The summer dusk had begun to gather before Octavius heard all that was to be learned of the frightful calamity which had befallen its absent sons. The local roll of death and disaster from Gaines's Mill earlier in the week had seemed incredibly awful. This new budget of horrors from Malvern was far worse.
"Wa'n't the rest of the North doin' anything at all?" a wild-eyed, disheveled old farmer cried out in a shaking, half-frenzied shriek from the press of the crowd round the telegraph office. "Do they think Dearborn County's got to suppress this whole damned rebellion single-handed?"
It seemed to the dazed and horrified throng as if some such idea must be in the minds of the rest of the Union. Surely no other little community—or big community, either—could have had such a hideous blow dealt to it as this under which Octavius reeled. The list of the week for the county, including Gaines's Mill, showed one hundred and eight men dead outright, and very nearly five hundred more wounded in battle. It was too shocking for comprehension.
As evening drew on, men gathered the nerve to say to one another that there was something very glorious in the way the two regiments had been thrust into the front, and had shown themselves heroically fit for that grim honor. They tried, too, to extract solace from the news that the regiments in question had been mentioned by name in the general despatches as having distinguished themselves and their county above all the rest—but it was an empty and heart-sickened pretense at best, and when, about dark, the women folks, who had waited in vain for them to come home to supper, began to appear on the skirts of the crowd, it was given up altogether. In after years Octavius got so that it could cheer those sinister names of Gaines's Mill and Malvern Hill, and swell with pride at the memories they evoked. But that evening no one cheered. It was too terrible.
There was, indeed, a single partial exception to this rule. The regular service of news had ceased—in those days, before the duplex invention, the single wire had most melancholy limitations—but the throng still lingered; and when, in the failing light, the postmaster was seen to step up again on the chair by the door with a bit of paper in his hand, a solemn hush ran over the assemblage.
"It is a private telegram sent to me personally," he explained, in the loud, clear tones of one who had earned his office by years of stump speaking; "but it is intended for you all, I should presume."
The silent crowd pushed nearer, and listened with strained attention as this despatch was read:
Headquarters Sanitary Commission,
Harrison's Landing, Va., Wednesday Morning.To Postmaster Octavius, N. Y.:
No words can describe magnificent record soldiers of Dearborn County, especially Starbuck, made past week. I bless fate which identified my poor services with such superb heroism. After second sleepless night, Col. Starbuck now reposing peacefully; doctor says crisis past; he surely recover, though process be slow. You will learn with pride he been brevetted Brigadier, fact which it was my privilege to announce to him last evening. He feebly thanked me, murmuring, "Tell them at home."
"Julia Parmalee."
In the silence which ensued the postmaster held the paper up and scanned it narrowly by the waning light. "There is something else," he said—"Oh, yes, I see; 'Franked despatch Sanitary Commission.' That's all."
Another figure was seen suddenly clambering upon the chair, with an arm around the postmaster for support. It was the teller of the bank. He waved his free arm excitedly, as he faced the crowd, and cried: