CHAPTER XLI
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.