God help us! us women, with our wild, inordinate affections, when Death waits in ambush for our darlings, whom we are powerless to save from the smallest of life's ills and perils! A letter came at last, eight dear pages, with all the margins filled. Long, confidential, loving, with just a thought of sadness in it; a slight, almost imperceptible shadow resting on the glowing hopes with which he left; yet bright withal, bright like himself. The charm of novelty was potent yet. How I read it o'er and o'er, this first dear message from him; how I kissed the senseless thing; how my tears fell upon it; how day and night I wore it on my heart, until another took its place!
They came at stated intervals now, and as the time wore on, and their tone changed, little by little, I knew that the hard life he led began to tell upon him—that, petted, fondled, cherished as he had been, unfitted for hardship of any kind, they grew at times almost too great for calm endurance. He never complained, my grand, brave boy; he spoke of them lightly always, sometimes jestingly, but he could not deceive that fine interior sense. I knew there were times when he turned heartsick from the wild life that claimed him; I could see how his noble nature shrank from all that was coarse and revolting in it; how he longed for fireside joys and sweet domestic peace, and pined with dreary homesickness; how his heart cried out for me in the melancholy night. And then even this comfort, that had softened the dull, longing pain within, was denied me—no letters came. Mail after mail went and came, and I grew feverish with suspense. I imagined him beset by ghastly perils, and, with torturing uncertainty wearing my very life away, I watched and waited as women are wont to do. Then dark rumors were afloat of foes making a desperate advance, and of bloody battle pending. One night a horror fell upon my troubled sleep—an appalling gloom, a shuddering, suffocating sense of some impending doom. Battling fiercely and blindly with this dread, invisible something, I awoke in deadly fright, to find the terror no less clear to my perceptions, no less palpable and real, and to wrestle with it still. Some blind instinct in me called aloud for air; with difficulty mastering an almost overpowering impulse to rush out into the night, I flew to the window, raised it, and looked out. A fierce storm was raging—a storm of whose very existence I had until that moment been unconscious. The thunder rolled, and muttered, and broke in wild, fearful crashes. Sheets of lightning every instant lighted up the blackness, and made the sky terrific. Gushes of wind and rain wet and chilled me through and through. Unmindful of it, with that fine interior sense aroused, I listened with all my soul—not to the thunder's fearful voice, to the wild beating of the storm, or to the wind's melancholy moaning, but to something on the tempestuous air, and yet a stranger to it.
There came a lull in the storm at last, and then, O God! O God! through the sullen gloom, his voice was calling to me. Now faint and low, as if his life was ebbing; then raised in agony, wild with supplication and sharp with pain. I saw him covered with gaping wounds, on a hideous field, piled with slain and soaked with blood. I went mad, I think: I have a vague remembrance of rushing out into that fearful storm, undressed as I was, with wild resolve to follow the sound of the voice, to reach him somehow, or die in the mad attempt; of being brought back, shut up in my room, and a sort of guard placed over me; of making wild attempts to rush out again, and struggling ineffectually with those that held me back—of raving wildly; then of long and dreamless slumbers, when I had become exhausted, and the sharp agony was past; of rousing myself to go about in a listless, apathetic way, waiting with dulled sense for lists of killed and wounded; of the doctor bringing the paper to me and saying, with his face all light: 'He is not dead; you will find his name among the wounded;' of finding where he was, eluding their vigilance, and travelling night and day until I reached the place. All this seems vague and unreal, as a half-forgotten dream—too dim and lifeless for memory. Entire change of scene, new sights and faces, and, more than all, the conviction that the time had come for action now, and that he would need me, roused me from this misty state a little. When I landed at the place, I think I recovered the clear consciousness of my surroundings, while standing in the provost-marshal's office (the city was under military rule) waiting my turn to speak.
Then I thought for the first time what a mad thing it was in me to have come at all—at least, to have come in the way I had come; I, so unpractical, so wofully lacking in that sterling common sense, that potent weapon with which women battled successfully with the stern realities of life; and thinking, too, with a dull pain at my heart, that doubtless my darling would suffer by reason of my ignorance and inability. I studied the mass of strange faces about me, thinking to which I would turn for help, if help were needed. After reading them, one after another, and rejecting them, I turned at last to a group in front of me, and singled out one that was addressing the others, a man of consequence among them—at least a certain superiority of air and manner led to that conjecture. He had a fine open face, whose expression changed continually; and the more I studied the face, the more I placed a blind trust and reliance in it. Attracted by the magnetism of a fixed gaze, probably, his eyes wandered from the group about him, after a little while, wandered aimlessly about the room, and then met mine. Seeing that I was watching him, or observing, perhaps, that I was suffering, though, Heaven knows, the sight of misery of all kinds there was common enough, he crossed the room and came to me. 'You may be obliged to wait some time longer yet,' he said, in a tone of hearty kindness; 'you look ill, madam. You had better sit down.' He found a chair and brought it to me. He was on the point of leaving, but I grasped his arm as he turned to go. 'If you have any influence here,' I said, in a half-distracted way, 'tell the clerk, tell somebody to let my turn come next. My brother is here and wounded; I have travelled night and day to get to him; it's dreadful to be so near, and yet to wait and wait.' He turned in grave surprise, and looked at me narrowly, fancying, from my incoherency, I was taking leave of my senses possibly. 'Your name, young lady?' he said, at last. I gave it, 'Margaret Dunn.' He started at the name, and a heavy shadow came over his face: 'And your brother,' he said, hurriedly, 'is Lieutenant Dunn, of the Fifty-fifth Illinois Volunteers, Company A? I am surgeon of the Fifty-fifth; I know him well. He was a brave fellow, and as fine, manly, and handsome a fellow as one need wish to see.' He ended with a sigh, and mingling with the shadow there came a look of pity in his face. The past tense, which I am sure he used unconsciously; the look of pity; the sigh but half suppressed, overpowered me with dread. 'He has not died of his wounds?' I gasped, grasping his arm convulsively, 'O God! he is not dead?' 'He is alive,' said the doctor, gravely. 'Father, I thank Thee, Thou hast heard my prayer!'
The sudden transition from that mortal dread of death to the blessed certainty of life was too much; my joy was too great; forgetful of my surroundings, unmindful of his presence, I wept and sobbed aloud. When I had controlled my emotion in a measure, or at least their stormy outward manifestation, I found the doctor regarding me with the same grave face. 'You should not have come here in your present weak, excited state,' he said, at last, 'or, rather, you should not have come at all. From sights and sounds of a hospital, even strong men turn with a shudder. It's no place for a delicate woman.' 'He is there,' I murmured, tremulously; 'I can suffer anything for those I love.' Regarding me in silence for a moment, he looked as if taking my measure. 'These women that can bear,' he said, with a sigh, 'sometimes overrate their powers of endurance.' 'Do you think I shall have to wait much longer? do you think I can go soon now?' I questioned, appealingly, breaking the silence that had fallen between us. 'No, you must wait your turn,' said the doctor, decidedly; 'besides, you are not calm enough yet; the surgeons are at work in the ward where we are going. They are taking off a man's limb—two or three of them, for that matter. I shan't take you there until the operations are finished.' Then first came the horrid thought that he might be mutilated in the same way. Vague, indistinct, dreadful visions uprose before me, of all sorts and kinds of horrid disfigurement, and I grew sick and faint. 'Not his limb!' I gasped, struggling with a deathly faintness. 'No, not his,' said the doctor, sorrowfully. The same cloud was still there that had settled on his face when he first spoke of him; the same pity for me shining through it. 'There is a room here where the ladies go when they have long to wait. You had better go in there and rest yourself. I will bring you some tea and something light and palatable in the shape of food, and you must eat and drink. Confiscated property, you see,' he said, as he entered; 'a rebel family walked out, and we walked in; comfortable quarters.' I noticed then there was a carpet on the floor, sofa, mirrors, and other comforts. 'Sit down,' said the doctor. He had taken the tone of command with me—a tone I would have resented at any other time; now, nerveless and weak, relying on him solely, I obeyed him like a sick child. He brought the tea, watched me while I drank it, looked on while I choked down tears and food together. He ordered me to go to sleep, and left me. Doubtless even this command had its effect. Things grew dreamy and indistinct after a while; perhaps I slept a little; but the time seemed very, very long. At last his tap at the door roused me from this half-conscious state. 'Ready?' he briefly questioned, as he looked in, a moment after. I said yes, tremulously: now that the time had come, I trembled so I could scarcely keep my feet. He gave me his arm as we went out together. 'It's not far,' he said, encouragingly, 'just across here.' The fresh air did me good. Quite likely, the conversation he perseveringly maintained on indifferent subjects, in spite of my random replies, was also of service to me. I grew calmer as we went along. The distance was but short, and we soon reached the place of our destination—a large hotel, which had been hurriedly converted into a hospital.
'Come,' said the doctor, pausing with his hand upon the door, and turning to me, 'cheer up! There is no misery, after all, but what is in the comparative degree. Things are never so bad but that they may have been worse. I dare say, on occasion you can be a brave little woman.'
'I can,' I returned, eagerly, too grateful for his penetration, or at least his good opinion, and too sad and abstracted altogether, to notice that he was paying me a compliment. 'I can, indeed; indeed, you haven't seen the best part of me.'
He smiled just the ghost of a smile in answer, as we went in. He led me through several rooms into what had been a large dining hall—a chill, bare, desolate place. Cots were ranged up and down the room, cots across it, cots filled up the centre, and all, all filled with sick and wounded men. I thought if I was once in the room with my brother, some instinct would lead me to him; but I felt no drawing toward any one of those miserable bedsides, and a chill of disappointment fell upon me. 'Take me to the ward where my brother is lying,' I said to the doctor, pleadingly, 'ah, pray do!' 'This is the ward,' he replied, but he did not take me to him. He stopped at every cot we passed. Of my burning impatience, which he could not choose but see, of the urgent and almost passionate appeals I made to hasten his progress, he took no notice whatever. He stopped almost every moment; he felt the pulse of one patient, questioned another, dealt out medicine here and there—took his own time for everything. We stopped at last where, on the outside of the coverlet, lay a wounded soldier, half dressed; a poor, mutilated creature; a leg and an arm were gone. The face was turned toward the wall, away from us; not a muscle moved; he was sleeping, probably. 'Take me to my brother,' I piteously moaned, shuddering with horror as I turned from the unaccustomed sight. 'I have waited so long; do take me to my brother.' 'This is somebody's brother!' said the doctor, sharply. Something in the tone, not the sharpness of it—something half familiar in the broken outline of the form, caused a half-suffocating sense of a vague, unutterable horror. A deathly faintness seized me; I sank into a chair beside the bed. The doctor gave me water to drink—hastily and silently sprinkled some water upon my head and face. There was a movement of the poor maimed form upon the bed—he gave me a warning look—the face turned toward us. It was my darling's! 'My life!' Shivering and shuddering I threw myself upon the narrow bed beside him, clasped my poor darling in my arms, and held his stricken heart to mine. The hard, defiant look upon his features melted into one of tenderness—down the worn face the tears fell slowly. 'I didn't know as you would love me just the same,' he said. It was his right arm that was gone. Calling him by every endearing name with wild expressions of affection, I wiped the tears tenderly away, covering the dear face with kisses, while my own fell fast. The doctor left us together for a little—albeit used to scenes like this, wiping his eyes as he went away.
A gust of bitter passion swept over my darling. He started up. 'Rascally rebels!' he cried; 'cursed bullets! Why couldn't they have been aimed at my heart, and killed me! I was willing to give my life—but to make a wreck, a broken hull of me! Look at me, Maggie, a poor, maimed wretch. What am I fit for? Who will care for me now? To be an object of loathing!' he continued, between his set teeth; 'to be a sight of horror; to win, perhaps, after she gets used to the deformity, a little meagre love for charity's sake; to be scorned, and loathed, and pitied; if I could get only off from the face of the earth—out of the sight of men; if God would let me die!' Wounded sorely as he was, his boyish vanity in his really handsome person, his manly pride in its strength, was more sorely wounded still. Yes, strangers would think him a sight to behold: had not even I turned shuddering from that disfigured form, before I knew it was my darling's? He was ruined for life, and he was young too—only nineteen. He was very weak, and this passionate outbreak of feeling had exhausted him. It was but a flash of his old fire at best. His head sank back upon my arm again; he lay with his eyes closed, resting for a little; when he spoke again, his voice was low and wavering, tremulous with tears.
'I wouldn't care so much, only——' He paused, hesitated, drew with difficulty a little locket from his bosom, and gazed upon it tearfully. A jealous pain shot through my heart. I had thought until that moment that I was all in all to him, first in his affections, as he was in mine; that no rival shared his heart. This was the bitterest pang of all. I looked down at the beautiful face set in the locket, perfect as to form and color, with such a fierce hatred of its original as I hope in God's name I shall never feel again for any mortal breathing.