Aladdin O'Brien Part 26

"No, I can't. I'm no use now. Go back; go back and give 'em h.e.l.l!"

Aladdin endeavored to raise Peter in his arms, but was not strong enough.

"I can't lift you, I can't lift you," he said.

"You can't," said Peter. "Bless you for coming, and go back."

"Shut up, will you?" cried Aladdin, savagely. "Where are you hit?"

"In the back," said Peter, "and I'm done for."

"The h.e.l.l you are!" said Aladdin. Tears hotter than blood were running out of his eyes. "What can I do for you, Peter?" he said in a husky voice.

Manners' blackened fingers fumbled at the b.u.t.tons of his coat, but he had not the strength to undo them.

"It's there, 'Laddin," he said.

"What's there?" said Aladdin. He undid the coat with swift, clever fingers.

"Let me hold it in my hands," said Peter.

"Is it this--this letter--this letter from Margaret?" asked Aladdin, chokingly, for he saw that the letter had not been opened.

A shower of dirt and stones fell upon them, and a sh.e.l.l burst with a sharp crash above their heads.

"Yes," said Peter. "Give it to me. I can't ever read it now."

"I can read it for you," said Aladdin. He was struggling with a sob that wanted to tear his throat.

"Will you? Will you?" cried Peter, and he smiled like a beautiful child.

"Sure I will," said Aladdin.

With the palm of his hand he pressed back the streaming sweat from his forehead twice and three times. Then, having wiped his hands upon his knees, he drew the battered fragment of his sword, and using it as a paper-knife, opened the letter carefully, as a man opens letters which are not to be destroyed. Then his stomach turned cold and his tongue grew thick and burred. For the letter which Margaret had written to her lover was more cruel than the sh.e.l.l which had blinded his eyes and the bullet which was taking his life.

"'Laddin--" this in a fearful voice.

"Yes."

"Thank G.o.d. I thought you'd been hit. Why don't you read?"

Aladdin's eyes, used to reading in blocks of lines rather than a word at a time, had at one glance taken in the purport of Margaret's letter, and his wits had gone from him. She called herself every base and cruel name, and she prayed her lover to forgive her, but she had never had the right to tell him that she would marry him, for she had never loved him in that way. She said that, G.o.d forgive her, she could not keep up the false position any longer, and she wished she was dead.

"There's a man at the bottom of this," thought Aladdin. He caught a glimpse of Peter's poor, b.l.o.o.d.y face and choked.

"I--it--the sheets are mixed," he said presently. "I'm trying to find the beginning. There are eight pages," he went on, "fighting for time,"

and they 're folded all wrong, and they're not numbered or anything."

Peter waited patiently while Aladdin fumbled with the sheets and tried, to the cracking-point, to master the confusion in his mind.

Suddenly G.o.d sent light, and he could have laughed aloud. Not in vain had he pursued the muse and sought after the true romance in the far country where she sweeps her skirts beyond the fingers of men. Not in vain had he rolled the arduous ink-pots and striven manfully for the right word and the telling phrase. The chance had come, and the years of preparation had not been thrown away. He knew that he was going to make good at last. His throat cleared of itself, and the choking phlegm disappeared as if before a hot flame of joy. His voice came from between his trembling lips clear as a bell, and the thunder of battle rolled back from the plain of his consciousness, as, slowly, tenderly, and helped by G.o.d, he began to speak those eight closely lined pages which she should have written.

"My Heart's Darling--" he began, and there followed a molten stream of golden and sacred words.

And the very soul of Manners shouted aloud, for the girl was speaking to him as she had never spoken before.

x.x.xIII

When the fighting was over for that day, Aladdin wrote as follows to Margaret:

MARGARET DEAR: Peter was shot down to-day, while doing more than his duty by his enemies and by his country and by himself, which was always his way. He will not live very long, and you must come to him if it is in any way possible. His love for you makes other loves seem very little, and I think it would be better that you should walk the streets than that you should refuse to come to him now. He had a letter from you, which G.o.d, knowing about, blinded him so that he could not read it, and he believes that you love him and are faithful to him. It is very merciful of G.o.d to let him believe that. He must not be undeceived now, and you must come and be lovely to him and pretend and pretend, and make his dying beautiful. I have the right to ask this of you, for, next to Peter, I was the one that loved you most. And when I made you think I didn't I lied. I lied because I felt that I was not worthy, and I loved you enough to want you to belong to the best man G.o.d ever made, and I loved him too. And that was why it was. I tell you because I think you must have wondered about it sometimes. But it was very hard to do, and because I did it, and because Peter is what he is, you must come to him now. If G.o.d will continue to be merciful, you will get here in time. I hope I may be on hand to see you, but I do not know. Hamilton is gone, and Peter is going, and there will be a terrible battle to-morrow, and thousands of poor lads will lie on this field forever. And here, one way or another, the war will be decided. I have not the heart to write to you any more, my darling. You will come to Peter, I know, and all will be as well as it can be. I pray to G.o.d that I too shall live to see you again, and I ask him to bless you and keep you for ever and ever. Always I see your dear face before me in the battle, and sometimes at night G.o.d lets me dream of you. I am without dogma, sweetest of all possible sweethearts, but this creed I say over and over, and this creed I believe: I believe in one G.o.d, Maker of heaven and Margaret.

Angels guard you, darling.

ALADDIN.

GETTYSBURG, July 2, 1863.

x.x.xIV

On the morning of the third day of July, young Hannibal St. John shaved his face clean and put himself into a new uniform. The old nth Maine was no longer a regiment, but a name of sufficient glory. On three occasions it had been shot to pieces, and after the third the remaining tens were absorbed by other regiments. Hannibal's father had obtained for him a lieutenancy in the United States artillery, Beau Larch was second lieutenant in another Maine regiment, and John, the old and honored colonel of the nth, was now, like Aladdin, serving on a staff.

The battle began with a movement against Johnson on the Confederate left, and one against Longstreet on their right.

That against Longstreet became known in history as Farnsworth's charge, and Aladdin saw it from the signal-station on Little Round Top.

It was a series of blue lines, whose relations to one another could not be justly estimated, because of the wooded nature of the ground, which ran out into open places before fences and woods that spat red fire, and became thinner and of less extension, as if they had been made of wax and were melting under the blaze of the July sun. In that charge Farnsworth fell and achieved glory.

Aladdin held a field-gla.s.s to his eyes with trembling hands, and watched the cruel mowing of the blue flowers. Sometimes he recognized a man that he knew, and saw him die for his country. Three times he saw John St.

John in the forefront of the battle. The first time he was riding a glorious black horse, of spirit and proportions to correspond with those of the hero himself. The second time he was on foot, running forward with a-halt in his stride, hatless, and carrying a great battle-flag.

Upon the top of it gleamed a gold eagle, that nodded toward the enemy.

A dozen blue-coated soldiers, straggling like the finishers in a long-distance race, followed him with bayonets fixed. The little loose knot of men ran across a field toward a stone wall that bounded it upon the other side. Then white smoke burst from the wall, and they were cut down to the last man. The smoke cleared, and Aladdin saw John lying above the great flag which he had carried. A figure in gray leaped the stone wall and ran out to him, stooped, and seizing the staff of the flag in both hands, braced his hands and endeavored to draw it from beneath the great body of the hero. But it would not come, and as he bent closer to obtain a better hold, the back of a great clenched hand struck him across the jaw, and he fell like a log. Other men in gray leaped the wall and ran out. The flag came easily now, for St. John was dead; but so was the gray brother, for his comrades raised him, and his head hung back over his left shoulder, and they saw that his neck had been broken like a dry stick.

Aladdin had not been sent to that place to mourn, but to gain information. Twice and three times he wiped his eyes clear of tears, and then he swept his faltering gla.s.s along the lines of the enemy, until, ranged in their center, he beheld a great semicircle of a hundred and more iron and bra.s.s cannons, and movements of troops. Then Aladdin scrambled down from Little Round Top to report what he had seen in the center of the Confederate lines.

At one o'clock the Confederate batteries, one hundred and fifteen pieces in all, opened their tremendous fire upon the center of the Union lines.

Eighty cannons roared back at them with defiant thunder, and the blue sky became hidden by smoke. Among the Union batteries horses began to run loose, cannons to be splintered like fire-wood, and caissons to explode. At these moments men, horses, fragments of men and horses, stones, earth, and things living and things dead were hurled high into the air with great blasts of flame and smoke, and it was possible to hear miles of exultant yells from the hills opposite. But fresh cannon were brought lumbering up at the gallop and rolled into the places of those dismantled, shot and sh.e.l.l and canister and powder were rushed forward from the reserve, and the grim, silent infantry, the great lumbermen of Maine and Vermont, the shrill-voiced regiments from New York, the shrewd farmers of Ohio and Ma.s.sachusetts, the deliberate Pennsylvanians, and the rest, lay closely, wherever there was shelter, and moistened their lips, and gripped their rifles, and waited--waited.

For two hours that terrible cannonading was maintained. The men who served the guns looked like stokers of ships, for, such was the heat, many of them, casting away first one piece of clothing and then another, were half naked, and black sweat glistened in streams on their chests and backs. As sight-seers crowd in eagerly by one door of a building where there is an exhibition, and come reluctantly out by another and go their ways, so the reserves kept pressing to the front, and the wounded maintained an unceasing reluctant stream to the rear.