Westways: A Village Chronicle

by S. Weir Mitchell

Of all that followed John Penhallow in later years remembered most distinctly the half hour of astonishing relief from pain. As his senses one by one went off guard, he seemed to himself to be watching with increase of ease the departure of some material tormentor. In after years he recalled with far less readiness the days of varied torment which required more and more morphia. Why I know not, the remembrance of pain as time goes by is far less permanent than that of relief or of an hour of radiant happiness. Long days of suffering followed as the tortured nerves recorded their far-spread effects in the waste of the body and that failure of emotional control which even the most courageous feel when long under the tyranny of continuous pain. McGregor watched him with anxiety and such help as was possible. On the tenth of April John awakened after a night of assisted sleep to find himself nearly free from pain. Tom came early into the ward.

"Good news, John," he said. "Lee has surrendered. You look better. Your resignation will be accepted, and I have a leave of absence. Economy is the rule. We are sending the wounded north in ship-loads. Home! Home! old fellow, in a week."

The man on the cot looked up. "You have a letter, I see," and as he spoke broke into childlike tears, for so did long suffering deal with the most self-controlled in those terrible years, which we do well to forgive, and to remember with pride not for ourselves alone. The child-man on the bed murmured, "Home was too much for me."

The surgeon who loved him well said, "Read your letter—you are not the only man in this ward whom pain has made a baby. Home will complete your cure—home!"

"Thank you, Tom." He turned to the letter and using the one half-useful hand opened it with difficulty. What he first felt was disappointment at the brevity of the letter. He was what Blake called home-hungry. With acute perception, being himself a homeless man, Blake made his diagnosis of that form of heart-ache which too often adds a perilously depressing agency to the more material disasters of war. Pain, fever, the inevitable ward odours, the easier neighbour in the next bed who was of a mind to be social, the flies—those Virginia flies more wily than Lee's troopers—and even trifling annoyances made Penhallow irritable. He became a burden to hospital stewards and over-worked orderlies, and now the first look at Leila's letter disturbed him, and as he read he became indignant:

"DEAR JOHN: Mr. Blake's telegram telling us of your wound caused us some anxiety, which was made less by Dr. McGregor's somewhat hastily written letter. Aunt Ann thought it was excusable in so busy a man. Poor Uncle Jim on hearing it said, 'Yes, yes—why didn't John write—can't be much the matter.' This shows you his sad failure. He has not mentioned it since.

"It is a relief to us to know that you were not dangerously hurt. It seems as if this sad war and its consequences were near to end. Let us hear soon. Aunt Ann promises to write to you at once.

"Yours truly,

"LEILA GREY."

He threw the letter down, and forgetting that he had asked Blake and the doctor not to alarm his people, was overcome by the coldness of Leila's letter. He lay still, and with eyes quite too full felt that life had for him little of that which once made it sweet with what all men hold most dear. He would have been relieved if he could have seen Leila when alone she read and read again McGregor's letter, and read with fear between the lines of carefully guarded words what he would not say and for days much feared to say. She sat down and wrote to John a letter of such tender anxiety as was she felt a confession she was of no mind to make. He was in no danger. Had he been, she would have written even more frankly. But her trouble about her uncle was fed from day to day by what her aunt could not or would not see, and it was a nearer calamity and more and more distressing. Then she sat thinking what was John like now. She saw the slight figure, so young and still so thoughtful, as she had smiled in her larger experience of men when they had sat and played years ago with violets on the hillside of West Point. No, she was unprepared to commit herself for life, for would he too be of the same mind? For a moment she stood still indecisive, then she tore up her too tender letter and wrote the brief note which so troubled him. She sent it and then was sorry she had not obeyed the impulse of the kindlier hour.