He could not have told, under oath, who gave the command for that supplemental charge upon the supporting force. And yet his tongue uttered it, and he was in the front, still waving his sword through the red mist and letting it fall with demoniac force upon every thing that stood in his way,—when the last hope of the rebels was thus broken. He had known but little, most of the time: after that he knew literally nothing except that his fierce joy had turned to pain. As if through miles of forest he heard the notes of the bugles sounding the recall; and he had a dim consciousness of hearing the soldiers speaking of him in words that would have given him great pleasure had he been alive to appreciate them! Then he was back at the bridge. Kilpatrick was there, somebody cheered, and the General held out his hand to him. He tried to hand him back the sword that had done such good service, said: "I have brought it—back—" and spoke no more. Then and only then, as he fell from his blown and beaten gray, they knew that his first charge had a likelihood of being his last—that a Minie bullet, received so long before that some of the blood lay dried upon his coat, had passed through him from breast to back,—thank God not from back to breast!—so near the heart that even the surgeon could not say whether it had touched or missed it!
CHAPTER XXIII.
Once more at West Philadelphia—September and Change—Last glimpses of Kitty Hood and Dick Compton—Robert Brand and his Invited Guest—The News of Death—Old Espeth Graeme as a Seeress—The Despatch from Alexandria—The Quest of Brand and Margaret Hayley.
Hurrying rapidly towards its close, this narration must become yet more desultory and at times even more fragmentary, than it has been in the past. The seven-league boots of story must be pulled on, however unwillingly, and many a spot that would have been lingered lovingly over at the commencement of the journey, cleared now with a glance and a bound. The few pages that remain, in fact, may justify a change in the figure, appearing more like lightning glimpses from railroad-car windows than connected and leisurely views of the whole landscape of story.
September on West Philadelphia, where it seems but yesterday, though really three months ago, that we saw the fair June morning and inhaled the perfume of the sweet June roses. Those roses, the companions in life and death of that with which Margaret Hayley was toying on the morning when she met the crushing blow of her life,—had long since sighed out their last breath of fragrance and faded away, to be followed now by the bright green leaves amid which they had clustered and peeped and hidden. The waving grain fields which had formed so pleasant a portion of the June landscape, were changed as much, though less sadly. Bright golden wheat that had formed part of it, lay heaped in the farmer's granaries; and puffed loaves with crisp brown crust, made from that which had still further progressed in its round of usefulness to man, lay on the baker's counter. There was short stubble where the grain had waved, and over it the second growth of clover was weaving its green mantle of concealment. In the peach orchards the fruit hung ripe to tempt the fingers; the apples were growing more golden amid the masses of leaves where they coyly sheltered themselves from the sun; and on the garden trellises there already began to be dots of purple among the amber green of the grape clusters. There was less of bright, glossy green in the foliage—nature's summer coat had been some time worn and began to give tokens of the rain and wind and sun it had encountered. The birds sang in the branches, but their song seemed more staid and less sprightly, as if they too had felt the passage of the months, grown older, and could be playful children no more. Occasionally the long clarionet chirp of a locust would break out and trill and die away upon the air, telling of fading summer and the decline of life so sweetly and yet so sadly that decay became almost a glory. The mellow, golden early afternoon of the year, as June had been its late morning—not less beautiful, perhaps, but oh how immeasurably less sprightly and bewitching—how much more calm, sober and subduing!
Nature moves onward, and humanity seldom stands still, if it does not outstrip the footsteps of the mother. Something of the changes that had fallen during the preceding three months upon that widely varied group of residents beyond the Schuylkill who have supplied characters to this narration, is already known: what remains may be briefly told at this stage and in the closing events soon to follow. Of those changes to Eleanor Hill, Nathan Bladesden and Dr. Pomeroy, directly; of those to the members of the Brand household, yet sooner; of those to two minor characters who will make no further appearance upon the stage during this life-drama, at once. Let that two be Dick Compton, farmer, and Kitty Hood, school-mistress. The latter yet managed her brood of troublesome children, who still sailed their vessels that had succeeded to the evanescent three-master "Snorter, of Philadelphia," at playtime, in the little pond before the rural school-house, and performed other juvenile operations by sea and shore; but a great change had fallen upon the merry, self-willed little girl with the brown eyes and the wavy brown hair. The school had a mistress, but that mistress had a master—a sort of "power behind the throne" not seldom managed by one sex or the other, towards all persons "in authority." No bickerings at the school-house door, to be afterwards forgotten in explanations and kisses, now. Richard Compton found his way there, occasionally and perhaps oftener, but he always came in at once instead of the school-mistress going out to meet him with a bashful down-casting of the eyes and a pretty flush of modesty upon the cheek; and he made so little concealment about the visits that he often managed them so as to wait until school was dismissed and then walked all the way home with her! If the young lovers yet had secrets, they found some other place than the neighborhood of the school-house door, for their utterance. And the big girls and the bigger boys, who used to enjoy such multitudes of sly gibes at the school-mistress and her "beau," had lost all their material of amusement. The very last attempt at jocularity in that direction had been some time before effectually "squelched" by the dictum of the biggest boy in school: "You boys, jest stop peeking at 'em! He ain't her beau no more—he's her husband; and you jest let 'em do what they're a mind to!"
That is the fact, precisely—no less assured because approached with a little necessary circumlocution. Dick Compton had come back from Gettysburgh with the Reserves, unwounded and a hero. Carlton Brand was gone, and the only object of jealousy removed. And before Kitty had quite emerged from her "valley of humiliation" at the unfortunate slap and unpatriotic upbraiding, she found it too late to emerge at all. The wedding-day had been set and the marriage taken place, almost before she had any idea that such things were in immediate contemplation! Kitty Hood was "Mrs. Richard Compton," and that was the secret of the visits no longer stolen and the unabashed walking home together. Not that the visits of the young farmer to the school excited no commotion, now-a-days, but that the commotion was of a different character. All the big boys and some of the big girls hated him, as he strode up the aisle with his broad, hearty: "'Most ready to go home, Kitty?" and his proprietary taking possession of her with his eyes: hated him because he had to some extent come between her and them, and because there was a rumor that "after November he was not going to allow her to keep school any more." Perhaps there were good reasons for this resolution, into which we shall certainly make no more attempt to pry than was made by the big boys themselves! God's blessing on the young couple, with as much content in the farm-house as can well fall to the lot of a small indefinite number,—and with as few misunderstandings, coldnesses and jealousies as may be deemed necessary by the powers that preside over married life, to fit them for that life in which "they neither marry nor are given in marriage!" And so exit Mr. and Mrs. Richard Compton, for whom we have done all that the friend and the minister could do, leaving Providence and the doctor to take care of the remainder.
That matter properly disposed of, it becomes necessary to visit the house of Robert Brand once more, on the morning of Friday the eighteenth day of September, after an absence from it of nearly the three months before designated. Change here, too. Besides whatever might have been wrought in the master of the house during that period, of which we shall be soon advised, there had been a marked difference wrought in the relations sustained by good, warm-hearted, sisterly, darling little Elsie. There had been no return to the house, of the old family physician, first expatriated, so to speak, by word of mouth, and then bull-dogged and threatened with the protrusion of loaded muskets from convenient windows and the application of the strong arms of old Elspeth Graeme who could handle the bull-dog. The doctor's-bill had long before been settled, and (let us put the whole truth upon record) spent! Then Robert Brand had been again seized with terrible illness and suffering, rendering a physician necessary; and what resource was left except the before-despised professional services of Dr. James Holton? None whatever. So the old man thought and so Elsie Brand knew. Result, Dr. James Holton had suddenly found himself, in July, the medical adviser of the Brands, and the adviser, mental, moral and medical, of Elsie. He had since so remained, seeming to do marvels at re-establishing the shattered constitution of the invalid and setting him once more on his natural feet, and with a pleasant prospect that all the difficulties were smoothed out of the way of his eventual union with Elsie, when a little more time and a little enlarged practice should make their marriage advisable. And Elsie had grown almost happy once more—quite happy in the regard of a good man whom she loved with all the warmth of the big heart in her plump little body, and yet restless, nervous and tearful when she thought of the brother cherished so dearly, of his broken love, his alienated father, his absence in a strange land, and the probability that she could never again lay her golden head upon his breast and look up into his eyes as to the noblest and most godlike of them all.