An Echo of Antietam | Page 7

not alone the opposing lines of battle writhing and twisting
in a death, embrace, the batteries smoking and flaming, the hurricanes
of cavalry, but innumerable women also, spectral forms of mothers,

wives, sweethearts, clinging about the necks of the advancing soldiers,
vainly trying to shield them with their bosoms, extending supplicating
hands to the foe, raising eyes of anguish to Heaven. The soldiers,
grim-faced, with battle-lighted eyes, do not see the ghostly forms that
throng them, but shoot and cut and stab across and through them as if
they were not there,--yes, through them, for few are the balls and
bayonets that reach their marks without traversing some of these
devoted breasts. Spectral, alas, is their guardianship, but real are their
wounds and deadly as any the combatants receive.
Soon after breakfast on the day of the battle Grace came across to the
parsonage, her swollen eyes and pallid face telling of a sleepless night.
She could not bear her mother's company that day, for she knew that
she had never greatly liked Philip. Miss Morton was very tender and
sympathetic. Grace was a little comforted by Mr. Morton's saying that
commonly great battles did not open much before noon. It was a respite
to be able to think that probably up to that moment at least no harm had
come to Philip. In the early afternoon the minister drove into Waterville
to get the earliest bulletins at the "Banner" office, leaving the two
women alone.
The latter part of the afternoon a neighbor who had been in Waterville
drove by the house, and Miss Morton called to him to know if there
were any news yet. He drew a piece of paper from his pocket, on which
he had scribbled the latest bulletin before the "Banner" office, and read
as follows: "The battle opened with a vigorous attack by our right. The
enemy was forced back, stubbornly contesting every inch of ground.
General ------'s division is now bearing the brunt of the fight and is
suffering heavily. The result is yet uncertain."
The division mentioned was the one in which Philip's regiment was
included. "Is suffering heavily,"--those were the words. There was
something fearful in the way the present tense brought home to Grace a
sense of the battle as then actually in progress. It meant that while she
sat there on the shady piazza with the drowsy hum of the bees in her
ears, looking out on the quiet lawn where the house cat, stretched on
the grass, kept a sleepy eye on the birds as they flitted in the branches

of the apple-trees, Philip might be facing a storm of lead and iron, or,
maybe, blent in some desperate hand-to-hand struggle, was defending
his life--her life--against murderous cut and thrust.
To begin to pray for his safety was not to dare to cease, for to cease
would be to withdraw a sort of protection--all, alas I she could give
--and abandon him to his enemies. If she had been watching over him
from above the battle, an actual witness of the carnage going on that
afternoon on the far-off field, she could scarcely have endured a more
harrowing suspense from moment to moment. Overcome with the
agony, she threw herself on the sofa in the sitting-room and lay
quivering, with her face buried in the pillow, while Miss Morton sat
beside her, stroking her hair and saying such feeble, soothing words as
she might.
It is always hard, and for ardent temperaments almost impossible, to
hold the mind balanced in a state of suspense, yielding overmuch
neither to hope nor to fear, under circumstances like these. As a relief
to the torture which such a state of tension ends in causing, the mind at
length, if it cannot abandon itself to hope, embraces even despair.
About five o'clock Miss Morton was startled by an exceeding bitter cry.
Grace was sitting upon the sofa. "Oh, Miss Morton!" she cried, bursting
into tears which before she had not been able to shed, "he is dead!"
"Grace! Grace! what do you mean?"
"He is dead, I know he is dead!" wailed the girl; and then she explained
that while from moment to moment she had sent up prayers for him,
every breath a cry to God, she suddenly had been unable to pray more,
and this she felt was a sign that petition for his life was now vain. Miss
Morton strove to convince her that this was but an effect of
overwrought nerves, but with slight success.
In the early evening Mr. Morton returned with the latest news the
telegraph had brought. The full scope of the result was not yet known.
The advantage had probably remained with the National forces,
although the struggle had been one of those close and