Shoulder-Straps: A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862

by Henry Morford

"Oh Lord!" exclaimed the not-very-reverent Webster. "What next, I wonder? Awhile ago we had shrieks: now we have groans! I wonder if this place is haunted—just a little?"

"Hark! there it was again!" said Crawford. "It was a groan, and not very far from us, either!"

"In that case," said Webster, "as it is incumbent upon two members of the Advance Guard not to come all this distance for nothing, we shall be under the necessity of hunting out the groan. Ah!" and the speaker paused a moment. "By Jupiter it is a groan. I heard it myself that time. It is here, under this shed!"

The long legs of Webster at once made a movement in that direction, followed by the shorter and more symmetrical ones of Crawford. They reached the door of the wood-house, opening towards the burned mansion. The door was unclosed, and they could look within. Just as they reached the door both heard another groan—quite sufficient to satisfy them that they were not in error as to the place from which the sound had proceeded. A faint red light from the fallen embers of the burning house shone within the rough shed from the narrow door—scarce enough, at first, to make objects distinctly visible; but as they gazed the eyes grew accustomed to the dim light and they could distinctly trace what the building contained. They stepped slowly within, no motion from the occupants giving indication that their presence was known; and this is what they saw—dimly, but clearly enough for the purposes of recognition.

On a straw pallet lay an old man, thin-faced and hollow-eyed, his scanty white hair streaming backward on the end of the pallet, which had been turned up to form a pillow. Over him and reaching from his feet to his breast, was drawn a sheet, and on that sheet lay one of his thin, wrinkled and nerveless hands. His eyes were shut, and he might have appeared to be asleep, but that ever and anon there broke from him one of those low but distinct groans indicative of severe inward pain, which had startled the two Zouaves. But the old man was not the most singular or the most painful feature of this spectacle. Beside him on the ground, kneeling, and rocking backward and forward with that peculiar motion so indicative of intense and hopeless grief when used by some of the European peasantry, was a young girl—apparently very young, very small and very girlish, though there was something about her which even in that dim light gave the impression that she was not a little girl, but a woman.

So much the two soldiers saw, while neither of the occupants of the shed seemed to be aware of their presence; but Webster, an intensely practical man and more fertile in resources than overflowing with delicacy, was not quite satisfied with the view obtained, and instantly determined to improve it.

"Wait here—I am going for a light," he said, and stepping hastily from the door he ran to the burning embers of the house, caught the end of a piece of pine scantling of which the other was in full blaze, and in a moment more entered the door of the shed, his novel torch throwing an odd, ghastly light upon all the objects within the little building. Then and not till then did the intruders become aware that they stood face to face with one who was dying, in the old man on the pallet,—and with a woman of a rare and almost startling order of beauty, in the young girl who knelt beside him. Her form, as they could see, even in her kneeling position, was almost childish in the shortness of its stature and the petite mould of her limbs; and yet there was nothing thin or attenuated about her, and the epithet "fragile" could not have been applied to her with half the justice of that very opposite word, "willowy." Her face was infantile in the smallness of the features, in their perfect round, and in the expression of helpless placidity which seemed to lie upon it. But those features were yet classical in outline, and the mouth, especially, was very sweet and budding. The open eyes were blue as heaven; and the hair, of which there was a great wealth, loosed from all restraint and sweeping back on her shoulders, was of that delicate and almost impalpable blonde so seldom met (even among the English, who arrogate to themselves the purest blonde hair in the world) and so universally admired—nay, almost worshipped.

It is not to be supposed that so long a time was necessary for the two Zouaves to catch the particulars here set down, as would be indicated by the length of the description itself; and certainly no such length of time was allowed them without interruption. It was now evident that neither the dying man nor the young girl had before been aware of the entrance of the strangers; but as Webster entered with his torch of pine, the sudden light startled both. The old man's eyes did not unclose, but the young girl's looked around with a startled glance; she rose to her feet, clasped her hands imploringly, while so sad and beseeching an expression rested upon her face, that she might have been the discarded Peri pleading for her lost place in heaven,—and said:

"Go away, please! Grandfather is dying. Don't disturb him—please don't!"

"My poor girl, we do not mean to disturb him, or you," said Crawford, advancing a little way towards the side of the pallet, and throwing into his voice all its native sympathy and kindness. "We are friends."