Pocket Island Part 9

"Yes, my child," he answered sadly, "but we must go to him to-morrow. He is in the hospital at Washington and very low."

CHAPTER XIX.

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 const.i.tution 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 sh.o.r.es 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed, 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 grat.i.tude, 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, G.o.d 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 a.s.sailed 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 G.o.d-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 G.o.d spares your life."

And be it said, she kept her promise.

CHAPTER XX.

PLANS FOR HAPPINESS.

Appomattox and a glorious ending of the most sanguinary war in the history of the nineteenth century had come, and with it a few changes in Southton.

Only a part of that brave E Company that three years before marched so proudly away to fight for the Union ever returned, and of those the greater number bore the scars of war and disease. Very many sorrowing women and children were scattered through the town, whose hearts were sore with wounds that only time could heal, and the empty sleeve and the vacant chair were sad reminders on all sides.

The Rev. Jotham still extended his time-worn orthodox arguments to a wearisome length, usually concluding them with more or less varied and vivid pictures of the doom in store for those who failed at once to repent and believe; but strange to say the sinners who were moved by his eloquence were few and far between. It was known that he was not in sympathy with the great majority of the North, or the principles upon which the war had been fought, but believed in the right of secession, and that the North was wrong in its political position. Had he kept these opinions to himself it would have been far wiser; but he made the mistake of giving utterance to them at a Memorial Day service held in his church, which expression was so obnoxious to the most of his audience and such a direct reflection upon the brave men from the town who had shed their blood for their country that one of the leading men of Southton arose at the close of Rev. Jotham's remarks and there and then rebuked him. The affair created quite a disturbance in public feeling and was perhaps one of the indirect causes that eventually led to a division of his church and to the formation of a separate society in another part of the town.

A new princ.i.p.al had a.s.sumed charge of the academy, the trustees having decided for several reasons that a change would be beneficial. Mr.

Webber, who had ruled there for several years, industriously circulated a report that by reason of several very flattering offers to engage in mercantile pursuits, as well as failing health, he had decided to resign. As his voice, and the apparent desire to use it upon any and all possible occasions, showed no cessation of energy, a few skeptical ones were inclined to doubt that his health was seriously affected, and as it was over a year before he accepted any of the flattering offers, they believed he must have had hard work to find them. For the rest the town resumed the old-time even tenor of its way, though there had been added to its annals heroic history, and to its calendar one day of annual mourning.

Aunt Sally Hart said that "Liddy Camp had showed mighty good grit and that young Manson ought to feel purty proud of her," which expression seemed to reflect the general sentiment.

When the autumn days and returning health came to Manson, sunshine seemed to once more smile upon the lives of our two young friends, and how happy they were during the all too short evenings spent together in Liddy's newly furnished parlor, need not be described. It was no longer a courtship, but rather a loving discussion of future plans in life, for each felt bound by an obligation stronger even than love, and how many charming air castles they built out of the firelight flashes shall not be told. In a way, Liddy was a heroine among the little circle of her schoolmates and friends, and deserved to be, for few there were among them who could have found the strength to have faced the ghastly scenes she had, from a sense of duty.

"I do not care to talk about it," she said once to one of those who had been near her in the old days at the academy; "it all came so suddenly I did not stop to think, and if I had it would have made no difference. I did not think of myself at all, or what I was to meet. How horrible it was to be thrust among hundreds of wounded and dying men; to hear what I had to, and see what I did, I cannot describe and do not wish to. Under the same circ.u.mstances," she added quietly, "I should face that awful experience over again if necessary."

Life and all its plans practically resolve themselves into a question of income finally, and no matter how well aimed Cupid's darts may be, the almighty dollar and the ability to obtain possession of it, is of greater weight in the scale than all the arrows the boy-G.o.d ever carried. Even as an academy boy Manson had realized this; faintly at first, and yet with growing force, as his attachment for Liddy increased. With a certain pride in character he had resolved to withhold any declaration of love until he had at least a settled occupation in life; but when it came to going to war and parting, perhaps forever, from the girl he loved, to longer remain silent was to control himself beyond his strength. Now that she had shown how much his life meant to her by an act of devotion and self-sacrifice so unusual, his ambition to obtain a home that he could invite her to share, returned with redoubled force. What to do, or where to turn, he did not know. He was not even recuperated from the terrible ordeal that had so nearly cost him his life; but for all that his ambition was spurring him onward far in advance of his strength. One evening late that autumn, when he found himself unexpectedly alone with Mr. Camp, he said:

"I have for some time wished to express to you my hopes and ask your advice regarding my future plans. First, I want to ask you for Liddy, and beyond that, what I had best turn to to obtain a livelihood. I want Liddy, and I want a home to keep her in."

Mr. Camp looked at him a moment, while a droll smile crept into his face, and then replied:

"I am willing you should have Liddy, of course. I wouldn't have taken her to that hospital to try to save your life if I hadn't believed you worthy of her; but beyond that I don't think I have much to say in the matter anyway. I couldn't keep you apart if I would, and I wouldn't if I could." And then he added a little more seriously: "She is all I have left in my life, and whatever plans you two make, I hope you will consider that."

Manson was silent. The perfect confidence and simple pathos of Mr.

Camp's statement came to him forcibly, and made him realize how much he was asking. He meditated a few moments, and then said:

"I feel that I am asking for more than I deserve, and that I owe you far more than I can ever repay, but believe me, I shall do all in my power."

"We won't worry about that now," replied Mr. Camp, smiling again; "wait till your arm is well, and then we will talk it all over. In the meantime"--and a twinkle came into his eyes--"you have one well arm, and I guess that's all Liddy needs just at present."

The autumn and winter evenings sped by on wings of wind to Liddy and her lover, for all the sweet illusions of life were theirs. Occasionally they called on some of their old schoolmates, or were invited to social gatherings, and how proud she was of her manly escort, and he of the fair girl he felt was all his own, need not be told.

One day in the spring Mr. Camp said to Manson: "How would you like to be a farmer?"

"I have no objections," he replied; "my father is one, and there is no reason why I should be ashamed of it. It means hard work, but I am used to that. I am ready and willing to do anything to earn an honest living."

Mr. Camp looked at him for a moment reflectively, and then said:

"That has the right ring in it, my boy," and after thinking a little longer added: "I'll tell you what I'll do. Charles, if you can get Liddy to set the day I will give her a deed of the house and you a deed of the farm, provided you two will take care of me. That's fair, isn't it?"

Then he added, with a smile, "I guess you can coax her consent if you try hard."