The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, August, 1864 / Devoted To Literature And National Policy

by Various

I must not dwell on this. The days rolled on, and spring brightened the air, the grass was green again, the dying hope in my heart revived, and I listened again to the wren's song, and thought it yet promised a summer for my life. But that was the year of the Peninsular campaign, and the dying leaves fell on the graves of our bravest and brightest, and the autumn wind sighed a lamentation in our ears, and our hearts were mourning bitterly for the defeats of the summer, and no less bitterly for the dear-bought glory of Antietam. And winter came again: hope fled with the swallows, and my youth began to leave me.

In the late autumn I went to New York, to pay a visit to a friend. One night I went with my brother to the theatre. The play was stupid, and the entr'actes were long. In the middle of the second act, while some horrible nonsense was being talked upon the stage, I looked around the theatre, and saw no face I had ever seen before, when a lady near me moved her fan, and, a little distance beyond her, I saw—with a start I saw—the face that was never long absent from my thoughts. Changed and older, and brown and bearded; but I knew him; and he knew me, and smiled; and there was no doubt in my mind. I was not even surprised. But to the sickness of sudden joy soon succeeded the sickness of apprehension. What brought him there? And what would be done to him if he were discovered? How could I see him and speak to him? Oh! could it be possible that we might not meet more nearly! I wonder I did not die during that quarter of an hour. I turned and looked at my brother; his eyes were fixed upon the stage, and he was as curiously unmoved as if the world were still steady and firm beneath my feet.

I did not look at Edward again; I feared to betray him; and the green curtain fell, and my brother said, if I did not mind being left alone for a few minutes, he would go. He left me, and Edward came to me, and once more I saw him, and once more I heard his voice. He stayed only one moment, only long enough to make an appointment with me for the next morning, and then he left the theatre. The people around us thought probably that he was a casual acquaintance, if indeed they thought about it at all; and when my brother came back, he found me looking listless and bored, and apologized for having been detained.

I had—and still have, thank God!—a friend in whom I trusted; to her I had recourse, and it was by her help that I was enabled to keep my appointment. Only those who have known the pain of such a parting can ever hope to know the joy of such a meeting. I would like to make the rest of this as short as possible. Edward had run the blockade to see me; he had been to Washington, had stayed there three days, had heard of my absence, obtained my address, and followed me to New York; he had waited until twilight, when he had come to look at the house where I was staying; as he was walking slowly on the opposite side of the street, he had seen me come out with my brother, and had followed us to the theatre. He had trusted to his long beard and the cropping of his curly head as the most effectual disguise, and so far no one had recognized him. The only people who had known of his being in Washington were the friends with whom he stayed, the tailor who had sold him his clothes, who had a son with Stuart's cavalry, and the girl, my old school friend, who had given him my address, whom he went to see in the dusk hours of the afternoon, and who had hospitably received him in the coal cellar—which struck me, at the moment, as an infallible method of arousing suspicion. He wanted me to return with him, or to marry him and follow him by flag of truce; he was sure Providence had made his way smooth on purpose to effect our union. His arguments were perhaps not very logical, but they almost convinced me of what I wished to believe. I was willing to bear the anger of my family, but could not think of again undergoing the wear and tear of separation. I promised to let him know my decision early the next morning; I think I should have gone with him, but that evening we were telegraphed to return to Washington—my father had been stricken down by apoplexy; and my brother and I went home in the night train. Edward knew the reason, for he read my father's death in the morning's newspaper.

Three weeks afterward I had a letter from Edward Mayne by flag of truce; that was the week before Fredericksburg; and then the agony again began. It did not last very long. In the early spring came Chancellorsville, and there Edward was slightly wounded and taken prisoner; he was removed to the hospital at Point Lookout; his aunt went to nurse him, but I did not go; he was doing very well, and I thought it was wiser not. And one day in May—ah! that day!—I was looking out of my window, and I see now the blue sky, the little white clouds, the roses, and the ivied wall that I saw when my mother came in and said Mrs. Daingerfield had come to take me to Edward, who was very ill and anxious to see me. I remember how the blood seemed to sink away from my heart, and for a moment I thought I was going to die; but in another moment I knew that I should live. I was eager and excited, and not unhappy, from that time until the end was at hand.

I had never been in a hospital before, and there was a long ward full of men, who all looked to me as if they were dying, through which I passed to reach the room in which Edward Mayne lay alone. He heard me coming, and, as I opened the door, he raised himself in bed and put out his hand to me....

That night the dreadful pain left him, and his aunt said he seemed brighter and more hopeful; but when the surgeon saw him in the morning, he shook his head. When the sun set, Edward knew that he should never again see its evening glories. Into that dark, still room came a greater than Solomon, and as the dread shadow of his wings fell on my life, I hushed my prayers and tears. We sat and watched and waited; and there came back a feeble strength into the worn frame, and he told us what he wished. He said that perhaps he had been wrong, but he had thought himself right; at least, he had given his life for his faith, and soon, soon he would know all. Then he asked them to leave him alone with me for a little while, and when they came back into the room, nothing remained of him but the cast-off mortality. The sun was rising in the east, but his soul was far beyond it; and the sunlight came in and kissed the quiet pale face, that looked so peaceful and so happy there could be no lamentation over it.

That day came his parole; the parole which we had so exerted ourselves to obtain that he might go home to get well; and now it had found him far beyond the captivity of bar or flesh—a freed spirit, 'gone up on high.'

The kindness of the Government induced us to ask one more favor, which was granted us. They let us take him home to Washington and bury him in the place he had always wished to be buried in; and some Confederate prisoners were given permission to attend his funeral. So he was buried as a soldier should be buried, borne to the grave by his comrades, and mourned by the woman dearest to him. He lies now on the sunniest slope in that green graveyard, where the waters rush near his resting place, and the trees make a shade for the daisies that brighten above him.

He died as the sun rose on the first of June; we buried him early on the morning of the fifth. That night I left Washington, glad that it was to be no longer my place of residence, glad that my family would soon follow me to make another home where I could be stung by no associations. The old house passed into the hands of my elder sister, who is married to a Congressman from the West. But during this winter I have been so often homesick, and this early spring has been so chill and bleak compared with the May days of Washington, that I was fain to come back for a brief hour; and I have chosen to come in these last May days, that the first of June might find me here, true to the memory of the past.