Doctor Hathern's daughters

by Mary Jane Holmes

“You are not going to be shot, but to shoot somebody,” she said, patting him on his back. “And we’ll trim the house up better than it is to-day, and Phyllis shall make her best plum pudding, and I shall be so proud of you,” she added, throwing her arms around his neck, and kissing him lovingly.

The next morning he went away and we saw him marching by to the sound of the fife and drum, while I cried as if my heart would break, but Fanny stood upon the horse block by the gate and sent kisses after him until a turn in the road hid him from our sight. We heard from him often during the summer, for many men from our county were in the same regiment, and so, from one and another and from himself word came to us that he was well and had as yet seen no actual fighting, though very anxious to do so. Then the tone of his letters changed a little and he was not quite so ready to fight.

“I tell you what, Fan-and-Ann,” he wrote, “the boys in blue are not such milksops as you think. I have seen quite a lot of ’em, and they are a pretty good sort after all, and they gave me tobacco and hard tack and a newspaper, and said they’d nothing against me personally, but they had enlisted to lick just such upstarts and were going to do it. I’d smile to see them.”

“And so would I,” Fan said, with the utmost scorn, “lick us indeed! I wish I were a man!”

She was growing more bitter every day, and when one evening Phyllis came to me privately and said there was a half-starved Federal soldier hiding in the corn-field, I did not dare tell Fan, but went to him with Phyllis after dark and carried him bread and milk and a blanket to cover him and an umbrella to shield him from the rain. The third day he went away and I never heard from him again until the war was over, when I received a badly written letter, directed wrong side up and signed James Josh, who thanked me for my kindness which he had never forgotten. I passed the letter to Fan, who surprised me by saying, “Yes, I knew all about it; I saw you steal off into the corn-field and saw you feeding that poor wretch, and only a thought of Charlie and what I’d wish someone to do for him kept me from giving notice that a Yankee was hiding in our field. I knew when he went away and saw you and Phyllis coddle him up with sandwiches and hoe-cake and father’s old coat, and you took me to task for flirting in front of the house with Jack Fullerton, who was home on a furlough, when I was really trying to keep him as long as possible so as to let your James Josh get out of the way.”

Fanny was greatly softened at that time and not much like the fierce, outspoken girl who kept us up to fever heat during the second year of the war when the weeks and months dragged so slowly until at last it was winter and news came of the terrible battle of Fredericksburg, when the woods were filled with the dead and dying and the river ran red with blood. Three days after the battle they brought Charlie to us dead, with a bullet in his side and a look of perfect peace on his young face, smooth yet and fair as a girl’s. Some of his friends had found him in the woods, and rather than leave him there had at the risk of their own lives managed to have him carried across the country until at the close of the third day he lay in our best room where so many lilies had been when he went away, but which now echoed to father’s sobs and mine as we bent over our dead boy. Fan never shed a tear, but in a cold, hard voice told the men where to put the body, and then with a start, exclaimed, “What does this mean?” and she pointed to his uniform, which was not the grey he had worn away, but the blue she so hated, and which was much too small for him.

“Some thief exchanged with him, for see, there is no hole where the bullet struck him,” she continued, looking at the coat which was stained with blood, but whole. “Phyllis, come here,” she went on, while father and I sat dumb and helpless, “take off that garb of a dog and put his own clothes on him, his best ones, hanging in his room.”

Phyllis obeyed, and when the soiled and bloody garments lay upon the floor, Fan said, “give me the tongs, I am going to burn them up.”

Then father arose and reaching out his shaking hands saved the blue uniform from the flames.

“Wait, Fan,” he said; “there may be something in the pockets which will tell us whose clothes they are. Remember there are more aching hearts than ours.”