant drum; now shouts; by and by there
came the rattle of musketry, that seemed to proceed from some point more
distant than the village; a regular roll, then a ragged volley, then
scattering shots. Unable any longer to preserve this unnatural
indifference, Septimius snatched his gun, and, rushing out of the house,
climbed the abrupt hill-side behind, whence he could see a long way
towards the village, till a slight bend hid the uneven road. It was quite
vacant, not a passenger upon it. But there seemed to be confusion in that
direction; an unseen and inscrutable trouble, blowing thence towards him,
intimated by vague sounds,--by no sounds. Listening eagerly, however, he
at last fancied a mustering sound of the drum; then it seemed as if it
were coming towards him; while in advance rode another horseman, the same
kind of headlong messenger, in appearance, who had passed the house with
his ghastly cry of alarum; then appeared scattered countrymen, with guns
in their hands, straggling across fields. Then he caught sight of the
regular array of British soldiers, filling the road with their front, and
marching along as firmly as ever, though at a quick pace, while he fancied
that the officers looked watchfully around. As he looked, a shot rang
sharp from the hill-side towards the village; the smoke curled up, and
Septimius saw a man stagger and fall in the midst of the troops. Septimius
shuddered; it was so like murder that he really could not tell the
difference; his knees trembled beneath him; his breath grew short, not
with terror, but with some new sensation of awe.
Another shot or two came almost simultaneously from the wooded height, but
without any effect that Septimius could perceive. Almost at the same
moment a company of the British soldiers wheeled from the main body, and,
dashing out of the road, climbed the hill, and disappeared into the wood
and shrubbery that veiled it. There were a few straggling shots, by whom
fired, or with what effect, was invisible, and meanwhile the main body of
the enemy proceeded along the road. They had now advanced so nigh that
Septimius was strangely assailed by the idea that he might, with the gun
in his hand, fire right into the midst of them, and select any man of that
now hostile band to be a victim. How strange, how strange it is, this
deep, wild passion that nature has implanted in us to be the death of our
fellow-creatures, and which coexists at the same time with horror!
Septimius levelled his weapon, and drew it up again; he marked a mounted
officer, who seemed to be in chief command, whom he knew that he could
kill. But no! he had really no such purpose. Only it was such a
temptation. And in a moment the horse would leap, the officer would fall
and lie there in the dust of the road, bleeding, gasping, breathing in
spasms, breathing no more.
While the young man, in these unusual circumstances, stood watching the
marching of the troops, he heard the noise of rustling boughs, and the
voices of men, and soon understood that the party, which he had seen
separate itself from the main body and ascend the hill, was now marching
along on the hill-top, the long ridge which, with a gap or two, extended
as much as a mile from the village. One of these gaps occurred a little
way from where Septimius stood. They were acting as flank guard, to
prevent the up-roused people from coming so close to the main body as to
fire upon it. He looked and saw that the detachment of British was
plunging down one side of this gap, with intent to ascend the other, so
that they would pass directly over the spot where he stood; a slight
removal to one side, among the small bushes, would conceal him. He stepped
aside accordingly, and from his concealment, not without drawing quicker
breaths, beheld the party draw near. They were more intent upon the space
between them and the main body than upon the dense thicket of birch-trees,
pitch-pines, sumach, and dwarf oaks, which, scarcely yet beginning to bud
into leaf, lay on the other side, and in which Septimius lurked.
[_Describe how their faces affected him, passing so near; how strange
they seemed_.]
They had all passed, except an officer who brought up the rear, and who had
perhaps been attracted by some slight motion that Septimius made,--some
rustle in the thicket; for he stopped, fixed his eyes piercingly towards
the spot where he stood, and levelled a light fusil which he carried.
"Stand out, or I shoot," said he.
Not to avoid the shot, but because his manhood felt a call upon it not to
skulk in obscurity from an open enemy, Septimius at once stood forth, and
confronted the same handsome young officer with whom those fierce words
had passed on account of his rudeness to Rose Garfield. Septimius's fierce
Indian blood stirred in him, and gave a murderous excitement.
"Ah, it is you!" said the young officer, with a haughty smile. "You meant,
then, to take up with my hint of shooting at me from behind a hedge? This
is better. Come, we have in the first place the great quarrel between me a
king's soldier, and you a rebel; next our private affair, on account of
yonder pretty girl. Come, let us take a shot on either score!"
The young officer was so handsome, so beautiful, in budding youth; there
was such a free, gay petulance in his manner; there seemed so little of
real evil in him; he put himself on equal ground with the rustic Septimius
so generously, that the latter, often so morbid and sullen, never felt a
greater kindness for fellow-man than at this moment for this youth.
"I have no enmity towards you," said he; "go in peace."
"No enmity!" replied the officer. "Then why were you here with your gun
amongst the shrubbery? But I have a mind to do my first deed of arms on
you; so give up your weapon, and come with me as prisoner."
"A prisoner!" cried Septimius, that Indian fierceness that was in him
arousing itself, and thrusting up its malign head like a snake. "Never! If
you would have me, you must take my dead body."
"Ah well, you have pluck in you, I see, only it needs a considerable
stirring. Come, this is a good quarrel of ours. Let us fight it out. Stand
where you are, and I will give the word of command. Now; ready, aim,
fire!"
As the young officer spoke the three last words, in rapid succession, he
and his antagonist brought their firelocks to the shoulder, aimed and
fired. Septimius felt, as it were, the sting of a gadfly passing across
his temple, as the Englishman's bullet grazed it; but, to his surprise and
horror (for the whole thing scarcely seemed real to him), he saw the
officer give a great start, drop his fusil, and stagger against a tree,
with his hand to his breast. He endeavored to support himself erect, but,
failing in the effort, beckoned to Septimius.
"Come, my good friend," said he, with that playful, petulant smile flitting
over his face again. "It is my first and last fight. Let me down as softly
as you can on mother earth, the mother of both you and me; so we are
brothers; and this may be a brotherly act, though it does not look so, nor
feel so. Ah! that was a twinge indeed!"
"Good God!" exclaimed Septimius. "I had no thought of this, no malice
towards you in the least!"
"Nor I towards you," said the young man. "It was boy's play, and the end of
it is that I die a boy, instead of living forever, as perhaps I otherwise
might."
"Living forever!" repeated Septimius, his attention arrested, even at that
breathless moment, by words that rang so strangely on what had been his
brooding thought.
"Yes; but I have lost my chance," said the young officer. Then, as
Septimius helped him to lie against the little hillock of a decayed and
buried stump, "Thank you; thank you. If you could only call back one of my
comrades to hear my dying words. But I forgot. You have killed me, and
they would take your life."
In truth, Septimius was so moved and so astonished, that he probably would
have called back the young man's comrades, had it been possible; but,
marching at the swift rate of men in peril, they had already gone far
onward, in their passage through the shrubbery that had ceased to rustle
behind them.
"Yes; I must die here!" said the young man, with a forlorn expression, as
of a school-boy far away from home, "and nobody to see me now but you, who
have killed me. Could you fetch me a drop of water? I have a great
thirst."
Septimius, in a dream of horror and pity, rushed down the hill-side; the
house was empty, for Aunt Keziah had gone for shelter and sympathy to some
of the neighbors. He filled a jug with cold water, and hurried back to the
hill-top, finding the young officer looking paler and more deathlike
within those few moments.
"I thank you, my enemy that was, my friend that is," murmured he, faintly
smiling. "Methinks, next to the father and mother that gave us birth, the
next most intimate relation must be with the man that slays us, who
introduces us to the mysterious world to which this is but the portal. You
and I are singularly connected, doubt it not, in the scenes of the unknown
world."
"Oh, believe me," cried Septimius, "I grieve for you like a brother!"
"I see it, my dear friend," said the young officer; "and though my blood is
on your hands, I forgive you freely, if there is anything to forgive. But
I am dying, and have a few words to say, which you must hear. You have
slain me in fair fight, and my spoils, according to the rules and customs
of warfare, belong to the victor. Hang up my sword and fusil over your
chimney-place, and tell your children, twenty years hence, how they were
won. My purse, keep it or give it to the poor. There is something, here
next my heart, which I would fain have sent to the address which I will
give you."
Septimius, obeying his directions, took from his breast a miniature that
hung round it; but, on examination, it proved that the bullet had passed
directly through it, shattering the ivory, so that the woman's face it
represented was quite destroyed.
"Ah! that is a pity," said the young man; and yet Septimius thought that
there was something light and contemptuous mingled with the pathos in his
tones. "Well, but send it; cause it to be transmitted, according to the
address."
He gave Septimius, and made him take down on a tablet which he had about
him, the name of a hall in one of the midland counties of England.
"Ah, that old place," said he, "with its oaks, and its lawn, and its park,
and its Elizabethan gables! I little thought I should die here, so far
away, in this barren Yankee land. Where will you bury me?"
As Septimius hesitated to answer, the young man continued: "I would like to
have lain in the little old church at Whitnash, which comes up before me
now, with its low, gray tower, and the old yew-tree in front, hollow with
age, and the village clustering about it, with its thatched houses. I
would be loath to lie in one of your Yankee graveyards, for I have a
distaste for them,--though I love you, my slayer. Bury me here, on this
very spot. A soldier lies best where he falls."
"Here, in secret?" exclaimed Septimius.
"Yes; there is no consecration in your Puritan burial-grounds," said the
dying youth, some of that queer narrowness of English Churchism coming
into his mind. "So bury me here, in my soldier's dress. Ah! and my watch!
I have done with time, and you, perhaps, have a long lease of it; so take
it, not as spoil, but as my parting gift. And that reminds me of one other
thing. Open that pocket-book which you have in your hand."
Septimius did so, and by the officer's direction took from one of its
compartments a folded paper, closely written in a crabbed hand; it was
considerably worn in the outer folds, but not within. There was also a
small silver key in the pocket-book.
"I leave it with you," said the officer; "it was given me by an uncle, a
learned man of science, who intended me great good by what he there wrote.
Reap the profit, if you can. Sooth to say, I never read beyond the first
lines of the paper."
Septimius was surprised, or deeply impressed, to see that through this
paper, as well as through the miniature, had gone his fatal
bullet,--straight through the midst; and some of the young man's blood,
saturating his dress, had wet the paper all over. He hardly thought
himself likely to derive any good from what it had cost a human life,
taken (however uncriminally) by his own hands, to obtain.
"Is there anything more that I can do for you?" asked he, with genuine
sympathy and sorrow, as he knelt by his fallen foe's side.
"Nothing, nothing, I believe," said he. "There was one thing I might have
confessed; if there were a holy man here, I might have confessed, and
asked his prayers; for though I have lived few years, it has been long
enough to do a great wrong! But I will try to pray in my secret soul. Turn
my face towards the trunk of the tree, for I have taken my last look at
the world. There, let me be now."
Septimius did as the young man requested, and then stood leaning against
one of the neighboring pines, watching his victim with a tender concern
that made him feel as if the convulsive throes that passed through his
frame were felt equally in his own. There was a murmuring from the youth's
lips which seemed to Septimius swift, soft, and melancholy, like the voice
of a child when it has some naughtiness to confess to its mother at
bedtime; contrite, pleading, yet trusting. So it continued for a few
minutes; then there was a sudden start and struggle, as if he were
striving to rise; his eyes met those of Septimius with a wild, troubled
gaze, but as the latter caught him in his arms, he was dead. Septimius
laid the body softly down on the leaf-strewn earth, and tried, as he had
heard was the custom with the dead, to compose the features distorted by
the dying agony. He then flung himself on the ground at a little distance,
and gave himself up to the reflections suggested by the strange
occurrences of the last hour.
He had taken a human life; and, however the circumstances might excuse
him,--might make the thing even something praiseworthy, and that would be
called patriotic,--still, it was not at once that a fresh country youth
could see anything but horror in the blood with which his hand was
stained. It seemed so dreadful to have reduced this gay, animated,
beautiful being to a lump of dead flesh for the flies to settle upon, and
which in a few hours would begin to decay; which must be put forthwith
into the earth, lest it should be a horror to men's eyes; that delicious
beauty for woman to love; that strength and courage to make him famous
among men,--all come to nothing; all probabilities of life in one so
gifted; the renown, the position, the pleasures, the profits, the keen
ecstatic joy,--this never could be made up,--all ended quite; for the dark
doubt descended upon Septimius, that, because of the very fitness that was
in this youth to enjoy this world, so much the less chance was thereof his
being fit for any other world. What could it do for him there,--this
beautiful grace and elegance of feature,--where there was no form, nothing
tangible nor visible? what good that readiness and aptness for associating
with all created things, doing his part, acting, enjoying, when, under the
changed conditions of another state of being, all this adaptedness would
fail? Had he been gifted with permanence on earth, there could not have
been a more admirable creature than this young man; but as his fate had
turned out, he was a mere grub, an illusion, something that nature had
held out in mockery, and then withdrawn. A weed might grow from his dust
now; that little spot on the barren hill-top, where he had desired to be
buried, would be greener for some years to come, and that was all the
difference. Septimius could not get beyond the earthiness; his feeling was
as if, by an act of violence, he had forever cut off a happy human
existence. And such was his own love of life and clinging to it, peculiar
to dark, sombre natures, and which lighter and gayer ones can never know,
that he shuddered at his deed, and at himself, and could with difficulty
bear to be alone with the corpse of his victim,--trembled at the thought
of turning his face towards him.
Yet he did so, because he could not endure the imagination that the dead
youth was turning his eyes towards him as he lay; so he came and stood
beside him, looking down into his white, upturned face. But it was
wonderful! What a change had come over it since, only a few moments ago,
he looked at that death-contorted countenance! Now there was a high and
sweet expression upon it, of great joy and surprise, and yet a quietude
diffused throughout, as if the peace being so very great was what had
surprised him. The expression was like a light gleaming and glowing within
him. Septimius had often, at a certain space of time after sunset, looking
westward, seen a living radiance in the sky,--the last light of the dead
day that seemed just the counterpart of this death-light in the young
man's face. It was as if the youth were just at the gate of heaven, which,
swinging softly open, let the inconceivable glory of the blessed city
shine upon his face, and kindle it up with gentle, undisturbing
astonishment and purest joy. It was an expression contrived by God's
providence to comfort; to overcome all the dark auguries that the physical
ugliness of death inevitably creates, and to prove by the divine glory on
the face, that the ugliness is a delusion. It was as if the dead man
himself showed his face out of the sky, with heaven's blessing on it, and
bade the afflicted be of good cheer, and believe in immortality.
Septimius remembered the young man's injunctions to bury him there, on the
hill, without uncovering the body; and though it seemed a sin and shame to
cover up that beautiful body with earth of the grave, and give it to the
worm, yet he resolved to obey.
Be it confessed that, beautiful as the dead form looked, and guiltless as
Septimius must be held in causing his death, still he felt as if he should
be eased when it was under the ground. He hastened down to the house, and
brought up a shovel and a pickaxe, and began his unwonted task of
grave-digging, delving earnestly a deep pit, sometimes pausing in his
toil, while the sweat-drops poured from him, to look at the beautiful clay
that was to occupy it. Sometimes he paused, too, to listen to the shots
that pealed in the far distance, towards the east, whither the battle had
long since rolled out of reach and almost out of hearing. It seemed to
have gathered about itself the whole life of the land, attending it along
its bloody course in a struggling throng of shouting, shooting men, so
still and solitary was everything left behind it. It seemed the very
midland solitude of the world where Septimius was delving at the grave. He
and his dead were alone together, and he was going to put the body under
the sod, and be quite alone.
The grave was now deep, and Septimius was stooping down into its depths
among dirt and pebbles, levelling off the bottom, which he considered to
be profound enough to hide the young man's mystery forever, when a voice
spoke above him; a solemn, quiet voice, which he knew well.
"Septimius! what are you doing here?"
He looked up and saw the minister.
"I have slain a man in fair fight," answered he, "and am about to bury him
as he requested. I am glad you are come. You, reverend sir, can fitly say
a prayer at his obsequies. I am glad for my own sake; for it is very
lonely and terrible to be here."
He climbed out of the grave, and, in reply to the minister's inquiries,
communicated to him the events of the morning, and the youth's strange
wish to be buried here, without having his remains subjected to the hands
of those who would prepare it for the grave. The minister hesitated.
"At an ordinary time," said he, "such a singular request would of course
have to be refused. Your own safety, the good and wise rules that make it
necessary that all things relating to death and burial should be done
publicly and in order, would forbid it."
"Yes," replied Septimius; "but, it may be, scores of men will fall to-day,
and be flung into hasty graves without funeral rites; without its ever
being known, perhaps, what mother has lost her son. I cannot but think
that I ought to perform the dying request of the youth whom I have slain.
He trusted in me not to uncover his body myself, nor to betray it to the
hands of others."
"A singular request," said the good minister, gazing with deep interest at
the beautiful dead face, and graceful, slender, manly figure. "What could
have been its motive? But no matter. I think, Septimius, that you are
bound to obey his request; indeed, having promised him, nothing short of
an impossibility should prevent your keeping your faith. Let us lose no
time, then."
With few but deeply solemn rites the young stranger was laid by the
minister and the youth who slew him in his grave. A prayer was made, and
then Septimius, gathering some branches and twigs, spread them over the
face that was turned upward from the bottom of the pit, into which the sun
gleamed downward, throwing its rays so as almost to touch it. The twigs
partially hid it, but still its white shone through. Then the minister
threw a handful of earth upon it, and, accustomed as he was to burials,
tears fell from his eyes along with the mould.
"It is sad," said he, "this poor young man, coming from opulence, no doubt,
a dear English home, to die here for no end, one of the first-fruits of a
bloody war,--so much privately sacrificed. But let him rest, Septimius. I
am sorry that he fell by your hand, though it involves no shadow of a
crime. But death is a thing too serious not to melt into the nature of a
man like you."
"It does not weigh upon my conscience, I think," said Septimius; "though I
cannot but feel sorrow, and wish my hand were as clean as yesterday. It
is, indeed, a dreadful thing to take human life."
"It is a most serious thing," replied the minister; "but perhaps we are apt
to over-estimate the importance of death at any particular moment. If the
question were whether to die or to live forever, then, indeed, scarcely
anything should justify the putting a fellow-creature to death. But since
it only shortens his earthly life, and brings a little forward a change
which, since God permits it, is, we may conclude, as fit to take place
then as at any other time, it alters the case. I often think that there
are many things that occur to us in our daily life, many unknown crises,
that are more important to us than this mysterious circumstance of death,
which we deem the most important of all. All we understand of it is, that
it takes the dead person away from our knowledge of him, which, while we
live with him, is so very scanty."
"You estimate at nothing, it seems, his earthly life, which might have been
so happy."
"At next to nothing," said the minister; "since, as I have observed, it
must, at any rate, have closed so soon."
Septimius thought of what the young man, in his last moments, had said of
his prospect or opportunity of living a life of interminable length, and
which prospect he had bequeathed to himself. But of this he did not speak
to the minister, being, indeed, ashamed to have it supposed that he would
put any serious weight on such a bequest, although it might be that the
dark enterprise of his nature had secretly seized upon this idea, and,
though yet sane enough to be influenced by a fear of ridicule, was busy
incorporating it with his thoughts.
So Septimius smoothed down the young stranger's earthy bed, and returned to
his home, where he hung up the sword over the mantel-piece in his study,
and hung the gold watch, too, on a nail,--the first time he had ever had
possession of such a thing. Nor did he now feel altogether at ease in his
mind about keeping it,--the time-measurer of one whose mortal life he had
cut off. A splendid watch it was, round as a turnip. There seems to be a
natural right in one who has slain a man to step into his vacant place in
all respects; and from the beginning of man's dealings with man this right
has been practically recognized, whether among warriors or robbers, as
paramount to every other. Yet Septimius could not feel easy in availing
himself of this right. He therefore resolved to keep the watch, and even
the sword and fusil,--which were less questionable spoils of war,--only
till he should be able to restore them to some representative of the young
officer. The contents of the purse, in accordance with the request of the
dying youth, he would expend in relieving the necessities of those whom
the war (now broken out, and of which no one could see the limit) might
put in need of it. The miniature, with its broken and shattered face, that
had so vainly interposed itself between its wearer and death, had been
sent to its address.
But as to the mysterious document, the written paper, that he had laid
aside without unfolding it, but with a care that betokened more interest
in it than in either gold or weapon, or even in the golden representative
of that earthly time on which he set so high a value. There was something
tremulous in his touch of it; it seemed as if he were afraid of it by the
mode in which he hid it away, and secured himself from it, as it were.