CHAPTER XIX.
THE TRAGEDY OF WAR.
With the early dawn, Zenas rode off to join his militia company; which was summoned to repel the invasion. Loker and McKay were already in the field. They were all in the severe action at Chippewa. Captain Villiers distinguished himself by his heroic daring, and while heading a gallant charge, whereby he covered the retreat of the British, received a rather severe bayonet thrust in his leg. Binding his military scarf around the wound, he remained in his saddle till night, performing the arduous duties of commander of the rear-guard.
The three weeks following were weeks of toilsome marching and counter-marching beneath the burning July sun. More than once Zenas was within an hour's ride of home; but the pressing exigencies of a soldier's life prevented his making even a passing call on those whom he so much loved. He was forced to content himself with messages sent through Neville Trueman, whose sacred calling made him free of the lines of both armies. These messages were full of praise and admiration of the gallant Captain Villiers; and, accompanied by no stinted praise of his own, they were faithfully delivered by the young preacher.
"He will be Colonel before the war is over, I expect," said Neville, "and I am sure no man deserves it better. He is as gentle as he is brave. His treatment of the prisoners is kindness itself."
The Captain, although once at Fort George, commanding a re- enforcement of the garrison, was prevented by his military duties from riding the short three miles that lay between it and The Holms.
One day toward the latter part of July,—it was the twenty-fifth of the month, a day for ever memorable in the annals of Canada,— early in the morning a convoy of schooners and barges, filled with armed men, was seen by Katharine gliding up the Niagara River, their snowy sails gleaming beyond the fringe of chestnuts that bordered the stream. The Union Jack floating gaily at the peak, and the inspiring strains of "Britannia Rules the Waves" swelling on the breeze as the fleet approached, gave the assurance of welcome re-enforcements to the struggling army in the field. Running down to the bank, Katharine exultantly waved her handkerchief in welcome. The redcoats, who thronged the bulwarks, gave a rousing cheer in reply; and an officer in gold lace, with a white plume in his General's hat—who was no other than Sir George Gordon Drummond himself—gaily waved his handkerchief in return.
And right welcome those re-enforcements were that day. Disembarking at Queenston landing, and climbing the steep hill, they marched through smiling orchards and green country roads to the bloody field of Lundy's Lane, where many of them ended life's march for ever.
We shall depend for the further record of that eventful day on the narrative of Zenas, as subsequently reported, with all the vivid touches of personal experience and eye-witness. With bandaged head and one arm in a sling he sat at the kitchen table at The Holms, explaining to his father and some neighbours the fortunes of the fight. His story, disentangled from the interruptions of his auditors, was as follows: "You see," he said, making a rude diagram of the battle on the supper-table with the knives and forks, "General Riall took up a strong position on Lundy's Lane early in the day, with the regulars and the Glengary militia; and Lieutenant-Colonel Robinson [Footnote: Subsequently better known as Sir John Beverly Robinson, Chief Justice of Upper Canada.] commanded the sedentary militia. The enemy lay on the other side of Chippewa Creek, and didn't move till late in the afternoon. If they had come on in the morning, they could have crushed us like an egg-shell," and he suited the action to the word, by crushing into fragments one that lay upon the table.
"But we got it hard enough as it was. General Winfield Scott, [Footnote: Afterwards Commander-in-chief of the United States armies.] began pounding away at us with his artillery just before sundown. We expected to be re-enforced before long, so we determined to hold the hill where our own battery was planted at any cost. The sun went down; it got darker and darker; still the cannon flashed their tongues of flame, and the deadly rattle of the musketry went on without a minute's pause for three mortal hours. The Yankee sharp-shooters crept up in the darkness behind a screen of barberry bushes growing in the panels of a rail fence, and at a volley picked off all the gunners of our battery but three. Then, with a cheer, they rushed forward with the bayonet, and wrestled in fierce hand-to-hand fight with our infantry for the guns, which were alternately taken and re-taken on either side, till the hill-slope was slippery with blood.
"Our troop of dragoons was ordered to charge up the hill and re- capture the guns. I had only time to lift up my heart in prayer, and say 'Lord have mercy upon us,' when a roundshot struck my horse. He reared straight up and fell backward, partly falling upon me. All at once everything got black, and I heard not a sound of the din of battle that was raging around me. After a while, I don't know how long, it seemed like hours, I became aware of a deep thunderous sound that seemed to fill the air and cause the very earth to tremble, and I knew it was the roar of the Falls. Then I felt an intolerable aching, as if every bone in my body was broken. I opened my eyes and saw the moon shining through the drifting clouds. I was parched with thirst and raging with fever, and felt a sharp pain piercing my temple. Raising my arm to my head, I found my hair all clotted with blood from a scalp wound.
"Just then I heard a rattle and a cheer, and galloping down hill full in the moonlight, right toward the spot where I lay, a brass field-gun fully horsed, the drivers lashing the horses with all their might. I was afraid they would gallop over me, and raised my arm to warn them aside. But they either didn't see or couldn't heed, and on came the heavy cannon, lurching from side to side, the polished brass gleaming in the moonlight like gold. I heard a deep shuddering groan as the heavy wheels rolled over a wounded man beside me, crushing the bones of his legs like pipe stems. As the plunging horses galloped past, one iron-shod hoof struck fire against a stone just beside my head. In the momentary flash I could see the hoof poised just above my face. I remember I noticed that it had been badly shod, and one of the nails was bent over the edge of the shoe. By a merciful Providence, instead of dashing my brains out he stepped on one side, and I received no further hurt. After the roar of the battle had ceased, while the solemn stars looked down like eyes of pitying angels on the field of slaughter, I managed to crawl to the road-side and wet my parched lips with some muddy water that lay in a cattle track. In the morning Trueman found me and brought me off the field, and here I am laid up for one while. I pray God I may never see another battle. It is a sight to make angels weep and devils rejoice, to see men thus mangling each other like beasts of prey."
"Amen!" said his father. "Even when it is just, war is the greatest of calamities; and when unjust, it is the greatest of crimes."
Sadder still was the story told by Neville Trueman to Katharine Drayton, as he conveyed to her the dying message of Captain Villiers. The Captain was gallantly cheering on his company, when a bullet pierced his lungs. He fell from his horse and was bore to the rear, and carried into the little Methodist Church, which had been turned into a temporary hospital. Here Neville Trueman was busily engaged in far different ministrations from those which were the wont of that consecrated spot. The seats had been removed, and beds of unthrashed wheat sheaves from the neighbouring harvest-fields were strewn upon the floor.
As the bleeding form of Captain Villiers was brought in, Neville saw by his deathly pallor and his laboured breathing that he had not many hours to live. He sat down beside him on the floor and took the hand of the dying man, which he softly caressed as it lay passive in his grasp. Opening his eyes, a wan smile of recognition flickered over the pallid countenance. He tried to speak, but in vain. Then he pointed to his breast pocket, and made signs which Neville interpreted as a wish that he should take something out. He obeyed the suggestion, and found the copy of Wesley's Hymns given him by Katharine Drayton, but now, alas! dyed with the life- blood of a loyal heart.
"Tell her," said the dying man, but he faltered in his speech. Then, with difficulty opening the book, he turned to a passage where the leaf was turned down and a hymn was marked with the letters "H.V.," the initials of Herbert Villiers. The hymn was that sublime one beginning—
"Now I have found the ground wherein
Sure my soul's anchor may remain:
The wounds of Jesus, for my sin
Before the world's foundation slain;
Whose mercy shall unshaken stay,
When heaven and earth are fled away."
The dying eyes looked eagerly at Neville as the latter read the words; but when he replied, "Yes, I will tell her, and give her hack her book enriched with such a sacred recollection," a look of infinite content rested on the pallid face.
"I bless God I ever met her," faltered the failing voice. "Tell her," it continued with a final effort, "Tell her—we shall meet again—where they neither marry—nor are given in marriage—but are as the angels of God in heaven!" And with a smile of ineffable peace the happy spirit departed from the carnage of earth's battles to the everlasting peace of the skies.
Tears of pity fell fast from the eyes of the tender-hearted Katharine as she listened to the touching narration. As soon as she could sufficiently command her feelings she wrote a sympathetic letter to the now doubly-bereaved widow of the stately Melton Hall, amid the broad ancestral acres of Berkshire. She enclosed therewith the jewelled cross, which had been committed to her keeping; but the blood-stained hymn-book she placed in her little cabinet, beside the Prayer-Book with its leaves of rosemary for remembrance and pansies for thoughts.
The fellow-officers of Captain Villiers erected over the grave in which their comrade was buried, beneath the walls of the humble Methodist Church, a marble slab commemorating his valour and his heroic death. With the lapse of five-and-sixty years, however, its brief inscription has become well nigh illegible through the weathering of the elements, and the grave has become indistinguishable from the mouldering mounds on every side around it. But beneath the funeral hatchment of his father, on the chancel walls of Melton-Mowbray Church, is a marble shield charged with a cross enguled and a wyvern volant; and a record of the untimely death of the hope and last scion of the house on the banks of the far-off Niagara.